GARRISON CREEK DEMONSTRATION PROJECT
Rainwater
Ponds in an Urban Landscape
Brown +
Storey Architects
The connection
or disconnection between urbanism and environmentalism – city and nature –
is made by the human intervention of ‘infrastructure’. How we choose to lay this groundwork for the
physical support of our daily lives can create a disjointed gap in our existence
between our city and our environment. Or
a considered infrastructure can knit these two seemingly incompatible elements
together. This consideration of how our
city deals with its stormwater collection, storage and
treatment points to a new opportunity to make choices that can regenerate the
open and hidden landscapes of Toronto into a living part of the experience of
our communities.
Brown and
Storey Architects was commissioned by the Waterfront Regeneration Trust to
investigate the conceptual feasibility of providing rainwater retention ponds
that would help retain, treat and promote re-use in the existing open spaces
that trace the route of the buried Garrison Ravine.
The thesis
of this study suggests that the existing natural watersheds, like the Garrison
Watershed, can be used as sites for stormwater
management pond systems. Not only can
these connected pond systems serve to collect, treat and re-use stormwater locally, they can also act as a catalyst in the
creation of a series of connected open spaces knitting both an urban and a
green infrastructure back to the waterfront of Lake Ontario.
The study
Documents several aspects of the Garrison watershed: the considerable amount of
open spaces, their area and type, geological formations, existing stormwater infrastructure, the areas of fill along the
ravine path, and an abstracted location plan for retention ponds.
View Article:
Infrastructure and Parks, Canadian Architect, 1994