The Fort Whyte Centre was conceived in the late '70s as a place for education on environmental issues. Poised for a major expansion, the Centre required a new building to service its visitors. In additional to controlling access to the overall site, the Alloway Reception Centre includes a cafe, a meeting hall, washrooms, and a gift shop.
The building strikes a pose of environmental hyper-sensitivity. The rough stone wall on the north wall appears as a geological anomaly on the prairie, and its funnelesque shape collects visitors from the parking lot and draws them to the centre. The centre of this long low form is the site of a minor geological disturbance, where the polite flat roofed wings have been interrupted by a shifting of plates, dynamic soil pressures have pushed the piles out of the ground causing the roof planes to shift, and the walls to fall over.
