The Gardiner began as a triumph of speed and connectivity that has, ironically, disconnected Toronto from its waterfront. Now derided as a barrier and a blemish, the Gardiner is a necessary evil that will most likely remain in place for the immediate future. But what if its inherent qualities could provide the DNA for its reinvention? A drive on the highway can be a breathtaking experience, embedding drivers within the matrix of downtown towers. Its broad underside can be thought of as a giant shed roof attracting future activities and future visitors.
Gardiner City seeks to remake the highway as a resident of the city rather than an interloper. Using landscape, building, public space and water as the threads, the highway is woven into the city in a three-dimensional web of new neighborhoods, programs and urban experience. Interventions are imagined below, above, beside and across the highway. New buildings congregate under the protective surface of the roadbed, housing artist studios, schools, galleries, and markets while linking neighborhoods from north to south. Public and private spaces merge and blur. Existing tunnels and new pedestrian overpasses become supercharged with public programs. Dead end streets furl into slender new towers that hang over the highway. To the east, a dense mixed-use structure composed of independent bridge buildings comingles with the highway below, framing the east entrance to the city and emerging as a new soft icon on the skyline. Water and buildings form a new hybrid architecture with marinas, artificial weather, and gravity-less boardwalks. The landscape features that simultaneously enhance space both above and below the road incubate along the Lake Shore Boulevard east of the Don River and draw themselves out along the length of the road. Rail cars deliver trees to their new homes. The Gardiner evolves into the armature for greening the city.
(From competitor's text)
The design teams were given a detailed briefing which included information on existing conditions and concurrent studies before they began work. Half way through their assignment, design teams presented their work to technical and stakeholder committees for feedback.
Two design teams were assigned to three of following four options to be studied in the Environmental Assessment known as Alternative Solutions.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro / Architects Alliance were assign to "Improve" the urban fabric while maintaining the existing expressway
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