re:siting

Re:siting was a funded research proposal for the 2006 Rethinking and Redefining Social Housing in the City Centre ideas competition hosted by the L.E.A.P. Research Group at the University of Montreal. The project was a collaboration between Evan Saskin, Eric Van Ziffle, and myself.

The mandate of the competition called for a broad reconsideration of notions of social housing. In our scheme we proposed an aggressive reterritorialization of the Lower Donlands area of the Toronto waterfront to transform it from an underutilized industrial park into a viable residential district capable of housing 60,000.


The two images above illustrate our site planning strategy for the proposal. We mapped out a number of key industrial structures that we wanted to preserve and incorporate into the scheme. We mapped out proximity to each of these sites with concentric circles radiating outwords from each of these nuclei. This created a network of intersections and a variety of density which we able to use to generate a weave of vectors across the site. This geometry was used to place housing, with density (height) determined by density yield by the diagramming exercise as well as considerations of existing urban fabric.

[isometric of masterplan]


[masterplan detail]

[section through medium density housing module]