From the Star:
Hume: New waterfront park does double duty
Published On Sat Mar 13 2010
By Christopher Hume
Urban Issues, Architecture
When is a park not just a park? When it's also a water treatment facility.
The best example in this city is taking shape at Sherbourne and Queens Quay. These days, the site doesn't look especially park-like; in fact, it's a sea of mud as work crews pour concrete on the enormous channel that will run the full length of the site carrying clean water to Lake Ontario.
The as-yet-unnamed park, which actually extends north from the shore almost to Lake Shore Blvd., is one of 14 public spaces already constructed under the aegis of Waterfront Toronto, the agency created in 2001 by the three levels of government to oversee revitalization of Toronto's old harbour lands. From the start a decade ago, the organization's strategy has been based on the proposition that if you build the infrastructure, they will come.
But Waterfront Toronto has taken the concept an important step further. As Sherbourne Park – its temporary name – will illustrate so dramatically, in this case, infrastructure won't just make the area inhabitable, it will itself be inhabitable. This notion of using design to transform a public utility into a public amenity has never made more sense than now. It's not new, of course, but the idea that everything we build in a city should do double- (even triple-) duty is one whose time has come.
"The days of the singular perspective are over," argues Vancouver landscape architect Greg Smallenberg. "We're getting more collaborative. I would say that as a profession, landscape architecture has become much more aware of these issues of rationalization of capital costs. This is becoming more popular now. The truth is we've been thinking along these lines a long time. You see this in the blurring of roles; it's an indication that the professions realize we have to rely on each other. We now have road engineers calling us to collaborate on road design. Twenty years ago that would have been unthinkable. That's happening more and more.
"We are in a new world of collaboration. Today the feeling is that if we have to build something anyhow, why not build something worthwhile. Waterfront Toronto really gets that. The politicians are also getting it, which from my perspective is probably the biggest advancement of the last few years."
Smallenberg's firm, Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg, a world leader, won an international competition to design the innovative Sherbourne St. facility. But when the park was first announced last summer, it was something other than innovation that raised eyebrows – the $28.7 million price tag. That's a lot of cash, but keep in mind the bulk of it will be spent on water treatment equipment, not trees and benches.
"These days," he explains, "we take an interdisciplinary approach. The Sherbourne Park team included landscape architects, architects, engineers and an artist, Jill Anholt."
The intention was not simply to incorporate an industrial process – storm water purification – into the park, but also to reveal, even celebrate, that process. At a time when Canada's infrastructure deficit stands at $123 billion, such exposure couldn't be more welcome. These are the systems, usually out of sight and out of mind, that provide the basic urban functions we take for granted but can no longer afford to do so.
And so Sherbourne Park is also the Sherbourne Park UV Purification Facility. Beneath a pavilion designed by Toronto architect Stephen Teeple, water will undergo ultra-violet treatment. It then flows into the channel through three sculptures that rise nine metres above ground. The channel, which will figure prominently in the stormwater management system for the entire East Bayfront stretching from Yonge to Parliament Sts., also includes a biofiltration bed for further cleansing.
Meanwhile, a bit farther east, where the Don River veers to the west, another major waterfront green space, Don River Park, is also unfolding. Designed by leading New York-based landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, this is a neighbourhood park set atop a massive berm, a "flood protection landform" created to eliminate the kind of devastating flooding that occurred when Hurricane Hazel swept through the city in 1954.
Turning a landform such as this into a park may not be a wholly novel idea, but involving landscape architects and other designers in the process right from the start, even putting them in lead positions, has the potential to be transformative and to remake the merely useful into something beautiful.
The public remains understandably skeptical about the prospect of a revitalized waterfront, but contrary to expectations, it's taking shape now. Sherbourne Park, new name and all, will be completed this fall. Don River Park is expected to be underway by May.
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/778688--hume-new-waterfront-park-does-double-duty
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