Chasing Spadina

dc.contributor.authorHuang, Terry
dc.date.accessioned2018-09-10T16:21:23Z
dc.date.available2018-09-10T16:21:23Z
dc.date.issued2018-09-10
dc.date.submitted2018-08-31
dc.description.abstractToronto is a city that operates at the scale of automobiles and subways. Its environments are many and varied— layers of infrastructure, geography, and history create a heterogeneous mix of urban fabric. The Spadina Subway Line is one of the primary routes of navigating this mix. It extends from the heart of downtown northwest to the edge of Toronto and into the neighbouring City of Vaughan. With no single street to follow the Spadina Line winds through a fragmentary collage. On the surface the pieces have little relation to each other—a collection of urban fabrics forcibly connected by the subway. This thesis is a performance. It performs a walk, a transect, along the above ground line of the subway. This walk builds off the previous generations of theoretical walkers— the saunterers of Henry Thoreau, the flâneurs of Charles Baudelaire, the surrealists of André Breton, the Situationists of Guy Debord—and Lee Freidlander’s eye for the cluttered city to synthesize the perspective of the transient observer. A solitary figure that seeks out urban forms and artifacts to discover the layers of intentionality, the coincidences and contradictions that coalesce into the messy city—a city that is fragmentary, haphazard, uncurated. Documentation of the walk is done through mapping and photography. Mapping describe the lands of the Spadina Line holistically and create a picture of how the Line interacts with the wider city. Photographs describe the experience of the walk itself. This is an exploration of the present, of singular moments—the moments of encounter between a transient observer and a new urban form—that implies both history and future. Through act of walking and documentation—the moments and the maps—a narrative is found within the fragments of the Spadina Subway Line. It is a narrative of competing visions and failed ideal cities—a narrative of a great urban laboratory with decades of experiments in urbanity.en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10012/13766
dc.language.isoenen
dc.pendingfalse
dc.publisherUniversity of Waterlooen
dc.subjectWalkingen
dc.subjectSpadina Subway Lineen
dc.subjectPhotographyen
dc.titleChasing Spadinaen
dc.typeMaster Thesisen
uws-etd.degreeMaster of Architectureen
uws-etd.degree.departmentSchool of Architectureen
uws-etd.degree.disciplineArchitectureen
uws-etd.degree.grantorUniversity of Waterlooen
uws.contributor.advisorHaldenby, Rick
uws.contributor.affiliation1Faculty of Engineeringen
uws.peerReviewStatusUnrevieweden
uws.published.cityWaterlooen
uws.published.countryCanadaen
uws.published.provinceOntarioen
uws.scholarLevelGraduateen
uws.typeOfResourceTexten

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Huang_Terry.pdf
Size:
229.1 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
6.08 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description: