LARC 502 | Sensing Landscape

Situating Site

Located on unceded lands stolen from the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations, Burrard View Park is one of the many parks that run along Wall St. in East Vancouver’s Grandview Woodland neighbourhood. Situated within a residential area, Burrard View Park is a smaller park that is around 3 acres in size.  It runs between North Slocan, North Penticton, Yale and Wall Street, with a steep slope on the Northern end that continues into the water. There are extensive views of the North Shore mountains from the top of the hill and there is a variety of programming within the park: a daycare, a hospice, a playground, tennis courts and a dog park.

Cube Diagram exploring the environmental factors of the site and their impacts throughout the year.

Site History

The site has a contentious history as it was the location of numerous youth institutional facilities over the last 100 years, starting with the building of the Wall Street Orphanage in 1906. The only surviving original structure is the Cottage Hospice, previously a “Babies Cottage” for children under six, which was built in 1924. The old foundations of the notorious Juvenile Detention Hall that was built in 1930 are still visible on the site today; these foundations are a key part of my design.

There has been a renewed focus on the institutional history of Burrard View Park over the last decade. A proposed food forest that was meant to be built on the Southeast corner of the park drew criticism from several community members. The living conditions of the Wall Street Orphanage were notoriously bad and there are calls to fully investigate the park before further development takes place.

Designing for Grief

With this contentious history and the existing hospice on the site, I wanted to focus on grief as my health issue. I designed a space that could be utilized by the patients, visitors and staff of the hospice while paying tribute to the troubling history of the site.

In my research, I looked at the relationship between landscape and grief as well as the role that landscapes play in the processing and coming to terms with the loss.

The first takeaway from this design is the role of ritual in the grieving process. Rituals give us a sense of control over our grief, providing an avenue to find meaning in the chaos. Grief rituals support three main functions: honouring, letting go and self-transformation. With this in mind, I included a space to gather and craft, providing room for ritual.

The second takeaway is the role of earthwork and altering landscapes to mark places of grief. Humans have long marked places of death by altering the landscape. The burial mound, cemeteries, and the scattering of ashes in places that hold memories all root our grief in place. Grief is temporal and experienced in ever-changing phases that produce new understanding. This led me to incorporate mounds as a reference to this historical precedent of marking space.

The third takeaway is from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s pivotal 1969 book On Death and Dying, where she defines the “Five Stages of Grief.” Those stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Writing at a time when the role of institutions was replacing the role of community in death, Kübler-Ross called for the return to a community model of death, a model that fosters a healthier process of healing and moving through grief. With this in mind, I wanted to design a landscape that can be moved through and experienced throughout both the five stages of grief and the temporal changes of the season. Ultimately, I wanted to provide paths to wonder, contemplate and feel grounded in the land.

Design Process

Using the three key takeaways from my research—space for ritual, space to ground grief, and room to move through grief—I began iterating my design ideas, playing with various forms and programming to find a design that could encompass the complexities of the space.

Final Design

With my final design, I wanted to pull out the material of the foundation which would have made up the facade of the original orpahange and use it as a paving pattern running under the mounds. This forms a linear and familiar material that references the space’s former institution while the mounds interrupt this movement by breaking up the grid of bricks.

Playing With Perspective

Final plan

Sections

Perspectives

Passing Through

Gathering

Planting Plan

With grief as my health issue, I wanted to create a soft and relaxing landscape. With all seasons in mind, I proposed a dynamic but calming planting with a mix of grasses, perennials, ground covers, and evergreens. I also wanted to think about how the plantings will change over the years, softening the mounds and reflecting the evolving stages of grief. The design is meant to evoke movement through grief and the mounds speak to the 5 stages of grief as a guide to move forward. The bench planter will provide privacy and moments of reflection to let peoples’ eyes wander over the movements of the ports and the North Shore mountains.