Top choice for the New Park at 229 Richmond Street West

  • Wàwàtesí by West 8 Urban Design and Landscape Architecture

    Votes: 3 7.1%

  • Waasamoo-mitigoog / Electric Forest by Public City

    Votes: 2 4.8%

  • OneSky by PMA Landscape Architects and SLA

    Votes: 35 83.3%

  • Nookomis Garden by DTAH

    Votes: 1 2.4%

  • River Park by O2 Planning and Design and OLIN Studio

    Votes: 1 2.4%
  • Total voters
    42
  • Poll closed .
interchange42 said:
The winning design has been announced, and it is 'Wàwàtesí,' from West 8 and team. Front page story is here.

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42
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Ugh, imagine how bad this is going to look when value engineered to smithereens and then poorly maintained/managed by Parks for a few years.
I'm not asking for bland featureless grass and some trees (looks at some of the parks recently built in York Region) ... but thinking about the implementation and management is a real issue.

Also landscape architects - the jaggedy paving with plants growing around/through it never looks good in practice.

A real missed opportunity here, oneSKY looks so much better.
 
$10 says that any lights that make it through the VE phase will be maintained so poorly as to be useless. We may as well imagine and get used to a few dark concrete bunkers.
 
turini2 said:
Also landscape architects - the jaggedy paving with plants growing around/through it never looks good in practice.
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Agreed. Let me add, creating a non-level, living surface, in the middle of a walk way that will be salted and plowed in winter.........does not work; and is a safety hazard as well.

turini2 said:
A real missed opportunity here, oneSKY looks so much better.
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While I wasn't blown away by OneSky; there is no question it is the superior proposal.
 
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Hamiltonian said:
As a landscape architect, I'm not sure how they expect the tiny patches of grass to hold up any better than muddy patches of dirt.
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Agreed.

But also..........a monoculture of white birch in a highly urbanized environment seems really dubious to me. White Birch don't tend to do well in such conditions and a monoculture is an all-in bet.
3 years in, Birch Borer shows up...........there goes all the trees.
 
allengeorge said:
$10 says that any lights that make it through the VE phase will be maintained so poorly as to be useless. We may as well imagine and get used to a few dark concrete bunkers.
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and I suspect the curator will be VE'd and receive the pink slip after the first few projects.. "Focusing on integrating landscape, light, and performance, the design team describe the design as Toronto's first park with a curator that will schedule arts events and installations."
 
busybeaver said:
and I suspect the curator will be VE'd and receive the pink slip after the first few projects.. "Focusing on integrating landscape, light, and performance, the design team describe the design as Toronto's first park with a curator that will schedule arts events and installations."
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I imagine that to make this park work as proposed, the Downtown West BIA will have to hire someone to take on the curatorial duties, and hire maintenance for the park beyond what the City will provide, That may already be in the fine print that I don't have time to search through right now. It may be the case, in fact, that the BIA would be involved with any of the entries, had they won, here. They would probably want to be, since the City has been so awful with park maintenance for the last decade.

And to reinforce and add to what @junctionist said above, I believe it would be idiotic for any of the entries here to win without provisions for there to be restaurant patio areas that spill into the park along the John Street side. We need to be better at that kind of engagement in our public spaces.

42
 
My apologies if this was discussed before somewhere else on the forum, and slightly off topic: But why are projects like this one, Dundas Square, UofT landscape, Don River Park / Lower Don Lands etc, etc, listed under the "Buildings" section of the Forum?

Do they not deserve a category/heading that elevates the "Public Realm / Parks - Landscape / Public Space" into its own category? In someway, it speaks a bit to how we view the design and delivery of the public realm / parks /open spaces in Toronto as secondary and as appendices to "Buildings".
 
I hate to pick on a specific project, but I really have a problem with these types of park designs. Parks are simple, and they don't need a bunch of stuff that looks flashy on a render to function well for the public, pixelated grass/hardscape surfaces included. Putting a giant walkway in the middle makes the space much worse, not better. It's not a cool "feature." Its an obstacle to the average park user and it makes the space smaller and less inviting. There is no great park in the world, nor in Toronto, that is designed like this. All they need is seating, shade, washrooms and the ability to walk through the space in a relatively straight line. This design emulates all the mistakes of Yonge & Dundas square, NPS, and June Callwood all while being way more expensive than it needs to be.

To me, this design is worse than whats there now.
 
Ward8 said:
I hate to pick on a specific project, but I really have a problem with these types of park designs. Parks are simple, and they don't need a bunch of stuff that looks flashy on a render to function well for the public, pixelated grass/hardscape surfaces included. Putting a giant walkway in the middle makes the space much worse, not better. It's not a cool "feature." Its an obstacle to the average park user and it makes the space smaller and less inviting. There is no great park in the world, nor in Toronto, that is designed like this. All they need is seating, shade, washrooms and the ability to walk through the space in a relatively straight line. This design emulates all the mistakes of Yonge & Dundas square, NPS, and June Callwood all while being way more expensive than it needs to be.

To me, this design is worse than whats there now.
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The oneSky design was the better choice imo. But I don’t have big issues w this design. It has good potential. Also, I bet your reaction will be different after viewing the finished park. Love Park had grumblers too. And that’s a great space. But, I do agree with the lousy Yonge Dundas Sq & the awful concrete dreary hell that is Nathan Phillips Sq aesthetic. They are both lacking & horrible. I’m actually surprised that more people don’t crap on NPS, which should be the city’s most important public space.
 
Skyhighzz said:
Also, I bet your reaction will be different after viewing the finished park. Love Park had grumblers too.
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Love Park is a great design and I didn't grumble about it at any point. It's very simple and achieves all the goals a park should achieve. It also doesn't have a wall bifurcating it for no reason.
There are fundamental problems with the park design here that bother me. The north side of the park (with the busiest foot traffic) has entrances, but also has a bizarrely placed, non porous tree line, while the south side has a semi porous wall.

A park this small and busy isn't likely to do well with turf, so it seems like a no brainer to me that the winning recipe would contain things like: porosity to accommodate high amounts of foot traffic, plentiful amounts of seating, a mix of hardscape with protected planters for trees (shade) and other gardens, and bathrooms.

Follow the template of successful parks that are comparable in size, like Love Park, Berczy, St Andrews playground, Sugar beach.
 
This is what's in the budget to deliver this park:

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@AlexBozikovic ............ I don't think that's enough. I can't see it being delivered for that.

The years above are (from the left) 2024, 2025, 2026
 
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