As water has evolved from the city's industrial workhorse to its aquatic playground and shorelines have changed from mercantile to natural landscapes, cities must invent new civic typologies to fully seize the opportunities at hand. The Jack Layton Ferry Terminal has the potential to be one of Toronto's most important waterfront civic spaces. What would it be like if constructed, green and aquatic landscapes could merge to form new, hybrid spaces of utility and play, creating a new kind of civic icon -- an icon based as much on experience as form, as much on engineered green as man-made material? The new Jack Layton Ferry Terminal and Harbour Square Park can become just that -- a 'soft icon', reflecting the Toronto of the 21st Century.
Civic Canopy acknowledges the growing diversity of Toronto's population, engages in the reactivated waterfront with year round, dynamic, ever-changing programming, and provides an innovative structure befitting its position as a centerpiece of urban life. Civic Canopy embodies Jack Layton's personal and political principles of inclusion, accessibility, equality and enlightened populism. The renewed Harbour Square Park forms a synergistic bond with Civic Canopy, flowing freely under and through the canopy while becoming a unique destination along the city's waterfront.
Civic Canopy is an open, expansive timber roof that overlays and links greenscape, hardscape, and waterscape,covering the vehicle drop-off, ferry boarding area, park zones and water inlets. Like the tree canopy it intersects, City Canopy offers shade in the summer months and direct sunlight in the winter months. The new roof acknowledges the diurnal shifts in weather and populations, transforming over the year with a series of modifications both spectacular and invisible. Wild swings in temperature are seasonally adjusted with altered climates achieved through latent and active environmental modifications. New programming breathes life into the terminal and park in off seasons. Waiting is transformed from a passive nuisance to active pleasure. Rather than constantly checking the time, visitors meander freely in the park or warm themselves in the Grow House and are summoned to their ferry by a Geyser Clock, spectacularly erupting in advance of each departure.
Civic Canopy warps, bends and breaks to accommodate natural and programmatic features. Trees emerge through its openings, enclosed and conditioned areas are formed through puckers in its surface. The resulting undulating form is both liquid and solid, transparent and opaque, reflecting a merger of water and land.
Harbour Square Park samples the native landscapes of the Islands and brings them to downtown Toronto. Naturalistic waterfronts and flora form an enmeshed landscape which is simultaneously constructed and ecological - urban and wild. In this way the site acts as both a harbour for different landscape conditions and a harbouring landscape for multiple uses.
(From competition documentation)
The architecture of the Ferry Terminal pavilion Civic Canopy was greatly admired by the Jury. The beauty of the structure and canopy is bold, inspired and very beautiful. While the structure, placed on the axis with the Bay Street corridor blocked views of the water, the spatial excitement underneath the Canopy and on the second level are remarkable. The many programmed elements including Mist Rooms in summer, Ice Cave in winter, Grow House, inflatable protective bubbles and On Demand Programs are exciting if a bit complex from an operations perspective. The second level boardwalk that lifts up so that ferry passengers may pass beneath it, while maintaining uninterrupted public waterfront access, was handled in a realistic and positive way. However, strategies for management of ticketing and ticketed passenger were not fully resolved.
The Jury however was not persuaded by the landscape design. The landscape relied on extensive hardscape and a relatively minimal planting program which did not exploit the civic park opportunities. The open space maintained and extended surface driveways for private car access both to neighbouring condominiums as well as across the site reaching below the Terminal Canopy. These driveways had the impact of bisecting and disconnecting open space into a series of small parcels. While the realism of the driveway against the condominium and replacement Visitor Parking Lot was noted the numerous driveways occupying the crossroads of public gathering was a concern.
The Quays as lily pad marshes and the Floating Wetlands were a concern given the depth of the water and the active harbour uses along the dock walls.
(From jury report)
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