Christopher Lam Project Portfolio Master’s of Architecture, University of Toronto 2017-2021
The Lantern Natatorium Site: The Golden Mile, Scarborough, Ontario Team members: Yvonne Fu, Chris Lam The Lantern Natatorium creates a centrepiece for the Golden Mile Secondary Plan, an urban renewal strategy put forward by the city of Toronto to revitalise the Golden Mile, a former industrial site in Scarborough, Ontario. The natatorium’s soft glow, created by its curtain wall system shrouded by an expanded metal veil, acts as a beacon against the edge of the hydro-corridor behind it. The Lantern is subtly raised to be visible from all sides, as well as visually connecting it to the hydro-corridor. A bike path wraps up and around the edge of the natatorium, extending the access between the streetfront and the green space behind. The veil lifts at the corner to allow access to the natatorium, as well as to the covered outer space. The Lantern utilises passive control methods to promote an environmentally responsible architecture. The south facing siting of the outdoor pool provides heat and light. Operable windows provide passive ventilation, and only necessary program is regulated, leaving the pavilion-like circulatory area passively controlled.
Shading systems shield the glass facade, reducing heat gain while maintaining natural light throughout the building. Through material experimentation, including glass block, illuminated concrete panels with fibreglass rods, and parametric wood slats, perforated metal was chosen for its weight and porousness. The glass roof of the natatorium
The Lantern Natatorium connects essential program to mechanical services, while relying on passive ventilation systems to mitigate systems load and reduce the building’s carbon footprint. Operable windows and ventilated rooms cool program spaces, including offices, gyms, and the cafe, during the summer, while warm, humid air from the insulated pool space is recycled to provide dry heat to the spaces during the winter and colder days.
acts as both a skylight and rain catchment system. The perforated facade allows water to drain through to the roof, where a system of channels directs water from the roof to rain tanks, where water is recycled for the pool and adjacent landscape.
The structural steel shed system with vierandeel trusses and HSS columns supports the ‘floating box’ program elements, ramp, floor plates, and inner light atrium void. By suspending the atrium within the structure, the system creates an enclosed humid zone, allowing light to enter the pool area while preventing the transfer of heat and humidity, as well as the creating the glowing heart of the natatorium.
Suspended volumes are arranged around the central atrium, which provides light and enclosure to the pool area below. The volumes surrounding the atrium overlook the pool, connecting all programs to the central focus. These programmatic volumes, including gyms, offices, and cafe, are accessed by a ramp which wraps its way around the atrium, connecting the program spaces while providing views of both
the pool area and the landscape beyond. The outer walkway ramps up to the second level, creating a separate entrance to the dry areas, as well as providing hout to the outer loggia area. This outer space, which hugs the exterior of the natatorium, provides a place to pause between the historic Golden Mile commercial area and the hydro-corridor to the North.
Facing Reality Vancouver Island, Canada Facing Reality is a mobile climate education centre which attempts to subvert the existing architecture of Vancouver Island’s colonial past in order to address the current climate crisis and establish a network of climate data points. By redefining the architecture of the school in the context of Vancouver Island’s colonial past, the project confronts the colonial ideologies of division, isolation, and permanence. In response to the climate crisis, the mobile school engages with these practices and their effects on Vancouver Island to promote a community driven approach to data collection and to inform a climate education. Its curriculum confronts the reality of climate change in the environment in which we live, as well as reconnecting participants to ecological thought. It strives to create a dialogue between modern science and traditional knowledge, while engaging the public in environmental learning and consciousness.
Upon arrival, the climate monitoring balloon is launched and the structure is assembled by the team
In the evenings, the climate monitoring balloon is lowered to signal the start of the evening activities and to provide light to the inflatable below
As participants begin to gather, the pneumatic structure is inflated. It will host field courses, lectures, and evening stories and films
The inflatable structure can be used as the backdrop for films, lectures, and seminars, as well as traditional storytelling
The climate monitoring balloon is raised above the tree line to collect data. After the event is finished, it will remain and be raised again to continue monitoring
At night, the structure is deformed with straps to create private spaces for the teachers and scientists to sleep
Work Life Balance Site: Kensington Market, Toronto, Ontario The ‘Experimental Collectivity’ studio sought to envision new modes of collective housing in Toronto in an effort to address the ‘missing middle,’ or the housing gap between suburban, single family dwellings and high-rise apartments. The Work Life Balance collective housing imagines a new community of housing and work space, creating flexible spaces for community events. Townhouses sit above storefronts and office spaces, with large, open plans allowing community events. A pedestrian street between the townhouses creates a large public gathering space, where market events occur. The chamfered roofs of the townhouses create skylights with double height spaces, providing airy, light, living spaces. Alternating window placement provides privacy in a dense living arrangement.
Townhouse ground +1, with kitchen and double height living room
Townhouse ground +2, with bedroom, bathroom, laundry, and balcony
Ground store space, in typical daily configuration
These floor plans show the flexibility of the units. Jennifer is an aspiring fashion designer and the owner of a vintage clothing store. During regular use, her storefront on the public lane acts as a store for her
Townhouse ground +3, with studio space
Ground store space, transformed into runway for show
clothing finds, as well as her own designs created in her studio on the top floor of her apartment. Each season, she converts her shop into a runway to show off her newly launched line of clothes.
The units of the Work Life Balance housing collective consist of two and three story apartments, accessed from the ground floor retail space below. Each unit is lit by alternating windows and skylights, providing light and privacy.
Ground +3 The top floor of the three story apartments are faced by the angled skylights, creating brightly lit lounges and workshops.
Ground +2 Work desks sit above the spaces created by the double height ceiling, overlooking the activity below and providing a connection to the lower area. Corridors are exploited to increase the amount of usable space.
Ground +1 The first floor of the housing units contains spacious kitchens, living rooms, and bed rooms for small apartments. Angled windows on the floors above create well-lit, double height spaces.
Sunken Kindergarten T
Site: Glen Morris Street and Huron Street, Toronto The project brief called for a kindergarten of four classrooms, capable of holding twenty students each. Due to the scale and complexity of the adjacent buildings, a low, geometric structure was chosen to contrast the surrounding buildings. The low pyramid, with classrooms sunk into the earth, was designed to provide safety and privacy without relying on fencing. Further, the central courtyard allows ease of access to the outside to all four classrooms, while providing covered and uncovered play areas.
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Erosion Machines Team members: Niko Delic, Simba Mai, Chris Lam The erosion machines team created a series of sculptural pieces using a mixture of digital and hand modelling. Through experimentation, the team combined concrete, plaster, balloons, plastic bags, lasercut forms, burnt cedar, and CLT to create objects which combined hand craft and digital fabrication. We experimented with how concrete would react being injected in balloons, around water filled balloons, and squeezed into plastic bags, how plaster, cedar, and CLT withstood CNC milling, and the combination of these experiments resulted in a final model contained within a glass dome.