This thesis proposes turning a Toronto subway station into a gallery that will display temporary exhibitions of contemporary art. Islington subway station, on the corner of Bloor Street West and Islington Avenue, will anchor a future civic and cultural centre and will become the social and public focal point of Etobicoke Centre. The building will turn this neighbourhood into a vibrant community, creating a self-sustaining node around which people will live, work, and play. This proposal has been inspired by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s concept of the ‘third place’. In contrast to the first and second places of home and work, the third place encompasses the social realm, being a neutral space where people can gather and interact. The proposal for the Islington Gallery of Art also adapts new urbanist Peter Calthorpe’s theory of the ‘Transit Oriented Development’ where the subway station is the central node in the neighbourhood. Both of these concepts will be discussed further in the thesis. The Islington Gallery of Art will bring commuters a direct connection with culture. This gallery will transform the public space of infrastructure into a setting for informal public life. A third place will be created where one currently does not exist. The thesis combines the three narratives of public space, public transportation, and civic culture in the design of a mixed-use building. It explores how transportation infrastructure and architecture can combine with contemporary art to instigate the development for a new kind of place, one that isn’t a traditional street or square, near the periphery of the City of Toronto.

This thesis proposes turning a Toronto subway station into a gallery that will display temporary exhibitions of contemporary art. Islington subway station, on the corner of Bloor Street West and Islington Avenue, will anchor a future civic and cultural centre and will become the social and public focal point of Etobicoke Centre. The building will turn this neighbourhood into a vibrant community, creating a self-sustaining node around which people will live, work, and play. This proposal has been inspired by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s concept of the ‘third place’. In contrast to the first and second places of home and work, the third place encompasses the social realm, being a neutral space where people can gather and interact. The proposal for the Islington Gallery of Art also adapts new urbanist Peter Calthorpe’s theory of the ‘Transit Oriented Development’ where the subway station is the central node in the neighbourhood. Both of these concepts will be discussed further in the thesis. The Islington Gallery of Art will bring commuters a direct connection with culture. This gallery will transform the public space of infrastructure into a setting for informal public life. A third place will be created where one currently does not exist. The thesis combines the three narratives of public space, public transportation, and civic culture in the design of a mixed-use building. It explores how transportation infrastructure and architecture can combine with contemporary art to instigate the development for a new kind of place, one that isn’t a traditional street or square, near the periphery of the City of Toronto.

When one researches the city, the neighborhood appears as an indispensable building block. Kevin Lynch, In The Image of a City, suggests that neighborhoods are "the basic element of the city" and the main way "most people structure their city". Furthering the idea of the neighborhood as a building block of the city, Sidney Brower discusses the need for different types of neighborhoods to allow for a diverse social setting to create diversity in the city. The research put forward by Lynch and Brower shows the idea of the neighborhood as a strong concept in older cities. However, the concept of the neighborhood has become less apparent in the modern cities and should be revisited in order for the neighborhood to once again be a substantial entity in the city. In The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg discusses the idea of three realms of life and the balance needed to live a fulfilling life. The first realm centers on the domestic, the second on the productive, and most significantly, the third realm centers on the social aspect. In modern neighborhoods, the idea and the architecture that make the social realm has been lost and must be reintroduced. The significance of reintroducing the third realm is the creation of a strong socially defined neighborhood and one that becomes a more identifiable part of the city. With the concept of the third realm in mind, this thesis posits the introduction of a fully integral layer of social programming that responds to a specific neighborhood condition. This way of conceiving the neighborhood and building upon the existing Main Street, the third realm will serve to facilitate a greater sense of neighborhood place.