Creating a dance floor for trees

Anna Thurmayr and Dietmar Straub, a husband-and-wife team and members of the Faculty of Architecture’s department of landscape architecture, are fully registered Landscape Architects in Germany and Canada, and this allowed them to enter, then win honours, at the prestigious Deutscher Landschaftsarchitektur Preis 2013 in Germany.

“This award competition is launched every second year and is one of the most recognized awards in the German speaking area or even in Europe,” Straub says. “And we are very pleased by the fact that we got this award for a humble project in Winnipeg.”

Their project, Folly Forest, redesigned a dull asphalt section of Strathcona School in Winnipeg into “a dance floor for trees.”  (Read a brief project outline in this PDF.)

Out of 124 submitted works the jury selected one main price and eight “Würdigungen/Commendations” for the Deutscher Landschaftsarchitektur Preis 2013. Thurmayr and Straub were awarded  a “Würdigung/Commendation”.

Reflecting upon their success, Straub said, “We have had the luck to receive a National Citation Award at the CSLA Award of Excellence in 2013 as well. To get an award in Canada and in Germany for a design project (in the same year) somehow reflects our personal and professional situation: HIER UND DORT or HERE AND THERE! But it is more here.”