This Is Edmonton: Architectural Icons Editor’s Note: In this second photo essay on Edmonton urban spaces, Spacing Edmonton introduces Darren Kirby. Darren is a long-time Edmonton resident with interests in architecture, construction, infrastructure, urban planning, history, and photography of all of the above. You can view his pictures on flickr and follow him on twitter. Edmonton is not a city of iconic design and architecture. There are few if any structures here that could seriously be put forth as ‘iconic’ on a world scale, and that’s fine. Edmonton is a pragmatic city, perpetually a place to get things done. Edmonton is a place to build structures which serve a purpose rather than to build magnificent edifices which serve as monuments to vanity or capitalism. Despite this, Edmonton contains an amazing stock of interesting and unique structures as beautiful as they are practical. These structures cover a huge cross section of design styles and eras, from the late 19th century through to today. True to ourselves and our city, a modest tour of some of this city’s more impressive structures may be in order to remind ourselves we are doing well, and that really, we can be iconic on a more human scale. An Edmontonian scale. Thus, a few icons of Edmonton: