Vacant sites of various sizes are scattered throughout Halifax’s downtown core. The site of the former Halifax Infirmary is of particular importance due to its size and proximity to many of the city’s major assets. Structured around a stable centre of public institutions and supporting spatial and social infrastructure, a new urban mat weaves together diverse fabrics, effectively extending the reach of each element or system of elements while maintaining original boundaries. Infinitely scalable, mats are capable of building interdependence and association between people and places through a structuring process that involves the overlapping of urban elements through time.
Imagining a new centre of stability in the city – anchored by strong existing public institutions – the elements that fill the site must take on an unconventional, anti-monumental shape. Through an organic understanding of the in-between – a sort of interstitial urbanism – these elements can not only form the physical construct of the site, but can create habitat and allow for unexpected patterns of human behaviour. Such a process requires one to step away from buildings and plans viewed from above and to explore the hidden potential on the ground, in the city, on the street and in the landscape. Aldo Van Eyck predicted an end to architecture’s fascination with form, to be replaced by a ‘culture of determined relations’ where ‘the relation between things and within things are of greater
significance than the things themselves’. Mat-building continues this push for a shift in architectural design from static imagery to organisation, temporality and transition. It places architecture closer to the humanities and in a position better able to deal with the dynamics of contemporary cosmopolitan forms of urbanity. Mat-building is place-making in a phenomenological sense – using the experiences of people as the foundation of design. The mat is a discussion of density, city life (in buildings and in the street) and cultural differences in the use and meaning of space. In this sense, the mat may be the most appropriate ’ground cover’ for culturally diverse cities as it embraces the overlapping and complex structuring of social and spatial elements of urban life. p
street, street smarts, street life: onsite 19
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