There is consensus on re-urbanising/repopulating this small North American
downtown, but the means and act of doing that is full of challenges and anomalies.
This city, lacks, narrow non-residential blocks and pedestrian scaled spaces, which
impact on its vitality & ability to thrive economically. It also lacks dedicated arts
and small business spaces in the core, which are identified as having importance for
the health of the city. This is a proposal for a pedestrian oriented arts/business
complex.
Using roughly 6m wide (similar to a typical older house in the area) bands of
individually tenanted, terraced units, for creative and/or business uses, this project
seeks to address this lack in a concentrated way to jump start the urbanising
process. In so doing its smaller spaces will ventilate the downtown. This microcosm
may be more realistic than hoping for a return to pre-existing conditions.
Modular in nature, but based on 6m square ‘tubes’, not dissimilar to shipping
containers, but with more generous proportions, likely constructed with internally
self-finished engineered softwood panels, this building element can be mainly vertical
or horizontal, combined or omitted in such a way as to create a block capable of
occupying a site in the city with mass, but being fully permeable it facilitates a wide
range of internal and external activities and relationships. Common, sheltered spaces
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