The Missing Middle.

Toronto’s post-war suburban expansion has lead to a car-based urbanity that consists of two extremes: the high-rise apartments and the single family housing. “The Missing Middle” is a term that refers to the absence of an in-between scale in Toronto, a missing scale, when countered well, believed to be the key to strengthen its under-built avenues.

This graduation project proposes to counter this mid-rise strip approach with a housing strategy that envisions this transit investment as a unique opportunity to rethink the suburban tissue towards a post-sub-urbanity. An urbanity that wants to evolve towards denser, more affordable and resilient suburbs. \nThe project uses a housing strategy that suggests to create an overseeing Avenue housing association that starts several Community land trusts along the avenues by means of borrowing from the city. As a result, the land acquired by the Avenue housing association will disappear from the real estate market.Within these communities, the residents will only rent or pay for the home and not for the land, as this is retained by the local CLT. As a result, the homes will remain affordable as land prices no longer rise.\nThe strategy also uses local post-industrial plots. Where 60 years ago the car industry was one of the most important catalysts for generating the suburban landscape, it could now rely on the local timber industry. This not only encourages Canada's building culture, but also strengthens Ontario's wood economy. The sawn timber would be brought to the industrial plots, to make construction elements that can be used for the mid-rise transformation along the avenue. The old suburban tissue could then be recycled on the same plots. This implies the start of a circular system that focuses on Toronto's local economy.\nThis urban strategy was demonstrated through a design proposal on a site suffering from profit development pressure. The project rethinks the over-sized envelope, by releasing pressure by spreading the density with a certain porosity scaling down towards the residential fabric. It becomes a very dense interplay amongst compact, yet adaptable typologies (40% more compact than the current proposed apartments),To legitimate this new scale and to fight against the de-saturization along the avenues, the project enhances itself in tectonics and color of the facades. There emerges a transition both in scale, color and the profundity of the tectonics towards the residential tissue.