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Three unlikely design concepts actually get built in Toronto. Are the wavedecks a hazardous, inaccessible flight of fancy or good public space?

 

The Simcoe Wavedeck is the newest feature on Toronto’s evolving waterfront. Its excictinf undulations create a memorable and engaging public space that pushes the limits of safety that pushes the limits of safety and accessibility.

 

There are design ideas that seem as if they could be implemented. This has been the case in recent years in architecture, where each new computer-generated fantasy by any of the big names gets everyone’s head scratching in a collective “How are they going to build that?“ Such ideas have been less the case in landscape architecture, where form tends to follow function by necessity. While architecture can still hide level floors, elevators, and ramps within a skin of just about any material and design, landscape architecture’s  surface tend to be for both and  actual use.

 

So when the landscape architecture firms West 8 of Roterdam and du Toit Allsopp Hillier (DTAH) of Toronto, as part or their winning competition entry fot Toronto’s central waterfront in 2007, rendered a series of crazily undulating wooden decks spanning harbor boat slips, it honestly seemed a bit unlikely they would ever get built. How would people walk on those plank roller coasters? Wouldn’t  the liability exposure be extraordinary? How do you make wood do that?

 

 

the story of the wavedecks is the story ot how crazy ideas get built

 

 

"We sit in our studio in Rotterdam," admits Marc Ryan, a na­tive Torontonian now with West 8, "and dream up crazy scuff." Which is what it seemed like at the time, but that's how you win competitions. Waterfront Toronto. the semipublic agency respon­sible for the reinvigoration of the entire waterfront, shockingly held them to the idea.

 

Today, three so-called wavedecks are in place and open to the public. Each has its own personality, but they are remarkably similar to the original renderings prepared by West 8 + DATH (the official name of the joint venture that is designing the water­front). Standing on the Simcoe WaveDeck - the most improba­ble of the three - Ryan himself seems incredulous they got built. He even looks a little embarrassed, as if the designers got the last laugh, pulled one over on the public and the funders by getting to do whatever they wanted, just as star building architects seem to.

 

But the last laugh goes to the public itself. On that gloomy late-summer day, Ryan was witness to kids exploring Simcoe's humps as if they were an adventure playground, out-of-town tourists posing for pictures on the ipe decks, and average Torontonians sitting and reading and watching the boats bob in the harbor. Had he ventured our 10 hours earlier, at nearly midnight, he would have seen small clutches of 20-year-olds engaged in deep and not­ so-deep conversation on the benches, just out of sight of couples cuddling down by the water's edge.

 

As fantastical as the wavedecks are, they provide public space that is both engaging and relaxing-nor an easy combination to pull off. And since the wavedecks are built out over the water, that public space is reclaimed literally from thin air. Getting here, of course, wasn't easy. It also wasn't cheap: Reel had a construction cost of about $2.7 million U.S., Spading was about $3.4 million U.S., and Simcoe ran about  $4.8 million U.S. But the story of the wavedecks - how they deal with accessibility and safety, how they were actually constructed, how they create both public space and natural space-is the story of how crazy ideas get built.

 

The three wavedecks were completed from west to fast, with Spading the first done in Sep­tember 2008, followed b_y Rees and Simcoe in 2009. One more is planned at Parliament. Each   one is named for the nearest perpendicular street, and all are meant to widen the pedestrian route along the waterfront and the Queens Quay road and transitway at the places where Toronto's har­bor slips pinch inland toward the street. Essential­ly, they are undulating wooden boardwalks of ipe and cedar, with stainless steel accents in the form of guardrails and bench Supports. Each has its own personality. "Spadina is the classic," says Ryan, de­ scribing the quite formal, symmetrical, high-In-the-middle promontory, which won a 2009 ASLA Honor Award. Rees is the quintessential expression of how Adriaan Geuze, International ,IL LA, West 8's to under, describes his plans for the waterfront: as a place where the city kisses the lake. The Rees deck dips in the middle, coming to within 35 inches of the water. Simcoe, says Ryan, "is a smile; it's for fun." It's a rumpled wooden carpet, with two tall hills that rise to more than I I feet above the harbor.

 

Despite their different personalities, though, ^they have delib­erate commonalities in their Structure and aesthetic. "The wave­decks establish a powerful language chat repeats," exlpains Ryan. "As you walk the street, you'll have encounters with different but familiar elements." That coherence is a critical aspect of the en­tire waterfront project, which will eventually create a wooden boardwalk along five miles of Lake Ontario. The wavedecks are one aspect of that theme, and they reinforce several existing stretches of very popular boardwalk and will lac­er be joined by wooden bridges at the mouths of the slips.

 

The best way to think of them srtuctually is to envision seven long ribbons of glue laminated untreated coastal yellow cedar. Between the ribbons is ipe planking. The space between the ribbons varies by wavedeck but is general ly just over four feet. Each beam has a small shelf on each side that carries the planking. These ledges undulate differently than the tops of the beams, and this creates steps and side slopes^, as the deck rises and falls. Every element serves both structural and aesthetic purposes. The glue-lam beams carry the majority of the weight, but their faces are visible wherever there are steps. The distance be­tween the beams is narrow enough to allow the ipe to remain sup­ported only at the shelves (except for the outermost spans, which have additional steel under them). The whole structure is support­ed from below on perpendicular steel beams reaching out from the harbor wall and sitting on concrete columns set into the har­bor floor. The decks are beefy, designed to resist the lake's ice up­lift and wave action, and to support, says Ryan, "1,000 people or a fire truck."

 

Vertical elements are subtle compositions in steel and wood, and, as with the structural elements, ^everything does double duty. Low steel rails seem purely ornamental but are carefully placed relative to slope and drop-offs. Benches have steel bases with ipe cladding and provide a safety function in addition to being comfortable for sitting or reclining. “There was always a desire to keep the wavedeck edge open and free," says Ryan, "but you have to mark that edge. [The benches] are our answer to a toe rail."

 

 

The decks were designed in a complex interplay between com­puter modeling and full-scale mock-ups built in West 8’s office. This combination allowed the designers to test what it would feel like to walk on certain slopes and cross slopes but also to achieve precision to within one-sixteenth of an inch. The approx­imatelv 20-inch-thick beams were constructed off site from one­ inch-thick strips of wood in 65-foot sections (except the most se­vere undulations at Simcoe, where the sections are much shorter and the wood strips are one­ quarter-Inch thick, to allow for tighter curves). The off-sire construction reduced the amount of precision construction required on site, where it would be far more difficult to achieve Essential­ly, the structure (steel supports and glue-lam beams) of each deck fits together like a puzzle, and then the ipe planks are screwed into place on the ledges that are an Integral part of the beams. The vertical elements, likewise, sit on the ledges, and the planks are cut around them, giving the appearance that everything rises from beneath the deck.

 

"This structural purity is a perfect reflection of the aesthetic pu­rity It actually conjures modernism, though in a naturalistic, nonrectilinear way. Form and function are inextricable, but here form is driving function, and then function becomes form.

 

The wavedecks, however, despite their satisfying elegance and strangeness, don't seem to follow the regular rules for plazas and screetscapes. They are wholly public spaces, and they are well used, but there are no apparent ramps, no obvious division between flat areas and steeper slopes. They are more landform than plaza, and that raises some questions about accessibility and safety.

 

"This is like a double black diamond ski run," says Ryan, referring specifically to Simcoe's pre­cipitous slopes. "But we're taking people's com­mon sense into account, just aS if they were hik­ing." Though Simcoe's hills constitute the most abrupt topography on any of the three wavedecks, each has its slopes, steps, and traction concerns. The magic of the design is the tact that even though each deck looks like (and in fact is) a sin­~^,le monolithic composition, the designers know, Mid have marked, exactly where the differences in slope occur. That notation is not done with garish yellow striping or incongruous texture changes, but rather with small raised metal discs. These discs occur at the outer edges of the decks (here accompanied by textured yellow dots and steel bol­lards), to generally warn users that this is riot a uniform plane. They also true the accessible pathways across the decks, with wheelchair icons placed at the edges of the routes.

 

 

 

Each wavedeck is composed of seven beams running parallel to the harbor wall, as at Simcoe, above. The beams themselves are both structural and aesthetic. They support the ipe planks that form the surface of the wavedecks, below, but their tops and faces are exposed, creating steps and ramps. Each of the beams undulates differently, which gives the decks their apparent randomness, bottom.

 

 

 

West 8 + DTAH have also allowed for universal accessibili­ty through the shapes of the decks themselves. Spadina has a central rise that is slightly higher than the adjacent street, while its outer corners plunge down toward the water. From the har­borside corners of the deck, there are diagonal pathways that rise, step free and at less than 5 percent, to the central high poi nr. From there, it is possible to move downslope in either direction along the water to the low points. The slope here is between 5 and 8 percent, and a handrail and grippy treads are on the planking. Despite the undulations and steps, a fully accessible route is here, but it's subtle.

 

 

 

Likewise at Rees, the center of which dips down to the water, the accessible route is present but understated. Metal discs mark a path­way^, from the Queens Quay corners down to the center, creatively dodging steps on either side and never getting steeper than 5 percent. The Rees slip is home to a sailing program for persons with disabil­ities, so the steel rail c the center of the wavedeck is removable to al­low easier access to boats than exists anywhere else in Toronto today.

 

At Simcoe, accessibility and safety are more complex because the slopes on the big hills well exceed 8 percent. 7wo step-free, accessible routes down to the water slip between the hills and steps. They are either marked with the usual metal discs or flanked by a curvy steel rail that winds around both ills. The rail is low, about knee height, and easily stepped over, but it is meant to signal the adventurous part of the deck. On the hills, the ipe planks are beveled, so they create a sawtooth surface to the walks, which helps with traction. A taller steel railing separates the hill area from the water, though it has horizontal cable rails, which are climbable and likely unsafe.

 

Ryan admits iliac the Simcoe hills were a bit of a stretch for Toronto, even coming on the heels of the very successful Spadina deck. There haven't been any major incidents, though, even though a favorite local sport has been to slide down the beams. Since each successive beam is taller arid steeper than the next, users can choose their level of comfort. Ryan and Waterfront Toronto are subscrib­ing to the idea that if people actually are given less information about the hazards of a place, they will be more alert and more care­ful. That's an idea, of course, that is hotly debated in North Amer­ica, but it expresses the European sentiment that people need to be responsible for their own actions when in unfamiliar environments.

 

A more difficult discussion is whether the accessible routes are marked effectively enough. For someone with limited mobility or sight, those little metal discs might be hard to identify quickly. To improve safety, the stair nosing detail used at Spadina a stainless steel strip with a textured grip was modified ac the other two wavedecks. Rees and Simcoe have white stripes, which are much more apparent in the all - wood landscape. It could be suggested that brighter markings would help with accessibility, but then that kind of striping would mar the aesthetic of the decks.

 

 

 

Underneath each wavedeck is another world. Toronto Harbor is a tough place for aquatic life: lots of boats, lots of stormwater runoff, nor much habitat. But the wavedecks are trying to reme­dy that by restoring habitat in the slips they bridge. "Every time we build a new human public space," says Ryan, "we're also build­ing these biotopes.^° During construction of the decks, contrac­tors; recontoured the lake lx-d, bull[ shoals with river stones, and attached tree root fans to concrete on the harbor floor. Some of th is was done randomly, by just tossing stuff in to the water, and some more carefully by construction workers in scuba suits.

 

 

 

Though perhaps a small gesture, this habitat creation speaks to some of ^-Waterfront Toronto's sustainability goals. Many of' the organization's projects are restoring degraded landscapes and creating new commmunities with high-efficiency buildings and walkable neighborhoods. In fact, the last remaining wavedeck, Parliament, will actually be a long boardwalk and plaza that will  collect and treat stormwater from an adjacent condo complex. The water will drain to ranks at the dock wall, and those tanks wiII be the basic for the boardwalk. The water will flow to a larger holding area, over which the wavedeck will be built. The required size of this last tank determine,.] the size of the wavedeck, and the undu­lating wood ^theme will have its ex­pression as a series of biomorphic win­dows down into the tank. The wood will bulge upward at the windows, at most as if something had been pushed through from beneath. The windows will allow in sunlight for ultraviolet

light treatment of the stormwater and will make the treatment process visible. Current plans are for three holes and two sculp­tural towers. The project is presently in schematic design and has no set implementation date.

 

Encountering the wavedecks for the first time is a complete surprise, especially Simcoe, with its waves that tower more than head high. They are completely our of the ordinary, redefining what a plaza surface can be. They actually, in photographs. look a little like the photorealistic renderings from West 8 + DTHA's original competition entry, which is a good thing because it means the designer and client invested the time and money to re­alize the vision. In both architecture and landscape architecture (especially the latter), wild ideas tend to get watered down. It's easy to back away from some of the more grandiose schemes by citing liability concerns, constructability issues, and accessibili­ty rules- The wavedecks could easily have become flat or stepped plazas with custom benches and sleek steel railings. They could have east IV become three of the same, for the sake of greater con­tinuity and lower design and construction cost. What got built is probably the most difficult way to cross a boat slip.

 

Some cities build unexpected, love-it-or-hate-it works of archi­tecture to put themselves on the map (actually Toronto has done that, too, from the 1)6) New City Hall, known as the ^-flying saucer;" to Will Alsop's Ontario College of Art and Design to re­cent works by Daniel Libeskind and Frank Gehry). The water­front wavedecks are the landscape architectural equivalent of that: a bit sensationalist, highly photogenic, and completely new. But Spadina, Rees, Simcoe, and the forthcoming Parliament go two better. They create new public space and they help activate miles of existing lakefront. They might be a little hazardous, but they're a lot of fun-and not easily forgotten.