24.02.25 - MARC, MLA and MUD students in Integrated Urbanism Studio propose new life for Downsview Airfield
The Integrated Urbanism Studio (ARC2013/LAN2013/URD1011) serves as a core component of the architecture, landscape architecture and urban design programs at the Daniels Faculty, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration to address the complex challenges of 21st-century urbanism.
During the Fall 2024 term, the graduate studio focused on the decommissioned Downsview Airfield in Toronto—a transformative project with the potential to house over 80,000 residents. This ambitious undertaking positions Downsview as one of North America's most significant urban redevelopments, offering a unique platform for students to explore and address critical urban planning and design issues.
Students developed transformative schemes from creating a new agricultural food hub and an integrated water management system, to reevaluating systems of home ownership and reconsidering the site as a regenerative landscape. Read on to learn more about the diverse array of group projects.
Block-by-Block
Students: Jason Chen, Riling Chen, Shixun (Peter) Wang, Zixuan (Kathy) Zhou
Program: MARC
Instructor: Chloe Town
Website: rescaling-downsview.cargo.site
"Downsview Airport, located in the northern part of Toronto, is a site shaped by its aviation history. Following its decommissioning, the linear runway remains vacant, resembling a gash in the landscape and surrounded by isolated neighborhoods that function like archipelagos. The unused land has become the subject of intense speculation, particularly for condominium developments. However, these large-scale, top-down plans often result in homogeneous ownership models and architectural typologies, which deter social diversity.
Our scheme, Block-by-Block, explores the question: How can we build incrementally? At the urban scale, we re-evaluate the rectilinear property lines that define much of Toronto’s fabric and systems of ownership. These alternative ownership models facilitate smaller scale building typologies, fostering more intimate and interconnected communities. At the individual scale, each unit is designed to be flexible, equipped with essential plumbing and electrical infrastructure but left unfinished, allowing residents to customize their spaces according to their needs and preferences."
Terrain Bound
Students: Kiana Rezvani Baghae, Benjamin Dunn, Patrick Minardi, Orly Sacke
Program: MLA
Instructor: Fadi Masoud
Website: terrainbound.cargo.site
"Terrain Bound challenges the convention of boundary-making in city-building processes, arguing that large scale developments should be planned holistically, in connection with adjacent communities and with respect to existing ecologies. Downsview’s history as an airport has been defined by the assertion of rigid boundaries. While the airport’s function has ceased, its legacy persists in the surrounding neighbourhood. Our project identifies key boundary conditions and reimagines them as opportunities to bridge, buffer, and rebalance Downsview’s insular condition."
Reimagining Urbanism Through Integrated Agriculture
Students: Abby MacEwen, Amanda Nightingale, Denise Akman, Noel Sampson
Program: MARC
Instructor: Mauricio Quirós Pacheco
Website: nadasuperstufinal.cargo.site
"Toronto has lost 62.5% of its agricultural land, and with a growing population and the climate crisis, this project puts food security at the forefront of its development. This project transforms an industrial site into a new urban food hub, integrating agriculture across community, public, industrial, and institutional scales (S-M-L-XL). Through vertical farming retrofits to hangar buildings, banded field/greenhouse conditions, a new food terminal, and strategic connectivity, the site evolves as population and food needs grow. It envisions a self-sustaining urbanism, where housing and food production coexist, creating resilient systems that redefine city living—balancing density, sustainability, and food security as an essential urban infrastructure."
Diverse and Connected
Students: Zahra (Asal) Cheraghi, Neha Haider, Pablo Vasquez Segura
Program: MUD
Instructor: Roberto Damiani
"The project restores connectivity by integrating the site into the city fabric through three public connectors linked to the ecological network. An east-west green connector and extended street networks strengthen ties to the urban context, while the former runway becomes a vibrant pedestrian strip. Four distinct districts emerge, featuring diverse building typologies that balance density, porosity, and privacy. Green fingers activate Downsview Park, and existing structures are adaptively reused as amenities, unifying the overall vision."
Embracing Afterlife
Students: Angela Jang, Claire Leverton, Georgia Posno, Lauren Tran
Program: MLA
Instructor: Fadi Masoud
Website: embracingafterlife.cargo.site
"Embracing Afterlife explores the evolving narrative of Downsview Park, where the past, present, and future coexist. The park’s ecological memory, shaped by history, climate, and industrialization, leaves traces in its soil and plant communities. Our guiding quote, 'every environment bears a palimpsest of its past. Every woodland is a memoir made of leaves and microbes that catalog its 'ecological memory,' helped encourage us to think beyond the site as it presently exists.
Our project honors this afterlife by integrating the site’s history, particularly the runway’s past into its future design. By repurposing materials like old concrete, fallen trees and stone, we created an integrated circulation plan that reflect the potentiality of the site as a highly regenerative landscape. Interwoven through these repurposed materials is a robust planting plan that aims to remediate the site’s soil from chemicals and create a multi-seasonal space that entirely leads with landscape."
Everything, Everywhere, All At Once
Students: Ardy Chang, Nathan Shakura, Sharon Lam, Siena Buzzelli
Program: MARC
Instructor: Christos Marcopoulos
Website: integrated-urbanism.cargo.site
"Key terms that we examine throughout our project are: ultimate mixed use, fine grain, weaving, democratic planning, community life. The overarching concept for our proposed plan of Downsview Park involves the homogenous redistribution of the Framework Plan to weave together land use patterns of Toronto. We are critiquing the Framework plan which proposes an urban 'island', neglecting its surrounding neighbourhoods. Our project considers what mixed use means at the scale of the community and the city. We approach mixed use design by splitting up and rearranging the Framework’s land use plan evenly throughout Downsview Park. The Framework Plan is developer driven and we are challenging it with a radically democratic, fine grain, community-driven project."
Runways to Waterways
Students: Andy Lee, Ryan Grover, Olivier Beaudoin, Ram Espino
Program: MLA
Instructor: Fadi Masoud
Website: runwaystowaterways.cargo.site
"Runways to Waterways transforms Downsview’s former airfield into an integrated water management and urban ecology system. Positioned at the ridge of Toronto’s watersheds, it captures, stores, and filters water, mitigating lowland flooding while creating biodiverse public spaces. Repurposed runways form basins that direct stormwater through cloudburst roads, detention streets, and green corridors back into the Humber and Don Rivers. These interventions not only slow water, but establish dynamic spaces for recreation, education, and ecological restoration."
GREEN THREADS: Weaving Nature Through Urban Hyperdensity
Students: Jack Ahn, Casper Li, Suet Wing (Sylvia) Lo
Program: MLA
Instructor: Fadi Masoud
Website: highdens.cargo.site
"GREEN THREADS: Weaving Nature Through Urban Hyperdensity is a visionary response to Toronto’s rapid growth and escalating urban sprawl. This high-density experiment challenges conventional development by seamlessly integrating nature and city life, creating a compact, efficient, and vibrant urban fabric. Drawing from global precedents, it weaves together a transit-oriented nucleus, mixed-use towers, and dynamic public spaces—maximizing vertical and horizontal potential to cultivate a resilient, livable, and ecologically adaptive future."
The Strip
Students: Nour Fahmy, Timothy Soribello, Ming Yin
Program: MARC
Instructor: Samantha Eby
Website: downsviewthestrip.cargo.site
"The Strip explores the role of open spaces in urban settings, questioning what draws people to gather and how design can foster connectivity, inclusivity, and a sense of community. Through a carefully designed framework of the strips, each with distinct functions and typologies, we have created a dynamic and adaptable environment that encourages diverse social, cultural, and economic activities. This approach not only accommodates the growing needs of the population but also strengthens the collective identity of Downsview, making it a vibrant and welcoming destination for all."
Downsview in Reciprocity
Students: Olivia Chan, Susan Xi, Ariel Zhang
Program: MARC
Instructor: Mariana Leguia Alegria
"The proposal for Downsview reimagines Toronto living as a community-centric and regenerative urban model of local food production, affordable housing, and sustainable infrastructure. Strategies of adaptive reuse and flexible planning are prioritized while providing design agency for residents. In reciprocity, community members become stewards of the land and actively participate in culture sharing and learning through nature as they engage with the social amenities within the central park and its green-fingers that weave the site back into the surrounding context."
Production City
Students: Huzaifa Chughtai, Jacob Majak, Oliver Parsons
Program: MARC
Instructor: David Verbeek
"Downsview, with its vast expanses of underutilized land, presents a unique opportunity to address farmland loss caused by urban sprawl. Production City utilizes Downsview to develop a prototype for harmonious relationships between food production, the city, nature, and people. By employing the Westland greenhouse model, we aim to boost food production through urban agriculture. This method utilizes UV lights for year-round plant growth, allowing us to ultimately feed nearly 80,000 people, about 75% of our revised Downsview population."
