Interstitial place

The fabric of many post WW2 campuses in North America, can be described as a collection of independent buildings rather than as infrastructure that shapes and connects a network of public spaces with character, sense of place and social amenity. The same can be said for our late modernist cities. A re-examination and design of these interstitial leftover spaces can provide much needed public domain for students and faculty while also improving the ambiance and connectivity of adjacent buildings. Through analyzing and intervening within an existing underutilized circulation plaza within Ryerson’s urban Toronto campus, this thesis project asserts the importance of public space by creating new connections and relationships between building, landscape, and people using strategies of landscape urbanism and infrastructural urbanism. The synthesis of architecture, infrastructure and landscape has the potential to create public realm by intensifying and uniting new and existing flows within existing urban and social networks.