The Site
Guildwood GO Station, located in Toronto, Canada, intertwines with the city’s ravine system. It is an innovative project, the first station to integrate green roofs with architecture and ravine ecosystems. Our team used an urban ecology approach as an intervention on the embankment slopes, green roofs, and roof courtyard.
Urban Ecology
Ecological succession is a biotic self-generating ecosystem that evolves from meadow to deciduous climax forest over a hundred-year period.
Concept
Embracing architecture and ecological succession enabled us to envision the landscape as a bridge for human and non-human community movement and a green oasis amid an industrial corridor.
Track embankments create a linear topography echoed in the architecture. The geometry and materiality are repeated in the landscape through linear hedges, grasses, 18-meter-long stainless steel and Ipe wood seating planters. Granite strips embedded in the concrete plaza continue the lighting/flooring pattern of the interior and canopy. The green roofs and roof courtyard integrate vertically with the architecture.
The Experience
Inside views to the green roofs and roof courtyard at every point of commuter movement further establish an architectural connection with the landscape. Upon exiting the tunnels, commuters are greeted with panoramic views of borrowed landscapes merging into the roof meadows and slopes on both north and south platforms. The landscape atmospherically changes each season, from spring’s vibrant green to the warm colours of summer and fall to the whites of winter.
Ecological succession, a design intervention, has the potential to influence related design disciplines and engage the public. At Guildwood GO Station, with its unique mix of inviting architecture, ecological succession and traditional landscape aesthetics, commuters can once again engage with nature.
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