Edgewater Hotel Sign Comes Down
The Art of Not Knowing
If You Tweet It, He Will Come
Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
The Daily Photoist: November 20, 2009
From left: John Campbell, CEO Waterfront Toronto; Mayor David Miller; Federal Finance Minister Hon. James Flaherty; and Deputy Premier and Ontario Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Hon. George Smitherman.
Standing on the industrial site known as East Bayfront, which extends from Jarvis to Parliament streets and south from the rail lines to Lake Ontario, Mayor David Miller addressed a crowd gathered in the rain on Thursday morning to witness the groundbreaking of Sherbourne Park.
"One hundred years ago," Miller pointed out, "you would have been standing twenty to thirty feet deep in Lake Ontario." That’s when the shores of Lake Ontario lapped at the edges of Front Street and before landfill extended the shoreline to serve the vibrant port at the foot of Lower Sherbourne Street. For most of a generation, this area of the waterfront has been an industrial site that marred and scarred the shoreline and barred public access to the lake.
With the financial assistance of the federal and provincial governments as well as the City of Toronto—to the tune of $28.7 million—the area is about to be transformed into the revitalized East Bayfront community, which will incorporate urban housing, streetcar (light rail) transit, and George Brown College’s new Health Sciences Centre.
Sherbourne Park, looking north.
At the heart of East Bayfront is Sherbourne Park, a multi-use green space scheduled to open in the summer of 2010. Designed by landscape architects Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg of Vancouver, the park aims to meet the social and civic needs of community and city residents as well as regional visitors of all ages in all seasons, says company principal Greg Smallenberg.
Before designing the park, the team from the landscape design firm looked at old photos of the lakeshore for inspiration. What they saw—rivulets of water, groves of trees, and open land—became the three iconic Canadian landscape elements that shape the design of Waterfront Toronto’s Sherbourne Park: woods, water, and green spaces.
Children's play area, looking south.
The north end of the park has a neighbourhood feel with play areas for children. Here, the “woods” are represented by groves of Pacific Sunset maple trees. At the south end of the park, which is designed as a public gathering place and special events venue, red oaks shade the Sherbourne Promenade and American beech trees flank the Eastern Walkway, both of which form part of a water’s edge boardwalk that spans the East Bayfront community.
Top: From the waterfront promenade, looking north. Bottom: Water filtered on-site cascades from three dramatic art sculptures.
Running the length of the park’s east side and skirting its wide-open lawns is a stunning 240-metre-long Water Channel, the centerpieces of which are a pond-cum-skating rink and three dramatic sculptures entitled Light Showers. Designed by visual artist Jill Anholt, the nearly nine-metre-tall art pieces allow water filtered through the park’s bio-filtration system to cascade in sheets down a stainless steel mesh scrim.
The park is both public space and stormwater management facility, a feat that brought together architects, landscape architects, and civil engineers in an integrated team that Smollenberg views as the project’s biggest success.
“[The park] works on two levels: design and engineering,” says Smallenberg. It collects runoff from rainstorms in tanks located under the boardwalk. Here, gravity removes sediment and other impurities before the water is transferred to a large tank at the Parliament Slip where a WaveDeck, much like the recently opened Simcoe WaveDeck, will be built. Holes in the platform allow UV rays to further purify the water. Then, it’s transported to the Sherbourne Park UV Purification Facility located beneath the park’s Pavillion café, to remove any residual impurities. The fresh water is then directed through the three Light Showers art sculptures, before flowing the length of the Water Channel and finally spilling into Lake Ontario.
Not only will Sherbourne Park combine design and function with elegance, but it will be one of only a few LEED-certified parks. Sustainability practices in addition to stormwater management include bicycle storage, reduced light pollution, and renewable energy sources.
With so much going for it, let's hope Sherbourne Park lives up to its potential—we need more groundbreaking projects in our city.
All photos and renderings courtesy Waterfront Toronto.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Fantastic. More glass and steel. And I'd always been so impressed (and I'm not the only one) with the consistent red-brick and colonial aesthetic of the bordering St Lawrence neighbourhood.
Parts of this seem promising, but the notion of "representing woods with trees" is a little laughable.
I also find it bizarre that none of the artists' conceptions presented here actually shows the frigging lake.
One hundred years ago, Miller forgot to add, you'd be drowning in 20-30 feet of water plus a metre of semi-solid sewage waste and garbage — assuming of course you weren't being poisoned by the coal gas-based chemical byproducts and slag from the Consumers Gas facility that made the West Don Lands region the brownfield it is now.
Just the facts, really.
> Children's play area, looking south.
I hope to have monochrome children, too!
I'm sorry about being a bit catty about this, but seeing the bit about "reduced light pollution" — my research baby, literally — just annoys the crap out of me as it's like saying, "We're using lighter oil to drip into water drainage because heavy oil dripped from cars is toxic to the environment." I question what the architects at Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg genuinely grasp about light pollution. I'll even buy their principals lunch to see what it is they really know and have them define why they even mention it here and what it means to the typical Jane/Joe Blow walking down the street. If they fail, then they can be a compulsory investor for the light pollution remediation infrastructure I'd like to bring into prominence within the urban scape.
It's almost as if they're using it in marketing/press statements to assuage some sort of developer's master-planned guilt. I sorta wonder what John George Howard, the landholder who laid out the ground rules for High Park when he donated it to the city, would have said about Sherbourne Park. </urban_designer>
No bikes or bike posts in the renderings...
The narrow stream reminds me a little of Cheonggyecheon. I wish the city would revive (parts of) Garrison Creek...
Also no bikes or bike posts on renderings for the so-called "Greener Bloor" (aka, "Meaner Bloor") now undergoing its metamorphosis thanks to your beloved Bloor-Yorkville BIA.
Of course it's easy to add them afterwards, it's just a matter of drilling some holes, but they really shouldn't be afterthoughts.
And seeing the ROM on that street plan... WHY AREN'T THERE ANY TREES AT THE ROM?