PEOPLE MEET IN PUBLIC: SOCIAL INTERACTIONS IN THE VERTICAL CITY

Abstract

Privatization, urbanization, and advancements in communication technology and social media have contributed to social isolation and the degradation of public space by removing the real-life interactions and chance encounters, essential for producing valuable offline social networks, from urban life. This trend is exemplified by partnerships between private developers and the city resulting in condo lobbies masquerading a public space. Post offices are explored as an opportunity to capitalize on a declining public building typology, with a history of communal use, in order to retain them as public assets amid rampant development. The appearance and strategic location of post offices evoke in our collective memory a valuable notion of civic and public. Postal Station K at Yonge & Eglinton in Toronto serves as a prototypical site. Vertical connections are explored as a means to encourage social interactions between multiple publics accessing the building, by providing visual connections as well as conditions that allow people to transcend typical social segregations that may stunt life in public spaces. This thesis aims to negotiate a symbiosis between latent public buildings and the forces of urbanization through the conception of a new type of vertical public space that catalyzes social interaction.