ON MEDIATION: STUDENT LIVING

A proposal for a new student residence on the University of Toronto campus, this project considers the complexity and liminality that is student living. Unlike any other time in life, students are essentially asked to be engaged at all time. More so, to be able to concentrate these engagements within the residence. Eating, sleeping, and socializing are collapsed into a single place.

In response, the design of this project is rooted concepts of connectivity, wandering, and routine as intertwined and critical elements of a creative and healthy lifestyle. Designed not in plan or section, but with through a human scale, the building facilitates choices in mediating between escape and isolation — two key conditions of negotiating early adulthood. Every space from the extended covered street plaza, undulating green roof, and mezzanine; to the sprawling triple height common rooms and lofted student units, has choice embedded within it. The sixteen story tower aims to provide students with agency in establishing their new routine through the ability to discover valued moments of focused, shared, and wasted time within this node of their new life.