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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.