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Washington Canal: Barrier to Threshold




Jessie Gresley-Jones and Teressa Peill
University of Toronto, 2011

Problem
Washington Canal exists as a physical, psychological and economic barrier between Xavier University Campus and the Gert Town neighbourhood.

Proposal
This design intervention investigates strategies for transforming the canal from Barrier to Threshold. The threshold consists of a set of strategic, tectonic landscape elements that function simultaneously to improve stormwater detention and canal capacity during a storm event, as well as improve the quantity and quality of available civic space and help create a landscape fabric that draws the residential and institutional communities together. The site is divided into sub catchment areas whose boundaries are determined by an effort to re-align the hydraulic and hydrological movement on site. Managed and unmanaged greenspace, parking lots and other impermeable areas are mobilized to achieve stormwater detention to alleviate pressure on the canal and reduce neighbourhood flooding. The series of mobilized spaces, deployed over a three phase, thirty-year timeline will establish tectonic transects pushing and pulling community, water and the user experience to the canal as a threshold.