WHOSE HERITAGE? 2020 • Academic • Supervisor: Maria Yablonina
This project considers two categories of heritage buildings. Those that are already formally protected (“heritage”), and those that have been submitted for consideration (“publicly loved”). While this piece takes a tongue-in-cheek approach, jabbing at the consumerist undertones of architectural conservation, it is grounded in an evidence-based, datadriven methodology. Through spatial and literary analysis, webscraping, and image processing, this project uses a satirical advertising campaign to explore and critique the colonial power structures and biases embedded into Toronto’s contemporary heritage preservation. On the team, I was responsible for sourcing data and writing all code that would allow us to scrape the web as well as filter, sort, and geocode the data. I conducted the spatial analyses using GIS, and created digital models. I was also responsible for filming and editing the satire video. See Full Video
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Align
StyleGAN
Sort
Geocod
Web Scrape
Data Processing Map
Using crowdsourced images from the heritage database, I used a Generative Adversarial Network to begin merging images. Through this process, key architectural features across structures in each heritage category began to emerge.
Morphed Facades
By scraping and sorting addresses from the heritage register, I was able to geocode the list of designated and undesignated buildings. On top of these geocoded addresses, I layered property values and household income. This reveals that even properties that are only just submitted for consideration for heritage designation are largey clustered in high-income neighbourhoods.
Household Income and Heritage Designated Property Map
FRANKENSTEIN MODELS Monstrsous amalgamations of Heritage Buildings and Publicly-Loved Buildings with prominent features in each category.
The material textures were created by running all images scraped from the open database through a GAN. These are applied to the catalogue of massing bases.
Custom Texture Pack
Using Grasshopper, I wrote a looping script that averaged the massing shape and height of all structures in each heritage category. This resulted in a catalogue of artificial massings that represent the “platonic” ideal of a heritage or publicly loved building.
Massing Simulation