A Tour of the Monuments of the Lachine Canal

Undergraduate design thesis (1989)

Original statement: Faced with the task of developing a plan for the re-use of industrial sites, urban planners need not resort to behavioral, social or economic determinacy; instead, form itself can suggest program and architectural representation can be a planning tool. This project tested the capacity of highly abstract formal orders to suggest forms of inhabitation. It constituted a critique of a new urban master plan by the City of Montréal for development of Lachine Canal lands by questioning the assumed relationships between site and program implicit in their proposal.

Built in the 19th century to bypass the Lachine rapids in the St. Lawrence River, the Lachine canal fell into disuse after the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway locks system. Cyclists and walkers now use it as a recreational corridor; their mode of perception with regard to the industrial ruins that line its banks can best be described as the picturesque.

This thesis project proposed a series of formal interventions at the scale of land art within the canal park that, through strategies of incision and stitching, excavation and insertion, involved the user of the park in a more vital relationship with the surrounding sites. These interventions transgressed the park boundary, creating overlap between the leisure function of the park itself and the day-to-day functions of the surrounding industrial lands. This overlap in turn became the catalyst for new programmatic configurations.