Faculty of Design
Environmental Design
Zoe Chan
Cataclysm: Overflow
Environmental Design
This thesis aims to ideate recreational/leisure spaces within Toronto communicating and assisting in water management on a microscale. Architecture and Building Sciences historically grapple with keeping water at bay, away from spaces and structures. Acclimating to rethinking building sciences through everyday polymers changing their environmental applications to finding new ways of water storage that permeate through/attract us to our buildings as opposed to rejecting it. Amending to an alternate perspective of water, inviting all altitudes of surplus space across the city to harmonious agency. A creation of space and fabrication that reflects the complex changing states of water while fostering a physical relationship and consciousness in everyday life for future crises.
“Water is a vital, multidimensional substance in our lives- essential and in excess. Climate change has impacted global water infrastructure. Toronto’s “Condo Euphoria”, erecting vast infrastructure hastily has eradicated our natural defences that were in place to mitigate incoming waters. Unprecedented water levels and rainfall increasing in the mid 2000’s are overflowing Toronto’s infrastructure, spilling into the streets, transportation paths, and destroying homes. The city is in need of a solution that services to salubrious water that is functional and made towards public use. ”