Sherbourne Common
SHERBOURNE COMMON
PFS Studio
ARCHITECTS
PFS Studio
PHOTOGRAPHS
Tom Arban, Aristea Rizakos
YEAR
2011
LOCATION
Toronto, canada
CATEGORY
Landscape architecture, park
Text description provided by the architects. Sherbourne Common, transformed from a brownfield site along a neglected stretch of Toronto’s waterfront, transcends the conventional definition of a park by interweaving a stormwater treatment facility with landscape, architecture, engineering, and public art.
As the newest addition to Toronto’s revitalized waterfront, Sherbourne Common is both an outdoor living room for the new emerging mixed-use and residential East Bayfront community and a a multi-faceted urban park that is intended to serve the broader constituency of downtown Toronto. Conceived as a catalytic node along the waterfront, Sherbourne Common was built in advance of private development.
The commitment to public realm was paramount to the client’s vision for the regeneration of Toronto’s waterfront. Sherbourne Common along with other waterfront public realm contributions are becoming well used beautiful moments along the lakeshore strung together with a new waterfront promenade and a future grand boulevard.
This is strong evidence of the significance and power of building public realm in generating new vibrant urban communities on post industrial lands.
In absence of the future community that will regularly occupy the park and the future buildings that will eventually provide the park with enriching edges, Sherbourne Common has already become a wildly popular waterfront park, proving out the importance of flexibility and diversity as essential principles in the design of the park.
Directly adjacent to the park, a new 3,000 student campus has just opened and the first of several mixed-use/ residential buildings that will begin to bracket the park is now under construction.
Within its size, the park accommodates a wide variety of uses and responds to interests of a diverse constituency of future residents, students and employees of emerging businesses. Programmatically, the park strives to accommodate a full range of needs.
Based on the abstraction of the iconic lake’s edge landscapes reminiscent of Toronto’s historic shoreline, the composition of the park’s three rooms is built upon the idea of the woods, the water, and the green.
The idea of the ‘woods’ is expressed as a carefully organized ‘grove’ of Maple trees which extend across Queens Quay Boulevard, a renewed waterfront multi-use thoroughfare (pedestrians, bicycles, transit and cars) that is currently under construction and bisects the park into two parcels.
The extension of the grove across the boulevard provides continuity between the north and south portions of the park and creates a strong visual and experiential moment along the street.
The extension of the grove across the boulevard provides continuity between the north and south portions of the park and creates a strong visual and experiential moment along the street.
The notion of ‘water’ is expressed a number of ways within Sherbourne Common. The park is a composition of stormwater collection, purified and celebrated throughout the park before it ultimately discharges into Lake Ontario.
Materially and spatially, the various expressions of water bind north and south. Once collected and UV treated, a thin veil of purified water gently cascades down three 9 metre tall art sculptures which gracefully rise from the ground titled, “Light Shower’s. The water then passes through a biofiltration bed planted with aquatic grasses and is directed into a 240 metre long water channel.
As the water travels down the channel and reaches the centre of the park it meanders through a zinc-clad jewel-like pavilion and ultimately is discharged into Lake Ontario. The iconic natural clearing found along the shorelines of Ontario is manifested in the articulation of the ‘green’.
The open lawn carved out of the "woods" and framed by the plaza/stage adjacent to the pavilion provides the foreground for views to Lake Ontario. The scale and the design of the "green" allows it to operate as the central gathering space of the park and also provides intimate spaces within its edges where the "woods" begins to dissolve for individuals to enjoy the sun or read a book under dappled shade.
