Of
the
thesis
entitled: The Reflexive
Urban
Fabric:
The
Re-imagining
of
Toronto’s
Rail
Corridor
Abstract:
The
thesis The
Reflexive
Urban
Fabric:
The
Re-imagining
of Toronto’s
Rail
Corridor is
concerned
with
architecture’s
role
in
shaping infrastructural
systems
into
designed
composite
networks
that
respond
to
local, social,
and ecological
conditions.
Infrastructural systems
present
a
dichotomy
between
the
technical
and
cultural
influences
that are
inseparable
from
urban
planning.
They
have
been
given
technical
priority over
natural
and
urban
landscapes
for
an agenda
of
higher
mono-focused productivity,
while
also
shaping
urban
fabrics
in
relation
and
interactions
to the
supplies
with
which
infrastructural
systems
provide.
Through
the acknowledgement
of
historical
development
within
downtown
Toronto,
the infrastructural
interventions
of
past
eras
have
generated
spatial
conditions that
currently
constrict
the
desires
of
potential
urban growth. The
city
is
forced
to
develop
around
these suppressing
interventions,
creating
a
tension
between
the
growing
demands
of
an amenity-filled
contemporary
city
and
the
supply
dominance
of
functional efficiency.
The
Toronto rail
corridor
is
currently
a
void
in
the
urban
fabric,
which
is
splitting
the ground
plane
and
limiting
the
connection
between
the
city’s
core
and
its waterfront.
Thus,
it
is
the
exploration
of
reflexive infrastructural interventions
along
the
rail
corridor
that
attempts
to
reposition
the
role
of the
civic
conduit
and
expand
the
perception
of
its
performance
to
include social
and
cultural
dimensions.
The
primary intervention
focuses
on
the
Toronto
rail
corridor
between
Bathurst
Street
West to
Blue
Jay
Way.
The
proposal
is
an
investigation
of
the
role
of
the specialized
park
as
an
act
of
reflexive
infrastructure,
where the
layering
of both
social
amenities
and
technical
functions
produce
a
composite
network
for Toronto.
The
site
of
the
Toronto
rail
deck
park
is
the
first
intervention
in
a larger
series
of
interventions
to
re-imagine
the
rail corridor
as
a
whole
into a
reflexive
network
of
designed
spaces.
The examining committee is as follows:
Supervisor:
John McMinn, University of Waterloo
Committee Members:
Rick Haldenby, University of Waterloo
Val Rynnimeri, University of Waterloo
External Reader:
Mark Sterling, University of Toronto
The
committee
has
been
approved
as
authorized
by
the
Graduate
Studies
Committee.
The
Defence
Examination
will
take
place:
Thursday
April
27,
2017
4:00
PM
ARC
Loft
A
copy
of
the
thesis
is
available
for
perusal
in
ARC
2106A.