If you drive through the roundabout where Highbury Avenue meets Ron McNeil Line, you have probably noticed the bright red, barn-shaped sculpture standing in the middle of it. That piece, called Fading Memories, just won a Gold award at an international design competition.
The city announced the win on Facebook this week. Fading Memories earned a Gold certification at the 19th Grands Prix du Design, a worldwide competition judged by more than 120 architects, designers and other experts, in the Art discipline according to the designer’s own account (the city’s post described it as the “Art & Photography” category). Results were announced August 20. Gold-level projects move on to compete for the top “Grand Winner” title, to be decided at the competition’s two fall galas, October 8 and November 19. The piece is credited to SHIFT Landscape Architecture, a Guelph firm whose team includes landscape architect Michael Barker. The city’s Facebook post thanks “artist Mike Barker” by name; SHIFT’s own project page credits him for the project photography.
Fading Memories is meant to be a tribute to old wooden barns, the kind that used to dot the farmland around St. Thomas and are slowly disappearing. From one direction, it reads as a simple, solid barn shape, “similar to what a child may draw,” in the designer’s own words. Keep moving around the roundabout, and that solid form breaks apart into cross-sections cut through the barn, open vertical slats like weathered board siding. The city’s own staff report on the project describes the idea behind it this way: “The smell of hay, the sound of rain falling on a steel roof, the spectacle of dust reflecting in sunlight beaming through the cracks of board siding.” The goal, the report says, is to help keep those memories alive and “ignite new ones for future generations.”
How the city picked it
Council approved the piece on February 12, 2024. The city had put the art contract out for public bid the previous fall, and 13 proposals came in. A committee scored each one on things like design quality, experience and price. SHIFT Landscape Architecture came out on top, and council awarded the firm the job for $220,640, excluding HST, within the $250,000 the city had budgeted. During the meeting, members asked whether every roundabout in the city was going to get a piece of art like this. The city’s Director of Environmental Services said those decisions get made “on an ad hoc basis.”
That same night, council approved a second, separate art piece for the roundabout down the road at Highbury and South Edgeware. That one went to a different company, Metal Mind Forge, for $132,740, excluding HST. The city had targeted December 13, 2024 to open the Highbury and Ron McNeil roundabout to traffic, weather permitting, with Fading Memories installed the following week.
Part of a bigger pattern
Fading Memories sits less than a kilometre down Highbury Avenue from Imagination Station, the giant toy-train sculpture the St. Thomas Economic Development Corporation unveiled near Yarmouth Yards earlier this month. When that piece went up, Mayor Joe Preston called it part of “a growing tradition of public art across the city.” An international design award for a roundabout sculpture is a small, concrete example of that tradition getting noticed outside St. Thomas.
Whether Fading Memories goes on to win the Grands Prix du Design’s top Grand Winner title will be decided at the competition’s two fall galas, October 8 and November 19. For now, the Gold win stands on its own, a bit of recognition for a piece drivers pass every day without necessarily knowing its name.
Sources: City of St. Thomas Council meeting minutes, February 12, 2024 · Report ID-07-24, Highbury and Ron McNeil Roundabout Outdoor Public Art Award (PDF) · SHIFT Landscape Architecture, Fading Memories project page
By Anthony Zruna · About the LocVox Newsroom
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