Performance Themed Graduate Research Studio
“Architecture and its double: Scripting Participatory Event Space”
8 month research project
90 page document including text and graphics
Absence being the death of architecture simultaneously offers new opportunities. The remaining semi-abandoned rail lines situated in the core of Regina, Saskatchewan form an edge that terminates the industrial warehouse district and determines a threshold to the downtown area. The in-between is a vacant 17.5 acre lot framed by the main economic life blood of the city, the Canadian Pacific Rail. The void within the city creates a divide while providing an opportunity to intervene and reconnect the streets, the communities and the city. However, there is a peculiar beauty of the vast bareness and quietude of the remaining dust land with the main C.P.R. tracks sprawling outward to the prairie horizon. In what ways can absence manifest itself? How can one design and author absence?
The rail carries a tremendous history and was the founding element of the Queen City, yet its value is under-recognized. This thesis aims to formulate a strategy, supported by the train’s infrastructure, for the creation of a mise-en-scène framed by the urban fabric and designed to promote civic engagement on the site. This setting-of- narrative is inspired by the experience of the train within the vast and sublime prairie landscape.