Friday, August 17, 2012

d is for dog

In August pouf! submitted a project proposal to the Canadian Centre for Architecture, in response to a call for projects about what Montreal means to its users, A-Z. We chose "d" - for dog, naturally! Our submission, D is for dog, proposed to turn the spacious green lawns of the CCA into a pop-up or temporary dog park for one afternoon in fall 2012. The goal would have been to temporarily increase the amount of space on the island of Montreal for shared animal/human use, but we also hoped to engage visitors to the pop-up park in a dialogue about inclusive urban planning. Inclusive, that is, of our animal co-habitants in the city.

Tom modified Cynthia's photograph of the CCA grounds to include
some of our friends from Parc Gallery.


















Our proposal was not among those chosen for exhibition/enactment, unfortunately. But we thought followers of the dog parc gallery project might enjoy taking a look at our proposal. We were certainly inspired by Parc Gallery!


The cover page of our submission.


















The full text of our proposal.
















Thursday, August 2, 2012

Development continues on all sides of Parc Gallery

During our re-installation of the dog portraits in Parc Gallery, we were struck by the presence of huge building cranes on all sides, and the disappearance of the lovely, former ancien maçonnerie on the north side of the park, also home to a plumber and photography clinic, all vanished.

Looking north on Rue Basin towards downtown
- this view won't last long.















A building crane towers over the future Bassins de nouveau havre,
to the west of Parc Gallery.

















We came on the weekend, when there was no construction noise. Should one hope for the building projects to be staggered, to limit the noise pollution on a day-by-day basis, or for they to coincide, and thus - one hopes - end sooner?

Duke appears to look with some suspicion upon
the advertising tower for "Parc Gallery Lofts", which
will occupy the site south of the present dog park.

Le retour des portraits

The portraits are back! Visitors to Parc Gallery over the last few weeks will have noticed that we have returned the dog portraits, taken in fall 2010, to Parc Gallery's southern fence. Because a few of the portraits were taken from the park, we don't have quite as many as we did the first time around, so we decided to install them on one fence only. Maybe they will inspire more portrait-additions in the future!

Tom sorting the portraits - Zirreh is on top.





We used the same system as last fall to install the pictures. Please let us know if any seem loose or need replacement ties!








Jack looks like he's shaking paws with Tom.




The portraits seem no worse for wear despite being outside from August 2011-January 2012, when we took them down to show them at a public consultation (OCPM).















Of course, a dog user of Parc Gallery became quite interested in our work!












All done! A real dog outshines the pictures - but it's nice to see them up again!