Thesis Defence: Zichen Qian

Friday, September 16, 2016 9:00 am - 9:00 am EDT (GMT -04:00)

Of the thesis entitled: Two Design Proposals Over and Under the Gardiner

Abstract:

While the highway infrastructure of North America provides great benefits by connecting both urban and rural communities, this  infrastructure also comes with significant costs by separating and  creating barriers between various communities. The Sunnyside beach area in Toronto is an example of an important public area isolated by the Gardiner Expressway from the neighborhoods of Swansea, Sunnyside,  Roncesvalles Village, and Parkdale.  This thesis explores two prototype strategies for urban and architectural interventions on two  sites in the Sunnyside area by both bridging over the Gardiner Expressway and traversing underneath it, as an approach that could be  applied in other key locations along arterial urban highways.

Implementation of these reconnection strategies would provide an opportunity to add significant new activity programs in the Sunnyside area. The programming and spatial character of former recreation activities and facilities at Sunnyside are used within a process of urban memory retrieval to organize the proposed new buildings. Within the buildings, interior boundaries - walls between rooms – are eliminated as static space dividers and replaced as expanded functional space.

In-between Boundaries offers a systematic perspective for analyzing a  range of design scales for the built environment from urban design to site and building design scales and, in so doing, proposes an enhanced degree of complexity and continuity in architectural design.

The examining committee is as follows:

Supervisor:

Committee Members:

John McMinn, University of Waterloo

Val Rynnimeri, University of Waterloo​

Mona El Khafif, University of Virginia

External Reader:

Drew Sinclair,  SvN


The committee has been approved as authorized by the Graduate Studies Committee.

The Defence Examination will take place:  

Friday September 16, 2016
9:00AM
ARC 2003

A copy of the thesis is available for perusal in ARC 2106A.