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Love Park
By : CCxA, en collaboration avec gh3*
GRANDS PRIX DU DESIGN – 17th edition
Discipline : Landscape & Territories : Grand Winner
Categories : Landscape Architecture / Landscape Architecture - Public Space : Platinum Winner
In the centre of a new mixed-use tower neighbourhood built on former harbourside industrial lands, Love Park replaces a 1950s freeway offramp, bringing an icon into a tower district and the heart that had been missing in the community.
Love Park was previously the site of an offramp to the Gardiner Expressway, built for downtown commuters and lakeside industries established in this area of reclaimed lake-fill. The neighbourhood has been transitioning to mixed-use residential and offices over the past twenty-five years, along with the epic revitalization of Toronto’s waterfront that has transformed the water’s edge into a metropolitan destination. Previously a motorist’s no-man’s land, the Love Park site optimizes an infrastructural knot situated curiously at the centre of some of the city’s top destinations. This fulcrum along the waterfront’s east-west axis is a natural meetup point for launching day trips, a veritable crossroads at the foot of the metropolis.
The large scale of development to date has not given much emphasis to human scale in the public realm, despite the large numbers of people that have been attracted into the neighbourhood. Giant building volumes and ubiquitous glass curtain walls have created a district in need of a distinguished signature.
Revitalization of the Queens Quay boulevard to the south of the park has been a catalyst for elevating the pedestrian priority of the public realm. New parks and public realm features have succeeded in transforming the waterfront into a civic destination, and Love Park provides an opportunity to become a landing and gateway to both the Financial District to the north and Lake Ontario to the south, while having a distinct identity of its own.
A space of simplicity and grandeur, Love Park aims to be both a local community amenity and a gathering place for residents, workers, visitors and tourists. This breathing room in the city is a green oasis of quiet yet stimulating repose.
The design for this space needed to strike a balance between the needs of local residents for a green respite, the desire of the growing worker population for outdoor lunch activities, and the crowds heading to Harbourfront Centre and the Toronto Islands to have an inviting gateway to the waterfront.
A new park in the heart of an emerging downtown neighbourhood, Love Park is inspired by the semiotic universality of the heart to create a meaningful symbol for the district. From freeway off-ramp to green oasis, Love Park becomes an urban refuge with universal appeal specific to everyone at the same time.
The park’s features work together harmoniously to transport visitors outside of the hardscaped city. It is punctuated by a basin in the shape of a heart, surrounding a preserved catalpa tree previously hidden at the centre of the former expressway offramp. A trellis composed of a complex filigree of arcs supports wisteria vines, and a garden for dogs provides a play refuge for the neighbourhood’s canines. Love Park is designed to become a sponge that directs runoff below grade, minimizing discharges to the surrounding municipal infrastructure and providing passive irrigation for the park’s trees. A leafy veil of preserved and new trees blurs the urban backdrop, and a perimeter of small hills masks traffic on the surrounding streets..
The slower park pace invites greater attention to detail and craft, from the hand-laid red tile mosaic of the pond perimeter, granite cobble of the pathways, sculpted bronze menagerie of Canadian fauna distributed like Easter eggs throughout the park, to the intricate fabrication of the trellis.
The fundamentals of a successful public realm – from sitting where you want, connection to the street, sunlight, food, water, trees, and an object of triangulation – are synchronized to inspire a space of joy and optimism, encouraging a relaxing atmosphere across all seasons.
From an environmental point of view, Love Park is planned to create an urban oasis that addresses important issues related to climate adaptation and resilience. The design team created a porous system of drains to capture runoff for infiltration into the ground to be used by the park’s 38 new trees. It also minimizes flows to the municipal stormwater systems which are already operating at full capacity. The contiguous leaf canopy proposed from new trees will also help reduce urban heat island effect at a very sunny spot exacerbated by reflection from the adjacent skyscrapers.
Opening day revealed how numerous tower residents, unified by the triangulation of their views into the park, had previously no place to meet each other. Love Park has introduced human scale to become the ‘town square’ of community life
The moment construction fences came down, it was clear that Love Park would become the town square that had been missing in the community. Residents in the neighbouring towers, who had never met each other before, were giddy sharing pictures taken from their balconies of the site during construction. Situated around the conceptual starting point of the project – the heart-shaped pond – this new park has given neighbours and visitors an opportunity to see and be seen, unified by views across the pond that showcases a panorama of the community. The park has become a neighbourhood amenity, a place for pet owners to socialize and exercise their dogs, with increased traffic for the adjacent restaurant and its outdoor patio facing the park. The iconic placemaking effect of Love Park has made it a meet-up point for people coming from across the metropolitan area. Children race remote control boats in the calm waters of the pond, couples intimately recline on the mosaic at ease within the park crowds, groups gather and lunch on the movable furniture under the trellis, and office workers carry out walking meetings while circling around the heart. Love Park is becoming part of the everyday life of the community. As the new park matures, with trees getting bigger and flowering vines soon covering the trellis, Love Park will fulfill its ambition as a green oasis at the heart of the city.
Additional Specs
Size
– 2 acres (8093 sq m.)
Trees
– 42 trees total:
- 38 new trees, Including ginkgo, dawn redwood, linden, Dutch Elm Disease resistant American elm, tulip tree, London plane tree, weeping willow, and silver maple
- 4 preserved mature trees: Catalpa, Siberian elm & silver maple
Pond
– Pond edge:
- 160 sq meter perimeter covered in red Mexican smalti glass mosaic tile fabricated by Mosaika of Montreal
- Doubles as both pond border and bench seating
– Pond depth: 20cm to 60cm
Trellis
– Designed by gh3* Architects of Toronto
– Vines planted to cover trellis with flowering wisteria, enhancing their green filigree feature in the park. Soil cells system integrated in the foundation promotes growth of large vines.
Dog Park
– 255 sq metres
Bronze-cast Animals
– 9 bronze-cast animals placed around the park.
– Artists: Tyler Balko and Marina Guglielmi from Toronto-based Maker Technical Sculpture Services Inc.
– Animals are all native Canadian specie, composed of blue jay, fox, woodpecker, racoon, beaver, snowy owl, rabbit, chipmunk, and a polar bear cub.
– Sponsored by the Waterfront BIA.
Seating and furniture
– 12 café style tables and 51 movable chairs, 120 metres of bench (made from thermally modifed Ash), and a 160 sq metre pond wall edge.
– Movable furniture sponsored by the Waterfront BIA.
Collaboration
Lighting : Ombrages / Éclairage public
