WINNER OF A 2024 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

This project is a sober study of a current trend in church building reuse that is occurring across Canada. The Parkdale People’s Palace illustrates multiple interventions in an existing church and residential building that elevate and expand the program possibilities, while prioritizing food security and strengthening community. The thorough study of “what could be” in the existing spaces is diagrammed in a manner that is visually convincing.
– Matthew Hickey, juror

LOCATION Toronto, Ontario

In recent decades, the decline in use of Canada’s church buildings has highlighted the need for creative approaches to adaptive reuse. This project builds on the existing needs of the South Parkdale community, west of downtown Toronto, to propose the reinvention of a church slated for revitalization into a community food hub. 

Designated a Neighbourhood Improvement Area, South Parkdale demonstrates a commitment to social equity in the face of gentrification. Within the neighbourhood, Bonar-Parkdale Presbyterian Church was selected for its signs of disrepair and intent for revitalization. Inspired by key community directions and community-oriented design precedents, this thesis proposes to add vital social infrastructure to the area.

The project aims to provide a relevant ensemble of spaces and programs that will revitalize the church property, allowing it to become a common meeting ground for community members of diverse ages and socio-economic backgrounds. The plaza invites farmer’s markets, the basement holds a food co-op, and a commercial kitchen accommodates the preparation of meals for large events. Behind the church, an extensive community garden includes raised beds for accessibility. A co-op café fronts the building, while a teaching kitchen and hydroponics area are tucked towards the back.

The existing sanctuary is transformed into a multipurpose atrium, framed by a wood scaffold equipped with elements that maximize flexibility of use. A set of retractable bleachers and stage allow for screenings, lectures, or performances. Retractable lights, rotating ceiling baffles, and shutters can be used to adjust lighting and acoustics. The space can also be used for celebrations, indoor markets, large social dining events, or informal co-working.

The design proposal imagines the potential of a heritage asset in providing crucial social supports to communities—and, by extension, to the city at large.

FACULTY ADVISOR: Lola Sheppard

As appeared in the December 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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WINNER OF A 2024 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

This project honours rural heritage through a sophisticated, simple and elegant approach. A series of pavilions is anchored by a stone wall that creates a strong axis running parallel to the train tracks and river. The pavilions are designed as separate entities, each with a purpose, and open to the river, adding to the sense of nostalgia. The use of regularly articulated open wood bays provides a warm contrast to the stone screen.
– Andrea Wolff, juror

LOCATION Petite-Rivière-Saint-François, Quebec

Like many rural centres, the Charlevoix village of Petite-Rivière-Saint-François is increasingly becoming disconnected from its heritage. This is due to a variety of factors, including the exodus of local residents following the modernization of rural work in the 1970s, and the tendency for new developments to be out of scale and out of character with the vernacular.

This project aims to restore Petite-Rivière-Saint-François’ built and intangible heritage through a program to protect, preserve, and transmit rural heritage. The project consists of a pair of pavilions, connected by a rubble stone wall that extends across a site between the village’s cliff and the Saint Lawrence River. It runs alongside the visible and invisible axes of the site: a pedestrian lane, the railway, the stream, and the river.

To the north, on a narrow plot bounded by Gérard’s stream, Quay street, the river and a grove, the Mother Pavilion hosts residential spaces for visiting artisans. 130 metres to the south, surrounded by mature trees, the Practices Pavilion provides areas for fishermen, carpenters, and craftsmen to perfect their art, preserving the heritage of ancestral crafts. Large workshops are dedicated to ship building, carpentry, maple syrup production, weaving, and eel preparation—all traditional practices from the region. Rubble stone walls define the main spaces and circulation axis, while large chimneys compartmentalize the rooms and are integral to the program.

As a whole, the project seeks to form new connections between artisans, villagers, and visitors, resensitizing residents to the territorial wealth of the region.

FACULTY ADVISOR: Thibault Nguyen

As appeared in the December 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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WINNER OF A 2024 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

The jury was delighted by this project’s witty and irreverent reworking of generic elevator spaces in residential buildings. Emphasizing the differences between people’s wants and needs, the design proposes new short-term communal uses, such as moving coffee shops, speed-dating tables, or speakeasies.
– D’Arcy Jones, juror

In the late 1800s, the arrival of the first high-rise buildings was coupled with worries about the inconveniences—and possible dangers—of living far from the ground. To counter these anxieties, the first elevators were created as opulent amenities and social hubs in buildings. They were revered as “ascending rooms” where slowness was embraced as a luxury.

As the demand for taller structures grew, speed and efficiency took precedence, relegating elevators to merely serving as vertical transportation. And yet, elevators remain one of the few places where the otherwise disconnected lives of today’s highrise residents converge, albeit briefly.

Ascending Worlds nods to the elevator’s historical significance and spatial essence, embracing its velocity, scale, and temporality to reveal a realm ripe with social possibilities. The project redefines the elevator as a catalyst for architectural innovation, capable of reshaping communal dynamics within residential towers. 

Ten different elevator prototypes are suggested in the thesis, each taking up the space of one or more conventional elevator bays. The two-elevator-wide Express Café offers residents a chance to grab a barista-pulled espresso on their way downstairs, and exchange greetings with other residents. The multi-level Venue includes a lower storey-stage and comfortable seating on upper balcony levels for acoustic mini-concerts. The one-elevator-sized Matchmaker includes a cozy interior with a small table to set the stage for an intimate conversation between two individuals. If the chemistry is right, either participant can slow down the journey—or conversely, they can also opt to discreetly access the “speed up” or “emergency exit” buttons under the table to bring the blind date to a quick end.

The designs are not dictated by the typical restrictions of vertical transportation, but are shaped by the quality and duration of the potential interactions that our present-day ascending rooms may evoke. Ascending Worlds endeavours to reignite the allure of the elevator, infusing it with newfound vibrancy and significance within our evolving urban landscapes.

FACULTY ADVISOR: Jeannie Kim

As appeared in the December 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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WINNER OF A 2023 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

This is an interesting exploration—by passing an electric current through the salinated water, you both clean the water and use the resulting crystallized structures to reclaim land. The research process evidenced a wonderful kind of multi-disciplinary process. – Michael Heeney, juror

German-American architect, futurist and inventor Wolf Hilbertz pioneered BioRock in the 1970s as a means of growing artificial reefs to benefit coral and other forms of marine life. When a small electric current is passed between underwater metal electrodes in seawater, dissolved minerals accrete onto the cathode—a material such as rebar, for example—encrusting it with a layer of limestone. For his Master’s thesis, Carleton University Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism student Cameron Penney proposed that the heavily salted winter runoff from Toronto’s roads could provide a BioRock growing alternative to seawater, and that the resulting, pollution-sequestering ‘Terrestrial Reefs’ of this concrete-like substance could provide numerous benefits to the city.

Using aquariums as model growing tanks, Penney passed a low-voltage electrical current through scrap metal, along with formed metal and scrap concrete. The process prevents rusting, and the resulting limestone accretion is three times stronger than cement. It is also self-repairing, and its strength increases with age. By conducting interviews with interdisciplinary researchers, Penney learned more about BioRock’s material properties and potential applications. On the negative side, it has a slow growth rate; on the positive, it can be synthesized on an industrial scale, and it can be used to repair concrete at the nano scale.

Penney subdivided the BioRock-deploying speculative design interventions he developed into three categories:

Expansion re-introduces at-risk limestone habitats as a landscape strategy, connecting infill sites with terrestrially growing BioRock. An alvar is a type of landscape in which a thin layer of vegetation grows over outcrops of limestone or dolomite bedrock. The mouth of Toronto’s Don River is a landscape where existing alvars could be helped to flourish through the introduction of BioRock ‘landscape scaffolds’. Here, Penney proposes, BioRock could also be used to create lookouts and sheltered seating areas. 

Production includes a manufacturing strategy for growing BioRock scaffolds within decommissioned water treatment reservoirs to reduce urban salt and carbon pollution. The author cites existing open-air tanks at the Humber River water treatment plant as a place where high-salinity runoff could be purified by serving as a BioRock growing medium, and then released into the river. 

Repair is an in-situ strategy for renewing the crumbling concrete bents supporting the Gardiner Expressway. Here, 3D-printed BioRock cells are monitored growing chambers that cover and re-cap damaged concrete on the Gardiner’s bents. When the monitor indicates that a repair is complete, the cell’s current is switched off. Penney proposes that the cells could contain a lighting component—an extension of the monitoring—a platinum anode growing component, and gas exchange valves. Once the monitoring component has determined that the repair is complete, the lighting can then be used as a street lamp for the Bentway below. With the potential for each bent to have multiple cells attached to it, the process could supply considerable additional illumination to the underpasses.

FACULTY ADVISOR Lisa Moffitt

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WINNER OF A 2023 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

This is an incredible project—the kind that’s usually done by a big firm of people, rather than a single student. It takes on the issue of violence in landscapes that appear bucolic, and tries to understand where a centre should be, and what it should be. This is twinned with an understanding of the area’s material culture and the experience of how people make things. It’s impressive to see a larger-scale mapping of what the problem is, followed by an exploration of what’s possible, and what kind of architectural vocabulary is appropriate. It’s very hard to get from these big subjects to an argument that works down to the specificity of a brick module, and it’s even rarer to see a student getting to this level of development.
— Claire Weisz, juror

In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, sexual violence against women and children is rooted in a long history of political, security, cultural, economic, and educational vulnerability. The Kushirikiana Architectural Guide explores how architecture—specifically the building process—can help transform the image of women to support the prevention of sexual violence in Eastern Congo. 

In Swahili, “kushirikiana” means to share and collaborate. Gender-based sexual violence can only be resolved if all disciplines commit to a collective effort. Factors that can prevent gender-based sexual violence include gender collaboration, the economic and educational empowerment of women, and the promotion of their leadership skills. The Kushirikiana Architectural Guide offers a platform for cooperation between architects, clients, end users, and organizations working to combat sexual violence against women. The guide follows a development project diary model, which presents guidelines based on the three pillars of prevention and an analysis of the region for each stage of the project. 

Organized in three parts—pre-construction, construction, and maintenance/evaluation—the guide is applied to the proposal of a women’s construction and agricultural centre in Businga, South Kivu province. The guidelines would be applicable for each stage of projects carried out by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in eastern Congo. Collaboration between social workers and architects also is relevant.  

The construction process, through participatory design, can empower women by expanding on these factors. The construction industry can offer new hands-on skills, introduce women to a new trade, and endorse higher responsibilities—all of which multiply their revenue streams. Collaborations between genders during the construction process can elevate the image and social status of women in a male-dominated trade. 

An in-depth material exploration embraces innovation while being grounded in vernacular principles and local resources. This informed the conception of the centre’s envelope tectonic as well as its aesthetic. Programs and landscaping strategies were developed synergistically to extend those impacts beyond the community it is serving. The proposal itself is inspired by wax-printed loincloth, a colourful fabric with printed patterns, produced in Holland. In the province of South Kivu, the loincloth is used by women to transport their goods from one town’s market to another. It is a symbol of pride and a channel for creative expression for women. 

By focusing on a new training model that adapts to pedagogical and gender-specific needs, institutions will achieve better student retention and promote gender equality. The greater inclusion of women in the economic sector will contribute to generational wealth and encourage a new social mentality on education and gender.

FACULTY ADVISOR Émilie Pinard

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WINNER OF A 2023 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

I liked how these drawings were very unconventional, and appreciated the process of exploration to think about third space differently from how it’s normally discussed. This project goes from really explorative drawing to more conventional, but still textured, renderings. I thought this was just a huge amount of work and very original. — Claire Weisz, juror

Colonization and industrialization in Canada have perpetuated an irresponsible use of the Land and the suppression of local cultures, which is environmentally and socially unsustainable. This research project explores how to reframe architectural education to incorporate Indigenous values and knowledge into design practice to help restore balance and sustainability. 

The project is informed by Indigenous teachings that the Land is the first space for learning, and the colonial model of a classroom is the second space. The Third Space proposes a new intermediary space for gathering, making, and learning for architecture students at the University of Manitoba. 

Processes involved in creating The Third Space include:

1) Treading on the Land – Under the guidance of campus Anishinaabe Elder Valdie Seymour, Allah Baksh experienced the Land as a teacher.

2) Seasonal teachings – Multiple conversations and local Indigenous seasonal teachings with Elder Valdie Seymour then defined the program of The Third Space.

3) Speculative drawings – Efforts were made to explicitly demonstrate the inconsistencies and inability of the current school spaces to promote land-based teaching practice, through a series of speculative drawings that acted as a medium to provoke important questions and reveal the qualities that The Third Space considers.

4) Listening to the Land – Listening to the Land involved a new set of tools. The Chladni plate is a metal plate attached to a speaker. When specific sound frequencies are played, the vibrations transfer to the plate, creating corresponding patterns in salt that is spread across the plate. Various recordings revealed the sound of wind during winter, the sound of footsteps on the snow, and in autumn the sound of water from a small lake on campus. These images were instances of contemplation and teachings from the Land.

The research culminated in the design of a gathering space to be used by architecture students for ceremony and learning. However, the underlying premise of this thesis is a questioning of the way we practice architecture. Do we look at materials, Land, water, and animals as relatives or resources? Indigenous Elders do not refrain from hunting, but they give thanks and an offering of tobacco, meat, or another good to the Land before they hunt. The Third Space can become a place for students to be reminded of the need to pay gratitude when we practice architecture.

The Third Space is intended to host events based on the Anishinaabe seasons and ceremonies. The site includes a camping space, a Round House for seasonal ceremonies and other community gatherings, and the Design Lodge that facilitates Land-based teachings through workshop and studio spaces. The ideas and activities involved in Camping Space can form the basis for a design/build course. In winter, students prepare wood needed for camping. In spring, when working outdoors becomes feasible, students learn how to build their camping space and then camp through summer. The Third Space makes place for Elders, ceremonies, the faculty, and the broader community. 

The teachings of Elders, sounds, smells, wind, and other experiences become guiding factors in this reconsidered architectural education. The hope is that The Third Space becomes a place of reclamation, and a place for the students to return to periodically. In this way, it will provide an opportunity for the faculty to build relationships with the larger community of Elders and the Land and to experience their teachings. This learning would then inform the way their students practice architecture when they enter the profession and help shape the way for new generations of students.

FACULTY ADVISOR Lancelot Coar

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WINNER OF A 2022 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

“The project is an interesting experiment in optimizing renewable resources, paired with a study of potential assembly systems. The idea of transforming and using different components of wood to create diverse kinds of enclosures is very appropriate to the generation of sustainable architecture.” – Louis Lemay, juror

Since the industrial revolution, Western building systems have relied on a static understanding of materials and a false sense of control. This often results in muted uniformity and a material system incompatible with the natural dynamic of the environment. What happens when we align our industrialized building paradigms more closely to the patterns of natural systems? 

Herrling Island is the last undiked island within the Fraser River in British Columbia. This project invites the chaos and behaviour of natural systems to guide the design and construction process. By working with chaos, vulnerability, and improvisation, it aims to discover an architecture that is more flexible, active, and effective in addressing contemporary problems. 

The large-scale clearcutting of Herrling Island’s native cottonwood forest has devastated the local ecosystem. This restoration proposition relies on both land-based and water-based interventions, with structures built with wood sourced from the black cottonwood trees already harvested from the island. 

The interventions will be built with unrefined and non-standard components. Traditionally, cottonwood trees are not suitable for construction due to the wood’s tendency to warp and bend during the drying process. But the lumber can be rough cut and processed by hand in ways that respond to this wood’s unique characteristics.

A weir—the low barrier that controls the flow of water in rivers—has served in Indigenous culture to sustainably manage fish stocks; contemporary weirs are used to count the annual salmon run, assess the health of the stocks, and collect other scientific data. The weir proposed for this project blends historic Indigenous and contemporary western methodologies. 

The weir also serves as a pedestrian bridge to the island. It is designed so that each spawning season, the main holding pens, platforms, and fishing fence will be rebuilt by the community and serve as a land-based learning activity. 

To supplement the weir, a wet-lab structure will accommodate workers and visitors during spawning season. The removal of vegetation from the edge of the island channel has affected critical animal habitats, and compromised the island’s natural erosion resistance. To aid in their restoration, each layered component of the wet lab mirrors the functions of its natural counterpart. Instead of a structure that explicitly defines the boundaries of humans and nature, the architecture invites nature to reclaim its territory. 

In response to the mass clearcutting that has damaged the island, dynamic netted tripod structures across the seasonally flooded area will nurture the vegetation and provide temporary habitat for young fish fry and birds. 

The field lab acts as a home base for all land restoration efforts. The massing and articulation of the structure are inspired by lumber stacks and log cabins. The thickness of the lumber counteracts the unstable nature of cottonwood, stabilizing the structure without any fasteners. The elevated walkway creates a vantage point for mapping and surveying the land, especially during the flooding season. As the forest regrows, the walkway will allow visitors to stroll under the tree canopy.

Advisor: Lancelot Coar 

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WINNER OF A 2022 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

“The translation of material into space is a fundamental tool of architecture. Loom to Room works between digital models and craft. It pairs computational tools with ancient material practices that are literally mediated by the hand of the architect. It creates an unconventional tectonic language, using one material, through which to describe changing spaces, thresholds and openings.” – Betsy Williamson, juror

From Loom to Room investigates the spatial, conceptual, and performative possibilities of weaving in three dimensions and its potential integration within the built environment. It is a study of how to translate material into space, movement into form, and design into collaboration. 

Historically, weaving has provided an occasion to gather generations together. It is a shared activity, traditionally done by women. Today, feminist scholarship recognizes the important role of these weavers within our cultural history. The repetitive interlacing of thread to make fabric is a form-generating process, transforming time into material. This inspires the question: how does the action of “making” inform and respond to design intentions? 

To understand the relevance of this gendered labour in architecture, Naomi Julien set off to weave an entire room. To accomplish this, she moved back and forth between digital and analog design processes. She began by using a rigid two-metre-wide maple cube as the frame, then scored all twelve edges of the cube equally on each side and chose a highly elastic synthetic blend for the thread. She connected edges together by transforming lines into surfaces, networks into patterns, and layers into obstacles. 

Julien used parametric design to test possible thread intersections, and computational tools to script the logical sequence of the weave. This sequence generated a weave that simulates bodily movement and transcends the loom itself. On further iterations, the warp and weft began to articulate a series of emerging openings, intersections, thresholds, and passages. Together, they challenge our preconceptions about spatial boundaries, agency in design, and materiality. Each thread expresses a negotiation between outside and inside, beauty and use, private and public, art and design. 

While this research does not propose an alternative to rigid building structures, weaving of this type could subdivide interior spaces by creating semi-transparent partitions, or connect building façades with filamentary canopies. Weaving can promote the engagement of people with the built environment, where a form comes into existence as the embodiment of a rhythmic collective movement.

Advisor: Theodora Vardouli 

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WINNER OF A 2022 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

“The jury members were required to check their abhorrence at a future in which humans merely become cogs in a machine that grinds through product and waste in a cycle of existence that doesn’t result in much hope. This student clearly had the courage to explore a future, based on present trajectories, that point towards a dystopia which seems disagreeable from the perspective of the spirit of humanity. The work is evocative: subversive while remaining rigorous in the response to what this might all mean. The drawings and illustrations were complete and comprehensive, allowing for appropriate critique.” – Peter Hargraves, juror

The suburbs are made possible by sprawling systems of resource extraction, infrastructure, and shipping. The outputs of these systems are accumulated and assembled into recognizable symbols of suburban culture. 

But the industrial roots of suburbia are obscured by the separation between industry and other suburban typologies. Landscapes of production and landscapes of consumption are kept culturally and physically distant. This is evident in Bowmanville, Ontario, where a large industrial waterfront is separated from the communities it supports and impacts by an infrastructural buffer zone. 

This thesis proposes a new typology: a community that merges industry and domesticity, melding their iconography together and making industrial systems visible. Here, we can learn what it means to live with industry, through flattening landscapes of consumption and landscapes of production. The proposal, Subindustria, is a bio-mechanical community designed for a strip of land between the Bowmanville cement plant and Highway 401.

Subindustria’s residents live in superstructures, oriented around a central bio-materials factory. This facility processes hemp, mushroom and thatch grown in the surrounding community and transforms them into viable building materials, such as hempcrete and mycelium wall panels. The infrastructure and industrial systems that construct the houses become a direct extension of it, resulting in one continuous system that blurs industry and domesticity. 

All of Subindustria is elevated. By raising it off the ground, it refuses to engage with zoning by-laws or land-use policy. This upward shift also opens up large swaths of land underneath to be claimed by nature, enjoyed by the community, or used as productive agricultural land. Each superstructure module sits above a hemp field. It can roll aside to provide sunlight as needed, with a system of mirrors drawing in light throughout the day. Mushroom farms are located underneath the module’s street. People, resources and waste are transported to and from the module along a central spine, aligning flows of materials with flows of people. 

The design of each house is a subversion of a typical Bowmanville home. Their unique character merges bio-materials, suburban construction, and the celebration of mechanical systems. Each house includes a series of flexible indoor-outdoor rooms and verandas, clad in mycelium panels. The project blurs the line between where houses end and the machine begins.

Advisor: Blair Satterfield

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WINNER OF A 2021 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

This is an attempt to really understand a material. It has principles that are reminiscent of Indigenous ways of knowing, in its desire to develop a deep understanding of a material as a foundation for a later architectural exploration in built form. While the architectural application of this research could be more fully developed, the project’s sensitive nature, graphic presentation, and reflection on the traditional technique of stacked timber construction are all commendable. -Jury Comment

A tiny, aphid-like insect is felling the towering eastern hemlock forests of the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. Native to East Asia, and first detected in North America in the 1950s, the hemlock woolly adelgid was likely transported to the continent in nursery stock from Japan. This invasive species has transformed hemlock forests into ghostly landscapes of dead and dying trees along the eastern U.S. coast and is now making inroads in Canada.

Hemlock House pays tribute at a critical moment to the threatened eastern hemlock. “There is no current global strategy to utilize wood from dead or dying eastern hemlocks and most trees are left to rot,” Odile Lamy writes in her thesis. “This project proposes to capitalize on this naturally available wood to construct a building that will celebrate the tree.”

The project is sited in Quebec’s Eastern Townships in the Parc municipal de Frelighsburg, where eastern hemlocks are still thriving. The municipality is currently designing a 10-year forest management program to improve the vitality of this undermanaged site. Hemlock House aims to increase landscape connectivity for the region’s residents and tourists, while accommodating forest management activities such as lumber and bark drying. It celebrates the shaded atmosphere
of eastern hemlock groves; the building is “a temple in the half-light.”

Wood, Lamy writes, is “an archive of the environment in which the tree has lived; its growth rings, knots and grain bear witness to the geological and physical past of the forest.” The project draws from the traditional pièce sur pièce construction of log cabin-style buildings, more specifically from Métis folk houses, and inverts a typical construction detail to expose the full cross section of logs in the interior. Hemlock trunks are conical, tapering as they climb. Timber for Hemlock House preserves this tapering. Local eastern hemlocks, harvested while still alive, form the columns that create a crib frame for the dead trees, decimated by the adelgid, that are stacked horizontally between them, with thick and tapered ends alternating in each row.

Due to the pandemic, the execution of the project ended up being very different from the design-build approach Lamy had originally envisioned. Holed up in a small urban apartment, she turned to etching, which in some ways parallels Hemlock House itself. The project conceives building as a process extending from the growth of a tree to its reconfiguration as a dwelling. In etching, the act of drawing is transmuted into the physical processes of carving and printing.

“When the adelgid reaches Frelighsburg, no more live hemlocks will watch over the Hemlock House, but the memory it encloses will endure,” writes Lamy.

Location: Parc municipal de Frelighsburg, Quebec

Advisor: Martin Bressani

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WINNER OF A 2021 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

This project offers a reflection on the reuse of abandoned offshore oil rigs, as well as an architectural solution that is well developed at different scales of experience. The duality between the industrial and natural landscapes—as well as the potential of a repeated typology for the rehabilitation of this type of infrastructure—are topics that are especially pertinent to our present times as we abandon fossil fuels and leave the infrastructure of extraction behind. -Jury Comment

First fact: hundreds of the approximately 1,862 oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico have been abandoned. Second fact: Between 1932 and 2020, Louisiana lost 5,000 km2 of coastal agricultural land. Idea: Relocate and consolidate some of the abandoned platforms off the Louisiana coast and repurpose them as food production hubs and experiential islands in a place where previously cultivated land has eroded into the sea.

The Mechanical Landscape thesis envisions the transformation of structures designed to extract the natural resource of oil into islands that simultaneously produce a wide range of crops and stimulate the economy by providing a series of new day-trip visitors’ destinations. Floating platforms are moved, anchored, and in some cases stacked; in others, juxtaposing multiple hulls creates larger surface areas. Three ‘islands’ are established in proximity: one for mariculture and one for agriculture, with a desalination plant situated between them and serving both of them.

The Maricultural Island’s farming operations include an algae development basin, rice cultivation, and a fish hatchery, with a chute for releasing mature fish into the sea. On a lower level, tourists can buy fresh ocean produce in a market and visit a diving pool before reboarding the vessel that ferried them to this destination.

Agricultural Uplands, the second island, has two plateau-like levels, with programming areas for intensive culture as well as a seasonal market, kitchen and food processing area on the lower and passive market gardening on the deck above. Laboratories are concentrated on smaller platforms elevated above and offset from the market gardening fields.

The third island, the Desalination Plant, offers visitors an opportunity to do more than gawk at labs and machinery: its top deck houses fruit tree gardens and an open-air swimming pool with expansive views.

In her thesis, Tyana Laroche describes abandoned oil platforms as “marine carcasses” and resists the idea that these megastructures deserve the “revalorization” of being allowed to deteriorate into offshore industrial ruins. Far better to repurpose them as more positive models of production, consumerism, and distribution—without enlisting design to obscure their environmentally problematic past lives. Mechanical Landscape, she writes, is “a condensation of layers in constant relation to one another, formalizing a balance between life, death and the rebirth of a neglected structure.”

Location: Gulf of Mexico

Advisor: Jean Verville

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WINNER OF A 2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

“This project tells an incredibly poetic story about the relationship between machines and ecology. The drawings are stunning. The longer you look at them the more you see. I’m not clear on the architectural implications, but there is incredible artistry here.” – Michael Moxam, juror

In the drive for ever-increasing yields, the adaptability of traditional farming has given way to way to industrialized agriculture. Large-scale machines have remade farm landscapes into gridded monoculture sites, geared towards efficient resource production and extraction.

But with the climate crisis creating turmoil in ecosystems, these liminal farm landscapes will become pivotal zones of ecological transition. How can they be remade as places of natural succession that support the interconnected futures of plant, animal and human communities?

This thesis proposes a speculative future in which different kinds of machines support the health of hybrid, complex agricultural landscapes. The new ecology of machines includes several types of small-scale devices.

Throughout the year, floating drones and soil sensors monitor the landscape, creating a comprehensive almanac of its characteristics and potential. Each spring, gyroscopic spinning tops carve delicate trenches across open fields for seeds and fertilizer. The planting patterns interweave different types of crops, informed by data from the network of drones and sensors to make the most of light, symbiotic adjacencies, wind pollination, and weed competition.

After sowing, the seeding machines are re-purposed as the pendulum-like blades of tiny weeding and harvesting machines. They roam the landscape in search of weeds, touching the earth lightly and cutting above the ground. As the crops are ready to harvest, the same machines reap ornate patterns into the fields, laying cut crops into careful windrows to dry.

At season’s end, collection machines with rotating armatures pull debris from the landscape, meandering until they fold under their own weight. The accumulated material decomposes into closely monitored compositions of compost and microbiota.

As uncertain tides push and pull environmental thresholds, deep ecological thinking will help create resiliency. No matter the future, rethinking the way we divide and cultivate productive landscapes is an essential step to riding the waves of change to come.

Location: Charlie Lake, British Columbia

Advisor: Thena Tak

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WINNER OF A 2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

“This was a very interesting study of what’s going to happen with the thawing permafrost in Arviat, and the architecture of a new type of collective living that could form on this unsettled ground. It evidences interesting research on the location’s housing crisis, environmental crisis, and cultural crisis, including visiting the site multiple times throughout the year.” – Susan Fitzgerald, juror

Ground in the Canadian Arctic is continuously shaped by dramatic seasonal cycles, extreme weather, and deep geological processes of glaciation and retreat. In the past, remote communities in the Inuit homeland of Nunavut coped with this geological instability through traditional knowledge of climate and territory. Then the North was aggressively transformed by systematic federal government interventions, including forced relocations of Inuit. Canadian visions of modernism imposed new patterns of settlement and spaces at odds with the fluidity of the land. Many current Arctic communities have outlasted the mines, trading posts, and military installations that dictated their location. And now the warming trends of climate change are increasingly destabilizing the frozen soils, or permafrost, on which these communities are constructed.

Local building practices in Arviat, Nunavut were the catalyst for this thesis project. Its author, Jason McMillan, made two research trips to the community and observed how its residents were engaging in collective projects that challenge the neutralized mapping, master planning and housing conventions that were imposed on Arviat. Stories and geological observations shared by community members inform the three design strategies that McMillan puts forth as more flexible and adaptable alternatives to current planning and design practices of the Nunavut Housing Corporation.

The first tactic, Fluid Geology, proposes block-and-wedge foundations surmounted by decks as a means of introducing a “layer of flexibility” between existing structures and thawing permafrost. McMillan also advocates planning that responds to hydrological features instead of conforming to a strict grid. The second tactic, Collective Ground, reconsiders buildings as a means of forming collective spaces, both indoors and out. The third, Lived Boundaries, explores how traditional relationships cross the physical boundaries designed into the town, connecting open space, structures and landscape by social and seasonal rhythms.

McMillan returned from Arviat convinced that much could be learned from the “informal and often messy collective projects” undertaken by the community to adapt the built environment they have to the unsettled ground beneath it. These projects offer great lessons, he observes, to “designers seeking to unsettle their own practices.”

Advisor: Lola Sheppard

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WINNER OF A 2020 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

“This project shows a very good understanding of the urban context and existing materiality. It didn’t try to achieve a very spectacular architecture—but that is the essence of Milton Park. While sometimes students want to do a big gesture, this student was confident enough to produce a calm approach.” – Stephan Chevalier, juror

Montreal’s Milton Park neighbourhood, east of McGill University’s main campus, has a coherent but messy built fabric that is part of its charm. Shaped by divergent social, morphological and demographic changes, its buildings range from Victorian townhouses to modernist high-rises.

Milton Park as Found adopts a realist attitude, exploring the possibilities of seizing this diverse built history as it is. It aims to study everything that has accrued in the area’s streetscapes—whether from the historical or recent past, whether beautiful or trite—and use it as a rich substrate from which to design.

The project proposes a medley of renovations and additions to Ballet Divertimento, an existing dance school on Milton Street. The school currently occupies the former École Notre-Dame-de-la-Salette, constructed by architect Paul G. Goyer in 1961.

The new project is deliberately explored in fragments, rather than as a singular architectural entity, probing the possibilities of engaging with a constellation of existing elements of all scales in the neighbourhood. Through subtle transformations, the project elevates ordinary moments in Milton Park, and makes incremental improvements to the existing urban fabric.

These interventions include weaving a new series of spaces into the school, including a central atrium, dance ateliers, a reception area, a café, a patio, and a secret garden. Many of the spaces are deliberately ambiguous in use: a rehearsal space might sometimes serve as an office, or as something else entirely. Particular attention is paid to how the addition occupies the spaces between buildings, and creates intriguing interstitial spaces of its own.

The project’s design, along with its drawings, deliberately blurs the distinction between the existing fabric and new interventions. “So what has really changed?” asks project designer John Jinwoo Han. He hopes that a visitor to the project would answer: “Not much, it’s not too different from what it was before.”

Advisor: Martin Bressani

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WINNER OF A 2019 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Cameron Parkin, University of Waterloo

Advisor: Maya Przybylski

Toronto’s downtown is rapidly densifying. One of the results is that residents have reduced access to biodiverse green spaces, which foster mental health and environmental responsibility. This project aims to move beyond ornamental lawns, exploring a dynamic strategy to creating complex urban habitats for flora and fauna.

The work explores computational methods of modelling networks and habitats that are borrowed from landscape ecology, graph theory, and parametric architecture. It involves simulating the two-dimensional and three-dimensional movement of birds through the city, and using this information to locate and inform a variety of interventions.

The work is divided into three parts, with each part exploring a progressively smaller piece of urban fabric. The first part maps avian habitat networks in Toronto’s downtown and central waterfront. Using layered GIS data and aerial imagery, it creates a “resistance map” showing where birds can most easily travel. High-resistence areas such as highways and tall buildings are lighter in colour, while areas that accommodate birds such as tree canopies and natural ground covers are darker. Simulated birds are deployed into the map at various point to reveal key movement corridors and significant barriers in the urban matrix. This allows a series of intervention types to be located within the network.

The second part explores how these interventions would affect bird movement in the three-dimensional fabric of CityPlace and Fort York. Guided by the initial model, habitat is added with green roofs and places for nesting and perching, and travel corridors are enhanced with street trees, shrubs, and bird-friendly glass frit. The resulting interventions are tested in a 3D model. A evolutionary algorithm allows hundreds of intervention combinations to be tried, to determine which are the most effective in generating connectivity through the area.

The final part of the study composes an artificial habitat that attracts local bird species and acts as a biophilic amenity for residents in CityPlace’s Canoe Landing Park. The habitat is designed by analyzing, deconstructing, and replicating elements from natural areas such as forests, marshes and woodlands areas, then reassembling them using parametric modelling. The resulting assemblies are built on a scaffold of laminated timber ribs, and have specific attributes, such as nesting boxes and planters, that mimic key elements
of natural habitats.

Jury Comments

Rami Bebawi :: This goes beyond analyzing the problem and starts thinking of solutions.

Joe Lobko :: An imaginative exploration and analysis of the evolving life of birds in our densifying cities, proposing strategies for more effective understanding of behaviours and impacts while offering creative suggestions for the evolution of bird-friendly habitat.

Cindy Wilson :: This thesis takes a rigorous approach to a pertinent aspect of sustainability that is part of the health of urban environments. As cities continue to grow, how can we mutually benefit and exist with nature?

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WINNER OF A 2019 CANADIAN ARCHITECT STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE

Brandon Eli John Bergem, University of Toronto

Thesis Advisor: John Shnier

The Museum of Natural History to Ultima Thule engages the histories of two Arctic islands. One is an archaic fantasy; the other exists in reality, but is challenged by environmental change.

For centuries, the northernmost regions of the world were mysterious. The supposed discovery of a remote island called “Thule” led to rampant speculation about the north. The island would be mythologized as “Ultima Thule” (furthest Thule) by poets, cartographers, and early explorers. It came to symbolize the edge of the unknown world.

Today, the actual Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard hosts the world’s most northern permanent settlement. The islands were discovered in 1596, and featured in a revised edition of Gerardus Mercator’s arctic projection map. Svalbard is a peculiar island, as the most remote location in the world. Claims of sovereignty are disputed. Century-old detritus—remnants from the age-of-exploration and early exploitation—have become cultural monuments. The landscape is nearly barren of vegetation, but carries fossilized imprints of grand primordial ferns. Scientific instruments littering the mountains attempt to register the changing climate, while Russian and Norwegian coal mines continue their work of extraction.

Highly documented and surveyed, Svalbard has eliminated the notion of Thule as an off-the-map marker of the unknown. At this same moment of cartographic clarity, the archipelago is being consumed by climate change. Mountains are crumbling from rain-induced landslides, glaciers are retreating from view, and the descending permafrost is destabilizing the ground. Like the mythical Thule, Svalbard’s future is uncertain.

This thesis posits the disappearance of the islands as an inevitability. It uses drawing as a means to explore, re-imagine and re-constitute the realities, legends, devastation and plausible futures of the island.

The drawings depict the familiar, authoritative context of a natural history museum. In the fictitious Museum of Natural History to Ultima Thule, the imagined future is represented as the past. The chronicles
of Svalbard are told through ten theatrical mise-en-scènes, each presenting part of the museum. Dioramas show taxidermied animals deformed by toxins, the luxurious Hotel at the End of the World being consumed by rising sea levels, and an army of drones attempting to shore up the island’s crumbling rock faces, pebble by pebble.

The museum itself is shown as being in a state of incomplete assembly, suggesting that catastrophe has already struck. Visible scaffolding supports landscape facsimiles and partially installed backdrops, spilled paint and wet floors hint at melting glaciers, boxed-up taxidermy renders the scenes slightly uncanny.

The Museum of Natural History to Ultima Thule explores drawing and architecture as mediums for storytelling. It reflects on Svalbard’s real complexities as the stuff of future mythology.

Jury Comments

Rami Bebawi :: These images are so beautiful. They have the capacity to embody both critical statements and nostalgic historical compositions.

Joe Lobko :: I could linger over these incredible drawings and the tales they evoke for hours. This is a magical dissertation on place and time.

Cindy Wilson :: If myth is the past and fantasy the future, this project makes me ponder how our fantasies become myth.

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