The winners of the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s 2021 Charrette on architecture, urbanism, design, and landscape architecture were announced during a virtual ceremony.

This year’s edition of the CCA Charrette, titled After MacDonald and organized in collaboration with an eponymous interuniversity research group, invited proposals for temporary interventions to address the emptied plinth of the MacDonald monument in Montreal and/or the site around it.

The competition additionally called for submissions to challenge the idea of permanence and public memory. It invited interventions that could speak to Macdonald’s legacy in particular, to issues around racial justice more broadly, and welcomed architectural approaches employing time-based and performance media. Proposals had to consider the positionality of the team: how do you justify your intervention? For whom do you claim to speak?

Students enrolled in any university around the world, and in any discipline, as well as recent graduates had the opportunity to participate in the competition. The winners included:

First place

Balançoire/Swing

• Lisa Hadioui, Université de Montréal – Architecture
• Juan Fernando Barrionuevo, Université de Montréal – Architecture
• Kamelia Djennane, Université de Montréal – Architecture

Second place

Voix

• Salma Alaoui, Université de Montréal – Architecture
• Jamila Baldé, Université de Montréal – Architecture
• Jean-Michaël Simard, Université de Montréal – Architecture

Third place

La Dimension Cachée 

• Charlotte Beaumariage, Université Laval – Architecture
• Joël Videaud-Maillette, UQAM – Environnemental Design

Special mention

I Own You 

• Marcela Torres, Concordia University – Art History
• Christopher Clark McQueen, McGill University – Architecture

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Two student groups from Laval University are among the winners of the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment, and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture’s 2019–2020 COTE Top Ten for Students Awards.

Audrey Rochon, Anton Zakharov, and Melaine Niget received recognition for their Copain, Copain? project, as well as Marie-Hélène Cliché, Michael Comtois, and Étienne Vigneau’s for their Matriochkas design.

The competition recognizes 10 exceptional studio projects that work toward achieving carbon-neutral operations through daylighting, passive heating and cooling systems, sustainable materials, water conservation, energy generation, and other sustainable systems.

The program challenged students to submit projects that use a thoroughly integrated approach to architecture, natural systems, and technology to provide design solutions that protect and enhance the environment.

Copain, Copain?
Students: Audrey Rochon, Anton Zakharov, and Melaine Niget
School: Laval University
Faculty Sponsors: Claude Demers and André Potvin

Jury Comments: Copain, Copain? Is unique – demonstrating the potentials of the COTE measures by adding an addition driven by local building knowledge. It is an addition to an existing primary school with intriguing sustainable concepts and fascinating outdoor connections. The buildings constructive process is graphically well presented, producing a new community symbol of sustainability. The low energy design, ideal for extreme cold climates, is imaginatively showcased in this graphically compelling winning project.

Matriochkas
Students: Marie-Hélène Cliché, Michael Comtois, and Étienne Vigneau
School: Laval University
Faculty Sponsors: Claude Demers and André Potvin

Jury Comments: Matriochkas conveys a compelling design for children and learning using a prefabricated construction technology with a clear sustainable approach. The projects convincing structure opens the outdoors, physically, creating a positive learning environment. The students presented their designs with clear graphics and reveals the projects innovation and environmental methods in great detail.

— Jury comments courtesy of acsa-arch.org.

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WINNER OF A 2015 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Close Encounters: A New Post Industrial Landscape is an architectural film that uses time-based media as a generative design tool. It outlines the potential of using technological artwork as a means of spatial production, rather than as an after-the-fact representation device.

The project imagines the fictional appropriation of an industrial landscape at the edge of Montreal. Pointe-aux-Trembles is densified and  rehabilitated while maintaining the area’s current industrial activities, including petrochemical plants, refineries and metal recycling. The thesis proposes an autonomous ecosystem of quasi-spontaneous architectural and urban elements, addressing the tensions arising from the close proximity of habitable spaces and toxic landscapes.

Through repeated digital experiments, the project sets up a parasitic architectural infrastructure woven into the industrial fabric. Architectural narratives materialized from an obsessive study of the East Montreal industrial park. Rich imagery and fictional processes opened the ground for investigating a future built environment in this part of the city.

By exploring the interaction between different milieus, the interventions also begin to unveil the social and political roots of “the natural.” The new environment navigates the boundaries between binaries: pure/toxic, landscape/architecture, natural/man-made, nature/culture.

This project leads toward a contemporary rethinking of the role of architects in the shaping of our urban environment. It proposes using the rough edges and cast-offs of design processes, seeking imperfection to pursue the anachronistic and unknown.

The video for this project can be viewed at vimeo.com/145638598

Jury Comments

:: Maxime Frappier :: This is a study of how we can use computer modelling tools to create space and atmosphere in better, more involved ways. This is a very good start to studying a new way of doing things.

:: Pat Hanson :: The research project’s primary goal is to use a time-based digital program as a way of generating architectural form. The time-based quality creates an opportunity to imbue the project with emotive qualities and a sense of place.

:: Johanna Hurme ::  The project is really alluring: it’s bold, atmospheric and potent. Unlike typical parametric architecture, this project has a sensibility that’s unique and powerful. There’s a recognizable reference to the gothic, but there’s also something in the aesthetic that is entirely new.

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Lőrinc Vass

The University of British Columbia (Thesis Advisor: Blair Satterfield)

In cities, usage patterns overlap, collide and shift—between groups, across history and over the course of a single day. This thesis project selects five interstitial locations across Metropolitan Vancouver that are characterized by ambiguous or contested relationships between spatial jurisdiction and temporal occupation. An architectural intervention poised between realism and provocation is presented for each site. By responding to multiple viewpoints, the proposals have a transformative effect.

Among the sites is Kitsilano Indian Reserve No. 6, the repatriated vestige of a Squamish Nation reserve, where a series of large scale acoustic mirrors are proposed to engender provisional connections across the territory.

In a second instance, a greenway where a natural gas pipeline slices diagonally through a suburb is populated by collapsible shelters, which facilitate communal gathering.

A set of floating shacks on the edge of Vancouver’s mudflats invites squatting, while doubling as nodes in a system of tidal booms.

A fourth episode proposes a series of canopies for Burnaby’s infamous winter roosting site of northwestern crows, providing civic amenities for both human and avian occupation.

Finally, a series of parking silos responds to the uneasy coexistence of assembly and agricultural uses along Richmond’s “Highway to Heaven,” allowing both activities to expand beyond their conventional zoning boundaries.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin :: The project experiments with the poetic expression of architecture as a discovery through the juxtaposition of adjacent programs. It’s a very positive and refreshing way to rethink programmatic innovation.

Patricia Patkau :: This project is not bombastic or heavy-handed. It’s delicate, and yet that delicate thinking can have incredible consequence. This project includes a sincere and simple mediation between habitat and human occupancy, and at the same time, its power is in its ideas.  I thought this was really beautiful.

David Sisam :: This project takes conditions of tension and perceived negative adjacencies and turns them into positive places, making the adjacencies into a celebration of their juxtaposition. I especially liked the description and proposal for the farmland and interfaith community, consolidating both as a way of preserving the agricultural land while accommodating the interfaith community. The whole notion of looking at these in-between places was in itself an interesting point of departure.

For the full project presentation, visit www.falseboundaries.xyz

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WINNER OF A 2016 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Alexander Ring, University of British Columbia (Thesis Advisor: Raymond Cole, FRAIC)

Sea levels could rise several metres by the end of this century, while extreme weather events simultaneously increase in frequency and severity. These pressures are already beginning to force coastal populations to migrate to higher elevations.

Polyvalent Adaptations proposes to create networks of soft and hard infrastructures that meet current needs for resource independence, while also offering emergency support in the aftermath of severe storms. Ultimately, these infrastructures become armatures guiding new, more resilient settlement patterns.

The author chose Tongatapu, a low-lying island home to 70,000 Tongans—and a place that could lose half of its land to the ocean in the coming decades—as a test location.

The thesis takes the form of a narrative spanning from 2020 to 2080, centred on a Tongan named Fokai. When he is 17 and living on his family’s farm near the sea, the Vaota (“forest” in Tongan) is being developed as a new infrastructure strip, stretching the length of the island along the 20-metre elevation line. Planted with trees, it also contains resources such as a market and a water treatment facility. Over the course of Fokai’s lifetime, the pre-planned intensification of the Vaota enables it to become his refuge after a catastrophic hurricane and flood in 2045, and ultimately, the site of his new home in Tongatapu’s transplanted capital.

Jury Comments

Manon Asselin: I was quite impressed with the breadth of what was presented in the student projects. It’s enlightening to see young architects taking on serious and substantial issues, and seeing it as part of their responsibility to respond to these issues in building the world of tomorrow—it’s going beyond just making pretty buildings.

Patricia Patkau: What’s most convincing about this project is that it deals with a serious issue in a rather matter-of-fact way. It suggests that communities can help themselves before the water rises and disaster strikes, and helps them to manage and plan. It has depth and optimism, offering a fully integrated way of approaching these kinds of problems. It’s thorough but also accessible, explaining itself in such a way that anyone can understand.

David Sisam: This project takes a very real situation—rising sea levels—and deals with it in a thoughtful and modest way. The proposal accounts for a decades-long period over which the scenario of reconstruction takes place, and recognizes the importance of both community involvement and proactive initiatives to respond to this crisis. The project was clearly presented, with an impressive degree of pragmatism.

For the full project presentation, visit www.alecring.ca

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Hidden behind the rolling fog and dense forests of Indian Arm Provincial Park lie the time-worn hydroelectric generating stations of Buntzen Lake. Built in 1903, Buntzen was the first hydroelectric facility in British Columbia and has supplied Vancouver with inexpensive, sustainable electricity for over a century. Today, much of this infrastructure has gone offline, leaving behind an impressive legacy of unique hydropower structures in desperate need of a new life.

Buntzen’s structures have become symbols of place identity. They preserve memory, help us shape our understanding of the past and offer a site of new possibilities for future generations. While never intended for people, this remarkable network of buildings, tunnels, and turbines contain rare spaces with qualities not replicable in new construction. Electric Space proposes a phased adaptive reuse strategy that reimagines Buntzen’s decommissioned hydroelectric facilities as conduits for newly emergent, renewable energy industries and programmatic opportunities.

Phase 1  CATALYST responds to the Provincial Park’s lack of a formal entry and suggests transforming the powerhouse into a hybrid building that combines a park visitors’ centre with a micro algae research facility. In hybridizing these two programs, the Powerhouse Research and Visitor’s Centre serves as a catalyst for new programmatic development throughout the park, while preserving the site’s legacy of renewable energy production.

Phase 2  CONNECTION transforms the sluice gates and hydraulic tunnel into a vertical circulation network, connecting ocean and lake. Grafting onto the sluice gates, a small funicular allows visitors to travel 500 vertical feet along rusty pipes to the mouth of the hydraulic tunnel. Exiting the tram, visitors enter a dark tunnel and then, travelling along an elevated path, walk towards a light in the distance. At the end of the tunnel, visitors arrive to the abandoned surge tank: an oculus inside the mountain, open to the sky above. Once there, visitors enter a glass elevator car that ascends through the mountain’s core to the forest above. They then exit onto a bridge that frames a view back to Vancouver, the city that this facility has helped power for over a century.

Phase 3  REFLECTION repurposes the gatehouse that once controlled the intake of water into the hydraulic tunnel. Built in a lake, the gatehouse is quite often mostly submerged underwater, bearing unique weathering patterns from a century of rising and falling water. This proposal embraces wild water and suggests replacing the original floor with a floating wooden deck to embrace the lake’s seasonal transformations. Inserted in the deck are three tubs, built the same diameter and in the same location as the building’s original surge valve, which allow bathers to occupy a memory of the building’s former function.

When approaching these decommissioned hydroelectric sites, my goal went beyond simply wishing to preserve what exists. By reimagining their former function and pairing the qualities of these devices with the programmatic needs of their surroundings, my belief is that adaptively reusing decommissioned hydroelectric sites dramatically enhances the experiential capacity and place specificity of surrounding parkland. In this alternate vision, there is a powerful opportunity to decipher the invisible energy of a landscape, creating a sense of place through time by connecting memory, community and nature inside these extraordinary industrial spaces.

Download Project PDF

Jury Comments

Shirley Blumberg :: I appreciate the thoughtfulness with which this project reimagines heritage Infrastructure.

Jack Kobayashi :: The retouched historic photo has an iconic character that has stuck with me. The balance of the submission exudes a high level of competency. The project proposes creative, adaptive reuse solutions against the backdrop of Vancouver’s ongoing struggle to preserve its building heritage.

Steve McFarlane :: This project proposes an engaging way forward for our inventory of abandoned infrastructure. It undertakes a thoughtful reading of the specific buildings and site while imagining new programs that reinvigorate their relevance to modern life. The treatment of historic elements and their relationship with new interventions explores valuable questions about how new and old can coexist.

View within Canadian Architect magazine’s December 2017 Awards Issue:

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WINNER OF A 2018 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Data centres are anonymous warehouses, consuming an enormous amount of energy to serve the world’s immense digital demands. Just short of becoming an environmental crisis, they also have underlying negative social impacts. Often, these ominous buildings exploit local energy resources while giving back little in return.

Northern Cloud is an architectural response that takes a synthetic approach to energy conservation by augmenting the data centre with a greenhouse and community centre. This strategy aims to lower energy consumption and make use of waste heat generated by the servers, through a contextual response which benefits the local community.

Unlike typical data centres where servers are in a large open space, Northern Cloud’s servers are arranged along a long perimeter form, which wraps around a central greenhouse. As servers generate large amounts of heat, the facade is designed for cold air intake, a technique and aesthetic similar to local fish-drying huts. Waste heat generated
by the servers is then fed into the central greenhouse. Food grown and harvested in the greenhouse is used in the adjacent restaurant and sold to the community, providing year-round food security to the region.

The massing of the building responds to the site’s sloping topography, providing a gradually rising accessible green roof, while collecting rainwater for greenhouse irrigation. The form terminates in a solar chimney lookout tower—a concrete exhaust plenum which helps draw air out of the greenhouse while also providing views out over the dramatic Icelandic landscape.

As an alternative to a generic building, Northern Cloud proposes a contextual architectural response to data centres in Iceland. It is a new interface between data infrastructure and the local community, shifting the identity of the data centre away from anonymity to become celebrated.

Faculty advisor: Martin Bressani, McGill University

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Jury Comments

Monica Adair :: There is a lot of restraint in this project, which takes a complex combination of programs and distills them down to a clear and compelling project. The sectional explorations are particularly strong, moving through from the core to the exhaust plenum. The project creates carefully crafted, magical moments.

David Penner :: The simplicity of the organization—and the scheme in general—would only be possible with a confident understanding of the program. I really like the boldness of this project.

Ted Watson :: This project feels believable—it could work. The representation is very evocative and atmospheric. It makes you feel the site, and sense the project’s spaces.

View within Canadian Architect magazine’s December 2018 Awards Issue:

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WINNER OF A 2018 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Excess soils and waste mounded around the Berkeley Pit copper mine have obscured its view from the city, changed natural ravines into vast tailings ponds, and caused the pit to fill with toxic waters. This project centres on four locations in and around the vast super-fund area. Uses for the sites are based on their latent infrastructural potential.

The original mine yard has been an impromptu music venue since the mine’s closure in 1976, and the city aspires to convert it to a permanent concert facility. The project invents a winch-based system that enables the headframe to be transformed into a sunken theatre, concert venue, outdoor stage, or elevated black-box theatre.

Used as a water level monitoring point, the Anselmo mine is linked through underground tunnels to the Berkeley Pit. Its headframe is connected to house a water treatment facility intertwined with public gallery and viewing spaces. At grade, phytoremediation wetlands transform the vacant watershed into a greenway.

Currently, the Berkeley Pit Viewing Stand is a tourist attraction, which tunnels through the perimeter mound of overburden and onto a small viewing platform. The project uses the existing tunnel as the primary access point for reclamation efforts within the mine, re-establishing this landscape as a publicly accessible parkland.

Sitting atop the northern slopes of the Berkeley Pit, the Emily Mine headframe has become an iconic structure for photographers. It is transformed into a destination and gathering place, with a cathedral-like roof over a monumental bonfire pit.

Through the adaptation of Butte’s dormant infrastructure, we can work towards the restoration of local environmental systems, and also imagine new possibilities for how to inhabit the greater global post-industrial frontier.

Faculty advisor:: Catherine Venart, Dalhousie University

Download Project PDF

Jury Comments

Monica Adair :: This is a rigorous exploration of interventions that rethink a series of once-derelict landscapes. It is convincing in its comprehensiveness and completeness.

Ted Watson :: This project is beautifully represented with an extremely strong graphic presentation of the subject. It looks at reclaiming industrial spaces in a socially and environmentally sustainable way. Each of the four sites has a different feel and realization that draws you in.

David Penner :: It’s interesting to see the romanticizing of industrial landscapes in the schools. There’s a good balance of resolution in this project, which spans from the big-picture issues relating to programming down to the details. I think that’s really admirable.

View within Canadian Architect magazine’s December 2018 Awards Issue:

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WINNER OF A 2014 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

STUDENT Evelyne St-Jacques, Université de Montréal

The Poudrette quarry in Mont Saint-Hilaire has been in operation for more than 40 years, extracting minerals used in the manufacture of concrete. The mountain has been carved away, giving way to a 100-metre-high cliff. Its straight cut exposes the rocky composition of the mountains, providing stark visual contrast between the industrial nature of the mining site and the wooded, vegetated state of the rest of the mountain. The rocky landscape conveys the crude roughness and solid mass of the mountain, while vegetation thrives in an everchanging seasonal dynamic.

This landscape, scarred by the Quebec mining industry, presents a distinct architectural challenge through its sheer monumentality and arid nature. But, at the same time, it is a very inspiring place. The constraints and appearance of the site demand a sensitive and poetic exploration that engages reflection on the paradoxical beauty of the industrial landscape. The aim is to instill a certain human presence to the site, acknowledging traces of its industrial past.

The quarry in Mont Saint-Hilaire is an ideal site for the construction of a centre for rehabilitation, respite and relaxation. A therapy centre comprised of fragmented human-scaled buildings forms part of an architectural journey, amplifying its relationship with the landscape. The therapeutic frame avoids isolation and exclusion by offering a place of rest and rejuvenation on a site that is open, mixed and multifunctional. The proposed central pavilion is a visitor information centre focused on the history of the quarry, while the surrounding pavilions are intended as places of respite for visitors. The materiality of the structures will emphasize tactility, stimulating the senses and encouraging an awareness and perception of the surrounding environment. Ultimately, the project’s goal is the rehabilitation of a site ravaged by industry to promote sustainable development through the poetic vehicle of architecture.

Jury Comments

Éric Gauthier: A sensitive proposal that sits firmly on the ground of this desolate landscape in a timeless way.

Michael Green: One of the most seductive of all the projects we saw. It has a Canadian spirit about it that’s just lovely. It would be amazing to see something like this built.

Tyler Sharp: The representation of this student project is very strong. It articulates conceptual clarity and an understanding of how this idea could be resolved as a real piece of architecture.

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WINNER OF A 2014 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

STUDENT Matthew Griffin-Allwood, Dalhousie University

Sable Island’s remote position, unique ecosystem and intricate balance make it an engaging, dynamic landscape that has captivated human attention for centuries. It is located on the edge of the continental shelf, between the Gulf Stream and Labrador Current, 175 kilometres from the nearest point of land in Nova Scotia. Its delicate ecosystem, formed on the emergent tip of a sand bar, is characterized by hundreds of plant, bird and marine species and is most famous for its iconic wild horses.

The dilapidated existing infrastructure on Sable Island is comprised of building typologies conventional to mainland Nova Scotia. They are ill-adapted to the island’s shifting sand and they quickly become buried or undermined, requiring constant maintenance as frequent high winds tear cladding materials away. Generators continually burn fossil fuels.

Careful analyses of climate, geology, topography, hydrology, vegetation, wildlife and existing human infrastructure provided a base understanding of how Sable Island’s ecosystem functions, and informed the selection of four different sites for infrastructure development in the changing dunescape. All of the interventions employ robust connections and materials, like structural aluminum façades and simple technologies that reduce reliance on fossil fuels and maintenance requirements.

Inspired and informed by their place, the architectural interventions of east light and west light shelters, visitor/research centre, and main station are interpretations of their habitats. Their formal expression, spatial sequences and necessary adaptations are derived from the natural processes around them; they become part of their dynamic ecosystem.

Ultimately, the proposed National Park infrastructure remodels human interaction with Sable Island by replacing and remediating existing settlements, and the systems, spaces and experiences serve to deepen understanding of human interdependence with the environment.

Jury Comments

Éric Gauthier: This project illustrates a renewed interest in the relationship between architecture and landscape, and reinforces our capacity as architects to respond to any given landscape.

Michael Green: A fantastic, playful and intriguing project; the forms and images are just beautiful.

Tyler Sharp: A series of pure pavilion-like volumes sit elegantly within the landscape. Another very well-represented scheme that illustrates a clear and appropriate understanding of how architecture can be built and how it should respond to its environment.

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WINNER OF A 2013 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

STUDENT Francis Ng, McGill University

During his visit to Montreal in 1881, Mark Twain observed that “you couldn’t throw a brick without breaking a church window.” The Catholic Church, as both an institution and a building typology, was a defining feature in the formation of Quebec’s cultural landscape. However, as its own identity solidified, Quebec sought to free itself from its patriarchal ties to the Vatican. The resulting schism, known as the Quiet Revolution, would strip away the aura that once surrounded these places of worship. The overabundance of churches across the province and the inability to maintain these buildings resulted in closures. The rejection of the Church generates an uncanny recognition of the remaining monuments; what was once so familiar is now alien. The secure House of God has become vacant and haunted by the absence of the very institution that founded Quebec. In dealing with this malaise, it becomes necessary to define a strategy to challenge the immutable nature of churches. The deconstruction of the church generates a process of defamiliarization from an established meaning of the building and its artifacts, allowing for new and varied interpretations to emerge.

Église Saint-Pierre Apôtre, a 19th-century Gothic-style church in Montreal, was chosen to represent the very fragility of ecclesiastical architecture in Quebec today. The church is cast into a concrete-like monument that consumes the body of the original building. Parts of it are inverted into its negative cast, while others remain intact. The resulting reliefs retain the shape and texture of the original features of the building, containing the ghost of its former self. While much of the exterior façade and openings of the original building are solidly cast, the interior church space is preserved as much as possible. The preservation of most of these existing elements enables the church to continue functioning as a profoundly sacred place of worship.

The closure of Catholic churches also meant that their religious artifacts would need to find a new home. Religious art that is of value only to the collective memory of the people in Quebec often becomes a burden for the diocese, and in response to this difficult situation, the thesis proposes a new addition above the existing church to permanently house and archive these disused religious artifacts. The vaulted nave ceilings are removed to establish a visual connection between the church and this new program, reinforcing the vertical relationship between sky and earth, sacred and profane. As such, the church/archive strives to reconstitute these fragments of art, of history, and of memory that represent Quebec’s identity from a time long gone.

Jury Comments

Karen Marler: This student’s overall presentation exhibits a level of maturity in identifying the essence of the issue. This project is beautifully executed and concise in its concept.

Marianne McKenna: This is a spectacular presentation of an illusion. There is a great representational ambition to reflect on faith and the Catholic Church, and an evocative and skillful use of black and white. I admire the technique.

Marc Simmons: It’s not exactly adaptive reuse–it’s adaptive destruction. The project is very cogent.

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WINNER OF A 2013 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

STUDENT Faisal Bashir, University of Toronto

This project revisits advances in computation and fabrication in an effort to produce a tectonic design logic that instills “civic memory” within the context of Karachi, Pakistan. Over the past three decades, Karachi has experienced poor economic development, sectarian violence and an increase in crime. This has led to a flight of human capital to Arab and European countries. The shortage of skilled labour and trained design professionals has partly resulted in the stagnation of architectural development. The project suggests utilizing the surplus workforce from the information technology sector in the construction industry, enabling the production of parametric architectural systems that pay homage to Karachi’s architectural heritage as well as encouraging an unskilled workforce to construct complex structures. Thus, this project proposes metro stations at three unique sites while employing a single architectural system to create complex and performative architectural geometries with an ease of construction.

Responsive Geometries is an attempt to learn from Karachi’s heritage and move forward with a distinct architectural style and building system. The project also investigates the issue of traditionalism of conservative cultures and contemporary architecture. Karachi, under pressure to accommodate a massive population influx, political unrest and socio-economic degradation, is suffering a loss of civic identity. The standards of architectural design and construction practices have declined over the past 70 years and in recent decades, Karachi has tried to adopt contemporary western architecture, but has largely failed, as the buildings produced are devoid of originality or culture.

Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) was launched in 1969 but was discontinued in 1999 due to administrative mismanagement and government negligence. As of 2009, a plan to revive KCR was put forward, and this thesis builds upon that plan, using it as a framework for new architectural exploration. As part of public infrastructure, KCR stations are the perfect site to conduct cultural and architectural design experiments. Three different sites (KCR Stations) have been chosen due to their unique track typology that includes an elevated track, a ground-level track and an underground track. This difference in sites will test the flexibility of the proposed building system.

Jury Comments

Karen Marler: It is fascinating to relate this student’s work to the other infrastructure projects submitted. The spatial qualities and materiality are rendered to create intrigue about these terminals while supporting this student’s interest in light and its role within a space.

Marianne McKenna: The approach gives an ephemeral quality to concrete, an inherently weighty construction material. It is ambitious in proposing a flexible yet sophisticated construction system using a constrained vocabulary of parts.

Marc Simmons: I appreciate the combination of materiality plus complexity.

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