Wandering Ecologies, Weiss/Manfredi’s design proposal for Toronto’s Lower Don Lands, has won the 2009 American Architecture Award.

The architects explain the project:
Wandering Ecologies establishes a new identity for Toronto, where recreational, living, and cultural activities are free to wander and overlap. Urban life and nature are reciprocal conditions that together can transform Toronto’s Lower Don Lands into a new cultural and ecological paradigm. City and water, infrastructure and ecology, destination and retreat: the essence and potential of Toronto’s Lower Don Lands resides in celebrating these multiple ecologies.

Before Toronto was a city, the Don Watershed released into Lake Ontario through Ashbridges Bay, the largest wetland in southeast Canada. As Toronto grew, industry transformed the mouth of the Don River into a concrete landscape, terminating the free flow of water to make room for an industrial port. Roadways, expressways, and overpasses crossed over the Don, concealing a nature that had once sustained a vital ecosystem. Today, the Lower Don Lands represent a void in the city that disconnects the Don River Greenway from the emerging waterfront.

Now, as a growing international city, Toronto has an opportunity to transform a place of lost nature into a place of multiple natures. Envisioned as an interwoven system of Wandering Ecologies, this iconic park creates a new model for sustainable waterfront expansion on the eastern edge of Toronto.

The primary design objective is to create a public urban waterfront park located directly on Lake Ontario, connecting city to water. Organized around the newly designed meandering Lower Don River, the park creates new settings for recreation and civic life. The naturalized river creates new wetlands and habitats for avian and aquatic species and creates new opportunities to engage the water through kayaking and fishing.

New public spaces are linked along the southern bank of the new Don River Meander and lead to a boardwalk and a pier outlook that will become a focal point of the park, providing a year-round setting for festivals and events. The outlook provides a new vantage to view the Toronto skyline. The Valley functions as both flood spillway for the Don River and more importantly as a setting for organized recreational activities and group sports.

The design will connect communities through a network of routes and paths that accommodate public transit, parkways, local roads, bicycle trails, and an extensive system of pedestrian paths. A new bi-level bridge provides access and views of the city and river along the public waterfront.

The design strategy for the park and infrastructure will become an international model for innovative waterfront development.

Credits
Client: Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation, City of Toronto
Weiss/Manfredi Team
Marion Weiss and Michael A. Manfredi (Design Partners); Todd Hoehn (Project Architect); Patrick Armacost (Manager); Cheryl Baxter, Beatrice Eleazar, Hamilton Hadden, Justin Kwok, Lee Lim, Sun Na, Yehre Suh
Client Team
Landscape Architecture Consultants: du Toit Allsopp Hillier (DTAH)
Structural Engineering Consultant: Weidlinger Associates Traffic, Structural and Civil Engineers: McCormick Rankin Corporation (MRC)
Ecology Restoration/ Regenerative Design Consultants: Biohabitats
Hydrology, Geotechnical and Shoreline Engineer
Consultants: Golder Associates LTD
Owner's Representatives: Chris Glaisek, TWRC
All image and drawing: ©Weiss/Manfredi.