CASA II/III Courtyard

Landscape Architecture, Project Management, Visualization

The CASA courtyard is designed as a vital link in the fabric of the evolving and densifying community at Bloor / Yonge in Toronto.

A pure and enduring spatial typology—a frame created by buildings—offers great potential for a memorable designed environment. Well-defined architectural space is scarce in our transforming city core. PUBLIC WORKS’s approach to the design of the courtyard draws from the early history of garden design: the eternal search for paradise. From Eden to today, the garden seeks places of discovery and imagination where one can become ‘lost’ within the city.

Employer: PUBLIC WORK
Role: Project Manager (SPA, DD, 50% CD); Visualization + 3D modelling (competition phase)
Status: Under coordination for construction documents
Year: 2015 - Current
Project Team: Cresford (developer), architectsAlliance (architecture)
Public Work Team: Ben Watt-Meyer, Guangyu Zhao, Marc Ryan

All images & text property of PUBLIC WORK Office for Urban Design and Landscape Architecture

Courtyard Aerial View

The City is being transformed as new architecture reaches for the sky while framing a new space at ground level, carved within a community fabric.

The natural horizon is shut out and replaced by an internal horizon: the upper edge of its architectural surround.

Inside it, a paradise is depicted.

Courtyard Elements

Rendered Plan

Annotated Plan

Waterscape Diagrams

Impression of Processional Entry from Hayden St.

Compression within the covered passage and descending rampway build drama towards courtyard arrival. Reflections scatter fragments of lush greenery. The cooling precence of water invites the visitor to advance.

50% Water-Scape

Most of the time the plaza can be programmed as dry to allow for events and gatherings.

100% Water-Scape

At special times, the entire plaza can be flooded with a thin film of water to create a water-mirror effect in the courtyard, becoming a contemplative space like no other.

Impression of Courtyard from the Perimeter Pathway

Continuing the processional sequence, the full depth of the water slab is revealed as one descends around its edges. The geometry of the angled building glazing is continued and expressed in the bronze seat wall frame.