Fall 2012 Thesis Reviews Booklet

M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012 DIANE CANTES ABRERA MARYAM ALAEDDINI CEARA ALLEN HIRSA AZIZI FAISAL BASHIR ANDRES ULISE BAUTISTA ELIZABETH BELINA-BRZOZOWSKI BOBBY CHIANG GASTON FERNANDEZ ROBERT E FIORINO KATHERINE GUDOV DUSTIN HOOPER BRIDGET KANE SARA KARDAN MANI KAZEM TABRIZI KIANA KEYVANI MIN WOO KIM ZEINA KOREITEM EDGAR LEON SKANDA XIAOTING LIN REBECCA MACDONALD YVAN MARSHALL MACKINNON

ROBIN MCKENNA AYESHA MOGHAL MATTHEW MORGAN KATERYNA NEBESNA NEVENA NIKOLAEVA NIAGOLOVA MAHTAB OSKUEE DIMITRA PAPANTONIS MIRCEA POPA NICOLAS ROLAND DINA SARHANE FELIX WING LAM SUEN BASHAR TALIB NICOLE TOMASI MÉLISSA MARIA TOVAR DUSTIN VALEN ANNE MALEE VAN KOEVERDEN AIDA VATANY OSGOOIE CHERYL WAN XIAO WANG ALEXANDER WARWICK MIKA YAMAGUCHI AVIS YAU

ACKNOwLeDGeMeNTs

Thank you to Andrea McGee, Daisy Lyman, Zita da Silva D’Alessandro, Katrina Groen, and Misha Rahardja for their essential coordination and administrative support in the Thesis program this term; to Maxim Batourine, Yuri Lomakin, Joseph Stewart, Johnny Bui, and Nicholas Hoban for support in computing and facilities; and to Dale Duncan and Pamela Walls for communications assistance and production of this book. Finally, thank you to Dean Richard M. Sommer and Chief Administrative Officer Kevin Wilson — and the impressive array of guest critics and thesis advisors, whose unwavering commitment continues to show through the success of our students.

iNTRODUCTiON

On December 12 & 13, 2012, Master of Architecture students from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design will present and defend their final theses to a distinguished group of critics, as well as a large faculty audience. The two days constitute a fantastic event that highlights the provocative, creative, and varied work of our accomplished students. Responding to challenges that are increasingly complex and global in nature, these projects reveal new possibilities, provide fresh perspectives, and explore innovative and sustainable ways to design and inhabit our built environment.

THESIS ADVISORS George Baird Aziza Chaouni Robert Levit An Te Liu John May Laura Miller Carol Moukheiber John Shnier Mason White

GUEST CRITICS Neeraj Bhatia, Cornell University Adrian Blackwell, University of Waterloo

Bruce Kuwabara, KPMB Architects Erin Lewis, OCAD University

Trevor Boddy, University of British Columbia

Ana Miljacki, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Michael Cadwell, Knowlton School of Architecture, Ohio State University

Erkin Ozay, Harvard GSD

Robert Davies, Montgomery Sisam Architects Patricia Gaviria, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto Rania Ghosn, Tuabman College of Architecture, University of Michigan Matthew Gryzwinski, Gryzwinski + Pons, Architects, NYC Wonne Ickx, Productura Architects, Mexico City El Hadi Jazairy, Tuabman College of Architecture, University of Michigan Bess Kreitemeyer, Center for Architecture, Science and Ecology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Adrian Phiffer, Office of Adrian Phiffer Michael Piper, DUB studios Amador Pons, Gryzwinski + Pons, Architects, NYC Michael Prokopow, OCAD University Erik Rubin, Sessional Lecturer, Daniels Faculty Ouri Scott, Dialog Architects Luisa Sotomayor, Department of Geography and Regional Planning, University of Toronto John van Nostrand, Regional Architects

M ARCH Thesis Reviews fall 2012

PROJeCTs

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DIANE CANTES ABRERA MARYAM ALAEDDINI CEARA ALLEN HIRSA AZIZI FAISAL BASHIR ANDRES ULISE BAUTISTA ELIZABETH BELINA-BRZOZOWSKI BOBBY CHIANG GASTON FERNANDEZ ROBERT E FIORINO KATHERINE GUDOV DUSTIN HOOPER BRIDGET KANE SARA KARDAN MANI KAZEM TABRIZI KIANA KEYVANI MIN WOO KIM ZEINA KOREITEM EDGAR LEON SKANDA XIAOTING LIN REBECCA MACDONALD YVAN MARSHALL MACKINNON

52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94

ROBIN MCKENNA AYESHA MOGHAL MATTHEW MORGAN KATERYNA NEBESNA NEVENA NIKOLAEVA NIAGOLOVA MAHTAB OSKUEE DIMITRA PAPANTONIS MIRCEA POPA NICOLAS ROLAND DINA SARHANE FELIX WING LAM SUEN BASHAR TALIB NICOLE TOMASI MÉLISSA MARIA TOVAR DUSTIN VALEN ANNE MALEE VAN KOEVERDEN AIDA VATANY OSGOOIE CHERYL WAN XIAO WANG ALEXANDER WARWICK MIKA YAMAGUCHI AVIS YAU

M ARCH Thesis Reviews fall 2012

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ENSTRANGEMENT OF ROCK MUTATIONS Diane Cantes Abrera

This thesis attempts to create an armature of understanding of Sudbury and its unique relationship between its built form and its natural form. “Enstrangement” (a term borrowed from Victor Shklovsky’s Theory of Prose) of rock and its various mutations allows us to “see” the object versus “recognize” it - an act which involves conscious involvement over the unconscious.

The project investigates one of three institutions that promote culture while creating a “center” or “centres” within a de-centralized northern city of antiMonuments. Focused on a city pushing against its existing boundaries of rocks, lakes, rivers, railways, and mines, this thesis strives to reassert architecture’s ability to elevate the ordinary, by using the banal as a vehicle for architectural form, programmatic combinations/reshuffling, and a new understanding.

Advisor: john shnier M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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TO MERGE OR TO EMERGE, THAT IS THE QUESTION MARYAM ALAEDDINI

Since the initiation of Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Task Force in 1991, Toronto’s waterfront has been a hot target for private developers. A significant number of mixed-use residential condominiums, mostly mid-rise, have landed on the north of Queens Quay West - all overlook the Inner Harbour and enjoy the views of water and the Toronto Island.

This project proposes a mixed-use development scheme for the site of Canada Malting Silos, located at Bathurst Quay, in close proximity to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. The scheme defines three zones: private residential, commercial, and public. Throughout the process of design, the proposition continuously dealt with the very common, yet challenging question of how to respond not only to the demands for architectural innovation but to its immediate urban surroundings and also to the environmental conditions of the site. Would the building superimpose itself on the property as the majority of existing buildings in that neighbourhood do or emerge from it both formally and operationally? Would it intrude into the immediacy of the site or merge with the existing conditions? Within the process of merging and/or emerging, would it provide public accessibility to the waterfront?

Would it incorporate more water activities as opposed to romanticizing the water views? Would it optimize the use of sunlight and air circulation?

The major claim of this project is that finding the right balance in response to all the aforementioned demands, questions, and issues seems almost impossible especially for a site that is deemed to be a victim of profit-making maximization but we continue to strive to answer them.

Advisor: robert levit M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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Arrival HQ:

Skill Incubators in Toronto’s Peri-Ethnoburbs CEARA ALLEN

The year is 2030. High-speed rail has been operational for a few years. Oshawa and Burlington are now within half an hour of Toronto by rail, and London and Kingston are less than 1.5 hours.

At this time, the current development plan for the GTA, Places to Grow, has nearly run its course. With the GTA lands almost completely developed, and with highspeed rail changing commuting habits, families and developers look to cities beyond the GTA along the high-speed rail line for building opportunities. A new term is coined for Toronto’s periphery: the ‘Ultra Toronto Area’ or UTA, where travel time to or from Toronto is under 1.5 hours.

In 2030, immigration will be the primary source of Ontario’s population growth.

Ontario’s immigrants have historically initially settled in Toronto’s Arrival Cities, such as Thorncliffe Park and Victoria Park. In the past few years, this trend has started to shift, and many immigrants are now settling in the GTA, or the ‘ethnoburbs’.

Once high-speed rail is operational, many immigrants will choose to settle in the UTA, creating new Arrival Cities, which will become Toronto’s ‘peri-ethnoburbs’.

With population growth relying so heavily on immigration, it will be more important than ever to assist immigrant transition into Ontario.

Ontario is predicting a shortage of skilled labourers in 2030. Recent immigrants can help to fill this shortage. A current discussion within government is to seek alreadyskilled immigrants. Another strategy is to train immigrants once they arrive.

This thesis proposes Learning and Welcome Centres for arriving immigrants, to be located in the cities with high-speed rail train stations. These centres combine learning (including skill, degree, and language upgrading) with immigration services, opportunities for small business development, and space for the community in Toronto’s peri-ethnoburbs.

Advisor: MASON WHITE M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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INFRASTRUCTURE AS ARCHITECTURE: DESIGNING COMPOSITE NETWORKS HIRSA AZIZI

Infrastructure plays a key role in dramatically defining cities. Compared with their original structure, the built fabric and spatial reserves of the past 100 years has left many urban environments almost unrecognizable. The involvement of architects is essential for coherent development of infrastructural design. The goal of this project is to optimize infrastructure as an urban resource, by introducing new architectural systems of infrastructure, to develop a cooperative configuration of new settlements within existing and new infrastructural systems. This provides an alternative to the current trend of consuming highway and vital watershed systems for new development.

Tehran, with a population of approximately 14 million, and an area of 1,000 square kilometers is a city with huge infrastructure and urban development, which needs to rethink its services in order to improve the living condition of the people.

Although services are provided, at times they become problematic and cause issues such as: pollution, discouraging flow of movement throughout different regions, flooding, etc. Therefore, the aim is to create water capture systems, by using the stream networks of infrastructure that is strategically located along the existing networks of highways. This would resolve the discontinuity of movement through different neighborhoods. Additionally, the system may act as a civic space providing recreational, commercial, and social functions; while still supplying portions of needed water for the neighborhood.

Advisor: robert levit M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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responsive geometries FAISAL BASHIR This proposal aims to revisit advances in computation and fabrication as a cultural project within the context of Karachi, Pakistan. It is an effort to produce formal and tectonic design logic that instills ‘civic memory,’ therefore enhancing urban citizenship.

Karachi, under pressure to accommodate massive population influx, political unrest, and socio-cultural degradation, is losing its civic identity. The severity of this condition is most evident in the city’s architecture. Despite having a rich architectural heritage, the city has turned into a mundane concrete jungle. It is this “architecture of utility” in its crudest form that has rendered citizens’ inability to identify with the city.

This raises the question of form and aesthetics gaining as much criticality as utility and their importance in stitching together the social fabric. The use of digital computation and advances in fabrication techniques could possibly bridge the gap between the architecture of economy and culturally responsive forms.

Advisor: robert levit M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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DISPLACEMENT/PLACEMENT:

THE POTENTIAL FOr THE MUTABILITY OF PRIMAL FORMS ANDRES BAUTISTA

This thesis analyses the potential of mutable primal forms within the context of Mesoamerican iconography. It investigates how primal form(s), more specifically the primal wedge, (used in Mesoamerican architecture), can be reconfigured towards a contemporary formalistic language. Moreover, it aims to find the balance between iconology and historic construction techniques through a proposed Geological Research Centre.

Situated 20 km south of Managua, Nicaragua, the site for this thesis has a particular geological significance: it is within a caldera, (known as the Masaya Caldera) which in itself sustains a lake and an active volcano. The Geological Research Centre will have adjacent complimentary buildings, which together construct a contemporary formalistic interpretation of its context. The dispersed programs and thus dispersed precisional forms, together with displaced/placed site materials add new layers of history to the site. It is through this addition of stratums, that a richer and more complex understanding of the site can come forth, which will inadvertently become open to transformation and evolution through verdancy and time. Hence, the buildings have the potential for not only immediate mutability through its formalistic iconography, but also via its imperceptible transformations which will occur with time.

The Masaya Caldera is considered “primal” or even sublime by the many international visitors whom come to see its live volcano. Primal, from its Latin etymology, prımus, refers to “first” or “primary” whereas Form is defined as “the shape and structure of an object” or “the essence of something.” When these two words are combined, they construct the fundamental theme of the thesis. When further amalgamated with the inherent geological character of the site, forms may inform (educate). Subjectively, Primal Forms are thus objects which hold the essence of both their form and their situational spirit. Hence, the project aspires at going beyond the program by allowing the architecture to embody the spirit of the site or its sublime experience. When this takes place, it allows architectural form to be almost negligible or momentarily indiscernible: mutable.

Advisor: john shnier M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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we’ve been non’ed ELIZABETH BELINA-BRZOZOWSKI

The architecture of North America’s government institutions plays a central role in creating some of the first impressions new migrants have of their new home. While investigating the major shifts of globalization and its processes of displacement, which includes moving away from one’s home land, one might find oneself in an in-between place, a queue, an empty room, or Marc Auge’s idea of a “non-place.”

According to Auge, a non-place is a space that “cannot be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity.” On the other end of the spectrum, a home is often associated with a place where one feels like they belong and where there is a range of familiarity. This idea of the familiar or alien seems sparked by a set of relationships between the sensorial physicality of an artifact/space (aesthetic) and psychological/sociological (behavior) observations.

Using Toronto Pearson International Airport as a case-study of non-places, it has been observed that the sterile environment and primal behavioral responses of anxiety, fear, and boredom trigger a paralysis of the senses. This thesis explores how we can ameliorate these conditions by re-activating the privacy of passengers through sensory relief. While identifying the sequence of areas in detriment within the Pearson airport, one can frame thresholds of absorption/immersion to create temporal privacy within such exposed conditions. Using these methodologies, interventions or revised artifacts are necessary to relieve the paralysis of the senses caused by non-places.

Advisor: laura miller M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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CHANGING IDEALS AND SHIFTING REALITIES IN THE TAIWAN STRAIT BOBBY CHIANG The site of one of the most complex and crucial issues in the West Pacific is the Taiwan Strait. In 1949, Chinese Nationalists suffered defeat in mainland China and retreated to Taiwan. Kinmen, the last archipelago of mainland China administered by the Nationalists was the frontline for the U.S. supplied Nationalist forces resisting the communist regime.

Despite 60 years of political separation and military stand off, representatives from the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC) and officials from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) initiated a series of groundbreaking delegations, and the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement was signed between PRC and ROC in 2010, reducing trade tariff, postal, and transportation barriers. Today, there are growing direct flights from Taiwan to mainland China, as well as an expanding ferry service from Kinmen to the Xiamen coastal region.

The opening of cross-strait transportation provides a new open-door policy to mainland China, attracting a significant amount of trade and tourism from both sides. Today, Kinmen is no longer a bi-coastal military frontline, but the new economic frontline serving the region of the Taiwan Strait, where the cultural and trade relations are overpowering political relations.

Responding to this shift in socio-economic reality, the Kinmen County Government initiated a series of Build-Operate-Transfer (PPP) infrastructure procurements, including improvement of the existing port of entry. However, the proposed schemes are directed towards the urgent globalization trade agenda and passive revenue generation, and do not respond to the decades of cultural and societal disconnection.

The next era of cross-strait relations calls for a peaceful and prosperous basis for negotiating foreseeable political differences. This thesis project responds to the decades of political separation by proposing new maritime infrastructure north of Kinmen Bay. As an island and a regional amenity, the port serves both as a destination and a launch point for Chinese and Taiwanese visitors, while promoting a cross-strait bilateral exchange.

Advisor: LAURA MILLER M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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transit and urbanism in the suburban gtha GASTON FERNANDEZ

With plans underway to upgrade, expand and build new transit lines that will necessitate the creation of new mobility hubs throughout the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), several challenges with regard to the planning and design of these spaces in Toronto’s car-dependant suburbs have come to the fore.

Given that transit is being woven into areas that have in many cases been built in an automobile-centric way, how can the landscape, infrastructure and built patterns of these areas be transformed to accommodate the increasing number of parking spaces demanded for these hubs?

This thesis will explore the potential spatial relationship between parking and architectural program that has been under-exploited. What if the interdependence of spatial function and parking becomes the catalyst for architectural invention and urbanism in Toronto’s suburbs?

Advisor: GEORGE BAIRD M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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THE FORGOTTEN AVENUE ROBERT E FIORINO After years of suburban growth around the periphery, developers are shifting their attention back to the city center. With new developments comes a welcomed increase in wealth and population to the city’s core, however, these buildings, many of them being high-rise point- tower-types are also drastically changing block morphologies, and the results are raising questions about how we’re re-building our central neighbourhoods.

Despite this, high-rise condominiums and three storey low-rise buildings continue to pop up across the city. Sadly, mid-rise development rarely appears.

Toronto’s urban development has been soured by rules that were designed for more suburban or high-rise developments in mind. A special mix of regulations and code requirements burden mid-rise buildings with unfair parking more appropriate for suburban or car dependant neighbourhoods. These include: redundant family amenity spaces, such as party rooms and resident-only gyms - not to mention garbage, loading and fire exiting requirements that are out of scale with mid-rise developments. We have started to uncover the true problem facing the city today, which is not so much that we don’t know how or what to build to make a better city, but rather that it’s usually not feasible to create the ideal buildings for our city.

Unfortunately, Mid-rise is a desirable form of low-rise, small scale housing and that most developers shy away from, saying the Pro Forma doesn’t work. They instead rely on Vancouver-style point towers or towns as a default response to density and development in urban areas. By taking advantage of various OBC loopholes, as I see them, and by using a better cost-saving material system, such as light wood framing/ CLT and engineered wood products, you can change the form of the building beyond what it is typically conceived while staying within the parameters of the building code and zoning by-laws to build bigger buildings than are intended, and do so as of right. By making a six-storey building that is technically defined as a 4-storey building you can still build in combustible construction which at this scale would be about $135/square feet, whereas concrete is $170 or more. Many of the features, which result, would net premiums on sale prices too, i.e. double height spaces. This Mid-Rise thesis is about proving an alternative model of development and way of city building.

Advisor: GEORGE BAIRD M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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Future Memory; Sunnyside Redux KATHERINE GUDOV

In bold but playful contrast to the privatized edification of the waterfront evidenced in The Boulevard club to the east, this proposal seeks to create a destination of hyperactivity on Toronto’s west waterfront. In this pursuit, the project seeks out the collective memory of a concentrated waterfront experience of our city thus intensifying a public connection to the lake. This defined yet supremely permeable creation of multiple future experiences resonates and conflates with the past memories of former times while revealing possibilities of a future city rich in meaning and connection.

Advisor: john shnier M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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macroform: microcosm DUSTIN HOOPER

Beginning in the latter half of the twentieth century, we’ve witnessed a shift in the organizational strategies of many businesses, societies, and urban centres, towards a model of decentralization. Consciously or not we are witnessing a shift in the way that the polis organizes itself and yet we are attempting to move forward with an outdated model of a monocentric city. We are relying on the infrastructural systems of the past century as though they were merely tethered to a singular core. Rather than see these infrastructural systems as objects that have divided the city’s neighbourhoods while serving the needs of a ravenous motopia we must instead see them for their potential: The Modern Fabric of the Future City.

Positioned within the lineage of conceptual, utopian urban proposals, this thesis attempts to critically understand how the infrastructural systems of the twentieth century have covertly established themselves as the Modern Fabric of our cities.

With the Intermodal Hub as its vehicle, this thesis investigates how the anomalous infrastructural lands of Greater Toronto (subway, rail lines, motorways etc.), and their predominantly undeveloped adjacent parcels have the potential to be modified and mobilized in order to operate as devices for reconnecting neighbourhoods while addressing the needs of a highly decentralized city in the 21st century.

Advisor: george baird M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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DEW POINT

AN ATMOSPHERIC WELL FOR MANANTIAL BRIDGET KANE

The Sechura Desert along Peru’s Pacific coastline has supported numerous civilizations throughout history despite the extreme topographical and hydrological conditions imposed on its inhabitants. Considered a cool desert climate, stabilized by the Humboldt Current, the thin coastal lowland rises dramatically to the western slopes of the Andes. A unique atmospheric phenomenon known locally as “Garua” or fog is due to the persistent low cloud deck over the Pacific and a high year-round relative humidity. La Garua interacts with the extreme terrestrial condition to create pockets of greenery, or Lomas zones, throughout the Sechura. It is within these Lomas zones that this thesis provokes an Architectural response to an ephemeral resource.

In the outskirts of Lima, the second largest desert city in the world, one-third of its citizens live in pueblos jóvenes, or young towns, that arise spontaneously due to immigrant land invasions. The city’s legalization of informal settlement has created swaths of communities that lack planned public space as well as formal water infrastructure. Life in a pueblo joven is defined by multiple scarcities: a lack of community well-being and a lack of everyday resources. In the case of Lima, these communities are often settled on rising hillsides in close proximity to urban Lomas zones. An opportunistic adjacency exists here, a seasonal infrastructure for fog capture placed on a hillside above Manantial can address two commodities: both public space and water supply.

Dew Point organizes a framework of technologies, buildings and programs into a choreographed circuit: ordering and framing novel modes of collecting, distributing, and experiencing water. The water circuit remains flexible in its ability to interact with the existing water network of private vendors in times of both need and surplus, but ultimately aims to instigate community development and a sense of resource independence.

Architectural nodes within the channelled landscape act as social condensers, providing opportunities for the citizens of Manantial to gather around everyday acts associated with the use of the condensed fog.

Advisor: MASON WHITE M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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AUDITORIUS SARA KARDAN

“Universities have become great at creating long, tall, thin people in terms of their disciplinary knowledge and not very good at creating T-shaped people, who can interact and converse with their colleagues.” — John Hennessey, President, Stanford University.

“We had dreamed for years of an institution of independent scientists, working together in one of these backwoods of science, not as subordinates of some great executive officer, but joined by the desire, indeed by the spiritual necessity, to understand the region as a whole, and to lend one another the strength of that understanding.” — Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.

With computation and communication technologies saturating our environment, people, places and objects are increasingly gaining the ability to sense, capture, and stream data to the web. To what extent does this new digitally augmented performance manifest itself? Or even more precisely what new possibilities does it offer architecture? This thesis explores architecture’s role as a spatial interface, one calibrated to mediate physical and virtual dimensions.

The site is the University campus, the epicenter of knowledge creation. The program is for a communication hall, an auditorium for trans-disciplinary engagement, facilitating collaborative and cross-disciplinary idea generation, recording, referencing, and dissemination. The building and its surfaces create an acoustic environment capturing a multiplicity of spoken words, and dynamic discussions within its walls. As world issues grow ever more complex, of critical importance will be our ability to promote interaction and harness communication networks towards common goals.

Advisor: carol moukheiber M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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frames and gardens:

typological-driven approach for transformation of suburban landscape MANI KAZEM TABRIZI

“… even more dangerous at the present juncture, of identifying the taste for habitation with the past, with the innocent, with the natural, with the untrampled, so that, just at the moment when what is needed is a theory of the artificial construction, maintenance, and development of carefully designed space, we are being drawn back to another utopia—a reactionary one this time—of a mythical past in which nature and society lived happily together (‘in equilibrium:’, as they say, in ‘small face to-face communities’ without any need for artificial design).” 1 With the initial interest in the unfolding future of ecological, social, and cultural conditions in Toronto’s “inner suburbs,” this thesis asks a simple but challenging question: Can ecological remediation become the armature for rethinking urban intervention in areas that need investment in their physical and social infrastructure?

A series of analytical mapping exercises has led to a closer examination of TaylorMassey Creek and its watershed in the east end of Toronto as a test bed for this question. Being one of the most polluted tributaries of Don River and entirely engulfed by the developed area, Taylor-Massey Creek is an epitome of our decaying natural heritage entangled in striving suburban surroundings. The proposal aims to respond to the existing natural and cultural forces by introducing new spatial and territorial typologies to revive the creek’s leisure and ecological landscape.

1Latour, Bruno. “Spheres and Networks: Two Ways To Reinterpreted Globalization .” Harvard Design MagazineSpring/Summer.30 (2009): 138-144.

Advisor: aziza chaouni M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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PAN-AMERICAN 2.0 KIANA KEYVANI

At 47,958 km, the Pan-American Highway stretches across North, Central, and South America. The highway was built primarily as a main route for trade between countries and later became a tourist destination where many take on the challenge of driving or biking across the Americas on the world’s longest road. In most of the countries it runs through, the Pan-American Highway also serves as the main transportation route between large cities and towns.

As the highway stretches from North America to South America, it is exposed to varying climatic challenges. In particular, the Andean portion of the Pan-American Highway in South America is susceptible to geological hazards including landslides and sand storms, endangering the thousands of lives that use the highway daily.

Over the past ten years local governments and institutions, such as the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America (IIRSA), have spent over $30 million in road repairs and new road construction to redirect traffic off of main highways such as the Pan-American to reduce the casualties and traffic congestion caused by the geological hazards. Since many of the large cities and towns that the Pan-American Highway connects to are in the Andean Mountains, any new road construction will have to cut through the mountains and will inevitably be exposed to landslides. In other words, by building new roads, not only are the problems relocated to another road, but the disruption that comes with construction increases susceptibility to landslides.

The goal of Pan-American Highway 2.0 is to revitalize the highway as the main transportation artery of the Andean region by responding to geological events that will then provide economic opportunities. This thesis explores a system composed of poles, cables, and nets that redirects the land sediments away from the road and allows for economic opportunities on previously unoccupiable sites. The mitigation system acts as an overarching architecture that allows for programs such as rest stops, markets, and viewing platforms to emerge.

Advisor: MASON WHITE M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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POST BUBBLE APARTMENTS SEOUL, KOREA MIN WOO KIM

Over the past four decades, Korea (particularly its capital, Seoul) has seen the unsustainable growth of a real estate bubble. Fueled primarily by an increase in population and subsequent demands for housing, the bubble has continued to worsen due to deliberate attempts by homeowners nationwide to play the market for profit. One by-product representative of this phenomenon is the extreme seriality in apartments - featuring the appropriately named “People’s Plan” - of the 80s and the 90s, constructed all around the capital and around the country with far more economic justifications than architectural. Seriality afforded quick construction contributing to a faster moving market, as well as increased ease for potential owners to purchase and sell.

Today, these “People’s Plan” apartments are concurrently approaching their designed obsolescence. Meanwhile, the market bubble has seen its peak, a low birth rate projects depopulation at alarming rate, and “nuclear families” from decades past have experienced even further shrinkage and atomization while becoming diversified in terms of lifestyle patterns.

This thesis imagines a possibility in reconfiguring these structurally and spatially outdated “People’s Plan” apartments by bringing about unit designs, aggregation logic, program distribution, and master-planning motives which are relevant to the Korean demographics of today - The Post Bubble Apartments. The site is in the northernmost end of Seoul, a complex built in 1995 with unit types and masterplanning typical to its era.

Advisor: JOHN MAY M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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STORY OF THE EGG ZEINA KOREITEM

One of Death & one of Life After - Death.

This is a question of disaster. Not demolition, not ruination - alone. It is a disaster because it appears to be dealt with as a threat to an amalgamated existence. It begins with portrayal and ends with worship. It begins as a solution to individuals’ anxieties and ends with a stab at a collective continuation.

Representation and faith have taken a hold of it. It has disappeared the moment we became fascinated by its image. The moment we rendered meaning, built a myth around its condition, and began a process of dissolution. The moment we decided it will be an Egg, it was no longer there.

But if it is gone, we are gone.

Then, why will it save us?

Advisor: john may M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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PARALLEL BRIDGING edgar leon

Situated on the border between Colombia and Venezuela, a series of hydric architectural interventions along the Arauca river seek to be instrumental in the restoration of the socio-political issue of territories in conflict. Learning from the Medellin case-study and the concept of Social Urbanism, the proposal aims to augment the flow and exchange of transport, knowledge, and activities; highlight the dynamic nature of built form; and underscore the empowering nature of public space.

Advisor: MASON WHITE M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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production urbanism: city of villages AN URBANISM ROOTED IN VILLAGE CULTURE, PRODUCTION SPECTACLES, REGENERATING SYSTEMS AND NATIONAL EDUCATION skanda xiaoting lin 30 years ago, China’s economic reform generated unprecedented economic growth.

This boom has also created pressing issues: polarization of rich and poor; unequal rights and opportunities for 252 million migrant workers; sprawling polluted industry across the country, economic fall of low-tech industries; and the loss of cultural identities.

The public’s hope for a new kind of reform is as urgent as it was 30 years ago.

The newly elected government has decided to carry out reforms on production and education. Four new special zones have been created as an urban apparatus to address the problems surrounding both production industries and the people who make these industries run, as well as the cultural identities of these people. This urban apparatus is based on an ecology of production, where education and social life are seen as integral to the process of manufacturing. It is fundamentally a test-site - a self-sustained knowledge generator that exports the latest sustainable production systems into underdeveloped regions to amend outdated industries or seed new industries. Instead of contributing to urban sprawl or economic disparity, this urban intervention will eventually result in an integrated network of mid-scale cities as a spatial projection of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

Advisor: laura miller M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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55degN:

a responsive housing system for northern climates rebecca macdonald

Deteriorating housing in Ontario’s First Nations communities is not a new story. In Fort Severn, Ontario’s most northern community, 40% of housing is in need of major repair. Currently, existing homes have a lifespan of less than ten years, resulting in a critical need for housing in the community. The rapidly deteriorating housing stock is primarily attributed to current construction methods that are unable to respond to the harsh northern climate. The housing crisis is exacerbated by the continued use of a housing typology that fails to address the current demands of First Nations cultural norms.

55degN is a high performance modular housing system that can adapt to the changing needs of First Nations communities. This system reintroduces the hearth to the residential plan as a catalyst for the reorganization of the domestic environment and the efficient integration of low tech, passive thermal systems.

55degN moves beyond the design of a single house towards an integrated residential housing system that encourages regional economies through resource harvesting, local manufacturing and residential construction. The result is a housing system that is driven by First Nations communities while responding to the distinct social and climatic environments of Northern Ontario.

Advisor: carol moukheiber M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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ARCHITECTURE AS A SECOND NATURE yvan marshall mackinnon

If architecture is a visual algebra, in which content and form are abstracted to basic mathematical symbols, is it possible to blur conceptual dichotomies, such as nature and human-made or is it just an idle thought? Like Marc Antoine Laugier argued in his theory of the primitive hut, architecture has always been a second nature and nature a second architecture. This visual algebra - from which relations and operations produce a pattern language, an urban fabric - is a central proposition of my thesis. The visual algebra results from layering the cause and effect relationships that emerge from issues of building orientation and site characteristic: topography, awkward triangular shape, pattern of natural light, forest and crop land, open linear vistas via a highway to the north-west and train tracks to the south-east, a transit line capable of intensifying program, issues of building type and construction, and issues of circulation, parking, building heights, distances, and so forth. Is this architecture as though it where a second nature transcribed into a symbolic order of mathematical abstraction or is it another machine in the garden?

Advisor: george baird M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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A HOUSE CHURCH ON (MY) MOHAWK GRANDFATHER’S LAND AN ARCHITECTURAL EXPLORATION INTO THE CONFLUENCE OF FAITH, CULTURE, AND FAMILY ROBIN MCKENNA Two hours east of Toronto, just a little a ways off of Belleville and before Kingston, there is a Territory given back to a tribe of Mohawks nestled just north of Prince Edward County on the water. It is here, north centre of that territory, that an architectural need was conjured, one of a Mohawk Christian minister from within the community. This land was his grandfather’s given to him to use as a home for several generations. It is here where this Mohawk chose to build a house not just for the generations, but for worship.

This is where the outsider designer comes in, but real life projects have limitations.

One month to design, three months to build, a tight budget, and some site issues, along with others, led the project down the path to a regular house with only some Mohawk craft adorning the exterior.

But the experience formed the questions that form this thesis. What could a Mohawk Christian House church look like? It’s true that to begin with the idea of a house church is more culturally responsive, but what shape could the confluence of Faith Culture and family life take within this unique context, and how would that exploration unfold? What elements do you take from a culture not your own, and how do you remain sensitive to a faith lived out through a culture?

While not ‘the’ answer, this thesis looks for a possible answer by looking not at the literal forms that once housed Mohawks hundreds of years ago, but three aspect of the culture:

Craft - the forming of space and experience Connectivity to land - formed from land and part of it Intergenerational/ancestral living - an architecture that responds to Mohawk family and life

With the inspiration of these three aspects, a house church was formed responding not only to the facts of the project, but to the understood potentials from learning the needs of the ministry by being a part of it those four months.

Advisor: john shnier M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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PERIMETERS OF RE-IMAGINED ARTIFACTS A HISTORICAL PALIMPSEST

AYESHA MOGHAL

Berlin is an organism cut off from a part of itself, and a capital cut off from its own country. Thus, it is the essential fragment: a petrified piece of something old and a living piece of something “other.”

— Peter Eisenman, 1984 In moments of cultural or political revival, history is often used to reinforce a sense of identity. In the center of Berlin there exists a site that has been scraped clean and reinscribed under each major reformation of the city. A baroque palace, which existed on the site nearly a century ago, is being resurrected in hopes to mirror the nation’s current prosperous status as a rejuvenated European capital.

Being critical of the blatant reconstruction of a selected moment in history, what other possibilities exist for a site that carries a weighted past in a city like Berlin, which cannot forget nor re-live that past? Instead of relying solely on recreating a hollow nostalgic emblem, how can this site reflect its heritage and also better serve the city’s current spirit?

Fluctuating between re-creation and invention, precision and imagination, this thesis aims to bring the many layers of history into a realm where past, present, and potential futures co-exist in a crafted landscape that invites interpretation and reflection. The selected moments of the past are situated along a procession through time and space guided by the physical manifestations of memory in the form of re-imagined artifacts.

Advisor: john shnier M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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the observer & the spectacle the cameron voir design archive

MATTHEW MORGAN The Cameron Voir Design Archive is an online archive & book dedicated to the work of Cameron Voir, a Canadian architect and photography enthusiast who disappeared mysteriously in June of 2009 in the outlying areas of Fort McMurray, the central hub of the Alberta tar sands operations.

This archive is intended to shed light on the unique characteristics of Voir’s work and investigate his desire to create unique spatial experiences within the unexpected. His work explores the use of mirrors, reflections, framing devices, and camera obscura techniques imbedded within seemingly banal architecture. These interventions, which vary in scale and technique, can be seen as a lens in which to observe and critique the industrial spectacle of the tar sands operations while also positioning the observer as subject within this contentious setting.

The Cameron Voir Design Archive can be found online at www.cameronvoir.com.

Advisor: an te liu M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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ANTE-MONUMENT: THE ARCHITECTURE OF EMPATHY kateryna nebesna

Over the past decade, the notions of beauty have been stretched and society has come to appreciate the post-modern sublime or terrible beauty. There are many who seek to experience terrible beauty firsthand. As a result, slum and disaster tourism are the fastest-growing niches of tourism in the world (BBC). Somewhere in between the above mentioned activities fall tours to the site of a nuclear tragedy, the Exclusion Zone, established in 1986 as a result of a nuclear accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

This thesis positions the site as a monument to historical and ongoing events where architectural interventions, the Ante-Monuments, address the phenomenological qualities of the Exclusion Zone site. The interventions seek to establish a dialogue between history, memory, and emotion to frame Chernobyl not as a museum of anomalies but as a destination that requires sensitivity and reflection.

Advisor: john shnier M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN STRANGERS NEVENA NIKOLAEVA NIAGOLOVA

This project is about conversations between strangers. Open spaces within the city are often thought of as public places, for meetings and exchanges between social groups. Though we imagine that this usually occurs, it is not always the case. Many small open spaces within downtown Toronto, whether public or private, are plain and nondescript. Examples include plazas or pathways lined with benches with no focal point, where the usual actions supported are very short moments of rest or walks through the space.

Focusing on such spaces, which have the potential for social interaction, this thesis proposes a series of interventions that, through the delight and amusement of “play,� could offer slightly out of the ordinary moments and experiences.

Social interaction is encouraged using an object as a mediator. The idea is that when one sees an action enjoyed by another, it is sometimes viewed as being worth experiencing. This is a proposition to inspire conversations between different social groups, not solely on their usual or mutual interests, but rather on unexpected events that they each observe.

Sources: Hajer, Maarten & Arnold Reijndorp. In Search of New Public Domain: Analysis and Strategy. NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 2001.

Ranasinghe, Prashan. The refashioning of vagrancy and the (re)ordering of public space. Toronto: University of Toronto Centre of Criminology, 2009.

Rietveld, E. Bodily Intentionality and Social Affordances in Context, in F. Paglieri (ed.) Consciousness in Interaction.

The Role of the Natural and Social Context in Shaping Consciousness. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins, pp.

207-226.

Advisor: carol moukheiber M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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LIGHT, SPACE, AND GAZE MODULATOR MAHTAB OSKUEE

“All objective entities are products of a historical process, that is, their identity is synthesized or produced as part of cosmological, geological, biological, or social history.” — Manuel de Landa The thesis is a material investigation, one that takes objects as its point of departure.

With the integration of micro technologies (sensors, microcontrollers, and actuators) into everyday objects, a renewed interest in materialism is emerging. With this heightened understanding of a quotidian object, the thesis draws on the complexity embodied within the physicality of objects to inform a transformation enacted within and through the material itself.

The project is a curtain. The object is understood as a specific manifestation of a textile, a soft surface that has co-evolved with architecture. Historically, the curtain, as a surface has taken on multiple and simultaneous roles, mediating thermodynamic currents, sight, light, color, smell and sound, framing activities, and staging atmospheres. Aesthetically and politically, the curtain has occasionally been dismissed as a weak form, negatively associated with an interior decorator’s arsenal.

The project embraces the curtain’s association with the feminine, exploring its potential to provide insurmountable utility in the modulation of space through the dynamic entanglement of environmental, social-cultural, experiential, and psychological elements. With the integration of sensors and soft actuators into the fibers of a knitted textile, the curtain’s vital performance reveals a veritable soft machine.

Advisor: carol moukheiber M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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the housing problem DIMITRA PAPANTONIS

Microunits are an increasingly popular option for the growing demographics of singles, couples without children or lone parents. This past summer, Mayor 2 2 Bloomberg even issued a competition for 300ft dwelling units, 100ft smaller than the current legal New York minimum.

This is not the first time the issue of housing has been explored. Housing first became an issue with women entering the workforce, which led to growing equality between the sexes, and changes to the traditional family. Since the early 20th century, more people have been living on their own and exporting social engagements outside of their household. This was reflected in the second CIAM conference in Frankfurt, which focused directly on this problem, Existenzminimum.

What is the bare minimum a person needs to survive?

Drawing inspiration from monks’ cells and mid 19th Century French prison cells experiments, among other things, modernists develop different ideas of dwelling units. Le Corbusier completely shrunk the typical bourgeoisie unit down to 14m,2 fit for a bachelor. Whereas Teige claimed it was more about quality, not quantity of spaces, and thus by exporting aspects from the house, collective housing allowed for quality shared spaces and private dwelling units to shrink.

By looking at the history of the spaces we live in, and understanding our current lifestyles, we return to the problem of housing. The investigation is to see how, by exporting the most private, but least used and most expensive spaces in our dwellings and making them shared spaces, the remaining unit may grow by repurposing the space left behind into larger living spaces, rather than shrinking them down as Teige suggests. What, then, is the new line between public, private, and semi-private spaces in the dwelling unit? How can we create more quality spaces through communal living? Could this lead to more spacious and humane dwelling units? How do we match emerging life styles and still breed social interactions?

Advisor: john may M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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RECLAIMING THE WATER’S EDGE: CONSOLIDATING PUBLIC SPACE, SERVICES, AND LANDSCAPE ALONG TORONTO’S HARBOURFRONT MIRCEA POPA This thesis examines the dilemma of mobility integrating large territories and adverse local conditions of segregation, while establishing connections, infrastructural lines, and produce ruptures. Situating the arguments in Marcel Smets’ The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure, this thesis seeks to find collective form through negotiating relationships of urban services using cartographic studies. How can architecture participate in a dialogue with infrastructure and landscape to structure new settlement, stimulate development, and reduce segregation and marginalization? What opportunities exist to facilitate new forms of interaction?

Hypotheses are tested in Toronto’s Harbourfront neighbourhood. Chaotic, diverse, fragmented, the CN rail line scars the landscape; the Gardiner Expressway psychologically imposes from above; the PATH retail network abruptly ends; and below grade are layers of Toronto’s water supply and distribution network. The CN tower, Rogers Centre, and the historic John St. Roundhouse are part of the immediate context.

This thesis seeks to consolidate, unify, and fuse these disperse conditions by restructuring accessibility and circulation, deploying layered narratives and delineating a series of organized events. The project bridges the gap across the rail lines, consolidates Gardiner Expressway on/off ramps, mitigates acoustically vehicular traffic noise, and connects the PATH system to waterfront retail podiums.

The spatial layout is explored as an instrument for organizing a collective realm through a continuous roofscape.

Advisor: robert levit M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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DETOUR ARCHITECTURE:

ENGAGING THE CANADIAN LANDSCAPE THROUGH ROAD SIDE EXPERIENCES NICOLAS ROLAND Detour Architecture explores the potential of creating a national network of roadside experiences off of the Trans-Canada Highway (TCH). The goal is to transform the TCH into an 8000-km-long national park/museum that considers the unique characteristics of each crossed territory. The park/museum include exhibits of architecture, landscape architecture, and design, and these sequential stops would provide unique experiences linking the itinerant traveler to distinct natural, cultural, and historical instances.

For many people, traveling the Highway is more than a means to get from point A to point B; it is about the journey itself, which allows an escape from the confines of daily life and a window into the landscape that exists beyond our cities. The roadside experiences proposed in this thesis expand on the traditionally functional character of existing highway “rest stops” by using thoughtful architecture as a means of creating a link between individuals and the land that surrounds them. These rest stops in turn would become destinations in themselves and act as added incentives for numerous new groups of travelers to visit seldom seen areas of this vast country.

By visiting a succession of these stops, a traveler would gain insights into Canadian national and regional identities in a way that would not be possible through other modes of travel.

Detour Architecture finds inspiration from the National Tourist Route program in Norway. Here, several dozen roadside stops were built by locally and internationally recognized architects, artists, landscape architects and designers. These projects put Norway at the forefront of ecotourism and architecture internationally.

In an exhibit showcasing Norway’s National Tourist Route, held at the Architectural League of New York, the question was asked: “What can innovative rest stops, information centers, and observation decks tell visitors about a culture?”

What could Detour Architecture say about Canada?

Advisor: aziza chaouni M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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high street : low street DINA SARHANE

Urban evolution has left the city street behind. As towers rise in height, the street remains on grade - overshadowed and forgotten. Toronto’s Bay Street is the testing ground for a new typology: a street that rises vertically to service the tall towers that surround it. The Z Axis is the key to revitalizing our urban streets and decapsulizing our tower culture.

Advisor: laura miller M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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HOUSING AS A METAPHOR FELIX WING LAM SUEN “Every single time something is done with a purpose in view, something fundamentally different and other occurs” - Jacque Derrida Architecture is a dialectic and diachronic series of socially constructed truths, where an object, in its physical materiality, is not a permanent irrefutable whole but a highly unstable and changeable social entity. Using the exploration of housing as a starting point, this thesis attempts to address larger issues of representation within post-modernist architecture.

I want to experiment with the concept of mass housing that, through its architectural and programmatic language, challenges the typical understanding of the concept of the “home” as a permanent, safe entity, where the idea of the home acts as its structure. The home I am proposing is a place where the relationships between the community and the stranger develop and where the borders that determine the relationships between inside and outside collapse. These relationships will be explored through architectural, tectonic, and programmatic language by proposing an alternative model for mass living.

Within the structural tectonics of the object lie zones of indetermination where materials and voids meet in order to create the subject of architectural space. These zones can be used to create alternative social conditions that are not fully defined programmatically.

This will be done by creating conditions in which one is never fully within one program or the other. Specifically, the mixing of a shopping mall (where we play), an office tower (where we work) and a condo (where we live) so that all three programs can reconcile each other’s disturbance and intrusion within the same bare space. This is done by placing voids of un-programmed, indeterminate spaces between them and stacking these spaces in sections within translucent membranes. This experiment would take place in Mongkok in Hong Kong. The densely packed urban condition found here is a place where unpredictable social forces meet on a daily basis, a place where one can do anything - a place where impossibility is an option not a fact.

The goal is to create a sense of incompleteness of being, to create a complex that is a dynamic entity of dialectical forces at work, where the categorization or the identity of the building is elusive - a building that is always in the process of being. This built-in level of incompleteness is an attempt to capture the future without an image, a future of unforeseeable possibilities.

Advisor: john may M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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REINVENT, RE-SETTLE, RESURRECT BASHAR TALIB

The subject of this thesis is the communicative value of architecture. Just like art and poetry, architectural rhetoric can be used as a vehicle for asserting an idea and conveying a message. Architecture is also seen as cultural expression and a product of environmental and social conditions. It plays an essential role in shaping the cultural identity of a given society.

In traditional societies, social and cultural values and identity matter a great deal, and architecture is seen as an expression of those qualities.

Architecture is also very fragile in nature, and the impermanence of the architect’s work is the only guarantee.

The site chosen for this architectural experiment is the village of Umm Qais, in the northeast corner of the country of Jordan.

Image from the film Blow-Up (1966), directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

Advisor: aziza chaouni M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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closer to home nicole tomasi

This thesis seeks to unveil the interiors of childhood daydreaming associated with the suburban dream home. The house of our past is more than an embodiment of home; it is an embodiment of dreams. The home is a container with nooks, corners, cellars, and attics unfamiliar to the adult, but familiar to the child. These places were often dark, murky, and cold interiors but served as resting-places for daydreaming. Reaching these portals would require one to bridge the threshold between reality and a constructed reality, often at a scale two sizes too small for the adult, but suitable for a tiny body. The adult relies on dream memory to live in today’s dream homes, but the houses of our past were in fact a place for the child, as they stood as a container of portals for the daydreamer. I begin this thesis by asking what the dream home of the 21st century is for the adult and critique the whereabouts of the missing portal.

Today, the 21st century dream home is being mismanaged; from the street to the sky, people live on top, beside, and beneath one another. A thorough examination of the adjacencies of rooms within a condominium typology reveals a lack of portals for the adult daydreamer.

Thus, an existing, newly built, downtown Toronto condo is the site of speculation for this thesis. Its representation stands independently absent of drawings, models, or images, allowing the thesis to suspend itself between reality and artificiality.

Through the curatoration of photographic representation, the thesis documents a series of sites within this particular condominium as the potential portals for the adult imagination. The scale of the photos activates a real time portal gesturing towards something momentarily forgotten; it provokes a feeling of uncertainty to the truth of the image. With no plans, and no sections, this thesis suspends disbelief long enough to provoke the dream-memory unveiling the nostalgia for childhood.

Advisor: An Te Liu M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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IN THE WAY OF THE CITY mÉlissa maria tovar

In The City, it was commonly understood that space was a shared resource. How any single entity occupied space could and would affect the remainder of The City’s inhabitants. The Citizens so legibly valued this resource that they appointed a unit, the sole purpose of which was to manage it. The Department of Spatial Affairs, or DSA, as it was known, published Spatial Rules.

Though land boundaries delineated ownership, there was consensus that the space linking owned parcels belonged to all, each and every inhabitant of The City. This shared, in-between space, in which vehicles, light, inhabitants, and air circulated, was called the Thickness.

Over many stages in The City’s growth, there came to be a series of districts in which the Thickness was questionable. The owners of its lands were few, but like-minded in their objectives, such that a consistent building type arose in the New Districts.

The majority of built form arising in the New Districts had enacted section 5.1.1 of the Spatial Charter, exchanging a significant volume of space for a series of indemnities, which were to relate to the inhabitants of The City. The Provisions ranged from the punctual to the experiential, but mostly took on qualities of a palliative veneer, tentatively mending the Thickness. …

And so the DSA came to understand that, by and large, the Thickness was in imminent danger of erosion, and that perhaps, in the New Districts, it had never fully come to fruition...Thus the Department of Spatial Affairs came to pass an emergency measure which was to be retroactively applied to the New Districts, Section 5.1.1.10.

Advisor: laura miller M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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sympathies between design and waste management practices dustin valen

With the world’s urban population set to increase by 72% by 2050 and consenting to the safe co-existence of productive building types, including housing, and even agriculture, the impetus to reimagine the modern city has reached a high pitch of enthusiasm1. Unspoken, however, is the fact these productive processes, along with the huge number of people they are imagined to support, will inevitably produce enormous amounts of waste, re-enacting a historical circumstance that engendered widespread sanitation reform and gave rise to modern town planning principles during the 19th century.

In an age demarcated by rising rates of waste production, hugely efficient manufacturing and rapid obsolescence, it is significant that the question of waste is beginning to exit the realm of the technical and reappear in conversations about sustainable societies and their futures. While architects and designers are quick to champion the sustainable ethos, questions have yet to be raised about the complicity of contemporary design practice and deterministic modes of waste management. Inescapably, our resolve to bury, drown, incinerate or otherwise put trash out of sight is a reflection of the idealism at the heart of the modernism and its hygienic representation of the city. Historian Paul Overy showed how modernist buildings of the inter-war period were a “brilliant and visually stunning exploitation of the imagery of hygiene and health, light, fresh air and openness,”2 from Ebenezer Howard and Tony Garnier to Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. His remarks are equally true of modernist projects for the city that, by employing the rhetoric of hygiene and calling for the elimination of waste, gave credence to that paradigmatic dictum: “out of sight, out of mind.” As shifting modes of production speed alternatives to the modern city, it is absolutely necessary to revisit at the same time our implicit attitude towards waste, its 19th century origins, and the relationship it bears to the city.

1United Nations Economic and Social Affairs, World Urbanization Prospects The 2011 Revision: Highlights (New York: UNESA), 3.

2Paul Overy, Light, Air and Openness: Modern architecture between the wars (London, U.K.: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 217.

Advisor: carol moukheiber M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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A CHILD FOR LA TUNDA

AN ANSWER FOR BUENOS AIRES ANNE MALEE VAN KOEVERDEN

Situated in the Southwestern Andean region of Colombia, A Child for La Tunda, is a project that responds to the needs of the area’s indigenous artisanal gold miners.

Based within a place of human conflict, ecological destruction, and gold mining, the project identifies major characteristics of resource extraction and embeds them into the design of much needed artisanal mining infrastructure.

Major considerations in the design of this project include: employing temporality, mitigating trauma to the landscape, and biasing locality in material selection and building techniques. Using alchemy (i.e. employing chemical properties of both mining materials and building materials) as a driving design tool this project incorporates these considerations by experimenting with the notion of trace - traces a building and its byproducts leave behind - in the design of this architecture.

Aside from these considerations, the project embeds itself into local culture in the form of a traditional ghost story, La Tunda, embodying similar themes including disturbance, scars, erasure, and reincarnation.

Advisor: mason white M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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GEOTHERMAL TOURISM:

OCCUPYING LANDSCAPES OF EMBEDDED ENERGY AIDA VATANY OSGOOIE

Consider how energy enriches your life. Now consider the 7 billion other people on earth who also use energy each day to make their own lives richer, more productive, safer, and healthier. Then you will recognize what is perhaps the biggest driver of energy demand: the human desire to sustain and improve the well-being of ourselves, our families, and our communities. Population growth is inevitably linked to an increase in energy consumption and the use of limited fossil fuels. It has also been connected to the irreparable damage to our natural environment.

This has caused the world to look for possible resources of renewable energy.

Different types of green energies are embedded in different landscapes with diverse characteristics but they have one thing in common: they are all sites of production, environments for consumption, and places for capital accumulation. The leading role that these energy landscapes are playing in changing the character of the context and the spirit of urbanism deserves much more attention from both urban planners and architects. In fact, the key issue is to see these landscapes of energy as spatial conditions - not just productive lands, but lands that are part of where we live, lands that are just as important as the land in which our cities sit upon.

The Andean mountains are a good example of these energy landscapes as they have an enormous amount of geothermal energy embedded in them. My thesis aims to study the ways in which such industrial landscapes are being occupied.

The question to ask is whether architecture is able to inspire in a consciousness that would lead to an increase in efficiency and awareness in the energy landscapes. Can architecture find a synergistic relationship between the resource embedded in a particular landscape and the land use?

Advisor: mason white M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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CHERYL WAN

Sensation Tiring perspectivAI Intricate (ir)Regular {String} a thesis about drawing stairs

Advisor: john may M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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A NEW DWELLING FOR THE URBAN CHINA XIAO WANG As China enters the 21st century, the problem of housing has become a dominant issue within its major urban centres. The changing social, cultural and economic behaviour within the population of China’s cities has begun to demand a new typology of housing to accommodate their new needs.

With the rise of modernity in “The West”, China’s urban centre quickly adapted to the production of mass housing to provide for the mass migration of rural migrants into the city, hoping for better lifestyles. With high demands, housing, like pieces of Legos, are scattered throughout without much thought.

The instability created by the economics, and industries have greatly affected the urban migration and housing development in China. In turn, the housing market has begun to affect the economy and industries. The competition for labour, as well as adequate housing has created great instability within the sociality of the people and their means of life.

The dwelling unit can no longer provide, nor accommodate the new sociality that exists within the new urban context. Instead, as Peter Sloterdijk describes this condition of modernity, the dwelling unit now acts as an atomized unit, controlling and atomizing further the social insecurity that develops in the urban dwellers. As technology and infrastructure develop within the city, and the pace of life continues to increase, the city of migrants becomes a city of strangers.

Shanghai is a city that has undergone this change and is continuously inhabited by this instability. In this city, its residents find no fitting place to identify themselves with. It is a city of people connected yet disconnected, seeking only for efficiency and productivity.

What will be a fitting place for the urban dweller to live in? How can this place integrate their new forming identities of self, and of community; of play, and of work; of family, and of friends?

Advisor: john may M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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ACOUSTIC MUSIC INSTITUTE IN AN AGRARIAN LANDSCAPE ALEXANDER WARWICK

This thesis explores the intersection between music jams and agrarian aggregation by designing an acoustic music institute for my rural hometown, Beeton Ontario.

Beeton is a small satellite community of 4,000 people located roughly one hour north of downtown Toronto. Its location makes it a reasonable commute from many urban centers as well as a member of small support communities in the area. This means that the institute can service both the smaller towns, and the larger urban areas. The institute encompasses a variety of music related programs, including a main concert hall, a music school (and corresponding residence), a music store, recording facilities, and a Luthier woodshop. The building forms, aggregation, and orientation are influenced by the balance between music jams and agrarian configurations.

Advisor: JOHN SHNIER M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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WASUREMONO: THINGS THAT ARE LOST OR FORGOTTEN MIKA YAMAGUCHI

There is a pain - so utter It swallows substance up Then covers the Abyss with Trance So Memory can step Around - across - upon it As one within a Swoon Goes safely - where an open eye Would drop Him - Bone by Bone.

-Emily Dickinson Wasuremono: things that are lost or forgotten is a distillation of perspectives regarding the socio-historical analyses of monuments, the ephemeral qualities of memory, and the definition of trauma, in, and filtered through an event, The Battle of Okinawa, and a site, the city of Osaka, Japan. The complexities surrounding the battle include a history of Okinawan diaspora, the existing representations of the event, and the trauma inherited by the post WWII generation. This thesis contends that memory is not indigenous to site; the intervention is situated within the context of Osaka Bay. The images, events, and architectures in Wasuremono are derived from a narrative represented through film. The narrative conveys history, memory, and myth to inquire into the challenges of representing a traumatic event.

Ultimately Wasuremono seeks to sift through the detritus of time and architecture to propose the necessary venture to an impossible destination.

Advisor: an te liu M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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PARK-IN-LOT:

ADDRESSING THE HOMELESS AVIS YAU Rehabilitation of homeless people is an underlying social issue in fast-growing cities like Toronto. There are many existing homeless shelters that provide temporary housing solutions for this group of people. However, as one takes a walk on the street today, one notices that there are still numerous homeless people living there. This raises questions about what this group of people really needs? What is homelessness? Instead of focusing on a solution to solve homelessness, this thesis recognizes that homelessness encompasses much larger social issues than the need for housing alone. According to the Street Needs Assessment Results by the City of Toronto, there are people living on the streets without a choice, as well as nomadic cultures that live out a lifestyle in which they have chosen the street as their home. Once one accepts that homelessness is a permanent aspect of our society, the focus should be placed on the needs of the homeless and how they can be met. This thesis is rooted specifically in looking for an architectural contribution to empower the marginalized so that they can fit within societal norms while fulfilling their immediate needs.

Homeless people often congregate in cities because of the existing infrastructure and immediate resources available. These are usually the underused or even void spaces that homeless people see as appropriate resting places. Instead of focusing on building new spaces, this thesis explores those that currently exist and are under-explored.

These spaces are often overlooked, and their full potential not realized. This project proposes using government-subsidized programs to transform these public spaces into a new type of hybrid spaces. Parking, among the many government facilities in the market is one example. Parking garages in the city are used by commuters during the day and are therefore left empty during the evening. A night-time program for these urban rest-stops would not interfere with their respective existing day-time program. By rethinking and reprogramming these public parking garages with the strategy of time-land sharing, these parking spaces are transformed into urban reststops for nomadic homeless groups. Together, these rest stops provide the setting for a system of programs that contain the necessities that meet the immediate needs of a homeless person - filling in the gap when the spaces are underutilized for the needs of people who need them the most.

Advisor: AZIZA CHAOUNI M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

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M ARCH Thesis Reviews FALL 2012

97