JASPER FLORES PORTFOLIO
JASPER FLORES
a. 132 Lyndhurst Ave. Toronto ON M5R 2Z9 c. (204) 963-5797 e. jasperflores89@gmail.com
B. Env. D., MLA Candidate
EDUCATION 2014-2016
Master of Landscape Architecture University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Toronto, ON
2008-2013
Bachelor of Environmental Design University of Manitoba, Faculty of Architecture, Landscape + Urbanism, Winnipeg, MB
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE 2016
Graduate Teaching Assistant LAN 1037: Plants and Design, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Toronto, ON
2014-2015
Research/Publication Assistant Research Contributor and Publication Assistant to Prof. Stephen Verderber, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON
2013-2014
Furniture/Product Designer Shape Industries/ Benchmark Design Group, Winnipeg MB Graphic Designer A+X Designs, Winnipeg MB
2013 2012
Landscape Design Intern Taylor Brammer Landscape Architecture, Sydney NSW Australia
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS Feb 2016
Honourable Mention, Ichthyo Rehabilitation OSSGA Student Design Competition, Ontario Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, Mississauga, ON
Sept 2015
Shortlist, TORONTO: Building a Winter City NXT City Prize, Toronto, ON
July 2015
Finalist, Middle City Passages Toronto Urban Design Competition by IVM and Metrolinx, Toronto, ON
2014-2016
John and Myrna Daniels Scholar Full Tuition Scholarship, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Toronto, ON
2012-2013
Manitoba Association of Landscape Architects (MALA) Student Excellence Award, Winnipeg, MB
2011-2013
Dean’s List, Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba
2012
James Palmer Lewis Student Scholarship
2011
Winston Leathers Award
SKILLS Adobe InDesign Adobe Photoshop Adobe Illustrator
ArcGIS Autocad Vectorworks
Rhino 3D Grasshopper Microsoft Office Software
Freehand Drawing Drafting Model Making
EXHIBITIONS, WORKSHOPS & OTHER PROJECTS Nov 2015
Exhibitor, Beneficial Biodiversity Symposium 2015 Toronto Botanical Garden, Toronto ON
Nov 2015
Student Designer, Don Valley Design Charette, Lower Don River Strategies Hosted by Evergreen Brickworks, with City of Toronto & Toronto and Region Conservation Authority
June 2015
Co-Designer, Macro/Micro/Myco 16th International Garden Festival, Les Jardins de MĂŠtis, MĂŠtis-sur-Mer, Quebec
May 2015
Student Designer, Canada-Netherlands Resilient Cities Summit, for the health of Don River Watershed In collaboration with Evergreen Brickworks & Delft University of Technology, Toronto, ON
April 2015
Exhibitor, Pixelated Habitat, Bee Nest Habitats 4th annual Grow-Op Exhibition at Gladstone Hotel, Toronto ON
2013
Exhibitor, Sketch Crawl Austin 2013 Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Conference 2013, Austin TX
2011
Exhibitor, Selected works, Gallery of Student Art (GoSA) Gallery Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg MB
MULTIMEDIA & PUBLICATION 2015
Research Contributor, Innovations in Transportable Healthcare Architecture Stephen Verderber, New York, NY: Routledge, 2016
Aug 2015
Macro | Micro | Myco featured in Landscape Architecture Magazine Aug 2015 16th International Garden Festival Entries
June 2015
Pixelated Habitat featured in Landscape/Paysages, 2015 Excellence, vol. 17 no. 3 Bee Bold, Animal Architecture + Biomimetic Geometry, pg. 2, 24-27
2013
Contoured Culture and Residing with Marginalia featured in Warehouse vol. 22, pg. 150-151, 160-161 Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba
2012
Lead our Footfalls, Fortress Garry and Infrastructural Symphonics featured in Warehouse vol. 21, pg. 265, 277, 280-281 Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba
VOLUNTEER WORK 2009-2014
New Journey Housing Non-Profit Organization assisting newcomers through their search for housing
2012
5468796 Architecture Inc. for Migrating Landscapes, Venice Architecture Biennale Assisted in model-making and onsite installation of the exhibition
2011-2014
Save our Seine Foundation Non-Profit Organization aiming to preserve the Seine River in Winnipeg
ACADEMIC
Ichthyo Rehabilitation
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Gravel Pit Remediative Strategies
Allen Road Redux
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Urban Design for Major Artery Road
Phillips House and Garden
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Mental Health Facility Design
Thesis-Ongoing
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Examining ‘Sacred’ Infrastructures
BUILT
Macro / Micro / Myco
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Myco-remediative Strategies; Installation
Pixelated Habitat
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Bee Nest Habitat
PUBLICATIONS
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Innovations in Transportable Healthcare Architecture 50 Published Research/Illustrations
Resilient Cities Summit
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Dutch-Canadian Collaboration
Middle City Passages Competition
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Community Engagement for Transit Re-design
NXT City Prize Designing Winter Strategies for Toronto
SELECTED WORKS
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Ichthyo Rehabilitation Gravel Pit Remediative Strategies
Allen Road Redux Urban Design for Major Artery Road
Phillips House and Garden Mental Health Facility Design
Thesis-Ongoing Examining ‘Sacred’ Infrastructures
ACADEMIC WORKS
ICHTHYO REHABILITATION Awarded Honourable Mention, OSSGA Student Competition 2016 LOCATION: Vic-dom Gravel Pit, Uxbridge, ON DATE: Winter 2015 TYPE: Gravel Pit Rehabilitation PROJECT TEAM: Nathanael Wilner
Situated in the Oak Ridges Moraine and located approximately 300m from the headwaters of West Duffins Creek, the Vic-dom Sand and Gravel Pit is uniquely positioned to have an extensive impact on a large scale. Ichthyo Rehabilitation seeks to maintain the anthropomorphic form and extractive function of the site but to progressively replace aggregate extraction with ecological extraction – producing native fish and plant stocks that will ameliorate and strengthen the health and vitality of the Duffins Creek Watershed. Utilizing the current basin like topographic condition of the site as a whole to collect and concentrate seeds from adjacent plant communities creates a nucleus of seed dispersal throughout the watershed. Likewise, focusing on augmenting riparian and aquatic habitats in the current and proposed pit lakes by pushing and pulling the edges to provide differing water depths suitable for specific native fish and plant species, this design will greatly increase the productive and performative potential of the lake through a careful and deliberate treatment of the area where land meets water.
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FORMAL STRATEGY Pushing and pulling of land plus water enables the the creation of shallow grounds where wetland habitats can be fostered.
SITE RE-CONFIGURATION The radial form will be simulated throughout the whole Vic-dom site, by means of different planting and topographic manipulation.
SEED CAPTURE + COLLECTION Water runoff towards the lake is expected to carry plant artifacts such as seeds and cones.
PROGRESSIVE RE-APPROPRIATION By the time complete fulfillment of the scheme, the site can be used for human programming and leisure as well by incorporating specific components, features, and circulation.
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2. Re-filling of the excavated material towards the lake hence the creation of a land ‘finger’.
1. Extraction of a lake ‘finger’
Boreal Forest
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Path
Land/Water Interface
Conducive for Fish Habitat
3. Commencement of planting with the ‘fingers’ as the process of cutting and filling continues.
4. Maturing of habitats over time.
LAND + WATER EDGE. The process of cutting and filling on the land/ water interface using existing machineries used for extraction. Providing the framework for a continued extraction, while rehabilitation is being implemented towards previously exhausted aggregate zones.
Extractive Area
Girodano Lake Depth
Seed Collection Unit
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JUVENILE
G
Water temperature below 110C
EN
ILE
Water temperature below 180C
A
N IN
ADULT
JUV
S PA W
SPAWNING
DU
LT
Water temperature below 120C
BROOK TROUT Salvelinus fontinalis
Eggs layed in shalow depression
Cover from predators Ground water upwelling
Main food source: Aquatic invertebrates& smaller fish
Main food source: Aquatic invertebrates
Open gravel or sandy substrate
Spawning Zone 0.1 -2m deep SPRING Juvenile Zone 0.5 -2m deep
JUV
* No specific vegetation required
1st SUMMER Adult Zone 1 -10m deep
Water temperature below 180C
WINTER
A
EN
ILE
LT U D
SUMMER
Water temperature below 120C
Cover from predators
Main food source: Aquatic invertebrates
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Main food source: Aquatic invertebrates& smaller fish
HABITAT REQUIREMENTS
G EN
NIN
Water temperature below 160C
JUV
SPA
W
Sectional profiles for individual species
ILE
+A
DULT DARTER SPECIES
Water temperature below 250C
Ammocrypta
Eggs laid in purpose built shallow burrows near rooted vegetation
Dense vegetative cover from predators
Densely vegetated sandy, muddy or organic substrate
Main food source: Aquatic invertebrates
Spawning Zone 0-0.5m deep SPRING Juvenile & Adult Zone 0-2m deep
JU
VE
SUMMER
WINTER
LE I N
* Dense vegetation required
Water temperature below 140C
SCULPIN
Cottus bairdii & Cottus cognatus Cover from predators
Main food source: Aquatic invertebrates
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PHASING
Existing Site
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During Extraction
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4
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8 9
12
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12 11
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5
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12 11
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Progressive Rehabilitation
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Final Rehabilitation
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12 11
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REHABILITATION
EXTRACTION
HUMAN OCCUPATION
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5
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WOODLOTS
COMPANY OFFICES
VISITOR’S DOCK PRAIRIE GRASS MEADOW
RIPARIAN / WETLAND
FISH TRANSFER FACILITY PATHS
RIPARIAN / WETLAND
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50
100
500m
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ALLEN ROAD REDUX Urban scheme for a major arterial road of Toronto LOCATION: Allen Road, Toronto ON DATE: Fall 2014 TYPE: Urban Design
As Toronto’s population density is expected to swell dramatically in the foreseeable future, cities and metropolitan precincts should be framed to be well organised and diverse, with multiple scales, multiple routes, efficient services and amenities. Allen Road Redux subscribes to and manifests this view of city life. Through a carefully considered framework, the project illustrates the ability for large scale infill development to give people greater access to areas of high amenity, add to the cultural vibrancy of urban developments intersected by the rail network and encourage the pursuit of an active lifestyle. Allen Road Redux is a wishful integration of landscape, infrastructure and urban life together as a way to give measure, vision, to the Allen Road and its surrounding neighbourhood. An urban experience is carefully crafted to travel across different sensibilities. The hope for this scheme is to let the development be as open, public, and generous by being perceptively curated by infrastructures, both of hard, such as Allen Road, and the open space infrastructure within the site. DESIGN TOOLKIT: The site strategy implements interventions that utliizes the toolkit for neighbourhood improvement. This includes building typologies that optimally satisfies the projected residential, commercial and employment space needed for the future development. Recreational and open spaces are enhanced as well, proposing different and smaller scale modes of civic spaces. These are given cohesive landscape by linking these through a series of boulevards weaving through the site.
BUILDING TYPLOGIES
Point Tower + Podium
Mid-rise Slab
Storefront Retail
Elevated Plaza
Tree-lined Boulevard
Neighbourhood Park
OPEN SPACE TYPLOGIES
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WILLIAM R. ALLEN ROAD Toronto, ON
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HIGHWAY 401
YORKDALE STATION
LAWRENCE WEST STATIO
YORKDALE PARK
LAWRENCE HEIGHTS MIDDLE SCHOOL
LAWRENCE HEIGHTS NEIGHBOURHOOD
WENDERLY PARK
DESIGN STRATEGIES:
1. Allen Road as spine
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2. Through roads as branches
3. Adjustment around blocks
4. Passages through parks
PRINCE CHARLES PARK
CHATERCOURT PARK
VIEWMOUNT PARK
ON
KAY GARDNER BELTLINE TRAIL
GLENCAIRN STATION
PROPOSED STATION
EGLINTON WEST STATION
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EAST-WEST CORRIDORS + GREEN INSERTIONS The east-west corridors bisecting an existing subway stop is redeveloped to accomplish optimal density, employing high and mid-rise buildings to accomodate residents and businesses. Passages are employed to accomodate open spaces where needed. Hence, the intersections of these schemes generate nodes of importance within the site. Three distinct zones are mapped out to illustrate their contingency.
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NODE 1: CULTURAL + LEISURE Node 1, which is a unique condition that exist at the northern end of the site, is an area delianted by open recreational spaces on several sides. An elevated plaza connects to the high-rise residential. These point towers are then surrounded by a neighbourhood parkette and a larger park at the northern end.
NODE 2: NEIGHBOURHOOD PARK INSERTION A neighbourhood park is inserted to create a passage through the development. It is then immediately surrounded by high-rise buildings, to accomodate residential units that would have uninterrupted access to the park.
NODE 3: RESIDENTIAL/COMMERCIAL HUB This node achieves the most density due to its immediate proximity to a subway station. An elevated plaza serves as the main civic space for the users of the subway. The plaza then is connected by bridges to commercial podiums and residential/office point towers. This scheme provides the easiest building-to-transportation interface.
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NODE 01 density: 70%
high rise buildings
large scale park
high rise buildings
elevated plaza
NODE 02 density: 60%
mid-rise slabs
high rise buildings
neighbourhood park
high rise buildings
NODE 03 density: 90%
high rise buildings
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elevated plaza
high rise buildings
mid-rise slabs
ELEVATED PLAZA / CIVIC SPACE At the areas where the Allen is punctuated by a subway station, it is proposed to cultivate a public and cultural setting by having a plaza. This plaza, which is an upthrust of the Allen Road instead of a top down anomaly, is meant to engage the grounds to which it has access to. It is two storeys above Allen Road, the first storey being a parking amenity to those who wish to park and ride the Subway. It also houses several oushoots of the stations where people can enter and exit.
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PHILLIPS HOUSE & GARDEN Entry to the Phillips House Project Redevelopment Design Competition LOCATION: 10 Buchan Court, Toronto ON DATE: Fall 2015 TYPE: Mental Health Facility Design PROJECT TEAM: Paul James, Pengxiang Meng
There is a radical rethinking taking place in our approach to the physical environment for mental health care for children and adolescents, in Canada. As a society, we have increased our awareness of the significant patient benefits that result directly from fostering a sense of community for those in need of mental health support. We know that when mental health patients feel they are respected, valued and are a part of something bigger that themselves, they make purposeful strides towards recovery. The Phillips House was a grand neo-Georgian residence with extensive gardens built in the 1940’s on the rural outskirts of Toronto. A design competition organized by the North York General Hospital was held in the summer of 2015. North York General Hospital initiated this innovative project to bring together under one roof – adolescent eating disorder outpatients day programs and child and adolescent outpatient mental health services which are currently located in a variety of different hospitals in the area. This will provide community based services that are coordinated, collaborative and integrated to create a culture of shared responsibility ensuring that those in need are well served. The project connotes the use of the historic nuances of the heritage house to cultivate a dialogue between house and garden. The historic shifted axis that guides the passage from inside to outside is reinforced by introducing a series of walls that emerge from the existing house and manifests into the landscape. Programmatic and site elements slide in between these edges as a way of combing the site to establish a new vernacular of building and garden, creating varying scales of group and activity areas to promote the integration of landscape into therapy and wellness.
Phillips House & Garden-1947
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Phillips House & Garden-2015
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LEGEND 1. Roundabout 2. Drop-off Area 3. Sports Court 4. Main Lawn 5. Maple Allee 6. Collection Pond
SITE PLAN
0
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7. Grand Steps 8. Outdoor Gathering 9. Outdoor Dining/ Vegetable Garden 10. Staff Area 11. Birch Grove
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10
1
25m
1 0
1
5
10m
Garden
Parking
Original Configuration
Creation of building extension to accommodate additional programs.
The collection pond during winter, allowing outdoor activities for the patients.
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Establishment of driveway + approach & entrance to the building.
Extension of programmatic devices from the building onto the landscape.
Private
SemiPublic
Public
Parking
Making a cohesive spatial scheme by using retaining walls that allows to orient programming.
Establishing degree of privacy that allows usage of landscape in different conditions.
Resulting spaces ‘slide’ within the walls, and activates the landscape as a proper extension of health and wellness goals for the institute.
Final landscape features include lawn, shrub areas, paved sports spaces, vegetable garden, and informal outdoor gathering spaces.
The creation of a welcoming entrance by using the existing elm tree for the approach.
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Collection Pond
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Water Channel
Outdoor Dining Area
Gathering Space
Maple Allee
Main Lawn
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THESIS-ONGOING Examining ‘sacred’ infrastructures On January 10th of this year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Bonnet Carré Spillway—a flood-control structure designed to redirect floodwaters threatening to inundate New Orleans. The 7000-acre site, commissioned after the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, conjures a mythic status of divine economic and nationalist security. For the people of New Orleans and its surrounding urban areas, the spillway indeed is a sacred infrastructure.
LAPLACE
This sacredness, however, also manifests on a completely different dimension—one that requires a different set of political discourse. Two graveyards exist within the spillway footprint. They hold the remains of enslaved African-Americans who worked in the plantations that were expropriated to make way for the project. Cycles of flooding and sedimentation have erased much of the site’s historical trace, and these artifacts remain a connective fabric to its cultural heritage. Bonnet Carré has become a curious case of contested cultural territory. It is facing burgeoning pressures in addressing its complexity and multi-dimensionality, concerning contemporary ecological, social, and economic realities. This thesis aims to speculate the role of commemoration into contemporary land use management, and have it contribute towards notions of spatial perception and territorial design. Current management by the Corps of Engineers render the site too utilitarian, creating a land devoid of a sensitive and keen understanding of multiple systems in place. Employing an affirmative rejection of the aforementioned land use practice, the thesis intends to engage a mutual choreography of water movement, economic gains, ecological sensitivity, and protection of cultural resources—that of the past, present, and future.
MO
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EMERALD NECKLACE Boston 1100 acres
FRESH KILLS PARK New York 2200 acres
BONNET CARRE SPILLWAY Louisiana 7623 acres
A
KILLONA CENTRAL PARK New York 840 acres
INTE
R S TA
T E - 1 I N T E R S TA 0 TE-1
0
A
A
LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN
LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN
US
US
RO
UT
E6
RO
UT
E6
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BAYOU LABRANCHE
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BAYOU LABRANCHE
MONTZ
NORCO
ONTZ MISSISSIPPIKENNER RIVER KUGLER
NORCO
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TAFT
MISSISSIPPI RIVER
HAHNVILLE
TAFT
HAHNVILLE
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OIL REFINERIES
MISSISSIPPI RIVER LEVEES 21.4 ft. above sea level 2011 FLOODING LEVELS 14 ft. above sea level
MISSISSIPPI RIVER
SECTION A-A SCALE 1:25,000
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CONTROL STRUCTURE
RAILROAD
MARSHLAND
RAILROAD
U.S. ROUTE 61
BALD CYPRESS FOREST
RAILROAD INTERSTATE 10
LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN
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ECOLOGY
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ECONOMY
INFRASTRU
UCTURE
HISTORY
RECREATIONAL
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Macro / Micro / Myco Myco-remediative Strategies; Installation
Pixelated Habitat Bee Nest Habitat
BUILT WORKS
MACRO / MICRO / MYCO Selected Work, 16th International Garden Festival Les Jardins de MĂŠtis, Quebec LOCATION: Metis-sur-Mer, Quebec DATE: Summer 2015 TYPE: Installation, Public Garden PROJECT TEAM: Concept Development : Jasper Flores & Jordan Duke Construction: LAN 2037 Class with Prof. Pete North
Emerging from the forest floor, Macro/Micro/Myco is a folded, modular structure hosting select varieties of mushrooms, and celebrating the role of fungi in fortifying and upholding our forest ecosystems. The mycelial networks of fungi intersect and permeate one another, generating the foundation of soils worldwide. They envelop the roots of grasses, shrubs, and trees, forming an intelligent biological model of connecting organisms to one another. Fungal complexity is the common denominator of a healthy forest. Macro/Micro/Myco is an invitation to see, smell, touch, and be fully enveloped by these enigmatic organisms, allowing to admire their minute but provocative forms. The structure is composed of growing units, accommodating the substrate wherein mushrooms propagate. Every surface carries a unique mushroom species — genetic diversity of fungi is vast by design, and crucial for life to continue. The skin is made up of distinctively cut panels, evoking the filaments of mycelial structure. The garden offers the distinct experience of traversing scales in which we appreciate the mycelial process: micro, or the wonder of these tiny organisms and the intimacy they provoke, and macro, or the vastness of the environment they inhabit and foster. *additional illustrations and photographs by Jordan Duke, Dayne Roy-Caldwell and Anna Rosen
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The pattern of the panels is modeled after the pattern of the mycelium, or the vegetative part of the fungus.
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PIXELATED HABITAT Selected Work, 3rd Annual Grow-Op Exhibition Gladstone Hotel, Toronto
Pixelated Habitat is a system of ecologically sensitive wooden modular units that will re-envision the potential of certain architectural features such as walls into operational ecological habitats. Hexagonal modules, composed of individual triangular block units will be created from a reconfigurable mold that will be able to dictate different functions based on programmatic adjacencies. This means that the blocks will adjust themselves based on their orientation. Possibilities of these orientations would be a wall, a column or a bench. Their programmatic functions are designed to be flexible and not limited to being bee nesting habitats. They are designed to have the possibility to hold water, and have smaller pockets with space to grow various forms of plant life.
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Pixelated Habitat featured in Landscape/Paysages, 2015 Excellence, vol. 17 no. 3 Bee Bold, Animal Architecture + Biomimetic Geometry, pg. 2, 24-27
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Pixelated Habitat was exhibited as part of the 3rd annual Grow-op exhibition from April 23-26, 2015 at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. Grow-op is an annual four-day exhibition that celebrates innovative ideas and conceptual responses to landscape, gardens, art, and place-making.
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Innovations in Transportable Healthcare Architecture Published Research/Illustrations
PUBLICATION
RESEARCH + PUBLICATION Innovations in Transportable Healtchcare Architecture Stephen Verderber, New York, NY: Routledge, 2016 Research contribution from 2014-2016. Assisted with the design and layout, created drawings and illustrations for the book.
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Sample drawings
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Resilient Cities Summit Dutch-Canadian Collaboration
Middle City Passages Competition Community Engagement for Transit Re-design
NXT City Prize Designing Winter Strategies for Toronto
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
RESILIENT CITIES SUMMIT Collaboration between University of Toronto, TU Delft & Evergreen PROJECT TEAM: Jordan Duke, Andrew Hooke, Koen Steegers
On the 29th of May 2015, the Consulate Kingdom of the Netherlands in conjunction with the City of Toronto and Waterfront Toronto hosted the Canada-Netherlands Resilient Cities Summit: Planning and Design in a Changing Climate. Before and in parallel to this summit, a collaborative student design charrette including students from Delft University of Technology and the University of Toronto took place and the results were presented as part of the Summit on the final day. The main design questions examined were how to increase resiliency of a watershed within a dense urban context at risk of extreme climate events and what urban design solutions can lead to climate change mitigation and adaptation using three varying sites in the City of Toronto. Derived over two fast paced days our project aims to utilize urban stormwater runoff as a resource rather than a problem. We refocus our attention to the Don River and make it a cause for celebration in Toronto, as the waterfront has now become. Gathering inspiration from Holland the windmill - and our well loved parkland system in Toronto - the ravine - we strived to create a new productive and recreational landscape along the Don River. By using bio-swales to convey water from surrounding urban streetscapes to the top of the ravine, we can then use the velocity of the stormwater movement and the topography of the ravines to generate electricity using adapted turbines, providing the city with a surplus of clean energy.
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MIDDLE CITY PASSAGES Finalist, Toronto Passages Competition sponsored by IVM & Metrolinx PROJECT TEAM: MSA Limited Architects, Chris Sharpe / Holistic City, Prof. Liat Margolis, Anna Rosen On July 9th 2015, 6 teams from all over the world were invited to participate fot The Middle City Passages Toronto competition organized by Metrolinx and the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, in partnership with the Municipality and the French Institute of Toronto, within the IVM international programme “Passages, transitional spaces for the 21st century.” The competition is an opportunity to investigate how the new Sheppard East LRT line’s infrastructure can interweave with existing local, small-scale pedestrian networks. It is also a chance to test how forging connections between local paths and to transit infrastructure can further support development and improve local living conditions. Can the design of new types of passages aid in producing a more urban condition in suburban Toronto? The Sheppard East Light Rail Transit (LRT) line is part of this investment and aligned with municipal plans that call for growth that is less dependent upon the automobile. New development is directed to areas well-served by public transit, efficiently using existing infrastructure, and, wherever possible, making transit, cycling, and walking more attractive alternatives. When discussing the meaning of passage, the organizational pattern of the city is crucial. The horizontal settlement is structured by a large scale rectilinear framework, in which a multitude of programs, scales and subpatterns can coexist. The LRT is an opportunity to introduce specificity in what is seemingly generic. The stops at mid block location tie in to the improved passage networks and existing figures (creek, ravine, railway, easement strip…). The clarity of pure forms such as the circles of light help to create safe-havens within the complex city fabric, a sense of place for the passages and an experience for the LRT rider.
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WINTER CITY TORONTO Shortlisted, NXT City Prize, Toronto PROJECT TEAM: Jasper Flores, Anna Rosen
To residents, Toronto appears to be in a state of perpetual ‘offseason’ weather. Winter is typically the occassion to stay indoors, or wildly dream of a holiday to a warm, exotic locale or to the cabin country up north. The Winter City Toronto strategy hopes to evoke a change on a cultural level, enabling Toronto to embrace its winter identity through small scale interventions, allowing residents to immerse themselves in an exciting winter city experience. As a Canadian city, it is time for Toronto to step up and further enhance its relationship to winter and changing climatic conditions. This scheme proposes tools that can be applied to city spaces such as parks, plazas, sidewalks, laneways and bike lanes, building an environment responsive to changing outdoor conditions, and connecting these civic spaces for a cohesive winter community. This toolkit of strategies consists of seasonally appropriate foliage, windbreaks, and canopies; seasonally responsive furniture, material changes and colour insertions, to name a few. They envision to transform city spaces from off season areas to ONseason destinations offering opportunities that make life in the big city bustle – in any kind of weather.
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ABOUT Jasper Flores is an emerging designer with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design from the University of Manitoba, and is currently pursuing his Master of Landscape Architecture degree at the University of Toronto. He has completed a varied range of design projects with emphasis on space planning, detail and material selection, critical design principles, and architectural drawings. He has also conducted research and analysis on a variety of designrelated topics including, but not limited to, sustainability, social and human behaviours, and design history. His design interests focus on creating innovative and culturally expressive environments.
a. 132 Lyndhurst Ave. Toronto ON M5R 2Z9 c. (204) 963-5797 e. jasperflores89@gmail.com
JASPER FLORES