The Verve The Central Link

The Verve is a long north-south mixed-use residential, manufacturing, and employment corridor that has a unique typology of warehouse co-op housing and civic amenities that do not currently exist. It includes artist-run galleries, and the Knowledge is Power Community Center.

The Central Link is the proposed transit station that centralizes existing and proposed transit systems among three butting municipalities that converge at this point.

Landscape Comprehensive Studio, Spring 2021

Instructor: Behnaz Assadi, Todd Douglas

Partner: Nadia Chan

University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Landscape Architecture

Cultivating Relations on the Toronto Islands

The archipelago of 14 islands, are home to six Environmentally Significant Areas, including human and non-human inhabitants. For over a Century, their borders have been reinforced with fill to maintain their security, however their stability continues to be threatened by accelerated high-water levels, flooding, and soil erosion.

To address the challenges of this shifting sandbar, the proposed flood mitigation strategies focus on building out the edges through bio-engineering methods, with the goal of promoting accretion and sedimentation, protection of the shoreline, as well as increasing biodiversity and enhancing habitat opportunities.

In addition, the strategy of reintroducing manoomin (Ojibwe for wild rice) to the interior canals of the islands offers a way to not only think about the physical interventions to mitigate the effects of climate change but also asks us to consider necessary changes to the culture that shapes our relationships to the land, Indigenous land.

The reintroduction and cultivation of wild rice provides a myriad of ecological benefits including: the filtering of water, increasing water clarity, decreasing algae blooms, binding loose soil, providing protection from high winds and waves, and creating a magnetic habitat for fish, waterfowl and other relations.

Prior to European colonization, the Mississaugas of the Credit hunted and fished on the islands, trapping muskrat, spearing fish in shallow lagoons and shooting duck, geese, and other waterfowl on its wild rice. A series of fish smoking structures are proposed to exercise the time-honoured practice and provide for a wayfinging system around Trout Pond.

Option Studio I Mediated Alps: reconstructung mountain archives and futures, Fall 2021

Instructor: Aisling O’Carroll

University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Landscape Architecture

Explorations of a Stereoscopic Lineage

Through reinterpretation and reconstruction, this project explores the role of historical representation and technology with respect to the archival document above and the popular 19thC instrument, the Underwood and Underwood stereograph.

A series of exercises in stereoscopic vision trace the lineage of 3D effect mediums to the present-day evolution of VR. An analogue device that combines a variety of stereoscopic viewing methods from old to new was created using a combination of reproductive technologies and as much found material as possible. The culminating VR reconstruction of the Mer de la Glace image provides viewers with an experience of the eroding mountain bases of the Alps, and the disappearance of the famous ice-forms to be confronted with the dramatic effects of climate change.

images.

Lenses - Deconstructed +3.0 reading glasses, reversed and reassembled, two colour anaglyph lenses, and kaleidoscopic lenses inserted into cardboard laser-cut frames.

Thesis, Spring 2022

Instructor: Liat Margolis

University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Landscape Architecture

Down By Law in Parkdale: Examining the City of Toronto’s Community Aspirations at a District Scale

Through the investigation of a 24,000 sq foot fenced off open space in Parkdale - property of the Toronto District School Board, this thesis maps the incongruencies between the city’s proclaimed aspirations around wellness, food security, open space, Indigenous land rights, and existing park bylaws, and policies that contradict the goals set forth by the City of Toronto.

This thesis asks, as park bylaws restrict cultural expression and practice within the public realm and disproportionately target the most marginalized constituents of our society, how can landscape architects move away from the myth of universal design premised on the idea of ‘design for all,’ and challenge existing bylaws to design with contextual specificity to advance autonomy, equity, dignity, and care within the urban realm? How might locally embedded bottom-up systems of governance within the community such as land-trust models, steward public infrastructure that encourages relationality, collective care, and shared governance?

Opposite page: Summary review of policy and strategy reports published by the City of Toronto pertaining to themes of education, health, food accessibility, equity, environment and ecology.