ARRIVING + LIVING AT THORNCLIFFE PARK

from MLA Portfolio 2023 | Luis Felipe Bendezu

by Luis Felipe Bendezu

LIBERATION AT THE DON

Urban renewal towards a self-sustaining community

Scale: 260 ha Type: group / academic Date: fall 2021

Thorncliffe Park is the earliest high-rise apartment neighborhood in Canada. It represents the modernist ambition to address the growing middle-class population in the outer boroughs of Toronto and was designed to become a self-sufficient New Town.

Currently, this “arrival city” has a population that consists of mostly new immigrants who are prone to struggle due to its built environment. The discrepancy between a thriving community and a declining neighbourhood drives us to propose a shift of paradigm.

This vision encompasses hydrology, green infrastructure, and productivity. This vision aims to empower the community by effectively reutilizing their infrastructural and natural resources on-site, and transform Thorncliffe Park from a neighbourhood of fragmentation into a community of growth.

‘’Depending on how you view it, inmigrant neighborhoods are either a successful antechamber to urban life or a place of dangerous isolation and poverty’’

- Doug Saunders, Canadian Journalist

Thorncliffe Park through the eyes of a newly arrived immigrant from South Asia.

Her life begins in one of these high-rise towers. Originally designed to accommodate 12,500 people, now has 30,000 residents.

Her neighborhood is fragmented by the infrastructure onsite including the Canadian Pacific railway and the hydro corridor.

In a total area of 4 square km, only 1.1 % of the land is designated as public parks and playgrounds.

Daily shores like shopping is an inconvenience for the ones who don’t have a vehicle, while 40% of the land is covered by parking lots.

The ravine is within walking distance but many residents come from countries where they are not used to the forest life.

The residents in Thorncliffe park created a strong sense of community through gardening and food production.

Even more challenges are coming. The proposed railway service station would further marginalize the already impoverished community.

After | Proposed condition that includes a cyclical economy of resources.

Infrapaisaje

New landscape infrastructure for a mining town

Scale: 30 ha Type: individual / thesis Date: 2016-2017

In 1953, the city of “San Juan de Marcona” was born as a mining camp on the only iron mine in Peru. While the country’s economy is built on a great degree of the profits generated by its mineral richness, little attention has been put on the spaces where miner families live, usually with limited resources and extreme environmental conditions.

The proposal includes a series of technical devices which embrace and employ natural resources to accomplish the transformation of an urbanized territory that currently neglects its coastal environment, missing nature based solutions (nbs) for growth and facing an on-going process of decay.

Master Plan | Infrastructural system that sutures urban fabric with environment

Interconnected network | Nature based solutions that feed urban activity and resources

Business as Usual Diagram | Urban decay in progress

Existing elevations allow for cohesive treatment of water

Energy harvesting becomes visibilized in daily life

A more livable space is created by restoring vegetation

Towers In The Park

A Prospective for Equitable Resilience

Scale: city-wide Type: group / workstudy Date: 2021-2023

This project looks at the untapped potential of the “parks” in “Towers in the Park”. Built between 1950-80’s based on universal modernist principles.

Led by the CLR, it aims to evaluate, measure, assess, and quantify the social and environmental value of public and private open space assets as they relate to the city’s overall resilience goals. It also explores the potential for integrating adaptation and mitigation strategies in these tower neighbourhoods to pursue overall socio-environmental sustainability strategies.