Madison Appleby 2022
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Contents
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Design: 1 - Weaving the Islands 11 - “The whisperings of roots”: Speculative futurism storytelling as research methodology 17 - The Swiss Way: noticing as an act of reconstruction 21 - Riverdale Park: Bend>Break 23 - Embodied Energy: Living Lab 27 - Elements of a Metabolic Landscape Research: 37 - The process of memory making: Collected to Collective 39 - The Great Serpent Mound 41 - GRIT Lab 2: Modules 45 - Ecological Stoichiometry
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Weaving the Islands
Toronto Islands, Toronto, ON. 2021.
In Collaboration with Stefan Herda Awarded: Professor Jeffery A. Stinson Graduate Student Endowment Fund
The Toronto Island shoreline is extremely vulnerable to flooding and erosion. Instead of looking out from the edge we decided to look inward, holding the islands together with a softer process-based approach. We wove resilient living systems, in the form of planted bioengineering strategies, into the mosaic of the island in the hopes of creating a connection to the land. How and where could we best incorporate the existing materials, processes and plant communities of the island to help mitigate erosion and flooding? We analyzed 53 existing edge conditions on the islands and created a vulnerability index, correlating bioengineering strategies to each score. Along the inner harbour of Ward’s island a living berm planted with salix shrub species marks the passage of water from sky to roots through concrete water columns. This is part of a system of dry wells sending inverted colums of roots down into the earth, creating an unseen network of support, a true living berm. Time is applied to the system, layering stewardship, water and growth. These interactions are revealed through the redirection of water, creating nodes of growth and human notice, marking the passage of water from the sky to the earth. Bending is what a willow wants to do, it is flexible, well rooted, letting water wash over, thriving despite environmental pressure. We must aspire to be like the willow, drawing strength from within, looking down toward the humble root to weave the islands back together.
01. Vulnerability index applied to edge condition of the Toronto Islands. 02. Existing edge condition of Gibraltar Point. 03. Proposed edge condition of Ward’s Elbow.
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Soil Erodability Factor
Soil Erodability Factor
Flooding Factor
Open Area Factor
Flooding Factor
Open Area Factor
Wave Height Factor
Wave Height Factor
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04. The section shows a moment in time, extracted from a wave height diagram within the Baird report. This is a severe storm modelled with a 3m 8s storm waves and has obviously been prolonged as you can see from the flooding. The fish have taken shelter and the vegetation is intact, whereas vegetation in the “open water” has been ripped up and sediment is swirling.
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05. The grooves and notches of these water markers were investigated through a conceptual concrete model. Here we see the path of water beginning as rain falling during a storm event, some of the rain is intercepted by the top of the column while the rest falls upon the path.
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06. Stewardship of this living berm is an important aspect of the system. Coppicing, planting, harvesting and cutting will take place at certain times of the year. Studies have shown that diversity in root architecture is important. As the roots twist and mat around the dry well’s they form columns creating an unseen network of support, a true living berm. 8
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07. The berm itself is constructed from a compacted clay core on the landward side to prevent water seepage. Both sides of the berm are sloped and built up with structural soil. The landward side has a vegetated crib wall system whereas the lakeward side is unsupported at a slope of 30% which is the typical angle of repose of soil. 10
“The whisperings of roots”: Speculative futurism storytelling as research methodology
Fairy Creek Watershed (Ada’itsx), Vancouver Island, British Columbia. 2022. Awarded: John E. (Jack) Irving Prize
In reaction to the conflict surrounding the Fairy Creek (Ada’itsx) blockade and the larger conflict of resource extraction throughout Canada, a story of the future and past was created, told from the perspective of the forest and the internet, translated through the language of the nitrogen cycle. Drawing from the tenets of indigenous futurisms, relational accountability and in response to science fiction’s role in colonial discourse, this story intends to redirect trajectories surrounding technology and extraction to create space for empathy in a difficult present. To take oneself out of ‘reality’ and imagine this story as research and prophecy, building these worlds allow for the possibility they may happen. Doing so in a way that challenges your own worldview fosters empathy. This story was consciously crafted with key tenets from indigenous futurisms outlined by author and scholar Grace Dillon. These tenets revolve around ideas of time (referred to as Native Slipstream), contact (with a capital C) and technology. Time in this story has been collapsed the past, present and future melded into one. The cyclical translation of nitrogen and alternate rhythms of the trees all help to deconstruct our foundational ways in which we view the world. Contact with the ‘Other’ has always been an insidious theme in science fiction. Contact is understood instead as a meeting of equals, guided by curiosity and empathy. This is seen within the meeting consciousnesses of the forest network and the internet. This brings us to technology, which in itself is a loaded term. However as Ursula Le Guinn states, ‘technology is how you do things. A process.”
08. Conceptual field sketches of the old-growth forest were created to shift the mindset from one of resource to one of personhood of the trees.
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gathering has begun back to our birthplace -
The sky darkens and one-story ends -
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pher and unlock them, the translation begins -
collective, with a groan we fall -
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The Swiss Way: noticing as an act of reconstruction Lukmanier Line, Swiss Alps. 2021.
The Swiss Way or Weg der Schweiz is a series of connected paths, each designed by one of the 26 Swiss Cantons, circling the southern half of Lake Uri. The creation of the path in 1991 was the main event celebrating 700 years of the Swiss Confederation. Georges Descombes famously designed the Geneva section, as a way to deconstruct the solidified, official history of a nation and give the possibility of imagining another. As Georges Descombes states “The ‘Swiss Way’ itself was moving.” (“How to Make a Path: The Swiss Way Project, 1991” 2020). This project explores this shift within the context of the Europeanization of Swiss Energy policy and it’s symbolic and physical repercussions. Following the Lukmanier powerline, the origin of Italy’s 2003 Blackout and cause of the change in power structure, the path reframes the Swiss Way, making tangible the intangible. It investigates the ‘hidden’ elements of a power landscape through sensory instruments that distill and direct attention. We as humans constantly edit and filter through what we see, hear and feel, this is the same with our stories and identities. The path as an object, is itself an investigation, reaching outwards towards the border, traversed by both tourists and Swiss. The path’s designation as the 27th segment places the industrial landscape at both the local and global scale on equal ground with the histories of the pastoral landscapes.
09. Animation still. Detailing the origin of Italy’s 2003 Blackout originating on the Lukmanier Line in Switzerland. 10. Sound auras, created from three aspects: frequency, amplitude and emotion. 11. Listening instruments positioned to redirect attention along the new Swiss Way.
Descombes, Georges. “How to Make a Path: The Swiss Way Project, 1991.” In Thinking the Sculpture Garden, 1st ed., 140–55. Routledge, 2020. https://doi. org/10.4324/9780429199882-8
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12. Highlighting sound instruments at the human scale. a) Listening to the river, b) to the powerlines, c) to the meadow, d) to the trees, e) to the sky. 19
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Bend>Break
Riverdale Park, Toronto, ON. 2019.
Awarded: Professor Jeffery A. Stinson Graduate Student Endowment Fund
Traditionally we have thought of a river as a line on a map, defined by it’s riverbanks. Flood events are the disruption, the outliers treated as disasters. The redesign of Riverdale Park was in response to increased flooding of the Don River. In this design Riverdale Park has been transformed into a space where the river can carve out its own path, creating a dynamic system and helping to shift the present paradigm of resilience, from static to dynamic. A base grid of optimized landforms was chosen from MIT’s landform catalogue1. for their optimized water infiltration and high biodiversity index. Over time through fluctuating water levels the river would redistribute these landforms, shaping a new system. Through careful research of riverine dynamics, one hypothetical sediment distribution was chosen to illustrate the future of this design. Raised paths were brought into the space winding through the landforms, creating spaces for education, contemplation and exercise. Bringing the river to the people, allowing change to happen as a heavily engineered space shifts into a “naturalized” river system.
13. a) Optimized landforms tested for water flow, infiltration and shape. b) Exploring the relationship between riverine dynamics/ water flow and proposed landforms. c) Modified potential energy diagram acknowledging different energy inputs in the form of natural and anthropogenic events. d )Fluctuating water levels translate temporal heterogeneity to spatial heterogeneity2.
1. Guzman, C. B., Nepf, H., and Berger, A. M. 2016. Design Guidelines for Urban
2. Hughes, F. M. R., A. Colston, and J. Owen Mountford. 2005. Restoring riparian ecosystems: the challenge of accommodating variability and designing restoration trajectories. Ecology and Society 10(1): 12.
Stormwater Wetlands
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Embodied Energy: Living Lab
University of Toronto Campus, Toronto, ON. 2020. In Collaboration with Agata Mrozowski Award of Merit: Toronto Urban Design Awards 2021, Student Nominated: XI International Biennial of Landscape Architecture of Barcelona, International School Prize
The contemporary city and its Modern urban infrastructure has been dependent on a linear stream of material and economic flows – starting at the site of extraction, moving through production, consumption with a final destination at disposal. This process of designed obsolescence has relied on the exhaustion of non-renewable natural resources often situated on the contested territories of Indigenous peoples. Our project takes into consideration embodied energy – the total sum of energy used to extract, manufacture, transport, and assemble materials for the built environment. Our project asks, what vernacular materials can we employ when designing for the west district of U of T campus to minimize the impacts of our ecological footprint? How can we increase the porosity of material surfaces to relieve the pressures off of the city’s infrastructure? How do we implement a design that looks at closed loop systems of material and economic flow? At the same time, energy is also understood from a spiritual point of view. “Within many Indigenous worldviews, objects are keepers of memory, and even more than that, are inscribed with or possess an animacy of their own.”[1]. In Embodied Energy: Living Lab, we wanted to encourage the praxis of ‘land as pedagogy’ by establishing the conditions for a ‘living lab’ that would further the study of urban ecology by examining the relationships between the city’s materiality and robust, resilient, and adaptable species found within alvar habitats [1] Bryan-Wilson, Julia. “Rebecca Belmore: Material Relations” in Afterall, A Journal of Art Context and Enquiry, 2018 (45), 43-49. 23
14. In Embodied Energy: Living Lab, we wanted to encourage the praxis of ‘land as pedagogy’ by by examining the relationships between the city’s materiality and robust, resilient, and adaptable species found within alvar habitats in Ontario. The amazing revelation of these plants in rocks crevices fosters the “art of noticing” as scholar Anna Tsing has posited in the book The Mushroom at the End of the World.
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Elements of a Metabolic Landscape Humber Bay, Toronto, ON. 2020.
In collaboration with Juan Bernardo Velasco Canela, Howard Rosenblat & Stefan Herda https://underthehumber.cargo.site/
Within the Humber Bay district, various flows of energy and industry are seemingly unplanned. Watersheds, aging sewage networks, food distribution, income disparity, and wastewater treatment all converge within the Humber Bay, but flow separately from one another. We developed a framework to engage in new opportunities for integrating programming, waste efficiencies, food distribution, and community engagement to foster a resilient and adaptive community. The project proposed four major interventions following the principles of a metabolic landscape. This circular economy realizes the potential of energy flows, food, waste, water, and people in a closed-loop system by reimagining the interface between the Ontario Food Terminal, the Humber Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant, a series of filtration islands that create a new shoreline experience, a mixed-use community development built atop recycled construction fill, and an extensive circulation network that stitches these major systems seamlessly together.
15. Visualizing the connections/disconnections between the key material flows within the site: Fill, Food and Waste. A Sankey diagram translates volume of material into the width of a line, allowing us to visually compare the volume of material within each system. 27
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16. A new path network and material flow winds down the Humber river and leads into the Metabolic park, through the Biogas plant to Food Terminal Hub leading along the Gardiner expressway to connect to the Lakeshore Common in the foreground. 29
17. Parkdale’s small businesses, convenient stores and food hub communities come alive with permeable interventions and retrofits. New connections across and along the Lakeshore corridor facilitate pedestrian friendly transit weaving throughout the transformed shoreline. 30
18. A new path network and material flow winds down the Humber river and leads into the Metabolic park, through the Biogas plant to Food Terminal Hub leading along the Gardiner expressway to connect to the Lakeshore Common in the foreground. 31
19. Parkdale’s small businesses, convenient stores and food hub communities come alive with permeable interventions and retrofits. New connections across and along the Lakeshore corridor facilitate pedestrian friendly transit weaving throughout the transformed shoreline. 32
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The process of memory making Collected to Collective
Steel welded frame (1/4 inch), aluminum plate, cotton thread, fishing wire. Exploring the relationship between collected memories and the collective memory of a nation through the analysis of the Ashrottbrunnem fountain (Horst Heisel, Kassel, 1985). The inverted fountain is a counter-monument to the Holocaust designed as a space to look down and remember. The thread is wound through the metal cross section of the fountain becoming both the memories of the onlookers and the shape of the fountain. 37
20. The process of making: a) MIG welding, b) grinding and c) CNC of aluminum cross-sections. In counter ceremony students were encouraged to add their own thread to the model, adding their own memory to the collective. 38
The Great Serpent Mound Ohio, USA.
A meteorite’s impact on the land 320 million years ago, a message from time, a remnant from the birth of our solar system. Time transported and imprinted into the Earth. Encoded in the elemental composition and shape of the surrounding rocks marking the landscape as other. Many years have covered this violent upheaval of life in a layer of living matter but still the faint shadow remains. The Adena culture with their deep connection with the land possibly recognized this “otherness” and added their own layers of charcoal, sandy-silt, and fire burned earth. The reasons behind the creation of the “Great Serpent” effigy mound is and will remain a mystery, its secrets locked away with the death of the Adena culture. But through history we can attempt to translate their meaning. In the Mississippian mound building culture, the “Great Serpent” was thought of as a symbol of the Underworld and was a great malevolent spirit. It was a reminder that time and death are inevitable, like the river winding beside the mound it continues in an unbroken cycle. 39
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GRIT Lab 2: Modules
The Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory at the University of Toronto
The Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory, or GRIT Lab, is located at the University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. A platform for multidisciplinary collaboration, GRIT Lab’s goal is to investigate the environmental performance associated with ‘green’ & ‘clean’ technologies such as green roofs, green walls and photovoltaic arrays.
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21. Blue-green infrastructure diagrams, typologies showcasing holistic design opportunities. 43
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Ecological Stoichiometry
Intraspecific variation in threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) in bar-built estuaries along the central Californian coast.
Our study was a preliminary exploration of the variability in morphology, physiology and elemental composition in estuarine threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) populations.
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