Gemma Savage Portfolio 2024

2024 portfolio

My name is Gemma. I am a graduate of the University of Toronto with a Master of Architecture and have a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University where I majored in International Development and minored in Film Studies.

Over my years of interdisciplinary study, I have pursued the many socio-political landscapes that make up physical space.

My approach to design is always well-researched and considers the multitude of actors involved in or implicated by a project. I am looking for a position where I can contribute to meaningful projects and develop my analytical, design, and technical skills.

Mine & Yours

THESIS STUDIO

Advisor: Laura Miller

September 2022 - April 2023

PART I: RESEARCH

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This thesis explores the governing structures of globalism and its effects on the environment. It posits design as an integral part of how these systems are constructed, operated , and communicated to the public.

The average contemporary middle-class consumer is a passive participant. How might the DIY, in its essence and its call to engage its reader, challenge passive consumption? The DIY asks that its consumer build through instruction. Is this input of personal labour able to change the way we consume and construct the world around us in a more meaningful way? (The how we consume)

design as didactic

How can designers help facilitate the pull away from singularity and the push towards plurality? The advent of globalization and its teachings has produced new actors that have been moulded and shaped by the promise of modernization. Equally so, can the sites and tools of teaching be dreamt up and designed to represent a new era of plurality? Toys are didactic tools for the development of a child’s interaction and perception of the world, as they often model or replicate more complex phenomena.

design as situated

To make visible the accounting that is taking place in many written forms but is often difficult to lay out visually, it is important that a dossier of evidence be collected, categorized, and shared. By looking at the collection, the aim is that we recognize how these collected sites are linked – the goal is to make visible the invisible links.

Mine & Yours: An Atlas of Complex, Foreign, and Contaminated Sites

Extractive operations are most often made invisible due to intentional corporate obfuscation.

Gold mines as large-scale developments in 'peripheral' (in relation to cities) landscapes must be made visible. If industrial mining sites must be a part of a long-term imagination of the future (due to generations spanning remediation plans); then learning to recognize these landscapes, and their histories, is crucial.

How can we equip current and future publics with the knowledge of these convoluted histories?

This thesis focuses on gold mines as peripheral sites that have dispossessed Indigenous lands and now act as satellites of global wealth and power. Throughout thesis I worked on research through map and model making. My research informed simplified wooden models that explained the artifice of property boundaries, reciprocal extraction sites, and the contamination of watersheds. I used GIS to map site contaminations, operation scales, returning vegetation and land ownership. These two components were collected and presented in a children’s book as a way of communicating complex sites to a lay audience.

In doing so, I treat gold mining sites as complex historical artifacts that require documentation that can be communicated to diverse generations.

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9. Natural & Unnatural Markers

10. Watershed Model

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APRIL 2023

Constructed

Sandbox

models developed and constructed for final presentation.

Building Blocks

Children's Book

Watershed Shelf

Shoshone Land Rights Surrounding Carlin Mine/Nevada Gold Mines

Location: Carlin, Nevada, USA.

This map locates important legislation (like the Ruby Valley Treaty), sacred Western Shoshone sites (Mount Tenabo), land management bureaus, and mining operations (shown in pink dots).

It shows a greater spatial understanding of the dynamics and actors that surround the Nevada Gold Mines.

Currently, Nevada Gold Mines in Nevada, US, is North America’s largest gold mine and the 2nd largest in the world.

It is made up of multiple properties and continues to expand. In 2019, American Newmont Gold Corp and Canadian Barrick Gold Corp merged their operations in the geologically gold rich Carlin Trend in Nevada, USA.

The property itself is made up of 3 mining complexes: Goldstrike, Carlin, and Gold Rush. Conjoined they span 28 kilometers. This means that it is larger than the city of Manhattan.

NGM continues to expand as they deplete gold stocks on their current properties. Nevada occupies the traditional lands of the Western Shoshone. This means that Nevada Gold Mines are located on lands that fall under the Ruby Valley Treaty. The Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863 acknowledges Western Shoshone ownership of the land but permitted nonIndigenous resource extraction so long as royalties were paid to the Western Shoshone (which they were not).

Intentions to expand operations further encroach on Western Shoshone sacred sites, like Mount Tenabo. These actions are met with protest as the Western Shoshone fight to protect their lands. The property boundaries of the mine are not rigid. Corporations can purchase more land through the bureau of land management making these boundaries impermanent.

Contamination Map for Yanacocha Mine and Chorompampa Mercury Spill in June 2000.

Location: Cajamarca, Cajamarca, Peru.

On June 2nd in the year 2000, a driver who was contracted by Yanacocha Mine, drove mercury from the mine to Lima.

This map focuses on the route of the driver transporting mercury from Yanacocha Mine for proper disposal. While driving Southward towards Lima, one of the flasks of mercury spilt all over the town of Choropampa. The spill is shown in pink with mercury spilling along the road from San Juan to Chorompampa.

In this case, the mercury was not contained to the road but was picked up by locals and brought further than the road into their homes. Many people in the town believed the mercury to be valuable and held onto it, with some even heating it up in their homes in the hopes of finding gold.

Mercury is used in gold amalgamation – the mercury draws the gold from the ore. Mercury is also very toxic and can cause many neurological and deformity issues when people are exposed to high amounts.

Only 49kg of the 150kg of mercury was recovered from Choropampa and the surrounding areas.

Operations Map for Giant Mine

Location: Yellowknife, NWT, Canada.

In 1949, gold production began. To release the gold from the ore, the mine would roast the gold.

However, the rock in this area also contained natural arsenic that when heated, separated from the rock in the form of arsenic dust. This dust quickly contaminated the surrounding landscapes.

It was not until 1951, after the death of a Dene First Nations todler, that the arsenic problem was flagged. The solution was to siphon the dust into old stopes (mines) and chambers underground. Currently there is 237,000 kg of arsenic dust stored underneath the site. For context, 1 teaspoon of arsenic dust can kill an adult human.

In 2014, the mine’s roaster was disassembled, bagged, and locked up in 365 shipping containers. The containers sit on site, waiting to be buried in an old open pit mine that will then be filled.

"Markers" Map for Giant Mine

Other locations, like the old townsite which is infected with asbestos is covered in plastic sheathing as the houses await disassembly.

As for the chambers, remediation plans are to freeze the chambers that contain the arsenic dust using thermosyphons. Thermosyphones are a heat exchange technology that maintains -5 degree Celsius around the chambers. This is so that water cannot seep into the chambers and consequently seep out but contaminated.

Giant Mine is surrounded by numerous small lakes and directly borders Yellowknife Bay which empties out onto Great Slave Lake. Many trails surround the site and open access to adjacent rows means that people are able to walk, bike and drive alongside.

It is important to recognize both dangerous markers on these sites, as well as natural markers that represent a hopeful future for these sites.

Growing in Place: The Case of Little Jamaice on Eglinton West

INTEGRATED URBANISM STUDIO

Partners: Catherine De la Cruz & Dabin Choi

Advisor: Lukas Pauer Fall 2021

In this studio, student groups were tasked with proposing projects that successfully incorporated density through housing while also respecting the existing urban fabric of communities along Eglinton West Avenue (Toronto, Ontario).

Working collaboratively, our group sought out community-based solutions. This included research of community land trusts (CLT*) both in Chinatown and Parkdale, as well as engagement with BUTO (Black Urbanism Toronto).

[* A CLT is a model of economic ownership in which a not-for-profit organization raises money to purchase properties in a specific community. The land trust then leases the land to the current tenants in an effort to mitigate against displacement as land values rise due to speculation. ]

Our design approach sought to engage and build on existing community agency and offer design solutions that would allow the community of Little Jamaica to ‘grow in place’.

CATALOGUE : How To Densify Your Own Backyard

For my individual focus site I chose a 2-block area South-West of Oakwood and Vaughn Rd. (South of Eglinton West Ave). It is at this major intersection that you find a small network of laneways that weave behind the commercial storefronts along oakwood, and flow into the residential blocks between Bansley Ave., Eleanor Ave., and Ashbury Ave.

Pedestrian Flows

Focus Area Expressway

Major Arterial Road

Minor Arterial Road

Collector

Blockages due to Construction

Walking Distance (in min.) from Eglinton Ave. W & Oakwood Ave.

School

Public Greenspace > 15 < 15 < 10 Parking Lot

Data collected from walking the site, Google Maps, and GIS software.

The design proposal is presented in the form of a catalogue. The catalogue is intended to help existing and new homeowners, or tenants, to approach laneway activation through backyard construction. Laneway housing can add densification within the ‘yellow belt’ of the city of Toronto.

For the focus area specifically, the laneway acts as an interstitial space between residential and businesses on Oakwood Ave. For the surrounding residential streets, the backyard of the single family home acts as an intermediate space between house and laneway. CATALOGUE : How To Densify Your Own Backyard

Companion Planting

COMPREHENSIVE STUDIO

Partner: Aseel Sadat

Advisor: Gregory Neudorf

Winter 2022

The 3 Sisters is a traditional Indigenous planting method in which three crops; corn, beans, and squash, are planted incrementally and close together. What drew us to the 3 Sisters planting method (also known as companion planting), was the interaction between 3 separates plants that are mutually beneficial when grown together.

This observation allowed us to look at the idea of reciprocity. How might reciprocity be crucial for building resiliency for the future? We propose 3 building that react to the current program demands, while also being mindful of future adaptability.

Through the parsing of program we are able to shift systems with the needs of each building. The West Building relies the most heavily on mechanical system as it houses everyday gathering spaces, offices, and residential units. The Centre Building is more passive as it is only used for concerts and gallery shows. The East Building consists of open workshop space and is serviced like that of a more industrial typology.

0: The Mound

The Earth

Front Elevation (South)

2: Beans

1: Corn The

3: Squash

Right Elevation (East)

Back Elevation (North)

Left Elevation (West)

Partial Plan Level 3 Workshops East Building and Bridge to Centre Building

Partial Plan Green Roof East Building

Partial Section Green Roof East Building & Bridge Connection to Centre Building

Folding Stone

MARC STUDIO 2 / PROJECT 1

Advisor: Ante Liu

Winter 2021

A gallery room designed to respond to the historical artifact it displays.

Haudenaussone Artifact: Small Strawberry Beadwork Basket.

Initially, what drew me to the strawberry bead work container was its structural quality. It relies on the way it is stitched together and the thickness of the material. It stands on its own but also falls onto itself.

The artifact is beautiful and richly decorative. From research on the history behind the bead work, I know that this artifact references pieces sold to Victorian consumers at Niagara Falls but was also an ingenious way of preserving indigenous symbolism and craft. Something that is seen as a simple tourist souvenir is far more complex.

I chose to connect my gallery room to the idea of instability and falling but also strength, as I felt it spoke to the artifact’s structure and history.

The room in which the strawberry bead work container sits feels heavy in form. By using a salt dough, the material can be rolled out and folded to form pliable shapes which are then baked.

This process allowed for only partial control; the weight of the dough, its fragility and what would happen in the oven was beyond my control. The material provides a solution to structure while also referencing the artifact and the way that it slumps, falls onto itself yet stays structurally upright.

Gallery Room Perspective Image. (Shot from model)

Kneading and rolling out the salt dough into long bands that will then be shaped over a springform pan

Section Sketch of Niagara Falls.

Sewn Sketch Model. Canvas and metal hoops.

Initial tests with salt dough.

and baked.

Final forms stacked to create the gallery room that will display the Strawberry Beadwork Basked.

The Haudenaussone Cultural Centre

For the final project, students were asked to imagine a Haudenaussone Cultural Centre located in Brantford, Ontario. What I had liked most about the previous project was the resistance of the material. The salt dough was used to emulate stone (something still and strong), but in the end falls on itself and creates folds.

For the Woodland Cultural Centre, I wanted to capture that same moment of material resistance. I began with the idea of one shape repeated that might be pushed and pulled in different ways to capture different moments.

The main form of the cultural centre is shaped from one continuous piece. To me, this represents the continuation of one space into the other and a connection from ground to sky.

The building prioritizes horizontal travel with the use of ramps (as opposed to more vertical stairs) which makes the building more accessible to all bodies and multi-generational gathering.

Black Oak Savanna Gathering Pavilion

LAN3700 Indigenoous Perspecties on Landscapes

Partner: Kiran Khurana

Advisor: Doug Anderson Winter 2022

This project looked at the restoration of Black Oak Savannas and the native grassland ecosystem along the Humber.

At an intimate scale, the strategy is to design spaces for people to come to the fire and engage in discussions that enable a greater sense of landscape literacy. Pavilions arrayed within the savanna provide an outlet from the increasingly dense urban condition, where small instances of learning and companionship can meaningfully occur between beings and the natural systems at play. These sites also serve as designated points of reference for those walking through these new and old savanna areas.

Map of Black Oak Savanna Areas & Proposed Pavilions in High Park, Toronto.

Black Oak Savannah Tree Bark Study, 2022. Laser cut birch plywood.

Perspective of Pavilion in High Park, Toronto.

Beach Scene Paintings, 2019. Oil on canvas & watercolour on watercolour paper.