I've been working on a reimagining of Rossdale power plant as a part of my thesis studies and thought I'd share a sampling of it here.
The thesis is titled "Generating and Oasis: Architecture of Climatic Engagement for a Northern City" and involves recommissioning the plant as a geothermal generation facility for West Rossdale, utilizing its residual and ambient heat for public, communal warming (highlighted by a series of thermal baths in and adjacent to the plant), and finally, integrating into the proposal the city's much talked about urban gondola project. The proposal is meant to stimulate a discussion about how our city deals with the winter season and how this iconic structure might be transformed to facilitate a shift in our climatic identity.
In short, it is a proposition that quite literally opens up Rossdale to the city as a 'destination of warmth': one whose warm waters and interventions of climatic comfort will bring Edmontonians to the very edge of winter. Here, unlike the internalized architecture that has become the norm in this city, the line between inside and outside is blurred.
Strategic cuts and extractions are made in the building's brick surfaces and inserted into their voids a wood-surfaced path, inspired by the stairs and boardwalks found throughout the valley, brings the city in.
The extraction of a piece of the Boiler Hall's west facade calls out saying "welcome to the new Rossale" and in its track, bathers are brought back out into urbanity:
The northward extraction of one of the switchouse's facades creates a gateway for gondola and pedestrain arrival:
The removal of the southeast corner of the turbine hall plays with the idea of climatic threshold and extends patio culture well into the fringe seasons:
Cutting through the historic volumes, 'the path' puts Rossdale on exhibit and acts as a platform for community programming.
The water of the baths bring the public into contact with the found subterranean terrain and allow the structure to be seen from never before experienced perspectives. Its warm waters bring people out and into the wintery landscape and keep them there.
The smokestack towers take the idea of extraction and fragment to the city scale. By taking a few of the plant's smokestacks and distributing them throughout the valley repurposed as warming retreats. By offering visually related moments of comfort through nodes like this, the valley becomes an activated realm across all four seasons.
The thesis is meant to be a catalyst for a developing infrastructure of climatic engagement in the city: one that inspires other interventions of warming that tap into unutilized thermal resources to activate once desolate streets. Possibilities I have offered include solar-tube clad gondola cars, snow-accepting building skins, LRT-grate heated bus stops, awnings that take advantage of waste heat from bakery ovens, or even simply canopies of light that stimulate associations of warmth and comfort above key pedestrian routes.
The Gondola:
LRT-heated bus stops:
Sensory Urban Installations:
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