[URBAN NOTE] "Toronto reimagines the public park for the 21st century"

[rfmcdonald]

blogTO's Derek Flack notes how the design of parks is taking off in Toronto.

In a city that seems always in a state of becoming something great, the design of new buildings is important stuff.

A similar rebirth is now taking shape with Toronto's park spaces. Gone are the days when an outdoor space is conceived as a grassy expansive with a few benches and a playground. As the city has become more and more dense, the design of its parks has become more and more inventive.

This process can probably be traced back to Claude Cormier's HTO Park, which repurposed industrial lands as an urban beach and served as an important precursor to the widely loved Sugar Beach, the latter of which almost entirely dispenses with the use of grass.

Working with smaller sites has forced architects and landscape designers to move away from traditional models of parkland in favour of urban spaces that are high on usability rather than sheer open area. Perhaps the best example of such a project is Underpass Park, but the design principles seen there can be spotted in most new spaces, even those with far more greenery.

Take, for example, the award-winning Corktown Common. Instead of plopping down a huge field in the middle of a major residential development, the park is built atop the Flood Protection Landform for the Canary District, and thus features plenty topographic variety to go along with a wetland pond, boardwalk path, splash pad and modern playground.