This studio focused on redefining the boundaries between landscape, urbanism, and the conception of public space in suburbia. It exploited the lack of design research and exploration in the status, form, and potentials of public open space in the suburban context. It started by acknowledging the fact that according to Census Canada, we are a suburban nation. In the Toronto region, more than 86 per cent of the population live in a suburban neighbourhood, and that the rate of transformation along Toronto’s edges is an opportunity and fertile ground for design innovation. The studio examined, critiqued, mapped and designed the future of suburban parks, interrogating their ubiquity and their value in the 21st century. It sought to tease through design iteration of landform / topography, material, program, and vegetation, themes brought upon by contemporary research on suburbia such as: Heterogeneity (social and ecological diversity of the suburban context), Productivity and Performance (the harnessing of suburban space to generate net positive eco-system services and value), and Experimentation (the flexibility of suburbia to invent new, recombinant forms and functions of architecture and landscape.
The studio was structured on 4 main exercises:
Exercise 01: Site / Suburban Park Figure Ground Catalogue and Index generated a graphic index of 50 total parks from across the GTA that were drawn, modeled, analyzed and compared.
Exercise 02: Region / Contextualizing the Suburban Park generated a series of macro-scale mappings that situated and contextualized the parks’ demographics, networks, land values / land uses, and historic narratives.
Exercise 03: Neighbourhood / Revealing the Forces asked students to zoom down to a 5-min walking radius (or 500 meters) of a selected park in the same region. Students drew an illustrative isometric drawing of the park and its context with hyper detail. The drawings highlighted notions of experiential thresholds, sequential transitions, exit, and entry, as well as public and private realms. In this phase, students also had to generate a conceptual framework for topographic, vegetal, and programmatic moves and interventions in the parks.
Exercise 04: Transformation / Students developed transformative design proposals in their respective suburban parks (from exercise 03). Rooted in the research, conceptual frameworks, and the contextual analysis revealed from previous phases, each proposal included a series of measured and precise topographic manipulations, as well as a set of transformative, vegetal, and programmatic moves. These moves enhanced the performative, cultural experience, and functionality of the parks.
Featured work by:
Sing Zixin Chen, Bonnie Chuong, Hillary Dewildt, Wenpei Fang, Elspeth Holland, Shikha Jagwani, Edward Marchant, Ambika Pharma, Zhengbang Wang, Michael Wideman
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