Landfill as Laboratory: (Re)Generative Architecture in Rouge National Urban Park

Abstract

This thesis explores architecture’s role as ecological enabler within the degraded landscape of Beare Hill Park, a decommissioned landfill at the edge of Rouge National Urban Park. Framed through the lens of seed conservation, architecture supports ecological research and rehabilitation of this site through temporal mapping, prototyping, and data simulation methods in the design of a dynamic, evolving multi-operative scientific architecture of ex-situ interpretive seedbank and in-situ seed orchards. Grounded in systems ecology, the design investigates how built form can engage with air, water, and soil systems through a regenerative strategy that centralizes local effort in the rehabilitation process while balancing programmatic requirements of scientific research, historical interpretation and leisure. By representing both human and non-human processes in an evolving ecological network, the project reasserts architecture’s role as an active enabler of new ecologies in post-industrial landscapes.