Cultivating Landscape: A Demonstration Farm in Rouge National Urban Park, Ontario

Abstract

This thesis addresses the role of architecture in the design of large parks, and the role of landscape in the design of architecture. Given the scale and importance of national parks to identity and imagination, how might their design achieve legibility and enhance experience of place, while simultaneously proposing a new space of public engagement? Underlying the thesis is a commitment to occupied, productive landscapes, and architecture as an interface between the public, and processes of production. The study site is the proposed Rouge National Urban Park, located on the eastern edge of the City of Toronto, Ontario; in particular, the design site is the agrarian hamlet of Locust Hill. At the landscape scale, overlaid regional systems serve as organizing principles of the park. At the building scale, landscape is actively constructed to host program, and yield produce. At the human scale, materials engage site history and environmental conditions.