STUDENT WORK / Refuge by Celia Wong
Monday and Thursday are studio days. On these days in particular, the third floor undergraduate studio is filled with a frenetic energy of design, research and exploration. Students can usually be found talking excitedly with design professors and classmates in a habitat saturated with trace sketches, study models and empty coffee cups. Every Monday we’ll share a completed project, churned out from this energetic studio environment.
Arch 393 / Andrew Levitt studio coordinator
Architectural Instincts and Imagination
This studio is an invitation to create. It explores the power of architectural instincts and imagination through three inter-related assignments. The first project calls for analysis, insight and story telling to integrate urban spaces, wild places and urban artifacts and forms a research base for the work that follows. The second assignment is a group based investigation into the mythology, biology and behavior of animals. The findings of this research are used to inspire an installation where amenity, ritual and imagination can meet. The final exercise calls for the design of an urban park on the site of the existing Toronto Island Airport. This assignment is an urban scaled distillation of the preceding exercises.
Project by Celia Wong / 3B
Design Statement
Refuge: late 14c; derived from L. refugium “place to flee back to”
The need to escape from the banality, stress and frustrations of Toronto is evident in the popularity of the Toronto Islands to the people of the city. Yet, what exactly are we fleeing from and what then are we seeking?
Negotiation is thus sought between the the familiar and the elsewhere, the sheltered and the exposed, the need to feel safe and the desire for adventure, the social being and the contemplative soul, the mind within and the world beyond. You weave in and out through these spectrums. In the end, the chance is offered to stay at the brink of the island on the breakwaters themselves.
The sound of the waves and you. Together, both enter the depths of the night…
