The Reflexive Urban Fabric The Re-Imagining of Toronto’s Urban Rail Corridor Andrew Cole 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...
Tactics to Tiny Finding Your Way Home Sheng Wu To minimize our personal living space goes against our North American culture and values, one that has been built upon our abundance of space and excess of material goods. In our “bigger is better” culture, homes have continued to grow larger in the past decades despite shrinking household sizes. But we have passed a tipping point. As a society, we are paying well above our means...
Submechanophilia Snehanjali Sumanth Twenty-three federal offshore oil platforms line the coast of Southern California for approximately 200 miles from Point Concepcion, Santa Barbara County to Huntington Beach, Oxford County. Installed from1968 to 1989, they are some of the oldest platforms in the world and currently face the process of complete decommissioning after having consumed the site’s 200-million-year-old reserves in just over a century. The site holds a heavy history with oil; from one of the...
City Familiaris A Study in Domesticating Infrastructures Sarah Gertler Problems associated with hyper density in Canada are fairly new, but they often create innate conflicts for all those who dwell in the afflicted areas. CityPlace, in Toronto is one such place. The project is the largest master-planned community within Toronto and is also densest neighbourhood in the city. The model for its development is known as Vancouverism and the podium – tower is the essential building block of this style. The main...
Reconstruction Site Re-designing the disposable Expo Scott Proudfoot Building, supported by the practice of architecture, is churning resources into waste at an alarming rate. Our method of construction has its inevitable conclusion in a pile of rubble. Lamentably, the natural resources we build with are finite, and our exploitation of these has nearly reached its peak. As humanity strives for a renewable energy future, architecture must engage in the renewable use of materials. In the long term future,...
The Interval in-between unmaking and remaking the body Qinyu Lu By its individual terms, we can think of a body in two coincident ways that meet it in the middle: from the familiar inside-out and the less familiar outside-in. To proceed from the middle of things conceives of a body always already extended into the world, able to affect and be affected by other bodies that share its environment. That is to say, a body...
Sprezzatura Dennis Tang The dramatic spectacle is dazzling, alluring, and seductive. Glimmering, it draws you into a maze of turns, distractions, and clues. The sparkling veil conceals objects of desire, while displaying them with pride. Slits entice desiring glimpses revealing moments of clarity ina shimmering cloud. These glimpses paint a picture of the world beyond, with your imagination finishing the partial image. Never is everything apparent; a centrefold would destroy all illusions. As your interaction...
Erosion Designing with Materiality in Impermanent Landscapes Kunaal Mohan Using the Buddhist notion that we conceive of time through observing change, this thesis attempts to answer the question ‘how can we create the sensation of time in architecture?’ It is important to acknowledge the fact that buildings will change over time. No building is above aging. “The transformation of a building’s surface can… be positive in that it can allow one to recognize the necessity...
The Master Works Exhibition provides recent graduates of the UW Masters of Architecture program the opportunity to exhibit their work solo or in a group and takes their thesis beyond a book to explore it as a larger exhibition. The opening reception for the exhibition will be on Monday, Oct 3rd at 6:30pm at the Design at Riverside Gallery.
Amanda Ghantous will be defending her thesis titled “Three Minutes to Midnight” on Wednesday September 7th at 12:30pm at the BRIDGE Centre for Architecture+Design. Her thesis is an exploration of the disconnection between the idealistic presentation of the world as depicted by utopian-fueled architecture and the everyday reality of human behaviour.
