Fall 2010 Thesis Reviews Booklet by John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design

DREW ADAMS LEO ARIEMMA VLADIMIR BEREZOVSKIY ADAM BRANDER CLEO BUSTER DEREK CHAN JUSTIN CHENG DEREK CHIEN NATHAN CHOW DAVID DELANEY NAZLI DELAVIZ JAKUB DZAMBA GABRIEL FAIN CHRISTINE FANG ALEXANDER FEHERTOI JONATHAN GOTFRYD GERARD GUTIERREZ STANTON MAN-YEE HUNG NEGAR JAZBI ADA-NKEM JUWAH ZEENA HASHIM KAMMOONA OMID MOHSENI KIASARI PRZEMYSLAW LATOSZEK CHENG WAH ALEX LUI THERESA MADER INGMAR MAK MONIKA MALESZEWSKA GAVIN MCMURRAY TZOLINE MNATZAKANIAN

FARZAM MOHAJER MEHREEN MUJIB CLARISSA NAM NI NI MLADEN PEJIC GIULIA ROSANOVA CARMINE ROTUNDO SIMON ROUTH DONATA ROZWADOWSKI MEHZUN RUB YAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;EL SANTOPINTO ALEXIS SCHNEIDER MAE SHABAN MARGARET SHANG PETER SHERRATT RICHARD SOLE MICHAEL SPATAFORA PATRICK SPEAR JOHN ANTHONY GORDON SPEED CONRAD TAVES ELAINE TONG ARTHUR TSENG DANIEL VIVAT JONATHAN WONG SIN WAI MATTHEW TUNG SHING WONG LEE TE HENRY WU DI YAN ALI YARBAKHTI CELINA YEE

THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to Ana da Silva Borges and Cecille Sioulis for strong program support and invaluable coordination of the Final Thesis Reviews; to Nene Brode and Liz Ross for communications assistance and production of this book; to Dean Richard M. Sommer and our new Assistant Dean, Administration, Horatio Bot; and to John Howarth, Johnny Bui, Bryn Dhir, and Zita da Silva Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Alessandro for facilities, resources, and coordination assistance for this Fallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Thesis Reviews. Also thank you to an impressive array of guest critics and our many thesis advisors whose unwavering commitment continues to show through the success of our students.

WHO NEW? I am very pleased to present this provocative roster for the FALL 2010 Final MArch Thesis Reviews. On December 13-14, 2010, our newest soon-to-be graduates of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, Master of Architecture Program, will present and defend their speculations to a group of external and internal guest critics and a large faculty audience. Fifty-eight students, whose varied work we will be contemplating, have ventured into areas of architecture that speculate on its capacity, its stakes, and its limits. Questions of technology, of city-making, of formmaking, of ecology, of social politics, of manufacturing often ask to seek expertise beyond the discipline, only to ultimately construct arguments of architecture. Provocations in design boldly engage a variety of scales, as manifest in the following pages, as interventions in an often re-framed world. I look forward to two stimulating days of rich discourse, varied perspectives, and new revelations. Pina Petricone Thesis Co-ordinator and Director, Master of Architecture Program

M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

PROJECTS

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M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ON HOUSING AND SUBURBIA,

OR, PROTOTYPES FOR A NEW SUBURBAN LANDSCAPE DREW ADAMS

This is a proposition for the paradigmatic consideration of small scale housing as a viable and desirable alternative to both conventional forms of suburban living and to status quo responses to density. It is a reaction to the understanding of the North American urban condition as being a suburban one, formed of a continuous, diffuse patchwork of more or less dense built form and, moreover, a wholly exhausted model of urbanism. Taken to its logical conclusion, it is faced with a broad series of conflating forces which are poised to challenge its present conception. Given such circumstances, suburbia’s vast amounts of under-utilized, highly-accessible and well-serviced land holds significant potential as key territories for reimagining the contemporary, post-industrial city. What is pursued is a rigorous, typologically-driven approach to the formulation of a series of new housing prototypes capable of adaptation to a wide variety of plot sizes and site conditions; from strip malls to power centres, mid-blocks to corner sites and so forth. These models are interrogated on a typified site in relation to this extensive network of suburban corridors and stake out an important and greatly neglected middle ground in the discourse on intensification and housing development. Most critical is their engagement, necessarily, with the external forces such as code, zoning, policy and real estate development logics which definitively predispose certain forms and broadly govern all aspects of design. Accepting such constraints as ‘givens’, deliberately pragmatic and opportunistic tactics are adopted in an effort to attain greater architectural invention and recover a position of efficacy in response. Succinctly, what is sought is not simply an alternative housing model but a readily realizable one with agency: viable and competitive against the standard array of market-driven types that compose the built environment today.

ADVISOR: GEORGE BAIRD M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

CONDO TAKE-OVER LEO ARIEMMA

As Toronto has progressed from a waterfront driven by industry to one with a desire to be lived on by a few, it has seen a shift in the typology of that which dominates its landscape. Once a waterfront scattered with industrial uses, Toronto’s lakefront now hosts an enviable density of prime real estate condominiums. While many cities search for their waterfront identity, Toronto’s vision has become overcome by the “condo on the lake” strategy. This strategy has led to privatization of lands and structures, adding to an already significant barrier of the elevated Gardiner Expressway between the city and the waterfront, distancing the public from the vision of achieving a truly public waterfront. Recognizing that the condominiums have taken a stronghold on Toronto’s waterfront lands and are an inevitable part of the city’s future fabric, the thesis looks to redefine the approach and typology of the waterfront condo. This new typology is meant to defy the obstacles of infrastructure, privatized territories, and buildings in order to create new connections from the city to its lakefront amenity. The thesis investigates the question of privatization along the waterfront, specifically the “condo-nation” that is evolving, and pushes ideas of reclaiming public space via public/private partnerships through publicly amplified programs, linking the city to the water’s edge via the expanded condo podium. The new typology seeks to rethink the possibilities of what a new thickened ground plane can give to the city and ways in which the public can infiltrate its mass to provide new public spaces in an otherwise typically private building type.

ADVISOR: PINA PETRICONE M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

THE TWO DREDGERS VLADIMIR BEREZOVSKIY

Dredger terminology: Within the thesis framework, the word dredger is used not only in its direct meaning, but as a physical and conceptual tool to excavate historical, conceptual artifacts of Toronto’s industrial sector. As a new image in the same mirror, the process of dredging underlines the historical values of the city as well as renders it in a neoconservative industrial romantic manner. Through its own conceptual and formal framework, the thesis continues the conversation around Toronto’s struggle to reach out to its main water feature (Lake Ontario) along with other infrastructural and urban design questions that have been ignored by the lately accepted plans for the area. East Toronto waterfront is a vast infill site on the lake. The Situ was produced and abandoned by the industrial revolution – a symbolic graveyard to the industrial history of a city on the lake. The thesis project follows two industrial artifacts: The Victory Soya Mills Silos (an architectural artifact that has recently received a national heritage status) and an old dredger that has been serving the near-to-site Keating channel for 40 years. Latest plans for rehabilitation of the Keating channel to a more natural water outlet to Lake Ontario are forcing the machine towards the end of its functional life. The long abandoned silos are to acquire a new architectural and functional existence on numerous scales. With the progression of the thesis, the two artifacts form symbolic, functional, and conceptual relationships between one another. The two dredgers form a very specific thematic milieu, under which the city grid, roads, and infrastructural artifacts can go through modifications and reformations of their relationships to the city and its occupant / the flaneur. The now formal couple performs on numerous scales; they are the effect and the effecting for larger scale urban design, landscape architectural and architectural moves deployed by the thesis. The Situ is an epicentre of numerous modern developments that are to be undertaken by the city of Toronto within the next 15-20 years, projects that will house a large percentage of Toronto’s rapidly growing population.

ADVISOR: ROBERT LEVIT M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

SICK IN THE CITY ADAM BRANDER

This thesis examines the dual condition of isolation and integration with respect to healthcare institutions in the city. While treatment can require patients to remove themselves from their everyday life, the success of their recovery is often hinged upon their ability to reintegrate with the city community, both physically and mentally. The Centre for Addictions and Mental Health (CAMH) Queen Street West location is currently undergoing a massive redevelopment: a transformation from an asylum institution into an urban campus. Main interventions of the project include driving public streets through the site and including a mixture of non-healthcare programs within the new buildings. As this hub for mental health is making deliberate progress to integrate with the urban fabric, its satellite components must also be examined against this objective, the Clarke Institute being one of these. Constructed in the late sixties as a centre for the treatment and research of mental illness, the Clarke Institute was and still remains an austere institution cut off from the city. This thesis puts this Brutalist body on the operating table and performs a series of procedures with the intent of disarming the site of its isolating qualities and integrating it with the surrounding urban fabric. Interventions are at play that aim to improve the psychological reading of the site from the perspectives of the patient and the pedestrian. Intentions include combating stigma via integration and fostering a more therapeutic environment. The concrete structure is pried open to embrace the ambitions that its Queen Street counterpart is pursuing while at the same time enhancing the sublime characteristics of the Brutalist building.

ADVISOR: PINA PETRICONE M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

HOUSING FLEXIBILITY

ADAPTING THE MONGOLIAN GER FOR URBAN SETTINGS

CLEO BUSTER

Through the adaptation of the traditional Mongolian ger, Housing Flexibility proposes expandability, portability, and densification. The thesis focuses on the redesign of the traditional Mongolian ger, creating a flexible structure that can be easily erected up to three stories. Due to climate change, extreme cold periods in winter and droughts in summer, overgrazing, and other environmental impacts, increasing numbers of Mongolians are giving up nomadic living to move to the city in search of new jobs and modern lifestyles. Over the past twenty years, Mongoliaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capital city, Ulaanbaatar, has undergone extreme growth and transformation. The previously small urban centre has become a sprawling, densely packed city of over a million people. Two thirds of the population lives in substandard conditions. With Ulaanbaatar as the geographic focus, the thesis offers a solution to the critical need for better housing as well as the issue of urban sprawl. The redesigned ger provides additional space in a vertical fashion, thus minimizing the physical footprint on each lot and freeing up the rest of the lot for alternate uses such as gardening and animal husbandry. The potential for vertical expansion also allows the GerUPs to be clustered in ways appropriate to the requirements of urban density while continuing to respect the southern orientation of the traditional Mongolian ger. The double skin curtain wall of the expandable GerUP not only provides greater insulation but also potential space for future services. Housing Flexibility responds to the increasing densification of Ulaanbaatar while maintaining cultural and spatial continuity.

ADVISOR: LARRY RICHARDS M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

TIDE-NAMIC SPACE DEREK CHAN

This thesis juxtaposes old and new architecture and landscape to reactivate and maximize the full potential of Liverpool’s historic Albert Dock as an attractive waterfront destination and extension of the dynamic activity and momentum from the city centre core. The new interventions are dynamic performative elements that connect people to the excitement, activity, and function of the heritage dockland and the river. This site, located along England’s River Mersey, has always been defined by its relationship to water. Historically, the intense activity that characterized the Albert Dock was generated by the shipping industry. The new intervention exploits the dock’s relationship with water in a novel way. By transforming the site into a public space that highlights the dynamic role water plays in this context, the space is given a new life in its contemporary urban environment while its historic functions are showcased and commemorated.

ADVISOR: ELISE SHELLEY M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

INFLATON FIELD JUSTIN CHENG

Now that it is becoming clear that we all move within the all-encompassing system of Global Capitalism, we need to accept the implications that this has upon our built environment. Like the inflaton particles that gave birth to the universe, the technological products of the Global Production Cycle unleash the built environment. These machines are pre-invented and organized according to local histories. Is our current built environment anything more than a specific permutation of an infinite series of technological arrangements, with certain historical values conveniently embedded? This thesis ruminates upon the possibilities and excesses of this technological Inflaton Field, utilizing drawing as a tool for understanding the conditions that drive the formation of the built environment.

ADVISOR: AN TE LIU M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ARK - AUTO RENTAL KIOSK DEREK CHIEN

In a world where the cost of parking is greater than the cost of vehicle ownership, a proposed minimum footprint, high density parking structure will continue to support individual vehicular transportation through the reconfiguration of existing infrastructural parking typologies. An automated dispenser terminal will function to park, charge, and display a series of super compact micro segment vehicles, and will be compatible with the space constraints of intensified urban environments. This vending machine configuration will facilitate the operation of and access to city car share programs, and give priority to the model of mobility as a service.

ADVISOR: CHRISTOS MARCOPOULOS M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ARCTIC BUILDING TYPOLOGY NATHAN CHOW

Cold climate buildings in the polar night and midnight sun region need to pay special attention to their inhospitable environment. With the unique temperature and lighting circumstances that the Arctic brings, it is also the isolation and emptiness that inhabitants must confront. How can an Arctic building be designed to facilitate healthy living and working while balancing its ecological strain on the environment? For example, the foundations of the building must confront the loss of stable ground as the once-perennially frozen earth warms, subsequent to a global thermal shift. Contributing to this problem is the current energy model which relies on the supply of fossil fuels to generate electricity and heat for misplaced southern-designed buildings. The conventional practice of “Green” architecture is mostly non-applicable to this region which requires the aspirations of being environmentally friendly to be sought in a new manner. Of additional interest is the ability to create a place that reconciles southern culture with the realm of the Arctic. The construction period in this region is short – a feasible building is ideally constructed in one season. Perhaps this can be achieved through modular prefabricated components that allow quick erection and the flexibility to articulate a new typology for this climate.

ADVISOR: MARY LOU LOBSINGER M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

DUNDAS STREET FORUM DAVID DELANEY

On November 28th, 2008, the Metrolinx board of directors voted to adopt the Regional Transportation Plan as laid out in The Big Move: Transforming Transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. The Big Move proposes a 25-year plan that will attempt to build “over 1200 kilometres of rapid transit – more than triple what exists now – so that over 80 percent of residents in the region will live within two kilometres of rapid transit...”.1 Within the Regional Transportation Plan, priority action 1.2 is to create high order transit connectivity to Pearson International Airport from all directions. Through an extension built onto the Georgetown rail corridor, high frequency trains will connect Pearson International Airport to the web of public transit within the city. Construction on the new rail connection has already begun... At the unassuming junction of Dundas Street West and Bloor Street, the Union-Pearson rail link intersects the city’s existing GO and TTC infrastructure, creating a transportation node that is expected to spur an extraordinary densification of the neighborhood. This increased density becomes the context for the designation of the hub as a void: the forum for public interaction and shared experience. Within this shared experience, the site becomes a gateway to both the airport and the downtown and as such it is the threshold to local, regional and global users. The forum becomes a space to be filled with a mixed-use development that centres on two major programs: a multi-modal transit link and a public library that is intertwined with a car sharing facility. The two program areas are linked both above and below grade by shared spaces, with the exterior space intended as a plaza for public events. The forum operates on both incremental as well as comprehensive levels: incremental in that there are separate programs with different needs and different infrastructural systems and experiences, and comprehensive in that the forum is a community entity within which all of its constituent parts act to serve the neighborhood in which it is located. 1 Metrolinx. The Big Move: Transforming Transportation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Toronto: Greater Toronto Transportation Authority, 2008. Pg 21.

ADVISOR: JOHN SHNIER M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ARCHITECTURE BEYOND SENSE OF SIGHT NAZLI DELAVIZ The ambition of this thesis is an attempt to explore architecture beyond our sense of sight. One way is to explore the interconnection of all the senses by introducing sensorial clues in unexpected ways to enhance our spatial experience. Having explored the importance of sight in architecture, it is evident that the visual clues indicating tactile, olfactory, and auditory elements of space are one of the most interesting aspects of this exploration. For example, when we see fire, we know that it is hot. Or when we see the shine on the polished floor, we know the floor is a smooth surface. In my thesis, I argue that adding others senses to the visual aspect of architecture creates new interventions. It also creates fun for users and usually increases the interaction between them.

ADVISOR: RODOLPHE EL-KHOURY M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

THIRD MILLENNIUM FARMING IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER FARMING REVOLUTION: SMALLER CHEAPER SUSTAINABLE JAKUB DZAMBA It is anticipated that in 2050 the world’s population will exceed 9 billion people. The expansion of the world’s foodprint that is expected to accompany this population increase may exceed the tolerances of our planet’s ecosystems, activating unknown environmental and economic tipping points, and result in extreme food shortages. HOW WILL WE FEED EVERYONE WHEN THE TIME COMES? This project proposes an idea named third millennium farming (3MF) that is about harnessing the abilities of micro-organisms (algae and phytoplankton) and micro-livestock (insects) to rapidly reproduce, for the purpose of food production. A detailed research project that resulted in the publication of a research paper indicates that 3MF food production strategies have a significantly SMALLER FOODPRINT than current crop farming and livestock rearing methods. Additionally, these new farming operations could be fed with certain types of city biowastes – creating a new, and more sustainable, type of food chain. In this vision of the year 2050, the 3MF revolution has swept away the antagonism between city, agriculture, and wilderness: grafting farming onto built form, while simultaneously allowing nature to creep back into our metropolises and daily lives. Farmers have returned to the city transformed – a mix between biowaste engineers, biologists, and botanists – managing high tech farms integrated into our buildings’ systems and city infrastructures. Toronto is leading the way in the world’s 3MF revolution – its multi-cultural population pumps out the world’s most diverse culinary solutions for utilizing insects, insect flour, and 3MF micro-crops in new and innovative ways. The city glows green at night as buildings; photo-bioreactors grow algae 24 hours a day - thriving off the nutrients found in city wastewater, eating the CO2 and re-oxygenating the city’s polluted air, all while producing feed for the micro-livestock farming operations. In the suburbs, farmers work to maintaining chemical-free lawns and parks, using the vegetation’s overgrowth to feed microlivestock. The CITY IS A FULLY SUSTAINABLE, FOOD-PRODUCING, ECOSYSTEM. The Ontario Place Experimental Community stands at the center of Toronto’s 3MF revolution – serving as a radical test bed for decreasing the city’s foodprint, utilizing city wastes in farming operations, and creating a popular image for this new lifestyle.

ADVISOR: LARRY RICHARDS M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

BRASILIA:

MERCADO DE EIXO MONUMENTAL GABRIEL FAIN

Brasilia is not a failed modernist experiment. Its strangeness is the very thing that should be appreciated. The city is dysfunctional and dystopian and it should be evaluated precisely on these terms: as an aesthetic object â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a work of Surrealist art â&#x20AC;&#x201C; rather than as an example of good urban design. The surface of the city is primarily defined by voids. To any visitor, it appears as an urban desert or a wasteland in which architectural objects are situated like pieces on a chess board. Brasilia had to represent the modern. By doing so, it operated as a form of cruelty on the people who were to inhabit the city. It suppressed the desires of many by removing anything which refuted the formal city. Since its creation, however, people have learned to appropriate the residual spaces to define their own needs. This thesis gives form and iconic value to these programs which have previously been marginalized.

ADVISOR: ROBERT LEVIT M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

XS SPACE

RE-SCALING URBAN AGRICULTURE

CHRISTINE FANG

The advent of mechanized farming tools, cheap crude oil, and the development of rail and highway networks at the turn of the twentieth century allowed for the economical long distance shipping of produce. This was the beginning of the great divide between food producers and food consumers. Today, over 60% of the food consumed in Canada is imported from other countries. The average produce item travels 2,400 km to reach the end consumer. This trend cannot continue indefinitely. Given that global crude oil production peaked in 2006, one must wonder: how will cities continue to feed themselves when it is no longer environmentally or economically sustainable to import food? What is the alternative to outsourcing our food production? How can we regain our food security? This thesis seeks to answer this question by reintroducing agriculture into the urban setting. Urban agriculture yields carbon neutral, flavourful, and nutritious crops, all while reducing product loss and spoilage due to energy-intensive transportation and storage. Side effects may include improved quality of life and environment. Small scale community gardens throughout North America have already proven themselves capable of organizing neighbourhoods in dealing with common issues, such as transforming underdeveloped spaces and fostering community engagement. There is not a lot of vacant green space available in built-up urban areas; however there are vast amounts of arable space dedicated to parking. This thesis explores the potential to locate and replant passive and productive agricultural systems within the existing built-up urban fabric of cities. It explores modular building units that transform parking spaces from vehicular storage space to sustainable machines for producing food. By transforming existing parking space into a new culture of local urban agriculture, this thesis challenges one to re-examine the cultural significance of the common parking space.

ADVISOR: AN TE LIU M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

THE LANEWAY UPRISING ALEXANDER FEHERTOI

In a world after suburban sprawl, the re-densification of Toronto begins. The influx of millions into the core has left the city wondering where these new people will call home. The city turns to a system that already exists. It exists in backs of our minds, in the backyard, and in the back alley. A system that was first created to sustain the initial growth of Toronto at the ground plane. A system that fed and bore businesses and homes â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a system called the laneway. The laneway system will get new meaning. It will be stripped of its modern dimensions and brought into the present with a historical understanding and perspective. The laneway will be home to many, and it will link with others to rise above the skyline and create a community that was always there. With the creation of a new zoning typology, and the cooperation of current property owners, the new laneway will rise out of obscurity and be the home to millions.

ADVISOR: LARRY RICHARDS M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

SCHRÖDINGER INSTITUTE JONATHAN GOTFRYD

The Schrödinger Institute is a proposed department and facility for the University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies. Dedicated to the synthetic development of specialized knowledge, the department will provide faculty, students, and visitors with the formal administration required to facilitate post-graduate studies in the fields of interdisciplinary endeavor. Its primary goals will be to spread an awareness of the implications of specialized knowledge and administer the interdisciplinary implementation of that knowledge. Influenced by dynamic systems’ theoretic understanding of the ways in which knowledge is synthesized and subsumed under unifying theories, The Schrödinger Institute attempts to provide spaces for the coalescence of a wide range of known information. By saturating its occupants within a bath of open concept production spaces which cantilever off a meandering core, the institute provides an environment of cross-collaboration. Acting as a seed crystal, this core will then align the goals of occupants by providing central spaces for the exhibition of their work. Faculty and students will thus congregate around shared exhibits that were produced within the surrounding educational solution.

ADVISOR: CHRISTOS MARCOPOULOS M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

FUTURE WATER LINES: REVISIONING CHICAGO’S LAKEFRONT GERARD GUTIERREZ

The Chicago waterfront marks the threshold between the Great Lakes and the entrance to the Chicago River. This critical border is vulnerable to the continued depletion of Lake Michigan. Current simulations under extreme global warming scenarios have showed a decline as large as 3m over a 60-70 year period. This condition would result in the shoreline retreating an average of four blocks from the city’s edge, thereby decimating the current waterfront park system and rendering the lake inaccessible for recreation and industry. Under conventional methods, this newly available land would be developed as an extension of the city grid with typical built form populating it. As an alternative, the implementation of a city-wide dam project can mediate between the changing water levels of the lake and the current water elevation at the city’s edge. This new Waterline will consist of a mix of inflatable soft components and adjustable steel and concrete structures. These systems will allow the dam to respond to a number of future water scenarios. The new Chicago Waterline aims to preserve the spirit of Burnham’s lakefront and augment those experiences by treating and diverting the city’s waste-water into a series of coastal lagoons that exist in the zone between the waterline and the existing shore. The dam will also serve as a robust armature that can support new visions of a hyper-flexible waterfront, one that supports multiple functions ranging from floating energy and food production to dynamic modes of waterbased urbanism. With the implementation of the Waterline, a second waterfront will emerge, one that continually adapts to the needs of the city and conditions of the lake, and further redefines the city’s interface with its most abundant resource.

ADVISOR: CAROL MOUKHEIBER & CHRISTOS MARCOPOULOS M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

WEAVING KENSINGTON MARKETâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S FORGOTTEN SPACES STANTON MAN-YEE HUNG Density is an additive process which inflects an increase in the population of a city. This addition injects a social and cultural dynamic that enriches the fabric of the city as a whole. Distinct neighborhood are the most significant aspects of the makeup of a city; they act as a social and cultural epicentre that diversify the cityscape. Architecture itself is a social and cultural element within the city, which anchors and defines a neighborhood. By combining these two ideas, we can use architecture as an aggregate to create density and bring additional social and cultural elements to the city. With these elements added into the city or the neighborhoodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fabric, we can produce a richer legibility of the urban fabric that shows its culture and its people. Through Kensington Market, which already has a rich social culture, we can test the idea of the additive process by using the in-between spaces found in Kensington to develop architectural typologies that inject additional diversity into the area.

ADVISOR: DAVID LIEBERMAN M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

N-GAR-Ă&#x2030; NEGAR JAZBI

Islamic geometric patterns are traditionally religious while culturally significant. They have been mathematically structured and poignantly crafted over the years. Their beauty lies in their orderly liaison. Infinity is their constraint. n-gar-ĂŠ is a morphology of Islamic geometric patterns to three-dimensional structures, that are both robust and delicate, light and dark, open and closed. The paradoxical union of the opposite traits is their most natural statement. Although old, they are from today for the future. Only with the help of digital tools today can we unlock, group, and visualize them so vividly. And if it was not for crystals, we could never see them as solids. Their crystalline symmetry is both their forte and elegance. They postulate equally beauty and principle.

ADVISOR: RODOLPHE EL-KHOURY M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

DEFINING NOW: INTERWEAVING PAST PRECEDENTS WITH FUTURE ASPIRATIONS ADA-NKEM JUWAH

This project explores the preservation of historical precedents through the abstraction and reinterpretation of core elements to create a contemporary environment that retains a pluralcultural regionalist aesthetic. The design aims to develop a critical and creative dialogue with traditional precedents: to challenge, amalgamate, regenerate, conflict, and spawn new tributaries to contribute concepts from these precedents to solutions for our twenty-first century world. The vehicle for this exploration is the design of the Abuja Center for Creativity, Innovation and Design (ACCID). It is intended to be an international centre that fosters creativity and innovation in a contemplative and interactive environment. It is an artists’ colony, a performance space, a regional and international resort compound, where its formal aspects create potential connections, juxtapositions, and spaces for contemplation. Nigeria is a nation of rich and diverse cultural and artistic heritage—a nation of over 150 million citizens with great natural resources and immense potential for growth and leadership. How do we design to address both its heritage and future potential? There is an innate desire for contemporary living without abandoning the past: spaces that function within twenty-first century contexts, yet reference their origins, thus giving users a connection to and ownership of modernity. Today is yesterday’s future.

ADVISOR: SHANE WILLIAMSON M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

UNITY BRIDGE ZEENA HASHIM KAMMOONA

The allure of older cities lies in the distinction of the local architecture and the identity its uniqueness creates. With modernization, these places are at risk of being engulfed by “global cities” that look more or less the same, full of buildings that could be anywhere in the world. There have been two opposing approaches to deal with this problem. The first of which aspires to preserve and propagate vernacular architectural elements and traditions throughout the city, while the second approach involves the fabrication and circulation of new forms that respond to the citizens’ functional needs and peoples’ reception of these forms. While the former lacks innovation, the latter approach aims to break through the constraints of local standards, a step too far. Through this thesis, I aim to reach a resolution that achieves a balance between these two approaches. The project will investigate the design process through which contemporary design ideas are integrated with the existing urban fabric, historic quality, and essential character of an area. The project is sited in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, dating back to the 8th century. This city was once the centre of the Muslim world and played an important role in Arab cultural life. Many plans have been established to rebuild this city and restore its damaged infrastructure through a modern national architectural identity, one that is feared to prevail over the rich traditional architecture of the city’s past. The objective of this thesis is to generate a new architecture that evokes familiarity, awakens memories, and incorporates an emotional element connected to something recognizable from the past, while forging a new way forward.

ADVISOR: ELISE SHELLEY M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

HONG KONG: KAI TAK RE-SHAPED OMID MOHSENI KIASARI JOHN ANTHONY GORDON SPEED Enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, Hong Kong’s harbour has long been used for industrial purposes, mainly trade and shipping, acting as a gateway into China. This has taken a toll on the character of the water’s edge, resulting in a hard line of empty shipping crates and abandoned sheds. Overpopulation has resulted in increasingly dense spaces with the only solution being to create impossibly high towers. As such, the harbour with its iconic skyline and potential to relieve the congestion of the city needs to decommission and restore industrial sites for public use and re-invigorate the experience of living close to the sea. Kai Tak, formerly the old Hong Kong international airport, is one of the last remaining undeveloped areas in the city. Surrounded by a sea of buildings on the upper portion and the harbour on the lower portion, this site has the potential to mediate between land and water, creating a rich and varied experience for the people of Hong Kong. The opportunity to create a space that successfully balances nature with infrastructural elements rests at the centre of our proposal. We seek to create a master plan where the architecture is in harmony with nature and the act of being on the water’s edge is redefined and made exciting again. Parametric modelling techniques are investigated and applied in an appropriate fashion in order to create a more fluid and responsive urban environment.

ADVISOR: TOM BESSAI M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ANOTHER SIDE OF CONCRETE PRZEMYSLAW LATOSZEK

“In concrete we have an intriguing material that, through its availability and mass consumption as a construction material, has built-in cultural potential to liberate mankind’s creativity and advance social progress. This no doubt utopian vision of the material was embodied in the modernist buildings formed in concrete during the twentieth century, which disseminated concrete’s potential as the cultural expression of progressive politics and social optimism in pre-war Europe, in the United States of the 1960’s, and the nation-building states of post-colonial Africa and South Africa. Such political optimism is now as ossified as the material favoured for its expression. This has left engineers and architects with an image of concrete as cold, hard, formless, and unloved – albeit ubiquitous.” -Franz-Josef Ulm “Another Side of Concrete” commences with a practical exploration of a material commonly referred to as Foamed Concrete or sometimes Cellular Concrete. The lessons and experiences descending from this approach begin to answer some common questions such as “what’s the matter with concrete?” as well as hint at various possible solutions. Therefore, I have made it my focus in this thesis to extrapolate from my exploratory findings in an effort to progressively reformulate this image of concrete. In this highly digital world, we are slowly losing touch with our materials. What was once carefully built by a hand has been transferred to the precision of digitally controlled machines. There are certainly many good reasons for this technological progression but there are some costly downsides as well. “Architectural design does not end as the tools of fabrication are put into action. On the contrary, making is a discipline that can instigate rather than merely solve ideas – in other words a design process.” Bob Sheil

ADVISOR: DAVID LIEBERMAN M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

CONNECT + REGENERATE

A SMALL SCALE URBAN FARMING & COMMUNITY GARDEN CHENG WAH ALEX LUI

The parking lot immediately south of the South St. Lawrence Market building has been deemed underutilized by the City of Toronto. As such, this space has been temporarily re-zoned to accommodate the weekly Farmers Market and Antiques Market originally located in the North St. Lawrence Market, which is undergoing reconstruction. The temporary structure holding these relocated programmes is expected to be removed once the North Building is complete. The parking lot would then be transformed into an extension of the David Crombie Park. However, the St. Lawrence Neighborhood Association (SLNA) has also expressed an interest to accept further input on the site in the future. This temporary arrangement has indeed revealed the potential of the site. Located between the residential neighborhood to the east and the commercial and entertainment district to the west, this site is highly accessible and yet of an intimate scale. Similar to other sites in the city which are waiting a final decision on their future, a temporary building can maximize the value and potential of the land while the neighborhood continues its assessment process. Being one of the well-designed neighborhoods, the proposal here is a temporary farming garden and community facility that would bring this neighborhood forward. The facility would engage residents in local production.

ADVISOR: STEVEN FONG M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

BUILDING MEMORIES:

THE ARCHITECTURE OF CULTURAL MEDIATION THERESA MADER

“Collective memory [...] is a current of continuous thought still moving in the present, still part of a group’s active life, and these memories are multiple and dispersed, spectacular and ephemeral, not recollected and written down in one unified story. Instead, collective memories are supported by a group framed in space and time. They are relative to that specific community, not a universal history shared by many disparate groups.”1 -Christine Boyer Canada and the United States share an inseparable history. This interdependence characterizes each nation’s growth, framing contemporary Western Culture as a product of waves of progress, born from struggles, disputes, revolts and war. In the wake of these waves, sites of former conflicts define a network of permanent scars on the land and the people of a country. In the absence of physical markers of this history, there often exist trails of photographs and alternative forms of documentation. These records uniquely identify each site by reconstructing history’s timeline. Every physical environment is bounded by the constraint of time. It is this notion of time that augments a site’s complexity by allowing current perception to form a collective memory. This thesis challenges the notion of collective memory through program and form, studying the capacity of architecture to act as a cultural mediator on contested sites. It employs Africville, the site of a razed black loyalist community on the shores of Bedford Basin, Nova Scotia, as a testing ground for designing the distinction between memory, nostalgia, history and progress. Boyer, C. (1996). The City of Collective Memory: Its Historical Imagery and Architectural Entertainment. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

ADVISOR: RICHARD SOMMER M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED... INGMAR MAK

Core House situates itself as one in the long lineage of off-site manufactured building explorations. It means to build from essential ideas about tectonics and apply current technology and fabrication systems to re-examine ideas about the way we build and the need for dwelling in today’s postFordist, post 9-11, mass-customized, socially-networked society. Nagakin Capsule Tower, Kisho Kurakawa, 1972 Led by Kenzo Tange, a group of Japanese architects and designers amalgamated under the banner of “Metabolism”. Influenced by the work of Team X and Archigram, The Metabolists focused on issues of housing in a mass society; their projects were characterized by flexible and expandable structures that would reach the scale of entire cities. Their most famous built work, The Nagakin Capsule Tower by Kisho Kurakawa, is emblematic of the notion of organic growth and instantaneous replacement manifested in the form of an adaptable plug-in megastructure. Loblolly House, Kieran Timberlake, 2006 Based on ideas first published in their book, Refabricating Architecture (2004), Loblolly House is composed entirely of off-site fabricated elements and ready-made components. By taking a new approach to the building of the house, beginning from the organization and division of labour and itself, and breaking down the components to cartridges and blocks, Kieran Timberlake simplifies the method of creating the custom single family home. By this method, they are able produce a work erected in the manner of weeks rather than months. Core House, Ingmar Mak, 2010 Core House picks up where Metabolism left off. The Metabolist movement was an intellectual triumph, but an architectural failure. Little work was built due to the audacity and sheer size of the proposals. In practice, cities are not often up for experimentation. Be this as it may, ideas of mass housing are even more pertinent today. There is a housing shortage on a global scale. Ideas of adaptable mass housing are not only ready to be revisited, but must be. By shedding the mega-frame and introducing ideas of networked socialized clustering as well as mass-customized rather than mass-produced components, the Core House means to present a much more personal and realistic proposal. This is done by amalgamating ideas brought forth by the Metabolists with current methods of production, organization, and assembly being championed by those like Kieran Timberlake. The Future is now… some assembly required.

ADVISOR: STEVEN FONG M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ASSISTED LIVING COMMUNITY PLUG-IN MONIKA MALESZEWSKA

Senior care facilities have been historically neglected by the architectural profession and society at large, their underlying design model remaining unchanged for decades. With an alarming 20 percent of North Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population soon to be seniors, there is now an urgency to reconsider the current typologies in order to adequately address all the needs of this significant demographic group, and not simply their shelter and physical care requirements. Seniors have a particular need for specialized architectural design, as their buildings are, to a large extent, their total living environment. Architecture housing seniors must address psychological and social needs, helping seniors maintain individual identities and a feeling of independence, as well as setting up a stage for engagement in meaningful activity and social interaction. The environment seniors are in must be stimulating, evoking excitement of living, curiosity, and arousal. This allencompassing environment is hard to achieve within the current monoculture typology which is in place as the model for senior care facilities. Present institutions are inward-looking microcosms of fabricated social interaction and simulated life; their focus is on extending longevity and not life. Segregated from the natural environment, real activity, children, and the productive part of society, seniors are forced to live in a culture of death. By physically attaching to complementary uses within the community, as well as integrating nature and children into its design, this thesis proposes an assisted living facility which improves peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s quality of life, rather than their lifespan.

ADVISOR: SHANE WILLIAMSON M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

STOPSPACE GAVIN MCMURRAY

This thesis proposes a newly formed public space, StopSpace, created through the enclosure and expansion of Toronto’s TTC Yonge/Eglinton transit interchange occasioned by the introduction of tunnelled Light Rail Transit to the intersection. Reminiscent of the souk, pavilion, and the arcade, StopSpace transforms the purely infrastructural experience that the intersection currently represents, while developing community and neighbourhood opportunities of engagement. Devised to extend social amenity across a variety of public and social requirements, StopSpace integrates the multimodal transit system, public space, public amenity, hospitality and retail. This thesis explicitly explores relationships between additive architectural and environmental dimensions, recognizing historical precedent and temporal elements within the public realm. The area has recently experienced intensive residential densification and expects both commercial and residential intensification in the near future. StopSpace explores the interstitial as well as the integrated border condition emerging from a rapidly densifying context. As a kind of ‘advance’ infill, StopSpace takes advantage of a strata plan to connect and develop public space through the existing site, and is at times nodal and at other tendril in character. StopSpace, so named in its derived relation to the transit stop, explores the potentials for architectural expression of the public realm through the disjoint tropes of StopWatch, StopMotion, and StopGap.

ADVISOR: RICHARD SOMMER M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

REMEDIATING THE JOHN P. ROBARTS RESEARCH LIBRARY TZOLINE MNATZAKANIAN “Memory really matters...only if it binds together the imprint of the past and the project of the future, if it enables us to act without forgetting what we wanted to do, to become without ceasing to be, and to be without ceasing to become.“ -Italo Calvino Cities are dynamic places of change and transformation, displaying the interplay between the past, present, and the future. The richness of Toronto’s architectural past, for example, is apparent through its materiality; layers of brick, concrete and glass blanket the city and define its material culture. The thesis looks to the rich collection of 1960’s and 70’s Brutalist architecture in the City of Toronto, and its rapidly growing need of remediation, to ask whether a critical architectural intervention can re-qualify this concrete stock and provoke a shift in its cultural status. It uses the case of the massive John P. Robarts Research Library, at the centre of the University of Toronto campus, whose presence was regarded with disdain, to ask whether an architectural intervention can give it new urban presence and re-qualify it as a social hub in the university and a treasure in the city. Through precise modifications and surgical insertions, the intervention claims new spatial opportunities which both reveal and enhance the potential of this previously unappreciated massive “eyesore.” Through this remediation, the transformation of this library into a central social hub revitalizes the surrounding campus while reclaiming a position of cultural value to the city beyond.

ADVISOR: PINA PETRICONE M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

RELATIONAL CATALYSTS FARZAM MOHAJER

A catalyst is something that you insert into a situation in order to transform it. It is usually much smaller than the base elements, yet once it is introduced, the reaction begins. A travelling puppet theatre done in partnership with P.J. Latoszek, a mobile briefcase exercise based on Jesusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; story of the Samaritan, or a nesting coffee table representing a four story house are all catalysts that engage and draw out an interaction with the participant. Moving towards ideas related to space and environment, the relational exercises are intended to foster a sense of expression and ownership in and throughout the design process. Partnering with Matthew House, a residence that provides housing for some of Torontoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most recent inhabitants as they arrive from the refugee highway, a number of catalysts have been designed and introduced into the existing Wednesday meetings at the house. As the design of the addition for this semi-detached house advances, the catalyst is adapted, reshaped, or substituted in order to move toward the end design together.

ADVISOR: ADRIAN BLACKWELL SECONDARY ADVISOR: DAVID LIEBERMAN M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

CHOREOGRAPHED SPACE

DYNAMIC ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN AUDIENCE AND PERFORMER MEHREEN MUJIB

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dance and Architecture have much in common. Both are concerned with practices of space. For a dancer the act of choreography as a writing of place occurs through the unfolding of spatial dimensions through gesture and embodied movement. For the architect space is the medium through which form emerges and habitation is constructed. For both, the first space we experience is the space of the body.â&#x20AC;? -Carol Brown The stage is often considered a static object designed to contain performances. However, a performance cannot be contained since it exceeds architecture, especially in this age of media spectacles, fluid technologies, and uncontainable bodies. What role does the stage and live performance now play other than forcing us to perform as well-behaved spectators? If we consider that architecture itself performs, as space in action, then we can explore new strategies for experiencing live dance as a more dynamic, engaging, and communal spatial event. The thesis re-conceptualizes the potential of performance spaces by making us frame and observe dance in a more engaging environment. The performance spaces/dance laboratories create multivalent experiences with the freedom of movement for the audience, just as experienced by the dancer.

ADVISOR: AN TE LIU M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

TORONTO’S INTERMEDIATE HOUSING PARADIGM CLARISSA NAM Toronto – a city that is heterogeneous in its neighborhoods, the people and the urban fabric: the current selections in housing typologies inadequately reflects this diverse matrix. Operating at the intersection between architecture and urbanism, it is necessary to explore new housing typologies that surpass the two ends of the spectrum, between the dense ‘urban’ living and the freestanding single family homes dispersed systematically in the suburban landscape. The premise for this thesis will challenge the current housing typologies and its new forms of development on Toronto’s peripheral site, along Finch Avenue just east of Yonge Street. With the goal of maintaining a medium density urban fabric, three types of dwellings are introduced that explore alternative and intermediate typologies exercising contemporary concepts of dwelling and domesticity.

ADVISOR: ROBERT LEVIT M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

RADICAL COMMUNITY CENTRE NI NI

We know that where community exists, it confers upon its members identity, a sense of belonging, and a measure of security. It is in communities that the attributes that distinguish humans as social creatures are nourished. However, our confusions on the matter are way too great that they stand in the way of making creative communities. We love low density, but we hate urban sprawl. We spend billions for public transportation but more than 90 percent of us do not use it. Our most dominant idea for something “new” is to return to the land-use patterns and circulation systems of the 1920s. Even when we attend seminars to discuss the future, the disconnection between our theology about community and what we actually do is so thorough that to point out the obvious would have a chilling effect on your day. Conventional community centres which were intended to function as the core of the local social did not work. As society became more mobile, the falling percentage of permanent residents led to dispersion and diversity. Local residents often shifted the focus of their social lives to interest groups, co-worker gatherings, or individual social events isolated from the rest of their community. Furthermore, with the spread of information technology, mobile phones and internet become the primary means of communication, resulting in restricted opportunities for face-to-face contact. However, with the average age of the population increasing, people are starting to look for a place to share with their neighbors – searching for a new type of local “street culture” on a daily basis. As a result, this project could be the birth of a new kind of social order which provides a contrast to the orderly mechanism of theory. This community gathering space will meet the requirements of specific neighborhoods, scales, and mechanisms. It would be a place where residents can enjoy a richly fulfilling sense of community. Overall, the theme is approached from a radical standpoint of architectural solutions for the lasting future.

ADVISOR: GEORGE BAIRD M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

REASSEMBLING THE MALL

PATHWAYS TOWARD A CIVIC ARCHITECTURE MLADEN PEJIC

“I would offer a less radical and more realistic approach. If a privatizing ideology and a consumerist culture have turned citizens into consumers, we need to go to where the consumers are and try to turn them back into citizens. … If they go to the mall in search of public space and are seduced into privatized shopping behaviour, we need to confront and transform the mall. The aim is … not to close the malls or lure people out of them but make them more like the multiuse public spaces they displaced.” -Benjamin R. Barber With the shift to a post-Fordist economy in the 1970s, inner-suburbs across North America have experienced profound demographic changes coupled with steady urban decline. Toronto’s easternmost former municipality, Scarborough, exemplifies this transition from suburbia as a white middle-class paradise to a hostile environment for recent arrivals, single-parent families, and the elderly. Through strategic additions and alterations, this thesis proposes an incremental transformation of Cedarbrae Mall, located in the heart of Scarborough, to better serve the needs of its multiethnic, aging community. These changes are designed to convert the mall from a corporate space of consumption into an equitable, public forum of production and exchange.

ADVISOR: ADRIAN BLACKWELL M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

[PARK]ING SPACE GIULIA ROSANOVA

What is public space? Within the contemporary city, the issue of public space is not a simple one. Traditionally public space was developed alongside city form – its physical and social quality dependent on a conscious dialogue with its surroundings. Good public space was a result of a number of factors ranging from the tangible qualities of form, materiality, and layout, to the intangible, accidental meetings, and seemingly random occupation patterns. Unlike historical models, contemporary public space is a residual exercise. Initiated by city building standards, or placed upon invaluable parcels of land, it exists as subsidiary to the built environment. The dependency on the car and the rise in land value within the city has overshadowed the need for constructing good public spaces. Simply put, the city needs space for the pedestrian as it needs streets for the car. But what if these were the same space? Green initiatives have temporarily transformed the space of the car into public spaces – most significantly the potential for the parking lot to become rededicated, at least for a short period of time, to the pedestrian. The idea of an “oscillating” public space animates the physical nature of the public realm, thus replicating the dynamism of city life and promoting its proliferation within the cityscape. In this strategy, public space would exist as a kit of parts, much like a travelling circus, that could be installed on a site to provoke the community and generate social theatre and spectacle. What is public space? My thesis seeks to redefine public space within the contemporary condition by exploring the potential for transformative public space to instigate collective consciousness while coexisting with the automobile.

Photo Credit: Art Monaco Portland, “Parki(ing) Day,” Park(ing) Day Network. 23 Apr. 2009, 5 Mar. 2010 <http://my.parkingday. org/photo/parking-day-10?context=user>.

ADVISOR: GEORGE BAIRD M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

COMBATTING EPIDEMICS IN THE DENSE URBAN ENVIRONMENT + CONDO PROPHYLAXIS

CARMINE ROTUNDO PROBLEM_ The threat of epidemics is something all major urban environments have been susceptible to since the beginning of organized cities. Our global communities and networks have ensured that any foreign pathogen could find its way to any urban metropolis within a matter of days. Toronto is not excluded from this threat. In 2002, SARS landed in Toronto and began to infect the general population. Hospitals became overcrowded, people became fearful of their surroundings, and the home seemed like the safest place to stay. In 2009, H1N1 followed a similar pattern of infection and again hospitals were unable to contend with the large number of people fearful of infection, turning many away and telling them to stay home. Even more shocking was that this had been the second epidemic to occur in less than a decade. Both these viral outbreaks led to a mass hysteria of fear and infected a large population of citizens, thus classifying the outbreaks as epidemics. Both these epidemics were helpful in illustrating how unprepared our cities are for the next epidemic outbreak to attack a densely populated area. Our urban areas are in a state of unprotected living: ready to be infected by the latest and deadliest epidemic to take advantage. Thus, architecture stands in a crucial design position to combat pandemic outbreaks in dense urban environments. The focus of this thesis investigation looks at how architecture can respond to the problem of epidemics through a re-evaluation and reconfiguration of the domestic setting in an effort to diagnosis, respond, and control contamination.

ADVISOR: CHRISTOS MARCOPOULOS M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE AND COMMUNITY DESIGN IN TUKTOYAKTUK SIMON ROUTH Design in the context of climate change must integrate complex, temporal processes. Communitybased responses to climate change require a common frame for multiple stakeholders to work and make decisions in together. This thesis develops an integrated model of a coastal Arctic community and evaluates the utility of that model for the visualization of environmental change scenarios, and the establishment of parameters for possible community responses.

ADVISOR: JOHN DANAHY M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

RECLAIMING HOUSING DONATA ROZWADOWSKI

Concrete Tower Renewal in Hamilton as a Catalyst for the Reconnection Between Housing and Its Inhabitants “…Primitive Shelter focused upon security and protection from the elements, where¬as modern housing implies attributes and relationships that address the social, psychological, and ecological connections between buildings and their inhabitants…Issues such as intergenerational equity necessarily emerge from this perspective to inform not just how we must rehabilitate our existing housing stock, but also how we must design our new buildings so that the future process of renewal is not compromised by outdated attitudes towards economics, ecology, technology and culture.” -Tower Renewal Guidelines. 2009 The aim of this thesis is to construct a regenerative housing model that maximizes what is currently available to us, and challenge the dilemma of a deteriorating housing stock by a process of addition rather than subtraction. While tower blocks are by far one of the most crucial housing forms the province has witnessed, the perception is that they are generators of negative activity. However, their abundance throughout the Greater Toronto Region is home to a significant portion of renters, providing a much-needed diversity to the housing market. To challenge these perceptions is to bridge the gap between the state of these apartments and their role in the housing market. Drawing from a need to renew the aging housing stock in Hamilton, Ontario, this thesis aims to filter through an architecture that in its current state is incapable of sustaining its inhabitants, and discover components that will enable vibrant dense living and community. Given the challenges that face Hamilton – a significantly increasing population and changing demographic – the transformation and preservation of mass housing is critical to its long-term sustainability.

ADVISOR: GEORGE BAIRD M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

A TRAIL OF TWO CITIES MEHZUN RUB

The direct experience of distance, from the point of view of perception, is essentially a fabrication of the mind. We certainly do not see it. Vision is just as it is on film: flat, on a screen, and in frames. Existing as an inexhaustible library of mirrored images is an experience of layering endless frames of perceptive input from which depth is contrived as an afterthought. As such, our experience of space is largely a subjective endeavor, whereby the contemplating mind is able to travel across pieces of perceptive experience and juxtapose impressions that exist over disparate landscapes of both the physical and ephemeral into one. In this way, space becomes recontextualized and depth is no longer an experience but rather a reconstructed understanding of it. The fragmented pieces that compose this intertwining trail may be as displaced as walking through a busy street in one city only to be on a train in another, seconds later. Such are the mental contours of the trails of consciousness – of following the rhythms of the perspective-less space of experiential topographies. This thesis explores the realms of psycho-geographic urban space through the rhythmic analysis of two cities, Toronto and Dhaka, as experienced and captured on the medium of film. The narrative serves as a filter through which to analyze and translate the many layers of ephemeral and authentic social space that often remain hidden under the global forces of consumerism. It aims to create dialogue between prerogatives of modern and non-modern street cultures and investigate possibilities of reconstructing cultural narratives through a series of iterative design languages which may embrace a middle ‘place’ between both.

ADVISOR: TOM BESSAI M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

GRIFFINTOWN INTERRUPTED:

ASSEMBLING AGENCY THROUGH THE DESIGN COMPETITION YA’EL SANTOPINTO

Griffintown Interrupted reharnesses the design competition as the site of a collective response to urban crisis. In October 2010, an international ideas competition was launched for Griffintown, Montréal, calling for temporary structures as catalysts of regeneration in one of the city’s most widely-debated districts. Forty-three teams of architects and designers from ten countries submitted proposals for consideration in the competition. Driven by local stakeholders, print and social media, international participants, local institutions, academics, weblogs, web developers, and translators, the competition has itself become the architectural site. Griffintown Interrupted mobilizes this heterogeneous discourse as the catalyst for a collective, small-scale and incremental architectural response. Griffintown Interrupted is an optimistic critique of the single author model of pedagogy and practice. Here, the traditional aims of the competition (winning authorship) are merged with an emerging trajectory in architectural practice (distributing authorship) – in a practice model which takes conflict, debate, and indeterminacy as its design toolkit. Through this competition-collaboration, the architect’s role is radically re-envisioned as instigator, facilitator, mediator, and curator. Griffintown Interrupted provokes debate around incremental urban regeneration and the efficacy of temporary architecture as a catalyst – while acting as a testing ground for collective design practices. The brief is available at: http://griffintowninterrupted.net.

ADVISOR: MARY LOU LOBSINGER M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ILLUMINATED DISTORTION ALEXIS SCHNEIDER

Natural systems tie together growth, form, and behaviour of the organism through an evolutionary process. This performative, cellular surface ties computational techniques to the physical limits of full-scale fabrication. Flexible parameters of depth, curvature, and permeability allow this lightdistorting screen to adapt to a variety of spatial and light conditions. Unlike traditional top-down nested hierarchies whereby the whole can be reduced to a series of parts this system enables new organizations, resulting in a whole to whole relationship rather than a part to whole relationship. Neither component nor surface would exist in this condition without the other. Together they are a mediator of light, the veil between stark daylight and glowing illumination.

ADVISOR: STEVEN FONG M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ALGEOLI MAE SHABAN

Algeoli is an interior surface constructed of modular microalgae photobioreactors. This surface is designed to act as a remediator of indoor air pollution (C02) while simultaneously providing an onsite water-treatment facility and potentially a biofuel generator. As an interface between human activity and air quality control, the hybrid mechanical-biological system is a responsive architecture acting in real-time to environmental changes. The current prototype integrates algae as an efficient organic living carbon sink into an interior space. Calibrated to act as a dramatically enhanced house plant, an array of algae bioreactors compose to form curtains, walls, or even lighting fixtures in three-dimensional space. A network of indoor air, power, and nutrient supply lines weave the bioreactors into a single membrane. The nutrients are supplied by the buildingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waste water. The curtain is nourished by the CO2 from the exhalation of the inhabitants. It is directly responsive to the users and the environment; each module operates autonomously and sensors activate select modules as appropriate to the changing levels of CO2 or light within a space. The modules then expand and contract with circulating air, revealing a mechanic-organic organism that is continuously refreshing the air.

ADVISOR: CAROL MOUKHEIBER M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

DEATH OF GAS STATIONS, REINCARNATION OF A SOCIAL LIFESTYLE

MARGARET SHANG

2030. There’s no gas, or at least, a paradigm shift in transportation and energy technology. So what happens to an entire network of existing gas stations? We can adapt them for alternative energy-powered charging stations for electric cars. Sounds simple, and some of these are already even emerging, BUT new technology = new architectural opportunities – we don’t have to adhere to old programmatic and spatial typologies of the gas station and how humans interact with their cars and their daily activities. This thesis proposes to design a new recharging-regeneration station which will be a snapshot of a more engaging experience between charging/parking and daily activities, which can eventually result in a big effect across the urban fabric if applied to the many existing gas stations. A small change can result in a big effect for architecture, the city, and energy production.

ADVISOR: AZIZA CHAOUNI M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

PLANNING ORGANIC GROWTH: URBAN AGRICULTURE AND THE MARKETPLACE IN POST-INDUSTRIAL CITIES PETER SHERRATT Planning Organic Growth looks at post-industrial cities in North America and proposes a set of strategies, guidelines and steps in order to anticipate the burgeoning urban agriculture movement that is already underway. The vehicle to engage these issues comes in the form of a planning manual designed for both professionals and community grassroots organizations. One of the main issues facing post-industrial cities is the abundance of vacant land, both in the form of former industrial sites and empty residential lots. In many post-industrial cities, communities have begun to turn to urban agriculture as a solution for utilizing this vacant land and to provide food security, healthy fresh produce, and community empowerment. This has been, for the most part, a largely grassroots movement of motivated community members and organizations. In order to anticipate this grassroots growth in urban agriculture, Planning Organic Growth will be a guidebook and manual for planners and, most importantly, interested grassroots organizations to look towards the marketplace as a catalyst to promote, support and sustain the anticipated movement. The thesis/manual suggests an entrepreneurial approach to urban farming. The epicentre of this localized entrepreneurial agriculture economy has/is/will always be the marketplace. By focusing on the marketplace, emphasis will be on staging certain benchmarks in the growth of the market based on the volume of localized food production. This begins simply at the common farmers market, which then evolves into a permanent market facility. At that point, certain agriculture-focused community and education programs are introduced. These programs are expanded on until the marketplace eventually evolves into a marketplace/agricultural educational/ community centre hybrid which acts as a both the terminus point for entrepreneurial community agriculture and as a valuable community resource point for new urban agriculture growth. Finally, this planning strategy is put to a test on the Broadway Market in Buffalo, NY. The broad suggestions, options and benchmarks of the overall planning strategy of the manual are used as a basis to develop a specific planning strategy for the test case. Suggestions are given as short-, mid- and long-term goals of program and development choices.

ADVISOR: ELISE SHELLEY M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

BUSINESS OR PLEASURE? RICHARD SOLE

This thesis seeks to explore the possibilities of a Red Light District in downtown Toronto. Using prostitution as a central theme in the project, the aim is to look at pleasure in the larger context. Pleasure comes in many forms such as food, shopping, bathing, suntanning, massage, and exercising. All of these possible alternative forms of pleasure, combined with a program of prostitution and brothels, open up the possibility of a district that is not monocultured in sex; they form the basis for an urban fabric that is not geared exclusively toward the male population but rather an area of the city where men and women can go together or alone to seek out corporeal, mental, and spiritual stimulation.

ADVISOR: CHRISTOS MARCOPOULOS M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

ELEMENTS OF SPACE MICHAEL SPATAFORA

Architecture is the combination of elements that define space. Those elements need not be floors, ceilings, and walls, but may be a variety of material objects such as furniture, plants and topography, or immaterial effects such as lighting and micro-acclimatization. This project explores how different kinds of spaces—meaning spaces that vary in function, intimacy and experience— can be created with the positioning of said elements. The chosen site for this project is King’s College Circle. The site lies at the geographic and historic centre of the University of Toronto campus. With no place to pause along the wet, muddy field, the current inhospitable conditions have deterred the 52,000 potential users from engaging with the site. As a result, the University of Toronto commissioned an Open Spaces Master Plan (OSMP) which aims to develop a unified vision of the network of open spaces on campus. Despite efforts to improve the quality of U of T’s open spaces, the OSMP has downplayed a crucial concept in urban design: that of the re-centralized core. Given the centrality of King’s College Circle on campus, the site has the potential to become the heart of campus activity. As a test site for space making, the project aims to create a variety of spaces that can accommodate different group sizes and activities through the deployment of a handful of elements. Programmatically flexible spaces, which relate to the academic functions of the surrounding buildings, will be created by combining and positioning architectural and landscape elements.

ADVISOR: SHANE WILLIAMSON M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

100

FUTUREWARD PATRICK SPEAR

It should come as no surprise to anyone in the medical industry that the designs of new care facilities are very slow to fundamentally change from the designs of care facilities of the past. There is a good and obvious reason for this: the risks involved with such change are far greater for the medical industry than they are with most others. If a facility is built using a novel approach to design and it does not function as expected, it is not profits or productivity that are on the line – it is the health, well-being, and even the lives of patients. As a result, the medical world tends to be reactive, rather than proactive, when it comes to meeting the potential of technology to improve the workflow of a medical facility. This shortcoming is especially evident in the area of complex and critical care, which is longterm, complicated, and interdisciplinary in nature. It revolves around communication and workflow technologies – interprofessional messaging, patient information tracking, and many others – more than any other type of care, and thus suffers the most from any incongruencies between the physical space where care takes place and the workflows implied by technological tools. Futureward is an opportunity to imagine what critical care design might look like if architects were free to be proactive in anticipating medical communication technology, and were free to use those technologies as tools to solve spatial issues that exist in critical care rooms today. Specifically, Futureward investigates how the diverse requirements of critical care rooms will be changed by advances in technology in the next 20 years. Those changes are used as design opportunities to create a room that maximally helps patients heal, makes family members feel at home, and assists practitioners in working safely and effectively. With that “ideal” room established, Futureward also seeks to investigate the emergent properties that arise when that room is multiplied out to the ward level. It is hoped that this vision of future critical care may help inspire innovative solutions in critical care today.

ADVISOR: STEVEN FONG M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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UNDERWORLDS CONRAD TAVES

“If we imagine going underground, we not only imagine an environment where organic nature is largely absent; we also retrace a journey that is one of the most enduring and powerful cultural traditions of humankind, a metaphorical journey of discovery through descent below the surface.” -Rosalind Williams, Notes on the Underground

If a landscape is to be understood in its totality, as the sum of all perceived aspects of a region, in the case of the largely unseen underground, much of the perception of that landscape is an act of imagination born out of millennia of conceptualizing the subterranean world in myth, religion, and art. It is these covert, illusory qualities that make underground space provocative. Historically and culturally, the world beneath ours has been associated with death and the unconscious. Its mythology has embraced the damned, and its science has suggested the possibility of new civilizations. What is true and enduring about nearly all representations of the underground in myth and popular thought is the conception of it as a world distinct and isolated from ours—a terrain of potential space and potential alternatives to our own. To enter the underground is to exit the world as we’ve known and imagined it. This project began as an investigation into a brown site that divided the town of Inverness, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, from its shoreline, and evolved into a re-discovery of the underground spaces that are the legacy of its former coal mine industry.

ADVISOR: LARRY WAYNE RICHARDS M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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REASSEMBLING DISASSEMBLY ELAINE TONG

My thesis explores a method of construction that addresses the full life cycle of building materials in application to residential densification sites along Toronto’s typical main-street avenues as part of the city’s growth mandate. The focus of this thesis is to explore an assembly method which would allow the building to adapt to the changing needs of its occupants over the life of the building, allowing for full re-use and recycling of its dismantle-able elements: at the same time fully incorporating the existing infrastructure. While most of the existing structure will be kept in its existing form, much of the dismantled materials will be repurposed into the skin and interior partitions of the new structure. A site has been chosen on St. Clair Avenue west as a typical Toronto main-street condition. As the city of Toronto is forecast to grow by 500,000 in population over the next 20 years, the Official Plan policies have identified Toronto’s main-street avenues as key potential intensification areas to address a significant portion of this growth. Thus this thesis is a testing ground for a cradle-tocradle approach to construction for a significant portion of new housing in Toronto.

ADVISOR: AZIZA CHAOUNI M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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STACK-HOUSE

VANCOUVER MULTI-FAMILY HOUSING PROTOTYPE ARTHUR TSENG

As the city of Vancouver adapts to continuing growths in immigration, two typologies have emerged as dominant housing models: i) The ‘Vancouver Special’ as a flexible split-unit home, popular amongst first-time buyers with extended families or requiring rental support ii) The Podium-Tower Condominium as a high-density model for the downtown core characterized by low podiums and tall narrow towers In recognizing these models as important precedents in densification yet proving problematic for balanced developments within a geographically constrained city, how can advantageous elements of both be carried forward to produce an alternate typology in accommodating Vancouver’s growing need for efficient and adequate multi-family housing? This project explores efficiencies in residential unit assemblies to maximize the quality of public and private amenities, while applied as a collective urban strategy for possible densification sites in Vancouver.

ADVISOR: TOM BESSAI M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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LANE+ DANIEL VIVAT

Every lane has a life, a nature, a character, that is often produced by unplanned forces. Every path is an experience governed by boundaries and fields of vision. The fluctuation of the boundaries can affect the experience of the journey. The nature of the vantage point can create the desire to take that particular path. The boundaries of the lane, their height, porosity, and materials define the condition of the space. The territory of the design thesis is exploring the laneways of Toronto as a valuable resource for increasing density by establishing sustainable servicing for present and future generations. It is a hypothesis demonstrating that laneway property is an underutilized resource for commercial development: one that is beneficial to both the city and individual economies. The goal is transforming existing laneways into innovative and sensitive extensions of existing communities by expanding upon the depth of the existing urban condition, whereby the equity of the city is increased and the benefits on a neighbourhood become synonymous with the experience of the city.

ADVISOR: DAVID LIEBERMAN M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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DRAWING REPRESENTATION ARCHITECTURE JONATHAN WONG SIN WAI This thesis is an interrogation and critique of architectural representation with polemical aspects. As a set of drawings without an obvious design intention, my project seeks to question the assumptions of representation within an architectural context by suspending the moment of recognition. They invite participation from viewers and refuse to be merely images to consume or take pleasure in. It focuses on the act of drawing in which the lines both refer to an intended object of representation and are caught up in the specificity of drawing itself. By creating a tension between two dimensional surface, and three dimensional illusionistic space, the drawings refuse to be absorbed as simultaneous wholes in the mode of typical architectural representations (e.g: renderings, perspectives, etc.). All this means that the drawings are interrogated by the viewer in lived time. This way the drawings set up a parallel between itself and architectural objects which are also encountered in live time. It represents even as it distances from those objects by complicating the quality of the drawing as picture. A curved line in the drawing is not a curved wall. An angled line is not a leaning column. The space of the drawing has a thin atmosphere; gravity does not apply. If the distance from the object becomes too great, there can be no inhabitation. Yet with no distance, there can be no critique and no questioning. The raison dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ĂŞtre of the drawings lies in this precarious balance. In suspending recognition, the drawing attempts to avoid the facile positing of spaces, objects, programs. By interrogating precisely this act of positing, this thesis questions those things which are only ever represented by architects.

ADVISOR: JOHN SHNIER M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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RE-INCARNATION

THE FUTURE OF HABITABLE PARKING STRUCTURES MATTHEW TUNG SHING WONG

As commuters rely heavily on vehicular access between work and their suburban homes, permanent parking structures provide a temporal destination to safeguard their vehicles. However, sprawling has inversely affected the regional competitiveness of many urban centres like Toronto; a paradigm shift to evoke a better reliance on efficient public transportation networks is required to promote future sustainable growth (environmental and economical). The OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) has recently reinstated a need for Toronto to alleviate its traffic congestion that is costing the city three billion dollars annually due to lost productivity. If the reliance on vehicles in the city decreased due to road tolling, the implementation of the “gas-guzzler tax”, and an increase in weekday parking taxation, what does the future hold for the city’s parking structures? Over time as parking demand decreases, will this be the end of a public services building typology that was once celebrated by the North American “car culture”? This thesis seeks to examine and propose a new possibility for parking garages to not only serve as a space for cars, but as a foundation to generate new possibilities within the context of the city. Furthermore, the basis of the design criteria is to introduce a structural typology that can anticipate future changes and demands that can ultimately extend the initial “life expectancy” of the parking structure in response to the changing urban conditions reacting to both urban and environmental concerns.

ADVISOR: STEVEN FONG M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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ARCHIEA-BE CHOOSYLEE TE HENRY WU

Choices constitute welfare for mankind. However, when one is overwhelmed with choices, it creates paralysis rather than liberation. Based on the culture of choice, this thesis explores a customizable residential prefab system which provides customers with an optimized number of options that would enhance their living experience. The ARCHIEA system triggers an iterative dialogue between architects and consumers through a product catalogue which indexes all predesigned components and options. Similar to purchasing a personal vehicle, customers choose what they desire in their homes from a list of predetermined options in the ARCHIEA system. The outcome of the ARCHIEA system is erratic yet strictly controlled.

ADVISOR: JOHN SHNIER M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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THE ASCENT OF MAN DI YAN

This thesis explores the function of architecture when its human purpose is obsolete. The project chronicles the journey of a traveller who awakens into a future where human enhancements have replaced the duty of buildings, element by element, until none remain. The narrative is set in a massive tower formed by the stratified aggregation of human progress. As the traveller ascends the structure, he is confronted by shifting typologies and technologies whose temporal transformations foretell humanityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fading dependence on habitat.

ADVISOR: CAROL MOUKHEIBER M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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PUZZLE BLOCK

(A FIELD FOR MAXIMIZING SOCIAL INTERACTION) ALI YARBAKHTI

The main idea of the Puzzle Block is the notion of diversity and flexibility. The intention is to design a Puzzle System and not just a block. In the Puzzle System, the block consists of diverse parcels. Each parcel has its own identity and character that represents a specific residential typology and serves a particular landscape function. These parcels join together to form a Hybrid Block. The goal is to maximize the Social Interaction between the residents by absorbing different types of people (age, income, family type) within a residential block and introducing various activities for each parcelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s landscape to provide different options for the residents to participate. The Puzzle System facilitates the possibility of contraction and expansion in the length of the block by deleting or adding parcels. By applying different configurations of these parcels, we can achieve diverse block organization that are both formal and typological. The Puzzle Block can modify itself to different locations and orientations by applying proper setting of parcels within a block.

ADVISOR: RICHARD SOMMER M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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PS5

COMMUNITY DISTRICT 8, MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY CELINA YEE

American schools are facing an imminent crisis. This is a crisis that is stemming from increased enrollment rates and aging and inadequate stockpiles of existing school infrastructures. Budgetary constraints, school closures, and both over-capacity and under-capacity issues are all contributing factors to the logistical imbalances in the current school system. The result is a chaotic system that requires students to travel longer distances, be placed into lengthy waitlists, and participate in competitive kindergarten entrance exams. The New York City Department of Education is the largest system of public schools in the United States, serving about 1.1 million students in over 1,600 schools. For the 2010 school year, as many as 2000 kindergarteners were placed on a wait list that limits them to no education until they are accepted into a school. It has reached the point where New York City has in fact surpassed the capacity to accommodate all the children in their respective neighborhoods, and funding for school capital projects are underway to help alleviate this crisis. Manhattan provides an interesting hyper-urban laboratory to test drive a new school prototype that attempts to rethink the traditional perceptions of a school as merely an institutional infrastructure. The prototype school, PS5, situates itself in the vacant airspace of three property lots, as it is the only means left for school property development in areas where public schools are in high demand. This thesis attempts to unfold the typical architectural design language of an elementary school, in order to help maximize school space utilization so that it can facilitate a greater responsibility to the students and the community. The design attempts to reimagine a space that directly impacts pedagogy, where learning takes place in all aspects and processes of the school building, where the architecture finally becomes more than the meaning of its parts, but as a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Third Teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; to the students.

ADVISOR: ADRIAN BLACKWELL M ARCH THESIS REVIEWS FALL 2010

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