1. Encourage diverse identities
The City of Toronto is first and foremost a medley of thriving, lively, human-scale neighborhoods. People are coming from all over the world to be Torontonians, creating an unrivaled international diversity of population, unlike anything the planet has ever seen! We have been inspired by this new reality, and we have adopted diversity as our design strategy - in lieu of a homogenous master plan we have assembled multiple ideas and inspirations. We have taken this multiplicity of visions and, out of the many, crafted a single waterfront for Toronto. Our proposal is designed to feel like an integral part of a city that is itself constructed from so many different communities and cultural identities.
This portfolio will show a multitude of overlapping design ideas. By using inventive programming and creative design elements from the many firms on our team and by making each slip, each pier, each public space as unique and magnetic as the neighborhoods that animate Toronto, our proposal will draw people down to the lake, to sit, to stroll, to eat, to play, to hang out, to enjoy themselves and their city.
But just as a city's diversity is sustained by citywide infrastructure -- hidden systems that underpin urban life -- our proposal allows a diverse flowering of design ideas and visions because they take root from fundamental ideas about connections between the city and its lake, the power of weather and importance of gestures at different urban scales.
2. Connect the city to the water
Millions of people visit the Central Waterfront right now. They visit one of the great new public parks or cultural draws, have a wonderful time, and head back to the city. Besides the runners and bicyclists using the waterfront as an exercise track or following the Martin Goodman trail, very few venture along the waterfront esplanade or Queens Quay Boulevard for extended walks. The waterfront feels isolated, cut off from the life of the city and its neighborhoods.
The key to the success of Toronto's new front porch is going to be the strength of its connections to the city. Our proposal understands, articulates and reinforces these connections. It reaches into the city to connect the vital urban energy of its streets and neighborhoods to the waterfront. Most importantly, it transports Torontonians out onto the lake and out to the islands. Our design brings people to interact with the water in diverse ways, to be in it or be surrounded by it. We see millions more Torontonians coming down from the city and its comfortable neighborhoods to enjoy the water and the waterfront at the new heads of the slip, new parks, and new piers and through new cultural and recreational programs. The Central Waterfront will take its place among Toronto's most beloved neighborhoods. Like it has in Yorkville, the Annex, the Danforth/Greek Town, Bloor West Village/High Park, and Chinatown/Kensington Village, the city will bustle, grow and flourish at the water's edge
3. Respond to changes in weather
Weather is a variable element - both predictable in its broad strokes and unpredictable in its specific events. Daily and weekly swings in temperature and precipitation can seem dramatic, but they follow the seasons within a relatively consistent climatic framework. Winter is cold, fall is brisk, summer is hot, and spring is warm. Each day may bring a surprise, but the fundamental pattern is steady and clear. The Toronto Waterfront's seasonal swing from cold windy winter eves to hot breezy summers days is its distinctive and inescapable quality. How people use the parks and other public space will be an individual and particular experience inextricably tied to the daily and seasonal oscillations of the weather.
Our proposal embraces the fundamental reality and power of the weather. It conceives of a range of seasonal activities and seasonal spaces that bring Torontonians to the waterfront throughout the four seasons. We are designing public spaces that reflect and indicate the rhythms and measures of temperature, wind, light and shadow. This makes a vibrant and variable waterfront experience and accentuates the effects of the climate on the waterfront itself.
4. Reflect the scale of Toronto
We are going to show you design proposals at a number of different scales.
- The grand scale of the harbor and city
- The neighborhood scale of the site... the Central Waterfront
- The human scale of the slip heads... public spaces as experienced by Torontonians
Our proposal responds to each of these scales in order to achieve a revitalized waterfront - identifiable from a distance yet human scale in its experience. Our dramatic new "Boardwalk Boulevard" on Queens Quay, our hundred-meter tall weather masts, lighting up the grain elevators as bookends, the groundscraper at Yonge Street pier, and the new ferry terminal pier - that adds a few hundred meters to the already lengthy Yonge Street - are all manifestations Toronto's desire for an iconic waterfront. In order to achieve this, we have proposed a series of gestures that read at the scale of the entire harbor - that people approaching the city by land, by water and by air will be able to make out. Thus the waterfront will join the CN Tower as a signature element of Toronto.
In addition, the overall waterfront-wide details like the wood of the boardwalk, the edge of the esplanade, the series of aquatic gardens, the distinctive bands of plantings along Queens Quay, and the blue-lit streetscape combine to address the neighborhood scale of the Central Waterfront site. And finally, we have conceived of specific designs and programming ideas for heads of slip, new piers and a new Queens Quay boardwalk that will give each place a unique and magnetic attraction. We use these series of human-scale spaces to weave the waterfront into a real neighborhood, with its own special and unique character.
(From competitor's text)
The jury felt the PORT scheme produced a range of innovative, elegant and sensitive solutions to specific conditions along Toronto's central waterfront.
The jury appreciated and applauded the inventive and creative response to our climatic zone and in particular, new ways of celebrating the winter season. The jury especially appreciated this design team's delightful proposals for the Spadina Slip, Peter Slip and Rees Street Slip proposals.
While the jury recognized this team's weather masts as an extension of the north-south link from city to water, they felt that they do not acknowledge the current intense patterns of shipping and boat use in Toronto's Inner Harbor.
This scheme's Boardwalk proposal for Queens Quay Boulevard proposed a wooden pedestrian boardwalk to the south of a relocated streetcar and bike lane and car traffic to the north. Relocating the streetcar tracks along Queens Quay is essential for this team to realize their vision for a new reinvented Queens Quay Boulevard.
The jury recognized the PORT scheme as the runner up in this design competition and while its individual interventions were strong and provocative the submission lacked the overall bold vision of a continuous waterfront that the competition brief articulated so clearly.
(From jury report)
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