“Permanent multi-element public artwork for highway underpass median, introducing visual interest and vibrancy to utilitarian infrastructure”
The City of Lethbridge Public Art Program, in partnership with the City's Urban Revitalization and Transportation & Transit departments, invites Canadian professional visual artists and artist teams to submit qualifications for a permanent public artwork at the 13th Street underpass.
This two-stage competition will commission an artist to design, fabricate, and install a multi-element artwork in the median beneath Highway 3 on 13th Street—one of the primary north–south connectors in Lethbridge and a key gateway into the north side of the city. The project seeks to introduce visual interest and vibrancy to an infrastructure site that is currently perceived as primarily utilitarian.
The artwork will be situated within the raised median of the underpass and must incorporate some or all of four existing low-profile concrete planter frames. The site is an active roadway environment where drivers are frequently slowing, stopping, and changing lanes. Proposals must carefully respond to safety, visibility, and maintenance requirements including maintaining clear driver sightlines, discouraging physical interaction and unsafe pedestrian crossings, avoiding resemblance to traffic control devices, minimizing glare and visual distraction, maintaining a low vertical profile, being visually calming, allowing access to existing lighting infrastructure, being maintainable without lane closures, and withstanding regular exposure to sand and salt used in winter road maintenance.
Installation must be carefully coordinated to minimize traffic disruption and occur outside peak traffic periods.