From the very beginning of our TORONTO FOR FREE research, I was always most drawn to the functioning and free “urban rooms” that exist outside the realm of formal design. Every day, city dwellers produce a diversity of spaces alongside our ever-changing environment. The interiors I’m referring to appear through necessity, and are often temporary, to provide bodies places for rest, shelter or leisure. As intermediate spaces, they exist as precious case studies. True representations of the complex relationship between bodies and the metropolis, and how one can influence the other.This project presents itself as a collection of “ideas” fit for a specific site - Tommy Thompson Park. Each proposed intervention is constructed using only existing material through the use of two temporary building techniques: stacking or threading. These “ideas” are then imagined as a starting point for the many ways park visitors could build up and inhabit the park in new ways, providing context for community design and authorship. The resulting spaces reflect the interests of each citizen designer by animating the existing anatomy of the site, and the very by-product of our growing city.
