The future of urban schools: integrating community into vertical school architecture

Abstract

Today we lack a substantial discussion on how educational design should define our future. As Toronto continues to increase in density, so has the demand for schools. Condo apartment completions averaged approximately 19,000 units per year up to 2020, which is in line with levels from 2014 to 20161 . If all the proposed residential units (active and built) are completed and registered, the number of registered condominium units in the City of Toronto will increase by 12% to a total of 210,350 units which could generate approximately 20,000 new students by 20512 . School boards are struggling to keep up with demands for space. Traditionally designed in a horizontal, dispersed fashion, schools are meant to provide the space to promote learning and growth, relying heavily on outdoor spaces. However, as the population within the city increases, land becomes scarce. Fostering a learning environment that is not dependent on the restrictions of external physical environment becomes an ever-increasing challenge. This project fuses urban design and architecture together. Urban design fails when the architecture is forgotten and vice versa. Researching both the current urban design strategies and the current architectural design typologies of the Yonge Eglinton area, my goal is to fuse the typologies together for the future development of the area. With all the development of the Yonge Eglinton area, an ongoing trend is building vertically. This thesis examines the current city density and explores the advantages of a newly imagined mid-town school. The traditional design of a school surrounded by green, open space and playgrounds may no longer be a reality for areas of Toronto that are densely populated with unsustainable infrastructure in existing schools. Therefore, this proposal supports a vertical elementary school typology with access to a variety of community services in the same building. The selected services that the mixed use project offers to the community were purposefully chosen to cultivate meaningful relationships between the surrounding neighbourhoods, parents, students and teachers, creating a thoughtful and useful building dedicated to serving the Yonge and Eglinton community. With this new development model, the community will be embedded into the school. As part of my site analysis, the history and the future of the Yonge Eglinton community will be taken into careful consideration in order to design a site-specific community hub.