A Grand Vision
Greater Sudbury's rich social and cultural life takes place at the confluence of geology, landscape, and infrastructure. The site's history is connected to geological time like few others. The city is located within the second largest known impact crater on Earth. This cosmic event is responsible for the region's mineral wealth.
In a self-reinforcing technological loop, this natural potential was discovered as the country built its railway infrastructure. Sudbury's founding is inextricably intertwined with the commercial interests to exploit its vast ore reserves. Human activities has since completely altered the nature of its landscape now defined by the tell-tale signs of extractive economies.
In the eighties, however, the city's history experienced an inflection point. Since then, it has made great strides to diversify its economy and remediate its surrounding environment (so much so that its effort were internally recognized in the nineties).
Following this new path, we expect that by 2050 the reclamation of Vale's mining site will be well underway. In this future context, our proposal is a steppingstone between the newly recovered lands to the east and the Minnow lake conversation area to the west. Additionally, we propose the recovery of Junction creek connecting the former extraction sites to the southwest to New Sudbury's conservation area in the northeast through a riparian corridor.
The metabolism of the region is one of soil, vegetation, mineral exchanges. In space, Sudbury can't be understood without a cross section of the entire biosphere from the crust to the stratosphere, and, in time, from the Paleoproterozoic era 1,8 billion years ago and well into the Anthropocene tens of thousands of years from now.
Urban Design, Architecture and Landscape
Inspired by the Living Building Challenge, our proposal aspires to exemplify "a city as beautiful as a forest." The basic conception of the proposal is to merge the vacant and underutilized lands surrounding the train yards and Brady st. To do so, a structure with a minimal footprint bridges these gaps. We call this structure the "*."
The result is a continuous synthetic surface of 60 hectares extending from Lorne street to the west to Paris street to the east, and, from Elm street to the north to Riverside drive and the train yards to the south. This surface contains three green "petals" or parks each one leaning toward a specific program informed by its urban surroundings.
To the south, we have an ecological petal which represents a microcosm of Sudbury's landscapes. It contains a densely forested area, a wild meadow, a wetland, and the riparian edge of Junction creek. This area works as an infrastructural landscape filtering any runoffs in its wetlands before returning them to the creek. It also features an open-air stage and a performing arts center.
To the north petal is dedicated to leisure and education. It features a proposed extensions for McEwen School of Architecture, a library, student dorms, community gardens and athletic fields.
To the west, the old downtown is revitalized by a set of key civic projects and the consolidation of all current parking lots and vacant lands into part of the park system. The southern half - the Junction -- contains an arena, a congress center, and a hotel. The northern half contains the Place des Arts (connected to MSoA through a linear park), a vastly expanded Memorial Park - now criss-crossed by Junction creek --, and a renewed City Hall.
Architecturally, the buildings seek to complement the landscape by evoking both machinic and organix images of flower petals, butterfly wings, but also the curving trajectories and volumes of trains and tunnels. However, their aesthetics are also performative. Artificial topographies (which remind of the landscape's own manmade features), landform buildings, and tree planting patterns, help mitigate the noise of the trains and the cold northern winds during winter and manages stormwater runoffs on site.
Community
The proposal seeks to improve the quality of all members of the community mainly by (1) providing much needed civic and recreational spaces, (2) increasing public health through the remediation of the landscape, and (3) fostering a sense of community though vibrant and stimulating public landscapes right in the heart of town.
The surrounding urban areas, which reflect some of the community stakeholders and interests, inform the park's program. Spaces are dedicated to communal forms of housing - in a city characterized by its predominant detached single-family housing type -, recreation, education, arts, and commerce.
As it should be clear by now, the proposal explicitly addresses most of the Living Building Challenge imperatives in terms of health, energy, water, place, equity, and beauty. Though we don't address specific building materials, we do imagine a process of soil remediation in the construction of some of the parks. Also though we don't get into building specifics, there's no reason not tu use responsibly sourced, low carbon materials for construction.
(Competitor's text)
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