A year before its opening in 1979, Winnipeg Square, along with six other property owners, signed an agreement with the City of Winnipeg to erect barricades at the corner of Portage and Main, effectively forcing any pedestrian traffic underground. This issue has been a matter of great debate in Winnipeg recently, and there has been some talk about reopening the intersection to pedestrian traffic: City to revisit opening Portage and Main. The tenant who refuses to agree to the reopening is clearly Winnipeg Square, though the article does not mention names, since the underground shopping centre stands to be impacted by the opening the most. At the moment, the Square has guaranteed foot traffic that could be persuaded to buy something en route to work or some downtown destination. With the intersections open and the available faster route of walking at street level, what would the future of the Square be, especially considering the falling enthusiasm for the Square as a shopping destination in the first place?
Who wants to work out of a little hobbit hole?
Winnipeg Square is not simply a walkway, which is often how the skywalk system is perceived despite the many stores found along it. Instead, the Square markets itself as a shopping destination, claiming as its anchor tenants, Shopper's Drug Mart, Chamberlyn's Restaurant, and Grand & Toy. Clearly, the Square does not compete at the same level as Winnipeg's true shopping centres, such as Polo Park or St. Vital, but its commercial interests are integral to a comparison of the space with the Bonaventura.
In addition to its anchor stores, Winnipeg Square boasts 41 other tenants, many of which are restaurants or fast-service food kiosks, as well as other basic services like shoe repair, dry cleaning, postal outlets, printing, and stores selling clothing, jewelry, flower, and more. With access to the city's major banks, a major hotel, a larger shopping centre, the city's largest library, and in-house medical personnel (all without leaving the climate-controlled space of the skywalk system), Winnipeg Square recreates in many respects the feeling of a city within a city.
As its website description suggests, Winnipeg Square requires some preparation before a visitor can successfully orient themselves in this underground space. Visitors must descend into the space from another level, be that street level, the second floor of another building, or from an underground parking lot, using escalators (people-movers!), the odd elevator, or staircases. This often involves entering other buildings first.
Upon entering the space from Graham Avenue, the main entrance, the visitor first encounters the Square itself, with a plethora of turn-offs that lead to the many exits to street level, parking, and other buildings, which you can see on the map provided below:
An abundance of signage indicates the bewildering effect the Square must have on new visitors. The signs also remind visitors that the regular world continues to operate above us, with two-dimensional arrows trying to indicate three-dimensional space.
While it may seem like a stretch to a Winnipeger in 2007 to describe the Square in terms of its disorienting and bewildering effects, I would refer such a person to the this YouTube clip about the exciting new Winnipeg Skywalk system:
Most of the sojourn takes place in the skywalk system, which does not directly comment on Winnipeg Square itself. But, as I said previously--it's all part of the same system and the system was at some point new to Winnipeggers. The confusion and limited knowledge of the system as expressed by many of the people the reporter encounters is valid. At the time, the skywalk system and the Square were spaces that our (Winnipeggers') current sensory organs were not yet capable of fully comprehending. Clearly, the reporter exaggerates his reaction to this, but at the end of the clip, the last directions he is given describe the "Portage and Main Circus," which is the circular structure that connects Winnipeg Square to the other buildings on both sides of Portage Avenue, and he in response conveys a complete inability to understand what this structure could be. And I think that even the managers of Winnipeg Square have a hard time describing this space, given their completely inadequate pictorial representation in the map:
The experience of the Portage and Main Circus is unlike that of any other space I have been to. The picture conveys to some extent my response to the space. It's an aesthetically pleasing space, but at the same time, it is disorienting. The space itself is like the non-place Auge describes. People walk through it to get to other places, but at the same time, there are little kiosks, pieces of artwork, transplanted musicians (aka buskers), historical plaques that are meant to stop the traveller.
At the same time, like the paths in a shopping centre or the ones Jameson describes in the Bonaventura, the mere shape of the space, its circularity, dictates the path of the traveller. You must walk around the circle in this way until you find the exit that you desire. The signs pointing out the exits, promising what lies beyond them, are all the same, so that all the destinations become glazed over with a layer of sameness. There is no beginning or end to the circle, no clear direction you should take other than going around. In this way, the "Circus" gives off the feeling of no escape! All this way, the Square has dictated your actions, but at the precise moment when you need more direction, all it can offer are identical signs with offset exits that are also entrances.
The sense that there is no way out--the possibility of the moment of panic--is acknowledged by the presence of these signs, which seem witty at first, but are really responses to the sublime feeling of the Circus, I think.
Observing the regular users of the Square and Circus, however, it becomes obvious that many have responded to the call to adapt. In fact, they proceed through the Square with nary a glance upward, as though the identical tiles lining the floor can direct them to the place they wish to go. So many steps to this bank. So many steps from this bank to that bank.
The response to the call to adapt, then, is the use of cognitive mapping. The regular users of the underground tunnels (and the skywalk system) no longer use the signs. The signs are for wimps. Kidding. Really, though, the signs and the new user's dependence on the signs contribute to the disorientation. By ignoring the signs and depending on habit and familiarity of motion, the regular user then traverses the space using his own cognitive map of the space.
Upon reflecting about my own cognitive map for Winnipeg Square, I realized with horror that it does not match the actual map. I had constructed in my head a somewhat magical image of Winnipeg Square as existing beneath the roadway. Let's continue with the inadequate pictorial representations, shall we?
However, that map has been blown to smithereens by the so-called accurate representation by Winnipeg Square. A basement?! How unromantic is that. I also imagine that the Portage and Main circus is actually located right in the middle of that intersection. The map is unclear on this point...though it does kind of suggest the intersection is merely traversed by a long tunnel. But I'd like to stay in a disillusioned state if that is the case.
On to the cognitive maps that help me orient myself, though. I have a general understanding of north-south in Winnipeg Square--which I hope everyone has considering the fact that the Square runs north-south along the block. So, when I reach the Circus, I envision myself, as I said, in the centre of the intersection. Essentially, I am standing in the middle of traffic with the three buildings that I have access to surrounding me. I shut out the fact that the Circus is a circle and just walk until I reach my destination in the map I have in my head. There is some compromise between what I imagine and what distance I have to walk in reality, but noramlly, that idea works, and I can get to the Fairmount fairly easily.
Remaining thoughts:
Jameson's observation that you cannot observe the Bonaventura hotel itself, but rather, you can only see distorted images of all that surrounds it made me think about how Winnipeg Square appears to the street walker.
It doesn't, really. Sure, there are awkward looking entrances everywhere, but without entering them, you couldn't possibly picture what is downstairs.
In the same way, while in Winnipeg Square, it's hard to remember what exists outside the building. This seems like a contradiction to my own cognitive map, but it isn't. Winnipeg Square, the mall itself that is, does not exist in relation to other buildings, really, so when you're in the basement of a building that does not exist, it's hard to imagine how it is situated in the streetscape. Instead, the windows project light and nothing else.
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