MLA Thesis
Feral City
Toronto’s landscape aesthetic developed from a period of time where the quest for progress and modernity was being achieved through systematic control and suppression of nature. The resultant landscape of the city is now one characterized by an overall homogeneity. Conversely, art culture has historically been drawn to the concept of nature as a powerful force of renewal and reclamation: as evidenced by western society’s obsession with the representation of ruins in art. This thesis draws on the cultural phenomenon of ruinophilia to develop a new framework of landscape aesthetics and ecological integrity within the existing parameters of the urban form.