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Architecture as a Consequence of Collective Perception

Nadia Petkovic
April 6, 2011

I aim to conduct an analysis of human perception towards the urban environment, and translate my
findings into a cohesive multi-scaled urban/architectural project. The project will embody multiple scales
in program, addressing private and public space in the city of Toronto, as well as an observation of their
effects on the greater city. In Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of great American Cities, she states: Cities
have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created
by everybody."1 Consequently, the notion of the city as a place that embodies everybody raises various
questions in regards to collective perception and its relationship to the built environment. How do we
possibly gather and amalgamate individual impressions into a collective perception? How can the
collective perception inspire and fuel architecture? How can architecture give back to society and offer
individuals means to reconcile with their city, their community and their personal space? In North
America we are continually dealing with the adverse effects of top-down planning approaches to city
development, predominately in those projects that were constructed in the fifties and sixties in response
to the past ideals of an automobile dominated society. How can we re-view the North American city
today as a model for new imagination, through not just the eyes of the individual, but also the
collective? I would like to investigate perceptions of architectural insertions, what I will refer to as
moments in the city and transform them according to collective ideals gathered through new modes of
discourse in the present society that form real basis for opinion and reveal culture. These include various
media, such as news, community initiatives and social discourse, including contemporary means of
communication such as internet forums and blogs, where individuals freely write and respond to
opinion. The intention is to witness the possible effects of a bottom up approach in various spaces at

Jacobs, Jane. The death and life of great American cities, Vintage books edition, 1992, (origin version 1961), New
York

different scales in the city. My role is not to author the total design of final outcome, but rather direct,
facilitate and respond to changing inspirations and opportunities in the project throughout the process.

Project Premise: Multi-Scaled Propositions, Moments in the City
The focus of the project is to conceive a new adaptation to the city through the collective
imagination. I can begin by introducing architectural moments into the city that are framed within their
context. These moments will materialize in the form of collages; photographic in the way they capture
instances of new imagined impressions of the city. Collages of city scenes will aim to inspire new
opportunities within the city, reconstructing the street to consider potentials and points of departure.
Collages can be constructed by combining contemporary images of Toronto with its historical imagery,
images from other cities and new ideas (propositions) for architecture, public space, and transportation.
The collages can act as the primary point of departure, first to deconstruct the street as means to
reinterpret the city, and understand it from the point of view of a pedestrian. These insertions will be
situated through media that enable an interactive discourse to take shape, for instance, a blog. The
gathering and amalgamation of a diverse variety of opinion in the methodology will influence and
negotiate the basis and benefit of any specific insertion. In this way, feedback I receive from the blog,
will inspire further advances into the project.
What is the role of Toronto as a model for new imagination? From an architectural scale to an
urban-scaled project, there is much to learn from Toronto and other Canadian cities. Torontos urban
landscape - the vastness of its sprawl, the disability of its uneconomical transportation system, the
unchanged scars of post-war development have made it a significant target of criticism and
simultaneously, an extraordinary prospect of potentiality for hopeful and passionate citizens. The site
chosen in Toronto will be situated around historical and current controversial urban issues, with
program(s) that appeal to the desires and fundamental needs of surrounding communities and the

greater region of Toronto. The programs will become concrete following the process of insertion and
feedback, encompassing a reflection of the collective contemporary desires for the city, and embodying
multiple scales. These scales will respond to individual space, public space and the interaction of various
spaces through a consideration of circulation and its shared affects on the site and city (ie. the dwelling,
the street as public space, circulation modeling).

Primary Area of Study: Collective Perception to Collective Authorship

There is emergent property that yields the possibility of meeting a collective authorship. This is a
subject particularly discussed by Steven Johnson, Alexander Wall, James Corner and many other authors.
Johnson, author of Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities, and software, introduces the
notion of the swerve, which he describes as the accidental exponential affect of unplanned decisions.
This is the notion that urban design goes beyond a central force of control, where there is a genuine
element of self-organization that occurs over time, and it is this force that fuels the essence of a
neighborhood, district or city. Emergence, through Johnsons perspective, acts as a bottom up approach
to urban design, where, communities and cities occur over time, centralized in space, but decentralized
in function, and where to some extent the holistic experience of a city is a progression of ordinary
accidents acting as a model of interactivity which is collectively authored.2 This project can look towards
Johnsons notions of emergence to structure it, whereby it proves imperative to work in steps or
fragments (moments), rather than a unified central approach - not to disrupt the importance of time and
the ability of multiple users to find a niche in their community.
Similarly, we can look towards Alexander Wall, who reveals the urban surface as a field designed
to increase its capacity to support and diversify activities in time even activities that cant be foreseen.
The central design strategy is then to extend the continuity of the urban landscape while diversifying its

Bentley, I. (1999). Urban transformations: power, people, and urban design. London: Routledge (pp. 239-273).

range of surfaces.3 This type of discussion empathizes with the notion of many individuals acting across a
landscape each with their own individual motives balanced by the range of opportunity that the urban
landscape can provide.
These perspectives reveal that no single opinion can resolve society, nor design an environment
that is meaningful to everyone all the time. History has exposed modernist egoist planning strategies and
architecture have led to desolate spaces, and monotonous neighbourhoods, void of interaction nor
ecologically sensitive. Corner regards the failings of twentieth century planning as the absolute
impoverishment of the imagination with regard to the optimized rationalization of development
practices and capital accumulation.4 However, he does not fall short of conveying a deep sense of hope
in the possibility of design, specifically what he refers to as landscape urbanism. He regards the
landscape as a horizontal surface or "field" of action. These surfaces constitute the urban field when
considered across a wide range of scales, from the sidewalk to the street to the entire infrastructural
matrix of urban surfaces.5 The urban scale engages not only the physical surfaces, but also society across
a collection of scales, which are relentlessly in flux.
There are numerous amplitudes at which we engage and identify with society, ranging from our
experience of intimate space, such as the dwelling, to our overall perception of ourselves as citizens or
belonging to a place, from the scale of the neighbourhood to the city. These are the scales at which we
in part define our existence. Our sense of self is based wholly on context and how we receive the
contextual impact of our surroundings. We form these strange bubbles of individual existence; which
embody our most immediate encounter with architecture and the built environment. Physically we share
the links between these bubbles as we move from place to place, and socially we share these links

Wall, A. (1999). Programming the urban surface. In J. Corner (Ed.), Recovering landscape : essays in contemporary
landscape architecture (pp. 233).
4
Corner, J. (2006). Terra fluxus. In C. Waldheim (Ed.), The landscape urbanism reader (pp. 32).
5
Corner, J. (2006). Terra fluxus. In C. Waldheim (Ed.), The landscape urbanism reader (pp. 30).

through varying discourses. Discourse enables us to form collective perceptions as means for change and
action. In the case of this project, these scales can be examined from an architectural to an urban scale
as initial moments that can develop through discourse into a concrete proposition.

Program: Moments in Public and Private Space

The program will work at various scales to develop a strategy embracing an emergent city. We
cannot do this by investigating the single stand-alone architectural artifact; we have no choice but to
embrace context.
Firstly, types of private ownership (private space), the dwelling or storefront, can be explored as a
starting point from which my project can evolve and transcend into the city scale in a relationship with
local and widespread discourse. These will take shape as an attempt to address contemporary density
and environmental issues in Toronto.
Secondly, the urban scale (public space) can be investigated as a moment that corresponds as
context or conditioning to the first insertion, the private spaces. The program of this urban-scaled
element will respond to the architectural context of the site, the proposed dwellings as well as the
specific issues related to the city of Toronto such as transportation, walkability and the various needs of
the community from other social, ecological and economic points of view. In particular, I would like to
investigate the city from the point of view of the pedestrian, by deconstructing the street and its
relevance to the public and private realms of the city and their interconnections.
This leads to the next moment, which is a proposal stretched across the city as a result and effect of
the other two explored scales. How will the dwelling, storefront and the street effect and condition the
city? As a renewed response to the latter program investigations it will become imperative to study
methods and patterns of transportation.

The result of this exploration will depend greatly on the feedback received throughout the process of
investigation. However, it will encompass an architectural project that illustrates a re-approach first to
the private space of the individual and then its context (made up of many individuals and their
environment), in which the architectural artifact does not operate alone, but as a result of relationships
to the systems that support it, and this process includes forms of social communication (which becomes
the central tool for the process).

Site: Gaps in the Toronto Urban Surface

Toronto is a notable city of plurality in Canada, between permanent populations and transient
immigrant populations, with a fascinating expanse of development surrounding the metropolitan area.
Like many North American cities Toronto suffers from problems of segregation and discordant
communities. These factors have led to disconnected perceptions of the city where the city for
Torontos many suburbanites, is a place for daytime life, and as tax-payers there is little interest
providing for the city services that are more important for urban dwellers, such as bike lanes, increased
public transit. Meanwhile the Toronto Transit Commission serves the low-density suburbs at a high cost.6
There is a continuing contrast between the outnumbering needs of suburban dwellers and those of
urban dwellers, which has lead to the election of controversial Mayor Rob Ford. The historical policy and
controversy in the city (i.e. the proposed Spadina Expressway, stopped in part by Jane Jacobs), the more
recent efforts made by previous Toronto David Miller (i.e. green bin program, increased bike lanes,
attempt to propose toll on the Gardiner Expressway), the contemporary controversial urban
development initiatives (i.e. waterfront revitalization, suggestion to remove the Gardiner Expressway)
and the very controversial election of the new mayor have made Toronto a fascinating Canadian city for
architectural and urban design venture. The city of Toronto as site is a reaction to these specific concerns

Solomon, Lawrence. 2007. Toronto sprawls: a history. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, (p.16).

and the project I propose will attempt to establish moments or architectures within the gaps of these
hot spots.
I would like to look at Spadina Avenue as a point of significant potential for a site, given its
historical and social context. Spadina was saved in the 60s by a citizen based opposition group who
rallied against the proposal to create the Spadina Expressway which would grant automobile users in
the suburbs convenient access to the city. This proposal would have split the city, cause segregation and
destroy many homes and local businesses, and in turn devastate local culture.
The deconstruction of Spadina reveals much about Toronto, if we observe and analyze various
parts of the street and their relationships to the city. Concentrating on the downtown portion of the
street, Spadina moves from the controlled historic expression of U of T buildings, through an unkempt
area of local businesses into the bustling china town area. It cuts through the fashion district and
entering a strange void of nearly nothing except a parking lot following a couple of gas stations towards
condos that seem impermeable at grade as it crosses over the CN rail lines. After the bridge it is cut by
the Gardiner Expressways merging lanes and overhead highway, and ends at the harbour. There is a
notable disconnect from the vibrant part of Spadina to that of the harbour, clearly severed by the
Gardiner. (Refer to Appendix A. Spadina).
Notably, Spadina has been characterized as a street of action, dominated by its role as a
transportation route, early on becoming a main tramway, and expanding in width to accommodate more
vehicles. What is the implication of transportation on the life of the street and the urban matrix? We can
observe Spadina as a site for the junction of many actions and possibilities. We can look at the street
within the context of Christine Boyers, The City of Collective Memory, whereby she engages the city
with respect to layers of history and memory that create a matrix of differences in expression and
opportunity. She states: Different layers of historical time superimposed on each other or different
architectural strata (touching but not necessarily informing each other) no longer generate a structural

city but merely illuminate an experience an experience of diversity.7 Boyer furthermore observes the
city through various visual models: the traditional city, the city as a work of art, the city as a panorama,
and the city as a spectacle. All of these models tend towards notions of emergence to gain grounds and
reconcile with collective imaginations. Boyer notions of the city reveal opportunities for how to envision
the artifact, whereby my first artifacts will act to collage these noted collisions in possibilities that
Spadina presents.

Mode of Production: The Internet, and Communication as Entertainment

How can these moments: be inserted within communities, in the public eye, in order to
generate feedback to examine the collective perception? The last decades have amounted in a
substantial and exponential advances in technology that have appropriated and challenged the means of
discourse in society. The Internet is a revolution that has changed our techniques of collecting
information; it is an ephemeral database of endless knowledge and opportunity that not only improves
ones ability to gain information, but also how to use it and apply it. It is a fascinating realm in which we
are continually sharing information, building information and responding to it and in various ways with
different methodologies. Additionally, we often do this for fun, as a source of productive entertainment.
We can look at new and common means of discourse to better understand the public perception
of any situation. Software and internet exposure have become a tool to make ideas and interventions
available to part of an interactive environment. I propose in the beginning to initiate and circulate a blog
as the first tool for collaborating and generating feedback, which will begin as a series of images
(moments). The initial images will be developed by a set of known skills amalgamated drawings,
models, photography and Photoshop. Later, as the feedback works to inform the project, I may begin to

Boyer, M. Christine. 1994. The city of collective memory: its historical imagery and architectural entertainments.
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press (p.19).

elaborate on my method, perhaps gaining the skills to create new modes of feedback generation. The
methodology will likely evolve along with the design process.

Conclusion: Your subheading

In conclusion, the aim of my project is collect and gather an understanding of collective
perceptions, both local and common, to a multi-scaled investigation of a Toronto site, dealing with
social, ecological and economic factors, which are specific to the history and context of the citys
development. The design process will undergo stages of investigation, from the scale of private spaces,
the community and city, and simultaneously, working within the framework of an emergent city
condition, not to interrupt the balance of time-sensitive urban transformations, with a particular
attention of the contextual impact of the proposal. The process of design will evolve according to a
methodology invested in discourse, communication and interaction, consequently resulting in the
observation and translation of a collective perception to the urban landscape.

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APPENDIX A. SPADINA