North Design Office
Toronto, ON CANADA |
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The Reassembling Ecologies proposal for Envisioning Gateway is based on an intense understanding of existing conditions and in-depth knowledge of optimal conditions for strengthened aquatic and terrestrial ecologies in and around the Gateway National Recreation Park. Running parallel with this is the need for a stronger definition of programs and activities for park users and an enhanced structure that allows for sensitive ecologies and recreation to coexist. Reassembling Ecologies attempts to repair and rebuild the deteriorating aquatic and terrestrial ecologies in and around Gateway through the rethinking and reorganizing of territories and infrastructures to better accommodate future uses and ecological flows.
The concentration and intensification of active recreation along a central spine in Floyd Bennett Field, utilizing the existing historic central runway, is the reorganizing strategy. The goal with this move is to liberate vast tracts of land that currently have sprawling, ill-defined, uses. Intensifying activity and concentrating its footprint enables larger tracts of sensitive terrestrial and aquatic ecologies to flourish with minimal disturbance. The central spine of activity is reinforced with a linear landform. The landform, constructed of material relocated from on-site (primarily the asphalt and concrete from the retired airstrips), performs multiple functions including; gateway to park on a local and regional scale, sound barrier, viewing platform, seating, link through site and as protection from future sea-level rise.
Reassembling Ecologies strengthens both recreational and ecological functions and provides a precedent setting rethinking for Gateway National Recreation Park such that intensive recreation can exist within flourishing ecologies.
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North Design Office is a landscape architecture, urbanism, and design firm. Based in Toronto, the firm was established by partners Pete and Alissa North in 2005. Pete and Alissa both graduated from the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Toronto and from the Master in Landscape Architecture Program at Harvard University. In addition to being partners at North Design Office they are also both Assistant Professors in the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.
North Design Office has developed a praxis where research and theory inform their process based approach to solving complex issues in the environments we inhabit. Their work ranges in scale from site specific art installations to architecture and urban design, with an emphasis on landscape architecture. North Design Office's design strategy is unique to each project and is founded on an intense understanding of site, context and program as the mechanism for transformation. The office is committed to the idea that well designed urban environments and open spaces create vibrant ecologies, communities, and cities.
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