Star: Plucking a Jewel from Lakefront Drab (Hume)
From the Star:
Plucking a jewel from lakefront drab
Nov. 20, 2006. 06:11 AM
CHRISTOPHER HUME
It's the architects who get all the attention, but more than ever it's the landscape architects who deserve it.
Nowhere more so than on Toronto's sleeping beauty of a waterfront. That became wonderfully clear this week when the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. handed over its annual general meeting to four of the planet's leading landscapists, remarkably, all of them working in this city.
By the time they're finished, this quartet will have transformed the waterfront, and with it, Toronto.
About time, too.
While most eyes have been focused on the so-called Cultural Renaissance — we'll see about that — the TWRC has quietly assembled a team that could make this city's waterfront the envy of the world.
Of course, given the petulance and lack of sophistication of all three levels of government, anything could go wrong between now and then. But if these practitioners are allowed to do what they can, the results will be a splendid renewal of the relationship between Toronto and Lake Ontario.
The four — West 8 (Rotterdam), Field Operations (New York), Claude Cormier Architectes Paysagistes (Montreal) and Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (New York) — are responsible for hundreds of hectares of prime real estate, much of it now a post-industrial wasteland. To them, that's nothing new. Indeed, much of the rebuilding of cities this century is all about reclaiming disused shipyards, abandoned harbours, old factories and the like.
Toronto has no shortage of sites, especially on the waterfront, much of which has sat empty for decades. But done intelligently, these derelict properties could become the saviour of the city in the years ahead.
The possibilities of these modern man-made landscapes are vast. Even a small scheme like Van Valkenburgh's 16-acre Don River Park will anchor a new neighbourhood of 6,000 residential units. Located on the west side of the Don, south of King St. at the east end of an extended Esplanade, the facility will include open lawns as well as sports fields, a marsh, playground, trees and an urban prairie. More than that, the space will be a local park and a city icon despite being cut off, mostly from the south and east. Situated atop a berm now being built to stop flooding, it will begin construction next year.
The biggest of the four projects, Lake Ontario Park, extends 37 kilometres along the shoreline from the R.C. Harris Filtration Plant west to Cherry Beach and the tip of the Leslie Street Spit. Though big at 965 acres, it is long and thin. It will encompass a variety of conditions and features from sandy beaches to thickly treed stands.
"It's all edge," said Ellen Neises of Field Operations. "There's no interior."
Though the master plan won't be ready until early next year, she talked at the meeting about "transects and outposts," ways of moving through the landscape to a wide variety of zones and destinations. The idea is to create a signature park for Canada as well as Toronto. The potential, she said, is enormous.
To the north, Cormier's 46-acre Commissioners' Park will be an essay in the contemporary urban landscape. Using the idea of camouflage, he has devised an approach that allows for an overlay of dedicated spaces — playing fields — with a more "naturalistic" sensibility.
Cormier also worked on HtO, the innovative urban beach now taking form at the foot of Simcoe St.
The fourth firm, West 8, was represented by founder Adriaan Geuze. He and DTAH of Toronto won the competition to redesign the central waterfront last summer. Their proposal will narrow Queen's Quay from four lanes to two and add thousands of trees to the area. It also focuses on the slipheads, which will be expanded and bridged.
The scheme was tested in a 10-day trial last August. Most visitors thought it a success. Work on the central waterfront will start next summer.
Though most of the attention here has been lavished on projects like Frank Gehry's redo of the Art Gallery of Ontario and Daniel Libeskind's addition to the Royal Ontario Museum, the truth is that their works are instantly familiar. By contrast, the landscape never repeats itself; every park is unique. With cities needing renewal more than new buildings, this is good news.
Christopher Hume can be reached at
chume@thestar.ca
AoD
much appreciated.