Stephen Avenue: An Area of Business and Pleasure

Our Jane’s Walk of centre east covered the most popular spots on Stephen Avenue: the Core, Bankers Hall, the Palace Theatre, the Bay, etc. A common theme that we found during our walk was that centre east is both a place of business and pleasure. Centre east as an area is filled with banks and oil and gas companies but also places to shop, have a coffee and eat.

Since Stephen Avenue gives off such a professional, corporate culture, it’s nice to have public art lining the avenue to balance it out, such as the “Conversation” statues by William McElcheran and the featured photo of this post. The featured photo is a photo of the Galleria Tree Sculptures gifted to the City of Calgary by Trizec Hahn Office Properties and fabricated by Empire Iron Works in 2000. 

Although we have an appreciation for art in general, we especially appreciate functional art. Not only are the Galleria Trees pretty to look at, the design is meant to reduce wind gusts between Bankers Hall and the Home Oil Tower. Calgary does get windy sometimes, so we love that the sculpture serves more than one purpose.

“Porte Cochere de La Lumiere” (The Portal of Light)

“Glass is the most magical of all materials. It transmits light in a special way.” - Gale Chihuly

Our group chose to explore the downtown centre east location for this semester's Jane’s Walk. While I do spend a frequent amount of time downtown, it was refreshing to take more than a quick glance at some of the incredible art installations the core has to offer. 

Our first impressions of this area were that it housed many corporate companies and buildings, creating a very “cement community”. However, the immense amount of fascinating artwork we came across diluted that dull notion and turned it into “I wonder what’s around that corner?”

The structure pictured above was designed by Michael Hayden and commissioned by Amoco Oil (Now known as BP). During the day, it appears to be just a stainless steel and glass structure. However, at night, there are a couple light portals that shine from the ground up, casting an array of colour into the glass panels. It is considered a visual light show to those walking by.

This was one of my favourite installations we came across. I picked this structure in particular as I felt inspired by the idea that it had a second component to it - the projected lights that are only visible at night. That alone would make me want to come back to it during the evening and see the vibrant colours cascading over the glass panels.