Montreal’s Lachine Canal, once the cradle of Canadian industry, is now riddled with industrial ruins, testaments to its productive past. Since the canal’s closing in the 1970’s, different attempts were made to reinterpret its role within the city. Contaminated sediments pollute the manufactured waterway, now stagnant and derelict. These toxic remains impact the redevelopments and heritage parks of the canal corridor. In the absence of any holistic future vision, these conditions pose a threat to local inhabitants and industrial artifacts. Meanwhile, Parks Canada’s approved heritage status pertaining to certain parts of the canal, further contributes to the segregation of the corridor into sporadic developments and static voids. Antoine Picon refers to these networks of technological remnants as ‘Anxious Landscapes’ – landscapes of artifacts that exist in the realm between technological obsolescence and ruin in the process of returning to nature. These landscapes are charged with industrial ruins and their residues in decay, perceived as waste, make us feel ill at ease with them. Portions of the canal and its industrial artifacts have been identified as having significant heritage value, but what productive possibilities do these heritage artifacts hold beyond their identified status? What possibilities do these imaginative playgrounds possess to reshape the corridor beyond its static blight? In abandoned industrial icons such as the Canada Malting Plant, resides the potential to address the remediation and reinterpretation of the corridor. The thesis investigates whether interaction with these industrial remnants can permit a tactile connection that allows us to uncover and explore the significance of such landscapes in a larger temporal perspective that considers past, present, and future. It proposes to reveal and express the historical development of the canal, exploring remedial solutions and spaces of community participation, energizing the Lachine Canal and its anxious landscape.

Montreal’s Lachine Canal, once the cradle of Canadian industry, is now riddled with industrial ruins, testaments to its productive past. Since the canal’s closing in the 1970’s, different attempts were made to reinterpret its role within the city. Contaminated sediments pollute the manufactured waterway, now stagnant and derelict. These toxic remains impact the redevelopments and heritage parks of the canal corridor. In the absence of any holistic future vision, these conditions pose a threat to local inhabitants and industrial artifacts. Meanwhile, Parks Canada’s approved heritage status pertaining to certain parts of the canal, further contributes to the segregation of the corridor into sporadic developments and static voids. Antoine Picon refers to these networks of technological remnants as ‘Anxious Landscapes’ – landscapes of artifacts that exist in the realm between technological obsolescence and ruin in the process of returning to nature. These landscapes are charged with industrial ruins and their residues in decay, perceived as waste, make us feel ill at ease with them. Portions of the canal and its industrial artifacts have been identified as having significant heritage value, but what productive possibilities do these heritage artifacts hold beyond their identified status? What possibilities do these imaginative playgrounds possess to reshape the corridor beyond its static blight? In abandoned industrial icons such as the Canada Malting Plant, resides the potential to address the remediation and reinterpretation of the corridor. The thesis investigates whether interaction with these industrial remnants can permit a tactile connection that allows us to uncover and explore the significance of such landscapes in a larger temporal perspective that considers past, present, and future. It proposes to reveal and express the historical development of the canal, exploring remedial solutions and spaces of community participation, energizing the Lachine Canal and its anxious landscape.

Master of Science / Department of Landscape Architecture / Regional and Community Planning / Stephanie A. Rolley / Community development and architecture approach the study of the city in distinct ways while sharing the purpose of creating or modifying the places we inhabit. Community development utilizes a scientific approach through the study of place-making, developing it from a socially based tradition, in other words, communities of place. Architecture considers the city like a work of art approaching the study from a physical perspective and emphasizing form. Architecture in this context is both an element of construction in space and the totality of the construction, the whole of a community’s modification of site. Developed from the point of view of an architect, this investigation challenges the distinction between architecture and community development exploring each perspective’s study of the city. Through a linear progression of framework diagrams, modified as the result of connecting concepts between the two disciplines, this investigation demonstrates how architecture and community development can achieve a unified framework for the study of the city.

In the late twentieth century, global economic forces changed the face of many North American cities. Cities which were built upon industry, that had provided both job certainty and economic vitality, faced questions of survival in response to shrinking population and urban blight. Unprepared for these drastic changes and unable to address them survival gave way to resignation. Buffalo, New York is an example of a once successful and vital city that continues to experience de-population due to the collapse of its industries. The collapse not only created economic repercussions but also effected the city’s built environment. Many of the Buffalo’s urban monuments, testaments to the ambition of the city, now sit empty; as do the working class neighbourhoods that surround them. The Thesis examines the role which architecture can play in understanding, strategizing and re-envisioning the life of deteriorating cities. Focusing on the City of Buffalo, the design centers on the New York Central Terminal. It proposes a radical repurposing of the Terminal to create a new urban hub which will spur the re-building of the city’s urban fabric. The design outlines a staged 25 year strategy for the de-construction of sparse areas and the strengthening of critical urban networks, thus creating a strong framework upon which a new physical fabric for the city can build and develop overtime. The Terminal, once a significant rail hub is re-envisioned as a revitalized hub for the new city. A key connective point within this urban framework, it encapsulates a variety of program moved from the surrounding neighbourhood to the site. The Terminal will act as an architectural catalyst for change, working within the larger urban strategy to spur a natural re-growth and densification of the city. The thesis presents the radical re-thinking of the architect’s role in the twenty-first century. As current economies and industries face change the urban climate is adapting from one of constant growth to one of strategic re-use. Skeletons of once successful cities lay across the North American landscape. Their urban artifacts: the grain mill, steel manufacturing plant and rail yards, which once supported whole cities as both providers of employment and definers of cultural identity, now stand as empty reminders of a prosperous past. The Thesis shows how these buildings , like the New York Central Terminal can be given a renewed cultural significance and powerful roles within the revived urban life of their cities.

In the late twentieth century, global economic forces changed the face of many North American cities. Cities which were built upon industry, that had provided both job certainty and economic vitality, faced questions of survival in response to shrinking population and urban blight. Unprepared for these drastic changes and unable to address them survival gave way to resignation. Buffalo, New York is an example of a once successful and vital city that continues to experience de-population due to the collapse of its industries. The collapse not only created economic repercussions but also effected the city’s built environment. Many of the Buffalo’s urban monuments, testaments to the ambition of the city, now sit empty; as do the working class neighbourhoods that surround them. The Thesis examines the role which architecture can play in understanding, strategizing and re-envisioning the life of deteriorating cities. Focusing on the City of Buffalo, the design centers on the New York Central Terminal. It proposes a radical repurposing of the Terminal to create a new urban hub which will spur the re-building of the city’s urban fabric. The design outlines a staged 25 year strategy for the de-construction of sparse areas and the strengthening of critical urban networks, thus creating a strong framework upon which a new physical fabric for the city can build and develop overtime. The Terminal, once a significant rail hub is re-envisioned as a revitalized hub for the new city. A key connective point within this urban framework, it encapsulates a variety of program moved from the surrounding neighbourhood to the site. The Terminal will act as an architectural catalyst for change, working within the larger urban strategy to spur a natural re-growth and densification of the city. The thesis presents the radical re-thinking of the architect’s role in the twenty-first century. As current economies and industries face change the urban climate is adapting from one of constant growth to one of strategic re-use. Skeletons of once successful cities lay across the North American landscape. Their urban artifacts: the grain mill, steel manufacturing plant and rail yards, which once supported whole cities as both providers of employment and definers of cultural identity, now stand as empty reminders of a prosperous past. The Thesis shows how these buildings , like the New York Central Terminal can be given a renewed cultural significance and powerful roles within the revived urban life of their cities.

Architecture in today's urban environments exists through, and must respond to, the interaction of contemporary constructs occurring within the context of the urban fabric of the established city. The opportunity residing between these concurrent systems of past and present offers the flexibility of countless modes of response to the ever-changing city Concerns of today"s architectural possibilities to the protection of the past, while enabling the evolution of the urban setting afford the designers of our cities a diversity of options in response to the needs and desires of modern society. Context is of primary concern, and must be addressed not only as the physical characteristics of the "site / Master of Architecture