Winnipeg’s Public Safety Building opened in 1966 as 

a headquarters for the Winnipeg Police Service. A condition from this time states that this site must have always been used for public purposes. At the time that the building was constructed, the site held a nineteenth-century market building which had been substantially altered in the first half of the twentieth-century to house civic offices. The site had been planned to house a new civic structure of the scale and shape of the Public Safety Building. The use of Tyndall stone in the facade tied the building to the neighbouring City Hall complex and to the historical use of this material for important government and institutional facilities in Winnipeg. The latter detail is an important one which makes the building fairly unique, since, by and large the material of choice for architects employing a Brutalist manner was concrete. The predominant use of Tyndall and concrete elevated the building to its own category, hence its architectural significance. This proposal intends to deviate the inevitable future demolition of this historical structure, re-purposing the iconic architectural elements of the Tyndall fins into a memorializing structure on the Marketlands site or in another relevant place in the city. In this way the sense of loss can be replaced by a sense of celebration and purpose, preserving an important element of the cultural identity of Winnipeg.

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This project intends to preserve the Tyndall fins into a memorializing structure on the Marketlands site 

or in another relevant place in the city. There are several creative possibilities to poetically reuse the iconic architectural Tyndall fins and re-contextualize them. It could be repurposed on the site of the new proposed market. It could be reused in the creation 

of a new autonomous memorializing project such as a new public art piece, a small multipurpose pavilion, or a new land-art or landscape feature. We would be dedicated to evaluate and conceive options in various architectural and artistic typologies in different contexts in collaboration with the City of Winnipeg, partners, and the community. The re-utilization of the fins could be directed to a new use and placed decided by the city hall or by the citizens of Winnipeg. Any of the options will aim to preserve the historical importance of the original architectural elements of the Public Safety Building transforming them now into a new poetic and functional structure that celebrates heritage, public life, and the architectural and material traditions of Winnipeg. 

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