City Parks, Burning Man, Roofs That Aren't Roofs, Atmospheric Electricity, & Freeway Demolitions

Could city parks bring urban centres back to life? This article looks at new urban parks in St. Louis, Detroit and Houston. And no, the Detroit one is not a (park)ing lot.

Ever wanted to create a 50,000 person city in the middle of the desert, party for a few days and then take it all down again only to do it the following year? Well, maybe you should go to Burning Man.

These architecture students ask the question when is a roof not a roof? (Answer: when it's a floor. Or a wall.)

Things I wish I could pull out of thin air: money, time, really good zingers. Oh, and I guess electricity would be kind of cool, too.

New Orlean's toys with the idea of tearing down an elevated urban expressway. Toronto, take note.

Photo: High Security Flower Pot, Revisted

Weeks ago I photographed this seemingly ridiculous flower pot on Grange St in Toronto. Yesterday I returned and found it had burst forth into the beautiful display you see in the picture above, proving yet again that you can't judge a flower pot by its cage.

Solar Homes, Iceberg Homes, Animal-shaped Cities, Bike Corrals, and Hacked Billboards & Websites

Architect Ralph Disch builds Heliotrope: the world's first energy positive solar home. It rotates to follow the sun where ever it goes. Except at night.

Daniel Andersson imagines the Iceberg house in Finland: a floating house that shows only its tip above water. Soon to follow: the first cruise ship sunk by striking a house.

Southern Sudan unveils plans to build animal shaped cities. It's like animal crackers, except instead of eating them you live inside them.

Vancouver grocery store owner credits the city's "hippy mayor" for on street bicycle corral that fits 18 bikes outside his store on Commercial Drive.

A group of Toronto artist's take it upon themselves to hack illegal billboards and replace the advertisements with their own art. In a twist of irony, the Toronto website illegalsigns.ca has also been hacked, but of a different less artistic nature.

The Architecture of Suicide

A few weeks ago now, I was riding my bike down Bloor Street and eventually came to the Prince Edward Viaduct, where the curious architecture of the bridge caught my attention -- a vast net strung up around us. It was as if we were nestled in the world's largest game of cat's cradle.

As it turns out the "net" is actually something called the "Luminous Veil", an anti-suicide barrier installed in 2003 and designed by Derek Revington at the University of Waterloo. Previous to the installation of the veil the viaduct had garnered the infamous distinction of being the most popular bridge in the city for suicides.

All around the viaduct are signs of its unintended use. On each side of the road at the east end of the viaduct there are large signs with a 24 hour phone number beneath for those who feel they need help. And below those, a conveniently installed phone booth. (On a sidenote: there is also a plaque instructing passers-by that this bridge was the one featured in the opening scenes of Michael Ondaatje's In The Skin of a Lion -- in which a woman falls off the bridge and is saved).

However, 7 years after the installation of the veil, it seems that while suicides from the bridge dropped from an average of 9.3 a year to zero a year, the overall suicide rate for the City of Toronto remained virtually unchanged.

The construction of the veil raises questions surrounding the social function of architecture: Can modifications to the built environment act as a kind of inanimate helping hand? Is the presence of a sign and a phone booth a kind of off-site social worker? And what happens when a piece of infrastructure is hi-jacked for an unintended purpose, especially one so heartbreaking?

It makes me wonder, too, why people choose certain bridges over others. I have heard that people will actually travel some distance to get to the Golden Gate Bridge in order to jump off of it. There is even a film about it called The Bridge. How does that lure get developed? In the report on the Prince Edward Viaduct the authors say:

The argument for putting a barrier on a notorious bridge as a suicide prevention tool is predicated on the idea that individuals contemplating suicide have a preference for that bridge over others in the area. "Suicide magnet" may be a particularly apt term that has been used to describe suicide bridges in the sense that different "magnets" have the ability to exert different amounts of pull and presumably, the more pull a "magnet" exerts the less interchangeable it is with other locations. p. 11

So, perhaps even in their most isolated state people yearn for a connection with others -- with something greater -- even if that connection is through death. Jumping off a certain bridge then becomes a statement or symbol, an induction into a community. However, the authors then conclude that the Prince Edward Viaduct was obviously not a strong "magnet" as suicides just moved to other bridges or means.

After I graduated high school, I heard that a student there had left a note saying he was going to jump off of a bridge in the area. Then he drove his car to a completely different bridge got out and, according to one witness, took off his shoes and simply walked off the edge. Would the Luminous Veil have prevented this? What if there had been a phone? Or maybe he would have simply got into his car and driven over to that other bridge instead.

Photo: No Urban Ball Playing Allowed!

Really? Ball playing was a problem here?

"Hey, Timmy, meet me down in the Toronto Central Business District for a scrub game in front of the BMO tower. After that we're going to go play volleyball in the middle of Bloor and Yonge!"

Design Success!, Design Fail!, iPhone Architecture Tours, High Speed Rail, and a Land of Giants

If you feel in a positive mood, you can check out this list of the top 20 urban planning successes of all time and see if you agree. Spoiler: Vancouver's Granville Island makes it to number 7.

Or if you feel in a negative mood, you can check out the 10 worst design fails of the past 25 years, instead. My personal favourite being the waterpark filled with colourful penises.

The Netherlands Architecture Institute launches Urban Augmented Reality, a smartphone app that will allow you to point your phone's camera at a building and instantly see information on that building, including past images and future projects. Definitely a handy tool for locals and tourists who want to know more about the city as they're walking around and don't want to take the time to do it the old fashioned way and look it up on Wikipedia.

On August 11th, the groundbreaking for the Transbay Transit Center -- a high-speed rail station that will link San Francisco with Los Angeles -- took place. The 2.25 billion project will see trains running at 354 km/h with a travel time between the two cities of about two and a half hours. Watch this beautiful 3D rendering of the future station and be consumed by jealousy (unless you live in SF).

Choi + Shine Architects re-design the boring electrical tower into a stunning Land of Giants, proving that infrastructure we long ago shrugged off as a necessary evil can be turned into imaginative and though-provoking architectural wizardries.

Sugar Beach or Sugar "Beach"?

Today wasn't the nicest day (cloudy and humid), but I decided to check out Toronto's newest beach, Sugar Beach, which opened officially to the public on August 9th. The beach is situated at the end of Jarvis St and next to the Redpath Sugar Refinery -- a big hulking warehouse of a building that sits across from the beach -- and is part of Waterfront Toronto's revitalization of, um, the waterfront of Toronto.

Waterfront Toronto's webpage on Sugar Beach uses the word "whimsical" twice in its description. This would be annoying if it wasn't so true. Whimsical is exactly what Sugar Beach is: there are the bubblegum pink umbrellas, the white Muskoka chairs, the candy-cane striped granite rocks, the ground-quartz sand, the pipes shaped like candy-canes with subtle metallic striping. Like I said: whimsical.

Sugar Beach is also quite surreal, located as it is next to an industrial building it seems an odd place to find such an idyllic area, but I enjoyed the contrast between the carefully designed beach area and the more grimy industry nearby. And if you get bored you can watch ships get loaded and unloaded or watch the ferries heading to Toronto Island.

The design of the beach itself, done by Claude Cormier Landscape Architects (they're also doing the Evergreen Brickworks), is great. It does, however, have the feel of a fancy meal at a restaurant where the food is constructed in such a way that it seems you don't want to eat it for fear of ruining it. But I was in love with the benches chosen, of which there are two kinds: one backless, and one with a curving, almost plant-like looking back. Both are quite comfortable.

In Mark Schatzker's review of the beach in the Globe & Mail he calls it a: "a postmodern park with beach references – sand, umbrellas, a boardwalk, even lifebuoys." In a way, I agree. But it all depends on your definition of beach. Schatzker's definition seems to hinge on water lapping against sand. In this definition, Sugar Beach is actually Sugar "Beach" because there is a low guard rail separating the beach from a several foot drop to water. There is definitely no sand-on-water contact happening here.

And, yes, Sugar Beach probably stretches the beach moniker a bit. Sugar Park doesn't sound as good, though. And, honestly, does it matter? One can argue semantics and the tenets of postmodern urban design, but at the end of the day Sugar Beach is still a spiffy new public space that reconnects downtown Toronto to its waterfront. And besides, breaking out the air-quotes every time you wanted to invite someone to Sugar "Beach" would be cumbersome.

Located nearby is Corus Quay, a new LEED Gold building that is to house the Canadian Media company Corus Entertainment. I thought the building would be imposing, but its facade is completely transparent and engaging, allowing passers-by to peek into the interior and check out what looked to me like a water slide.

Schatzker also wonders if people are going to use the beach and if children will be disappointed at the lack of sand-castle building ability in the sand (it's really good for sticking sockless toes into, though). Although it may have just been the excitement of a new toy taken out of its packaging, I can say that Sugar Beach was pretty busy today, even with the sticky weather. Most of the chairs contained people and there were a fare amount of children digging around with plastic buckets and shovels. They seemed content, beach or "beach".