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Between Figure and Ground: Articulating Heterotopia in the Suburban Paradox

This thesis focuses on exploring figure-ground within the
amorphous suburban green space of Calgary, Alberta. It
is an edgeless prairie city, flooded with unused space and
tethered by freeways that stretch toward the infinite horizon
beyond the mountains. The incessant need to own and parcel
nature has created a landscape of excess where both
city and nature are a blur at the edge of our distracted vision.
Using expanded defi nitions of figure-ground as a design
methodology, this thesis attempts to better understand
this paradox and to act in its middle ground. Articulating a
heterotopia between the ideal with the real, the public and
the private, the natural and the artificial, this thesis explores
a new imaginative space, delicately but firmly tethered to
suburban ground and its elusive horizon. The results manifest
in unexpected geometries on a thin strip of park between
a backyard and a freeway in Calgary.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:NSHD.ca#10222/21462
Date19 March 2013
CreatorsSimon, Holly
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish

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