Reimagining Canada’s Main Streets
Transformation from interior spaces to exterior rooms to accommodate all types of groups
By: Akter Azim, Nubras Samayeen, and Mithu Nath
Louis Kahn notably said, “The street is a room by (human) agreement.” Following and expanding on Kahn’s adage, this project revisits Canada’s heritage Main Street. The project envisions interior spaces becoming exterior rooms. Thus, a main street will contain rooms without walls and form an agreeable outdoor or civic home for urban dwellers. Our intervention, as an inclusive process and overplayed programmatic solution, is a patchwork of exterior rooms that accommodate different cultural and immigrant sectors, various age groups, and genders, and most importantly emphasizes accessibility and use by children and adults with disabilities. Taking this pandemic as an impetus for improved solutions, the method of this design intervention emphasizes community and individual public opinion. In the pandemic era, the imaginations, visions, and thoughts of children, adults and the elderly are collected through various digital and social mediums (details in drawings). Also, this project includes different community religious and ethnic community groups (for this project we sought out the Bangladeshi, Indian and Asian communities) to accommodate and reflect on their identity formation through spatial reclamation in a temporal manner. These integrative social ideas are the design-aid in generating an algorithmic-model that is the core essence of our intervention. It is a resilient idea that is based on malleable coded systems to create multiplicity. The project promotes socio-cultural conglomeration, economic and environmental sustainability that will promote healthier main streets and pluralist urban environments.
Details
Estimated budget: $5 million CAD for a stretch of one and half block area (between Bullock Dr and Old Wellington St.)
Materials and fabrications:
URBAN TREE - RCC seating - Steel frame & polycarbonate sheet
FAMILY CAFE - Wooden chair Table.
SQUARISH BENCH _ RCC seating.
OUTDOOR GROUP SEATING _ Wooden chair Table, RCC seaing.
OUTDOOR GYM FACILITY _ Steel Frame.
ZEN SPOT _ RCC
AMBLESIDE CURVED BENCH _ Steel frame & wooden bench
BUNED HILLS/ WAVE DECK FOR KIDS PLAY _ Wooden deck.
OUTDOOR CRADLE ROCKING CHAIR _ Steel frame & wooden seating
COLORFUL FLOATING UMBRELLA _ Polycarbonate sheet.
LOOP BENCH _ Molded Polythylene.
Installation and other services:
URBAN TREE - A canopy bench with heat & cell phone facility
FAMILY CAFE - Existing parking space & in between build space becomes family café.
URBAN PATIO - Existing parking space becomes outside room
SQUARISH BENCH - A seating facility containing different level for kids & adults.
OUTDOOR GROUP SEATING - Beside any retail shop & in between build space.
COLOURFUL FLOATING UMBRELLA - Defining the node point.
Contact
For more information, email the primary contact for this submission.
