Architecture

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's School of Architecture.

Research outputs are organized by type (eg. Master Thesis, Article, Conference Paper).

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53 North: Tactical Infrastructure in Edmonton
(University of Waterloo, 2017-08-15) Clayton, Bryce; Andrighetti, Richard
Edmonton, Alberta is the northernmost major city in North America, but inappropriate urban form has created a winter culture of avoidance. Long, straight city streets and a proliferation of voids within the downtown urban fabric are characteristic of many American cities, but when this condition is replicated in the far north the negative aspects of the winter season are amplified as arctic winds sweep through the streets and open spaces, and daily activity is driven indoors. As urban design has failed to account for the winter conditions, architecture has overcompensated in its response. Mechanical climate control is overused creating sharply delineated areas of over-protection and total exposure, creating harsh transitions for citizens as they move through built and unbuilt environments. But as the urban design has made winter life more difficult, the voids it has produced can also provide the spaces in which winter life can be embraced. For Edmonton to become a healthy “Winter City” it must attempt new approaches in urban and architectural design to resolve both its lifeless downtown core and the societal rejection of winter. This thesis proposes a new design tool whereby the intrinsic values of snow can be utilized to create winter public spaces to temporarily occupy the urban void. A new structure is proposed where City groups will act as coordinators sanctioning land parcels for urban interventions using the snow on each site and that cleared by the municipal workers, sculpted into basic forms. When used in combination, the forms create protective, desirable micro-climates which inject program and activity into the formerly vacant lots, introducing positive winter activity into the realm of daily life in Edmonton. The iterations in form serve a dual purpose by acting as a testing grounds, discovering new urban and architectural design strategies through experimentation and observation, informing future designs within the city.
Approaching Vertical: A Guide Through Land-Use in Ontario’s Niagara Escarpment
(University of Waterloo, 2018-01-22) Holborn, David; Andrighetti, Richard
Ontario’s Niagara Escarpment is a landscape 450 million years in the making. Over this immense time line, great natural forces of the earth have aggregated, eroded, and carved this landscape, a 725-kilometer scarp face stretching from Niagara Falls to Manitoulin Island, informing much of the land mass in Southern Ontario. Despite the minuscule fraction of geologic time that humans have occupied this region, the scale of our land-use is abundantly evident throughout its depth, from the marks and scars of industrial extractions to the layering of infrastructural erections used to inhabit the land. In a reciprocal fashion, the significance of this landform underlies the urban, social, economic and cultural development of human occupation in the region. The geologic landscape of the Niagara Escarpment forms the backbone of Southern Ontario. Humans are a geological force, from the elemental matter of our physical being to our extended use of the planet’s material resource, our species is rooted in the deep history of the Earth. Likewise, as proposed with the introduction of the Anthropocene epoch, the extended effects of human action are embedded in the immanent future of this world as a stratigraphic layer in its geologic makeup. The landscape is defined by this three-dimensional stratigraphy, at once a homogeneous entity (place) and heterogeneous assemblage (site). Despite these complexities, the understanding of the land is often relegated to its surface, a keen focus on the horizontality of landscape; represented, interpreted and experienced through two-dimensional projections onto a flat plane. The new realities brought forward by the Anthropocene require altered sensibilities towards our understanding of landscape and our agency within it. The development of our contemporary society is caught in a state of acceleration, an exponential curve ever steepening, and we are rapidly approaching a world which exists at a right angle to history. In this accelerated time scale, geology can no longer be considered an exploration of past conditions of the earth, it is becoming more and more evident that the geologic is a present condition which we are actively shaping. The landscape of the Niagara Escarpment is the ideal site through which to explore these emerging sensibilities as it naturally exposes its underlying form on a vertical surface, revealing a stratigraphy of geologic processes that encompasses the transformations of both human and non-human agents. Borrowing conventions from the field of geology to study and understand the world from the side, in section and elevation, and a through a broad range of temporal scales, this thesis seeks to present an alternate approach to the earth’s landscape to include the expanding depths and heights of the “surface” we occupy. Part One of the thesis, A Journey Through Land-Use, forms a collection of stories on the use of the land, relating the complex local histories of this specific landscape to a larger context of landscape interpretation. Part Two, A Stratigraphic Guide to the Niagara Escarpment, brings these revelations into immediacy, formalized in a guide that presents an altered interpretation of the Escarpment landscape through its elevation and section, focusing on the physical and ephemeral depths of the landform as it intertwines with networks of cultural and industrial land-uses. The goal of this localized study is to reveal the broader condition of connections and intersections between the natural world and the humans that build on it and with it, interpreting the geologic not as a thing in itself, but a tracing of these associations through a vast range of temporal and physical scales. Through this interpretation, representation, experience, and use of the land, the landscape is expressed as a complex assemblage of human and non-human factors rather than an ontologically distinct entity. What we create, where we create it, and the material from which it is created is a holistic, geologic being. As we approach new verticals within this world, these sensibilities should guide our agency in the continual transformation of this deep surface.
Brewing a New Community: Redefining local industrial manufacturing within a city
(University of Waterloo, 2020-05-28) Taylor, Meghan Ambre Irene; Andrighetti, Richard
The effects of globalization echo in former factory cities, in their depleted industrial landscapes and their abandoned buildings, creating a disconnect between people, their identities, their communities, and their cities. In recent years, there has been a return of small-scale manufacturing to cities with maker movements and the emerging desire for locally made products led by farmers’ markets and artisans. The purpose of this thesis is to consider how the craft brewery industry is serving as a catalyst for urban change by creating new opportunities to bring people together in post-industrial neighbourhoods. By examining contemporary social needs of the consumer and questioning how a collective hybrid industrial space can create a dialogue between the community and small-scale manufacturers, craft breweries today are trying to find a balance between production and social programmatic designs. They are redefining the industrial typology as something more than a factory, but a space of social and cultural production. Through the framework of neolocalism, a new sense of belonging and collaboration can be established through the shared collective identity of place, history and space. This idea is explored through the design of a brewery in the former Dominion Textiles Woolens & Worsted Mill in Hespeler, Ontario. The purpose of the design is to explore how experiential consumption within an industrial artifact promotes the craft of local manufacturing, increases awareness of the surrounding agricultural economies, and creates a new form of tourism for the region.
Claiming the Sky; Rethinking High-Rise Development in the City of Toronto
(University of Waterloo, 2017-04-04) Wright, Shannon; El Khafif, Mona; Andrighetti, Richard
Toronto is following the footsteps of populated urban cities like New York through the extrusion of skyscrapers, transforming Toronto into one of the densest cities in North America. Rapid development of residential density has produced a mono-centric core in which density is favoured over sustainable social neighbourhoods. This “gold rush” of condominium development has superseded the production of public amenity infrastructure to support the density added. Limited vacant lands, coupled with rising housing prices and the ever-increasing population, points to a potential crisis in which the long-term sustainability of these towers is questioned. Towers within the core can no longer afford to maintain the existing inflexible mono-culture, but must include public amenity infrastructure which supports the rapid density and diverse populous. The presence of the tower, soaring far beyond the ground plain, has further amplified the social and physical disconnect of the cities fabric and its inhabitants, while removing the responsibility from developers taking advantage of these trends. This thesis aims to investigate the production of tower “neighbourhoods” through the hybridization of vertical public and private spaces. The proposal aims to question the current high rise trends and limited public amenity infrastructure within the city and provide an alternative model for porous vertical neighbourhoods in which public amenity infrastructure is used to achieve social sustainability within Toronto’s core.
Co-Existing: Exploring Commercial Laneways in Downtown Toronto as a Network for Public Spaces
(University of Waterloo, 2020-09-17) Varriano, Christina; Andrighetti, Richard
This thesis explores the opportunities that commercial laneways offer for integrating new public spaces into Downtown Toronto, in order to increase the amount of public space in the city core and improve social interaction and community engagement. Public spaces are crucial elements of a city that contribute to the overall civic culture and create a better urban environment for people. Their main role is to support public life by providing a physical space outside of home or work for social interaction. Downtown Toronto is becoming increasingly saturated with high-density developments such as tall condominium and office towers, built to accommodate the influx of new residents, yet the city has neglected to adequately develop the network of public spaces. With a current lack of public space in Downtown Toronto, where can these necessary spaces be found within a city whose population density continues to increase, causing a shortage of available land in the downtown core? There are currently around 750 public laneways in Downtown Toronto, with mixed-use and commercial laneways being the primary typologies in the city centre. Laneways serve important functions in the city; supporting services including garbage collection, loading, deliveries and parking for adjacent buildings. As these services only occur once a day or once a week, the laneways are neglected and unused for the majority of time but could be revitalized to provide more value for the city. In the downtown core, laneways can often be found clustered together, within each adjacent block, offering the opportunity to create a network of public spaces. By improving the spatial organization and efficiency of the existing laneways, they could become shared spaces that support both city services and new public spaces. In a dense urban fabric like that of Downtown Toronto, the integration of public spaces must become a top priority, as they play a vital role in creating a more livable and humane city.
Diving in: The Architecture of Urban Lake Swimming
(University of Waterloo, 2019-09-23) Castonguay, Robin; Andrighetti, Richard
In the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, the Lake Ontario waterfront along the Greater Toronto Area was packed with swimmers enjoying its waters. Today, on a hot summer’s day, one could find the beaches, splash pads, and pools packed, but few swimmers in the lake. Fear of swimming in urban lakes, fueled by a history of pollution and social constructs related to health, have propelled us into filtered and chlorinated alternatives. By moving away from using Lake Ontario as a place for swimming, we’ve turned a blind eye to our negative impact on the water. Lake Ontario is safe for swimming most of the time, and yet, there are still many people who would not dare venture in, for fear of health risks. This fear has grown in part from centuries of pollution. The nineteenth century saw deforestation, farming and commercial fishing grow, as well as an urban expansion caused by a dramatic rise in population and industry, all of which resulted in a decrease in the water quality of Lake Ontario. Competition between recreational and industrial activities along Toronto’s waterfront eventually saw swimmers being pushed to the margins of the city. In the twentieth century, the use of phosphate detergents and commercial fertilizer, sewage infrastructure that dumped sewage and rainwater along the region’s waterfront, and the introduction of invasive species led to a growing number of beach closures over the years. Swimmers were thereby forced out of the lake and into more dependable alternatives. However, since the 1970s, thanks to infrastructural upgrades and environmental policies put in place by all levels of government, the quality of Lake Ontario water has improved, but the return of urban swimmers to the lake has not, due to the inherited and antiquated physical environment and social constructs that continue to shape our relationship with it. This thesis aims to bring urban swimming back to Lake Ontario. To realize this, I propose three strategies implemented at a site along the Mississauga waterfront by using architecture to educate the public regarding water quality perception, re-engage people back into the lake, and improve lake ecosystem health.
Embodied Depth: Re-interpreting the Park in St.James Town
(University of Waterloo, 2016-09-26) Kim, Jiyeon; Andrighetti, Richard
The thesis reflects on the loss of slowness and experiential depth in the age of acceleration. The “contrived depthlessness” of modernity – as described by Frederic Jameson– can be traced back to contemporary culture’s fixation with appearances, surfaces, and instant impacts. Modern architecture favors enticing forms and transparency at the price of tactility and the slow unfolding of spaces. Based on the author’s personal experience of tactile spaces within the city, and a reflection on the existing body of literature on places of stillness, the thesis identifies landscape engagement and layered threshold as the main approaches to generating embodied depth within the city. St. James Town in Toronto, a cluster of post-war tower block that serves as a gateway community for many newcomers, is marked by an extreme spatial flatness and anonymity. Harsh delineation of private and public realm hinders inhabitants’ connection with the city and fellow city-dwellers. St. James Town’s notable flatness is rooted in the 1920’s urban planning vision of Towers-in-the-Park, which is described by Le Corbusier as “a city made for speed”. For this reason, it is through the implementation of meaningful social interaction and landscape engagement on this site that the potential for architecture to generate embodied depth can be evaluated. Based on the fundamental value of a deep embodied space as a catalyst of memory and spatial appropriation, the thesis proposes a series of landscape and spatial layers at multiple scales including: an urban block, individual towers, and pocket gardens. The resulting diversity of paths and social programs encourage the inhabitants’ participation and appropriation of the cityscape. The thesis deems that the ethical role of architecture in the age of acceleration is to restore the natural slowness of experience and strengthen our sense of the real.
Envisioning a Future City with Autonomous Vehicles
(University of Waterloo, 2018-09-20) Liu, Brian; Andrighetti, Richard
The evolution and formation of our urban fabric have an inextricable relationship with transportation and urban mobility. The revolution in speed and power of transportation as a result of the automobile in the early 1900’s brought about radical changes in how cities were designed and constructed. City streets, previously built for horse-drawn vehicles and foot traffic, were modernized with asphalt and segregated for the sake of speed and convenience. Parking lots, garages and gas stations were carved out of the city fabric to support the population’s addiction and dependence on it as the ultimate form of movement. Expansive highways and extensive networks of arterial thoroughfares were put in place as cities began to undergo urban sprawl. As North American cities have evolved and developed around the use of automobiles, the requirements to support its use have become increasingly oppressive to other forms of city life. However, an upcoming revolution in transportation and urban mobility, ushered in by the development of autonomous technology, will present urban designers with new opportunities to re-evaluate the relationship between motorists and the city. Autonomous technology has the potential to completely redefine the rules regarding the spatial requirements of automobiles and how they operate within the city. It is widely believed that AV (autonomous vehicle) technology will encourage car sharing, shifting the business model from that of predominantly individual car ownership to a service based model, resulting in a significant decrease in number of vehicles on the streets. The efficiency of AVs will also drastically reduce the amount of space required to operate vehicles, allowing for a reduction in traffic congestion and road sizes. Another consequence of AV technology will be the reduction in need for parking, as a result of car-sharing opportunities and the possibility for vehicles to perpetually be in operation. This thesis explores the implications of AVs on the urban fabric and aims to direct urban design towards incorporating AVs towards a more equitable future. The city of Toronto will be used as a lens for envisioning how a future urban landscape incorporating AVs may take shape. The city currently suffers from immense friction between the overbearing requirements of automotive infrastructure and daily city life. Accidents involving motorists and cyclists are increasingly a problem and efforts to limit the range of the automobile within the city are becoming popular. It is estimated that one third of land in Canadian cities are for cars that aren’t even moving, removing land that could otherwise be allocated to additional housing or retail space. Toronto is putting its best foot forward towards a future with AVs though with investment from all levels of government, academia and private entities. The thesis studies the impact of the automobile on a variety of actors and spaces within the city and proposes visions of how the ubiquity of AVs may change the inherent structure of typical typologies in our city today. The work serves as a guideline in how we may design a more equitable city as a result of the opportunities presented from AVs. The advent of autonomous vehicles is inevitable and the visions proposed serve as a porthole into what may become reality within just a couple of decades.
Geographies of Urban Filth
(University of Waterloo, 2019-01-23) Zhang, Liyang; Andrighetti, Richard
This thesis studies how our cultural understanding of dirt and cleanliness are bound to issues of class and race and how they are manifested within urban and spatial design. Boundaries are formed between clean and dirty, familiar and foreign, us and them, through the rejection of matter that is disturbing or threatening to us. The city carries with it multitudes of identities, consequently forming divided groups and communities within spaces of belonging and exclusion. Thus, the thesis proposes a theoretical approach which questions our current conventions and practice of categorizing spaces, unearthing and bringing us in touch with the rejected ‘other’ within the city and within ourselves. This thesis grounds itself on existing ideas of identity and otherness by Julia Kristeva, R.D Laing, Krzysztof Wodiczko and Mary Douglas. In Julia Kristeva’s essays on abjection, she describes abjection as the discomfort caused when impurities and contamination become a threat to one’s own identity and order. It is when borders that are meant to protect us from the other, become ambiguous. The inherent fear of the abject breeds an obsession for purity which erases opportunities to engage with and understand those other to ourselves. These ideas of the self and the other, cleanliness and dirt, are explored through the intervention of the North Toronto Wastewater treatment plant central to three physically and socially disconnected neighborhoods of different income levels and ethnic groups. The treatment plant sits hidden and disguised below city level within the Don Valley ravine, collecting and filtering wastewater from these neighboring communities and releasing it back into the Don Valley River. Mary Douglas examines our cultural understanding of dirt asserting that dirt only exists through our categorization of space. Materializing these ideas into spatial design, the design proposal seeks to challenge the tension that the pure vision of the city has with its dirtier and wilder counterpart which is the wastewater treatment plant, the ravines, and the sewers. The design proposes the breaking down of boundaries between perceived “clean” and “dirty” spatial and social constructs with the insertion of a public space and bath within the wastewater treatment facility. The departure from the safety of the familiar city, and entrance into ambiguous marginal territories, allows one to experience moments of vulnerability where the questioning of one’s own identity and reflection of one’s own strangeness allows for a deeper understanding of the other. With the appropriation of the wastewater treatment plant, the strangeness of oneself within the foreign environment allows the stripping of borders to confront the strangeness of another.
A Living Room for Milton
(University of Waterloo, 2020-09-17) Hu, Rui; Andrighetti, Richard
Milton, Ontario is one of many smaller Canadian cities that has absorbed the sudden growth brought on by a combination of the lack of affordable housing prices and access to major employment lands in larger urban centres. In the process of this growth, the city has begun to run out of space for sprawl due to its unique geography, and is now looking to densify its downtown core. However, what is left in the middle of the city has long been neglected, empty of character or identity. The few built projects in the newly delineated city centre demonstrate a future indistinguishable from the present, where more profit driven and introspective developments will stake their claim. Within this context, this thesis looks to community building as a way to restitch the fractured landscapes of Milton, and to reclaim the identity of a new city centre for its citizens. The thesis begins with a photoessay that I have captured and curated over the span of 2019. It is a study of the state of communities in Milton, and a critique of their degradation. This critique is then addressed by four principles derived from a series of successful projects and contextual conditions. Finally, the thesis proposes two major interventions for Milton’s urban centre. First is the creation of a public park and rail-side mobility lane that link the public spaces of Milton. And second, a reimagined high school for the arts and public theatre as a community hub. In its entirety, the designs aspire to create a dignified public space of community, learning, and culture through accessibility, transparency, and collaboration.
Living, Together:Tools for Building an Intergenerational Community
(University of Waterloo, 2018-04-23) Woo, Janice; Andrighetti, Richard
Population aging is poised to become the most critical global demographic shift of this century. Particularly in highly developed regions, the proportion of older adults is growing more quickly than other age groups as a result of rising life expectancy coupled with falling birth rates. Simultaneously, rural flight and the continuing growth of cities worldwide have resulted in more than half of the global population residing in urban areas for the first time in history. The intersection of these two patterns raises questions about how older adults fit into the existing urban narrative. In cities like Toronto, where the housing market is highly competitive and supply is focused on high-density housing targeted at young urban professionals, older adults are tacitly rejected from dense urban areas due to inadequate housing options. As they age and become unable to maintain a home independently, older adults become even more starved for choice and must turn to senior-specific housing. The mainstream condo market also fails to accommodate the growing number of Canadians who live in non-nuclear households, such as multi-generational families. To sustain a continually aging, urbanizing, diversifying population, Toronto’s housing market must aim to create more intergenerational communities, guided by a set of design principles that generate welcoming spaces for people of all ages and abilities. Using Toronto as a case study, this thesis deploys an intergenerational housing tool kit in the form of a mid-rise building located on the current site of a municipal surface parking lot in Kensington Market.
The Making of Chang-Shin District: A Study in Top-Down and Bottom-Up Urban Development
(University of Waterloo, 2016-01-18) Yang, Hyunjoon; Andrighetti, Richard
This thesis studies the process of urban development as a mass phenomenon involving top-down and bottom-up paradigms, which work as a whole to achieve distinct characteristics seen in urban neighbourhoods. In this study, the top-down paradigm describes the ways in which the governing authorities frame a neighbourhood’s development by controlling major urban factors affecting the overall city, whereas the bottom-up paradigm describes the ways in which individuals collectively build up their own neighbourhood through emergent patterns resulting from the decisions of each resident. In the final analysis, the workings of top-down and bottom-up urban development can be described as a cooperative process, where the on-going dialogue between the two paradigms allow them to work synergistically. As a key place of industry and commerce throughout Seoul’s history, Chang-Shin has maintained its historical and cultural characteristics even in the midst of the powerful forces of modernization that have changed the face of the city as a whole during the twentieth century. Remarking on the district’s unique characteristics and its complex urban structure, this thesis probes around three questions: how did the district come to be? How does it function now? And how could the existing urban characteristics be effectively utilized to enrich the urban life in the district? The intent behind the thesis is to analyze the rich and intricate urban phenomena observed in Chang-Shin, and further, to propose a modest design strategy that could improve the use of the district as a whole through working with local, small-scale components within the existing urban environment. The urban analysis categorizes the informal characteristics of Chang-Shin into programmatic and spatial types, within which the design proposal distinctly focuses on public space types as key urban elements where both the urban characteristics and social functions of the district are vividly manifested. At a time when the cultural authenticity of Seoul’s urban environment has diminished drastically, acquiring clearer knowledge of Chang-Shin’s urban structure and development process is critical for successfully managing the meaningful cultural heritage in the city.
När: Constructing a Sensory Concentration Space
(University of Waterloo, 2020-05-27) Angardi, Vantar; Andrighetti, Richard
När: Constructing a Sensory Concentration Space presents a work that contemplates, designs, and materialises the notion of public personal space. Modern society often leaves us alienated from ourselves. This thesis is an exercise in constructing a restorative environment complementary to daily life. The fruit of this process is a personal pod I named När, derived from the word for “pomegranate” in Farsi, the symbol of vivacity and solace. Experience is a point of departure and arrival. It is the path between the fact and abstraction, a pure product of the mind provoked by an external event. När fashions a bespoke experience for a self to arrive at a sense of inner peace. This work aspires to reproduce this trajectory and describes the process by tracing the interaction between the mind and the sensing body. Striving to resolve the paradox of privacy and comfort in a dynamic public space, this two-part fabrication set explores the importance of the restorative niche and constructive rest. Through the juxtaposition of conventional and alternative relaxation and therapy methods, these pods provide a moment to disconnect, repose, and reflect inwardly. They become a personal space to meditate, nap, have a private conversation, or write an email, pivoting on the significance of comfort, security, and warmth. Additionally, this thesis evolves apace with the intent to stay environmentally conscious throughout its course, materials, and manufacture. Felt and reclaimed plywood thus become the principal components of the design. This book reconstructs the design process for När: from concept to production.
The Other Place: Building A Retreat Of One's Own
(University of Waterloo, 2017-04-17) Benninger, Brock; Andrighetti, Richard
How is one to ground themselves in an increasingly virtual and abstract world? The Other Place offers a complementary environment to daily life. Here one can establish the necessary critical distance from the conditions which define day to day life, and gain the perspective required to position one’s self within, or against, these conditions. Interpretations of The Other Place, beginning with the ideology of Otium as expressed through the Roman villa, continue today, varying widely across cultures, regions and individuals. The Other Place, then, can be understood as representative of characteristics that are at once general, and quite specific, reflective of broad contextual considerations, and the particularities of its occupant. The rich and complex process of designing and building a retreat of one’s own, in the tradition of the Ontario Cottage, on an island property three hours northeast of Toronto is used to engage with, in a rich and tangible way, the architecture and understanding of the retreat as a complementary environment necessary in contemporary life. The act of building leads to an examination of how building and self are inseparable. Building, then, becomes a means of architectural and self understanding. As The Other Place facilitates a wholeness in contemporary existence found through its experience, so too is a wholeness in architectural education gained in the pragmatic relationship between theory and practice found in moving from the studio to building site and applying knowledge gained from one to the other.
Post-Oil +15: Designing an "Urban Campus" in Downtown Calgary
(University of Waterloo, 2018-02-20) Chow, Jacqueline; Andrighetti, Richard
Calgary, Alberta is a city that is economically dependent on the petroleum industry. The inevitable boom and bust cycle surrounding the petroleum industry frequently disrupts Calgary’s socioeconomic health. Since the most recent downturn in 2014 caused by a drop in oil prices, the downtown region has suffered from a decline of buildings, jobs and population. As the administrative centre of the petroleum industry, the city core has been depleted of activity both in the public realm and in private office towers. The desolate state of downtown Calgary is not merely the result of the instability of the oil market, but is also due to the lack of success of the “+15 system” in creating a cohesive urban centre. The +15 system, a network of walkways which connect office towers through a series of elevated bridges, removes the pedestrian from the streets and renders the public realm inactive. The question of economic sustainability and urban renewal has challenged the policies of Albertan politicians, with many advocating strengthening alternative industries outside of oil and gas. As a response to this potentially diverse future economy, this thesis explores how the modern university can actively engage in the process of industry diversification by creating spaces that connect academic, social and economic activity. By transforming the +15 system from an isolated path into an “urban campus”, this proposal aims to activate and connect the horizontal public and vertical private realms.
Power, Architecture, Transition: Creating a Safe Space for Victims of Domestic Violence.
(University of Waterloo, 2018-01-22) Semenova, Natalia; Andrighetti, Richard
This thesis examines issues of poverty and homelessness in Toronto, specifically focusing on the needs of women and children who are the most vulnerable group and are homeless as a result of being victims of domestic violence. The thesis reflects on the power of architecture, relating to the limits of a physical environment created by an institution and how this effects rehabilitation and empowerment for shelter residents. This is a polemical thesis which creatively engages in the discussion of how informed design paired with an enlightened service model can create a positive implication on residents’ recovery. The traditional and institutional notion of the shelter, with its objective of correction, is not capable of extending beyond offering accommodation, to address the questions of fundamental concerns to our society. Violence against women is a crime that exists in secrecy. Survivors of domestic violence remain invisible, without a visible place to speak, without a place to tell their own stories. Dialogue is transformative. Telling invokes transformation.(i) In this context, a shelter can become a space of resistance. This thesis proposes a model for designing a shelter that is based on transformation, rather than adaptation. A model that openly instills invention and dialogue. A model that can question the relationship between personal and public. The aim of this project is to allow for architectural affordance created through affect and syntax. By looking at program possibilities, such as thresholds and gradients of privacy, this thesis proposes an approach that mediates the relationships between shelter residents, their community, and the surrounding neighborhood.
PRELOADING : A Transformative Approach to Flood Preparation and Relief
(University of Waterloo, 2019-01-23) Zhang, Anqi; Andrighetti, Richard
For islands and coastal cities, the body of water that nourishes the land can easily become a leading source of threat. Natural disasters are mostly unpredictable and often have devastating impact on life and property. Although intensive tsunami inundations rarely occur, annual recurring flooding caused by rising water levels and coastal inundation is a common problem. People are often repeatedly trapped in flooded homes or are forced to quickly evacuate to inadequate temporary shelters. Two common approaches to flood threat are to build permanent barriers or to physically distance people from the water. However, as the water is essential to the livelihood of islands and coastal cities, these approaches often create more harm than good, destroying the normal beneficial relationship between the people and the water. Damage to homes and the destruction of communities are often inevitable, and thus require large amounts of material and time for post-disaster reconstruction. Since external resources are expensive and difficult to transport during times of need, the lack of immediate internal response to sudden natural disasters can cause severe delays in the disaster relief process and hinder the future redevelopment of the community. Consequently, the urgent issue is how to incorporate flood readiness into the built environment. How do we prepare ourselves for the occurrence and recurrence of flooding in coastal cities? This thesis proposes that, in designing for disasters, the architect’s objective should be to design buildings that can respond to, recover from, and be resilient against water inundation. This thesis investigates a new strategy for flood protection and relief within the context of Port Alberni, British Columbia. The aim is to establish interconnected relationships between pre- and post-disaster buildings, materials, and resources. This means designing existing architecture in public space to contain the material and programmatic capacity to partially withstand flooding and strategically transform into spaces for flood relief. These, in turn, contribute to the rebuilding of a resilient community. Daily public interactions with these architectural elements can also preload the residents with disaster awareness and knowledge for disaster relief. The design aims to reduce the gap between the urgent need for shelter and the speed of reaction to flood events, at the same time, create an architectural syntax that constructs place and brings people back to the water.
REBUILDING OUR WATERS: An alternative view of Ontario cottage country through models of community engagement and shared environmental stewardship.
(University of Waterloo, 2021-09-10) Spasov, Hannah; Andrighetti, Richard
Cottaging is a ‘summer-home’ tradition for many Canadian families and plays an important role in Ontario’s cultural and provincial identity. The North-Hastings – East Haliburton area is a popular cottage destination; however it is also a place of struggle and hardship. There are socioeconomic and geographical tensions resulting from inequalities between local residents, Indigenous communities, seasonal cottagers, and the ecological landscape. This thesis considers each group’s history, contemporary situation, and social relationships within the context of the broader region. In the early research stage, a contentious through-line became immediately evident across each stakeholder group: that is the lake, its shores, and who can access them. Here, architecture navigates these complex social dynamics by reimaging shoreline locations as models for community engagement and shared environmental stewardship. Four design proposals were developed in conjunction with real-world community initiatives at sites along Baptiste Lake, Ontario. Each concept addresses one of the stakeholder’s plights while still being open to all other groups. The goal has been to create spaces that celebrate the landscape without forgetting the people integral to its formation and continued survival. So far very little research has been conducted about Southern Ontario cottaging and its effects on local communities. Their struggles are often glossed over or outright ignored in municipal planning and property development. Although these proposals are hypothetical, they work to motivate realistic change in Ontario’s cottage country.
Returning Wilderness: Centre for Environmental Education
(University of Waterloo, 2018-09-21) Khan, Snober; Andrighetti, Richard
We live in a time when much of the natural world is lost in the wake of human agency. No place on earth today remains untouched by human influence. This thesis is an attempt to find wilderness in the Anthropocene. To urbanised people most importantly children, the source of food and the reality of a deeper nature are becoming more abstract. Lacking direct experience with nature, children begin to associate it with fear and catastrophe rather than joy and wonder. Public education is enamored, even mesmerized, by what might be called silicon faith: a myopic focus on high technology as salvation. In the presence of these ideologies, it is imperative that we rethink school nature programs beyond the classroom and field trips. We must deploy natural preserves for a hands-on learning method with schools designed for environmental and ecological education. The Leslie Street Spit, with its abundance of ecological diversity is a befitting location for such an intervention. It exists as a unique form of wilderness in the city of Toronto and an example of anthropogenic character of our contemporary world. It is well suited to serve as an informative playground and education tool for children to discover their environment in its most natural form. Experiential education and nature-based experiences provide individuals of all ages with a unique and powerful opportunity to immerse themselves in the natural world in a constructive and beneficial manner. It allows them to explore several relationships including connections to oneself, connections to others, and connections to the land. These relationships, especially when created at a young age, have the potential to significantly increase personal wellbeing by providing an avenue for healthy development and exploration, fostering interpersonal relationships, and instilling core environmental values. Connecting children and youth to our natural world is therefore essential.
Tracings: Unraveling Home in the Diaspora
(University of Waterloo, 2019-05-28) Dalla-Ali, Haneen; Andrighetti, Richard
Tracings: Unraveling Home in the Diaspora presents works that contemplate the notion of home, post-migration. Inspired by my family’s journey from the Middle-East to Canada, the thesis examines ways in which the juxtaposition of memories and spatial encounters can explore the hybridized domestic identity of an Iraqi-Canadian, living in the suburbs of Southern Ontario. For migrants, spaces they leave behind are solely accessible through memories, photos, and video calls with loved ones back home, whereas spaces they confront upon arrival remain distant and unfamiliar. Through the lenses of memory, experimentation, sensation, and encounter, I revisit the domestic spaces of my past and present, and respond to them using sketches, video recordings, photos and making ventures. Aiming to unravel a layered perception of home today, I juxtapose gauzy childhood memories where I play in the shade of the trees in my grandparents’ garden in Baghdad, with a recent encounter with Cooksville Creek, a landscape feature adjacent to my first Canadian home in Mississauga. Striving to resolve the paradox of home in the diaspora, Tracings, a four-piece textile series, explores the relationship between my recalling mind and my sensing body. In deterritorializing memories of a past home and sensations of a familiar landscape, in each season, and reterritorializing them into each work, I uncover fragments of home. Within each piece, as I unravel coloured thread on a mould of the rocks at the creek, I capture the forces of my encounter with a landscape that is physically accessible to me today. Simultaneously, as I lay down each layer of thread, I dwell upon the garden I played in as a child, a place I no longer experience, yet unceasingly retreat to in my mind. As I complete each piece, I peel away the mould of the landscape, leaving only the forces of my interaction with it behind, made visible through color. Throughout the process, I negotiate the contours of my home in the diaspora, as each piece becomes a temporal, open-ended map of its terrain. My aim, as I create the series, is not to merely represent my memories and the landscape, but to create works that evoke a sense of ambiguity and express the nagging feeling of “in-between”, caused by migration. The work, an intimate and personal endeavor, aspires to speak universally to migrants today, to anyone who ever had to leave home. In addition, the thesis unfolds alongside an analysis of contemporary artists who, in their bodies of work, address issues of displacement and the search for home. Furthermore, the concepts that guide the research are distilled from the works of philosophers who, in their writing, focus on art and architecture’s affect on the beholder and the inhabitant as intrinsic arbitrators between humans and the cosmos. Throughout the thesis, I reflect on what home means to me and where home is today.

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