Faculty of Design
Environmental Design - Interior Design Specialization
Ying Yang
Cultural and Arts Center
Environmental Design
2021
This thesis project is about how to use a space to connect cultural context with human behaviour to increase cultural awareness. I believe the spirit of place and cultural awareness provide a possibility which a community can achieve social harmony. Through the creation of a hybrid form of existing architecture context, community cultural sustainability and symbolic objects provide an evolving dynamic relationship with past, present and future. It shows a dialogue between cultural awareness and human behaviour. As one popular immigrant city, the question I considered is what designers can do to help them to live in a new city with a multicultural society. At the same time, how to balance their original culture with the local community to reach cultural sustainability for all. According to the City of Toronto, over 50% of Toronto’s population is visible minorities and about 70% of them are Asian. So In this project, I choose downtown Chinatown as my study site. It is a classic ethnic enclave with a strong cultural context and the resonance of space for its community.
“The recognition and response to cultural context deepen the resonance of space for its users. This resonance amplifies the attraction of the space to the community and strengths human behaviour.Social harmony would be empathically resonance: the spirit of place and cultural awareness provide a possibility which a community can achieve wholistic harmony. Through the creation of a hybrid form of existing architecture context, community cultural sustainability and symbolic objects provide an evolving dynamic relationship with time past and present and future. It presents a dialogue between cultural awareness and human behaviour. Users can experience holistic environmental design to cognitive the cultural context.As one important role of urban design, public space is the best approach to embody a quality of spatial planning to achieve cultural sustainability and to increase cultural awareness for everyone. In this study, Chinatown which carries a strong cultural background and an ethnic enclave in Toronto is my research subject.”