Design for Diversity: Cooksville

As a partnership between ENSCI, Les Ateliers and OCAD University, I was able to participate in this one-week intensive workshop. Here, my team and I got to design a public space for the Cooksville neighbourhood in Mississauga, where more than 100 cultures collide. See more about the workshop at the OpenCity Projects website.

By analysing the city's boundaries, we were able to understand all the possible areas of intervention, focusing on the cultural diversity and heritage. Various field research, aided with a previous Cooksville analysis (available on the Mississauga website), helped us highlight prime locations, organizing them by different groups or issues.

From the previous research given to us by OpenCityProjects, we were able to see people's necessities according to various interviews. This helped us identify a common denominator: the need of connectedness or joining the different parts of the city as a whole. Some existing problematics in the area contributed to the concept development of our group project, such as small or non-existing pedestrian paths, big walking distances, navigation issues, lack of green spaces, etc. Very quickly, we decided to focus our project proposal on 'How can we view Cooksville through another lens?', leading us to create a free-flowing path that merged the entire city into one unified space.

The project divided into different features, namely a trail design, a serenity retreat and an interactive garden, the latter being the primary focus of my work. The path gives its user an opportunity to romanticize wandering in the city while absorbing sights and places that usually can go unnoticed. It connects one to the city as they view it from another lens.

These interactive gardens bring calmness to a fast-paced city, incentivize people to socialize and help people connect to nature and their community, as well as promote cultural exchange. This project proposal encompasses playful hills, sensory paths, gardens, seating arrangements that promote social gathering, and shade structures that could be rented for local pop-ups and markets to generate revenue.