Ecological Corridor
Competition Submission, Urban Designer at Brown + Storey Architects
St. Laurent Biodiversity Corridor, Montréal, 2017
To combat expansive heat islands and the fragmentation of habitats by infrastructure and development, the highly industrialized Borough of Saint-Laurent issued a competition to create “biodiversity corridors.” The intention of the corridors is to “connect natural habitats on private and public lands, medians and green spaces along three main lines of action: wildlife habitats, greening and citizen pathways” and to “boost the quality of the living environment for residents, visitors and workers.”
The proposal creates a systematic language of linear patterns - generators - that can be inserted into the secteurs of the Borough Saint-Laurent to establish the dedicated biodiversity corridor and consolidate the present archipelago of open spaces and connect them to their context in ways that transform today’s zones of industry, residential, retail and cultural infrastructure.
“Our gait is as personal as a fingerprint, and so are our multiple itineraries. Knowledge is grown along the myriad of paths we take”
— Tim Ingold
“Architecture is thus read as having the capacity to induce slow speeds, to inhabit silences, to trace new cultural vacancies and derelict spaces.”
— Felicity D. Scott
“Understanding cities and architecture – and communicating that understanding – involves telling real stories about real places…”
— Borden, Kerr, Pivaro, & Rendell
“Only an awareness of the influences of the existing environment can encourage the critique of the present conditions of daily life…”
— Sadie Plant
“It’s from the fragments,
the forgotten bits, that you actually read the world”
— Borden, Kerr, Pivaro, & Rendell