Alumna Sonia Ramundi (March 2012) has published a series in Spacing Toronto featuring projects by Daniels Faculty students. Each post explores ideas for an architectural intervention that could better connect Torontonians with the extensive ravine system that runs throughout the city.

“For decades we have bridged, fenced, bypassed, and built the city’s high-speed transportation lines through the ravines so that many are unaware of their potential as a culturally significant landscape feature within the city,” writes Ramundi. “More recently, and to the benefit of the city of Toronto and its inhabitants and visitors, the potential of the ravines and their meaning to our city has been explored by various individuals, groups, and organizations.”

Ramundi’s own graduate thesis project, completed in 2012, focused on the design of new, accessible pedestrian pathways into the Don Valley ravine that would improve circulation and erosion control, and provide new vantage points for visitors. In 2013, Associate Professor Brigitte Shim invited her to participate as a visiting critic in her Thesis Research Option Studio course, “Between the Ravine and the City.” A number of the students in the studio built on this work in their final thesis project.

The projects featured in the Spacing Toronto series include a plan to grow food in the green spaces orphaned by highway on- and off-ramps; a proposal to build a community centre into the bridge that connects Thorncliffe Park and Flemingdon Park on either side of the Don Valley; and the design of a new multi-use recreational path around Crothers Woods that would prevent public access into the core of this environmentally sensitive area.

Below is a complete list of the posts in the series.

• Between the Ravine and the City by Sonia Ramundi
• Beyond the Big Box by Federica Piccone
• Rain to River: Storm Water Infrastructure for the People by Kristen Duimering
• Finding the Ravine: Gateway to Toronto’s Urban Edges by Jason van der Burg
• Enhancing the Urban Water Experience by Nora Barbu
• Relinking the Ravine by Melissa Cao
• Urban Voids as Transcultural Spaces by Ladan Sharifpour
• Urban Aperture: Public Space by Jessica Ingwersen
• Adaptive Archipelago by Kristen Duimering
• Recovering Lost Landscape with Productive Infrastructures by Federica Piccone
• Daylighting the Urban Wetland by Melissa Cao
• Bride Building/ Building Bridge by Francesca Joyce