A city's intersections are places or voids where the trajectories, paths and commuter
routes of a cities citizens collide. They are points of momentary stasis. At intersections
the agents of speed and haste characteristic of the flow of the city are brought to a
collective pause. The challenge of this thesis was to bring about an architectural
representation of this negotiation between flow and pause. There was a desire to see the
commuterscape of Vancouver as a way of allowing different publics and contrasting
programmes the opportunity for chance encounters and collisions. This desire led to the
design of a building which served as an intersection, sometimes carefully controlled while
at others free and open to the random flows of urbanism.
The site at the corner of Main and Terminal streets in Vancouver was chosen because
it is a place where the di verse social, economic and historical fabrics of the city are
intersecting. This site is the busiest at grade intersection in Vancouver where skytrain and
bus passengers, car drivers and pedestrians are variously pushed together and pulled
apart. Commuter space and commuter movement through that space are generally
assumed to be unproductive, uninfected movement through vacuous and empty space.
This thesis challenges that view by inserting a building into this commuter space to utilize
the potentials for exchange, negotiation and encounter offered by such a space.
The building is made up of two very different programs - one containing a series of
small performing arts theatres, the other commercial and rentable office space. In
between the two, the inbound and outbound skytrain tracks and a public walkway create
varying perceptual experiences which mediate between the two different typologies. The
public zones of the building are used to link the varied programs together and to create
connections to the surrounding park and buildings. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/7968 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Uhrich, William Edward |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 4279376 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use. |
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