Date : 2012

This ideas competition winning design explores a strategy to counter the eastward sprawl along the Trans-Canada Highway “edge”, through a process of urban “surgery.” The freeway can be seen as a monumental incision cutting through our provinces, cities, communities and landscapes. The surgical process is one of “stitching” - stitching back the city fabric which has been cut by the freeway intervention. The project explores a means of reclaiming the space which was expropriated to build the freeways. A cultural bridge/building is strategically inserted around the existing infrastructure of freeway overpass at Lonsdale Ave., and the Trans- Canada Highway in North Vancouver. While this project is specific to this particular site, the proposal is meant to be a more prototypical suggestion for similar “stitches” along the Trans-Canada freeway continuum. It proposes to anchor the end of Lonsdale Avenue with cultural and civic spaces/park-space to complement the existing civic anchor at the south waterfront end of the avenue.