BY JANE MARGOLIES
Toronto?s Underpass Park, seemingly there all along.
FROM THE FEBRUARY 2017 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE
Corktown Common is the marquee public space in the evolving West Don Lands area of Toronto. Designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, the lovely 18-acre park contains meandering paths, pocket-size lawns, and a marshy cove, all tucked into a multilevel landform engineered to protect the downtown of Canada?s largest city from the threat of flooding on the Don River, which flows into Lake Ontario.
But just a block from Corktown Common, the much smaller Underpass Park, designed by PFS Studio with the Planning Partnership and situated on the same flood protection landform but beneath a tangle of roadway overpasses, is quietly gaining fans. OK, maybe not so quietly.
Visitors to the park hear skateboards hit the pavement?clack! Basketballs bounce, and young children shout gleefully in the vicinity of the playground equipment, the sounds reverberating through the echo chamber formed by the cement columns and beams that support the roadways above. The visuals, too, are none too quiet: Colorful murals on the columns take inspiration from graffiti. And in the middle of the site, an artwork composed of flat, mirror-polished stainless steel panels hangs overhead, adding fun house distortions to whatever moves below.
An outdoor rec room, town square, and art gallery all in one, Underpass Park, which cost $9.6 million and was completed in 2013, has ...