Le point de départ de cette recherche est une réflexion sur la notion « d'architecture iconique ». Au cours des années 2000 est apparu, dans de nombreuses villes occidentales, un type de stratégie de régénération urbaine basé sur l'expérience de Bilbao en Espagne. Selon ce modèle, il suffit d'ériger un édifice culturel spectaculaire pour engendrer des transformations dans l'évolution d'une ville. Dans la littérature sur la question, on qualifie ainsi « d'iconique » cette architecture qui, par définition, se confond et se substitue, par sa singularité, à l'image de marque de la ville. Si cette architecture réalisée par des architectes de prestige (qualifiés de starchitectes) se veut d'abord stratégique, on se bute à un problème plus complexe lorsqu'on tente de déterminer le message connoté qu'elle véhicule. Les icônes demeurent en effet profondément énigmatiques sur le plan symbolique parce qu'elles mettent en scène des formes abstraites et sculpturales. Un fait singulier semble cependant émerger à leur étude : tous les édifices iconiques présentent une rupture importante avec leur contexte d'implantation. Nous sommes ainsi amenés à les ressaisir comme des objets dont la logique culturelle consiste à se distinguer de leur milieu (forme iconique) pour ensuite rétroagir sur lui de manière à le transformer (fonction iconique). Paradoxalement, comme nous en faisons la démonstration, le rapport « autopoïétique » de l'icône relativement à son contexte la place en rapport de dépendance avec celui-ci. Ainsi, la mise en récit de ces édifices décontextualisés nous montre qu'en réalité, leur « distinction » est tributaire d'un discours où le contexte duquel ils cherchent à s'extraire occupe une place prépondérante. C'est à partir de ce cadre d'analyse que nous allons reconsidérer quatre édifices construits à Toronto au cours des années 2000 dans une période qu'il est convenu d'appeler la Renaissance culturelle torontoise. Véritable point de mire et inspiration de cette étude, le cas torontois nous permet d'aborder la question de l'architecture iconique dans un cadre qui offre à l'analyse plusieurs édifices construits simultanément. En dernière instance, cette thèse tente de replacer l'architecture iconique dans la lignée d'une discussion sur le monument et cherche, par le fait même, à considérer ce type de représentation architecturale à l'aune de la crise de représentation propre à la postmodernité. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Effet Bilbao, architecture iconique, Toronto, Renaissance culturelle torontoise, style Toronto, effet Toronto, ville créative, régénération urbaine par la culture, OCAD, AGO, ROM, Four Seasons Centre, Will Alsop, Daniel Libeskind, Frank Gehry, Jack Diamond, autopoïèse, théorie systémique autoréférentielle, architecture spectaculaire, icône, transformation identitaire des villes, starchitecture, architecture stratégique.

Sustainable development has created new demands and led to a new way of thinking within the community-planning realm and has grown in use due to the increasing and changing awareness of environmental issues and their connection to growth within communities. As part ofthe Canadian Federal Gas Tax Fund requirement, municipalities must develop an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP). Currently, many municipalities are working towards a sustainable or environmental vision for their community and have developed master plans and policies to implement environmental practices. The issue facing municipalities is how do existing bodies of work support and integrate into the development of an ICSP? The Town of Oakville is used as a case study to investigate the method of reconciling master plans and policies to develop an ICSP. The research methods include a case study, interviews, the analysis ofICSP toolkits and municipal ICSPs. The research identifies successes, limitations, and improvements for the proposed approach.

This thesis examines the educational inequalities facing Black high school students, particularly working-class youths in Ottawa's educational system. In consultation with several community organizations, educators, parents and students, several concerns were identified as barriers that impacted the educational achievement of Black youths in Ottawa's schools. They identified issues such as the continued negative stereotyping of Black students, particularly Black males as being aggressive, violent, low achievers, and lacking respect for authority, which often results in their suspensions and/or expulsion. Most importantly, they argue that in addition to the high rate of suspensions and expulsions, there also appears to be a funneling of Black working-class males into the criminal juvenile justice system, by schools, which results in the criminalization of Black youths by Ottawa schools. / This study was framed within a Black antiracist feminist framework that employed an oppositional and critical pedagogy aimed at interrogating the educational experiences of Black youths. The study examined the impact of race and class on educational outcome, and the ways in which the current educational arrangement benefits some students while disadvantaging others. Critical to the study is the denial of racism within Ottawa schools by educators and administrators. The problem is further complicated by the fact that neither the Ottawa Carleton District School Board nor the Carleton Roman Catholic Separate School Board compiles statistical database on students' race, ethnicity and/or social class, which is a necessary tool in determining the existence of educational inequality. Due to the lack of educational statistics educators have avoided accountability, thus preserving the status quo.

Canada's first Parliament Buildings, built in 1859--65 and destroyed by fire in 1916, were the nation's most prominent symbol of national identity and its most celebrated public space. Built into its fabric was an exclusively masculine definition of public persons, one which, at the end of the nineteenth century, women challenged in both subtle and overt ways. / This research examines the design of the Parliament Buildings as a multi-faceted building type, a complex mix of domestic, office and legislative design where both public and "private" spaces intersected. It overlays official documentation of the buildings with a rich variety of sources---archival photographs, newspaper articles and women's columns, letters, journals---to show how women transgressed the architectural prescription which placed them on the political periphery in the Ladies' Gallery, as observers and objects of observation. These sources show that, in fact, women altered and created spaces and initiated influential networks of their own both in and outside of the Parliament Buildings. By illuminating the primacy of the "political hostess," this research argues that women were not relegated to the sidelines, but appropriated---and practiced politics from within---the most privileged of spaces. / This methodology, by examining the interior organization and actual use of the Parliament Buildings, opens new possibilities for the study of legislative buildings and public buildings in general as dynamic systems of relationships rather than uni-dimensional building types. By showing how women challenged the spatial demarcations of gender and power and transformed the meanings associated with parliamentary and public spaces not initially intended for their use, we can draw a picture of the larger role women in Canada played as "public architects."

Environmental regulation of nitrogen cycling processes, denitrification and nitrification, was studied in sediment of Hamilton Harbour, with particular emphasis on the role of CH$ sb4$ metabolism (production and consumption). Through extensive sediment sampling and numerical analysis, it was found that particulate carbon was the best predictor of potential for anaerobic production of CH$ sb4$ and CO$ sb2$. The only predictor of denitrification capacity was anaerobic CO$ sb2$ production, indicating that beside NO$ sb3 sp-$ and O$ sb2$, a biotic factor involved in carbon metabolism may be important in the control of this activity. / Suppression of aerobic N$ sb2$O production in sediment slurries by C$ rm sb2H sb2$ and correlation with NO$ sb3$-production indicated that it was dependent on chemolithotrophic nitrification. Although CH$ sb4$ (1 to 24 $ mu$M) stimulated production of NO$ sb3 sp-$ and N$ sb2$O, we found that CH$ sb4$ at 84 $ mu$M or greater suppressed nitrification. Following extensive studies of pore water chemistry, potential microbial activities, and counts of nitrifiers and methanotrophs, we found that CH$ sb4$ oxidation (i) is more likely to suppress nitrification by competition for O$ sb2$ and NH$ sb4 sp+$ between methanotrophs and nitrifiers, and (ii) may be more important than nitrification as a sink of hypolimnetic O$ sb2$ in Hamilton Harbour. / Amongst a number of inhibitors, allylsulfide was found to be a differential inhibitor with much less effect on CH$ sb4$ oxidation in sediment slurries or in axenic cultures of Methylosinus trichosporium OB3b than on nitrification in sediment slurries.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 248-274). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M. App. Sc.)--Carleton University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-210). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.Arch.) - Carleton University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-83). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2006. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 308-313).

Thèse (Ph. D.) -- Université Laval, 1997. / Bibliogr.: f. [279]-292. Publié aussi en version électronique.