Re: Robert Fung Leaving TWRC/Central Waterfront Designs
Waterfront winner proclaimed
Jun. 2, 2006. 10:37 AM
CHRISTOPHER HUME
URBAN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST
The winner of the Central Waterfront Design Competition won’t be officially announced until 2:30 this afternoon, but the Star has learned that the jury has unanimously chosen West 8.
Headed by Rotterdam landscape architect Adriaan Geuze, the international team, which includes several Toronto architects, proposed a vision of the waterfront as a place of pedestrians, low-rise villages and thousands of trees that would become the city’s "green foot."
West 8 also suggests that Queen’s Quay Blvd. be cut back from four lanes to two, and the space turned over to people. There would also be a water’s-edge promenade that extends out into Lake Ontario joined by bridges that cross the eight slips located along the waterfront between Bathurst and Parliament streets.
The team’s plans, which went well beyond the competition terms of reference, include the dismantling of the Gardiner Expressway and an underground interceptor tunnel that would clean sewer water before it enters the lake.
Though these planning ideas are not part of the competition itself, they indicate the breadth of the winning scheme.
More than anything, the West 8 proposal saw the exercise as one that goes well beyond simply clearing up the awkward spots where the slips, water and road meet; instead its starting point was the need to reconnect Toronto and the lake and create a sustainable neighbourhood on the edge of the water.
West 8 was chosen from five entries received from Europe, the U.S. and Canada. The official announcement will be made today at 2:30 by politicians representing all three levels of government.
The West 8 entry was the first choice of thestar.com readers who voted in an online poll.
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