There are many abandoned spaces in the city; the Victory Soya Mils Silos is one of those spaces. My teammates and I researched the site's history and tried connecting the past to the present. However, it can be challenging to find its hidden past, even the present situation of the place, due to it has been a forbidden place with lots of warning signs. The following contents will highlight our observations of the site and how we counter those unexpected difficulties. Firstly, let me show you our artist statement of the exhibition so you will have a better idea what this project is about.
Artist Statement
Victory Soya Mills Silos, a former factory and soybean storage warehouse sitting near the inner harbour of Toronto, has become a vacant site since the factory was demolished. However, despite being registered as "abandoned", homeless people are gradually building it as their temporary homes. Thus, a tent city emerged, followed by endless arguments between the homeless people and the owners of the land property.
As we approached the site, we found the barbed wire fence and warning signs all around the site, speaking that the space does not welcome the public and that the tent city has already been replaced by a government-regulated shelter. So we decided to identify this place in our way to tell the site's story, to call for more open use of abandoned space. Rather than designing a site from a one-sided, personal perspective, architecturally or programmatically, we want to invite the public to participate in defining the public space that will be used by them.
The series of installations were created to show both the past "what it was", the current "what it is", and the limitless imagination of "what it would have been" of the site.
The video collage projected shows the site's history, with a sound collage of the tent city projection that happened here in 2014.
The signage installation was created to imitate the current limitation of accessibility to the site, with hidden images under the mirror documenting its current situation.
The series of photographs were taken with signages sitting at the site, projecting its current vacant situation with mirrored surfaces reflecting homeless people's imagination of its use.
We observe the site from the macro- and micro-perspective of the building, the contrast between the vacant soybean factory and crowded city buildings surroundings, and the materials on the site. Finally, when I was observing from the human aspect, one man living in the shelter came out the door, and we started to have a conversation. He told me he wanted to move from this shelter due to the no private spaces inside the shelter. He pictured his future home with a private kitchen and wooden furniture. He also showed great concern for people's healthcare, living around by hoping this place could be rebuilt as a hospital. Those are poems we wrote for three aspects urban, human and haptic：
Urban:
The south, the vacant.
Tearing a gap in the crowded skyline.
Used, yet eager to be used.
Human:
I am homeless, but I am not hopeless.
I am restlessly looking for happiness.
hmmm, not there, but it will be there!
Haptic:
The scar of time.
The floor of signs.
What was concealed will be what is revealed, waiting for a chance with no more appeals.here, but it will be there!
Then we collect materials to create a physical space. It is not easy to decide which materials we should use. For example, mirror-liked reflected paper, wooden stickers, streams, etc. We want to use the materials to rebuild the space of the factory.
The physical model shows the existing condition of the site as we draw eyes on the existing physical threshold condition of the site, such as the wire fence, cordons, and warning signs which prevented people from interacting with this vacant space. We represented them with different materials with the background of the box designed as reflective mirror surfaces, indicating it's under the private property owner's surveillance, which prevented people from interacting with the site while helping extend the site into unlimited space. The cotton threads divide the space into pieces, showing the concept of segregation.
The model also shows the space is redefined and reused although the place is under surveillance. Multicolour diodes symbolize the messy unauthorized occupants of the space, such as cars, tents, and people. The cut through each direction of the box with applied transparent sheets indicates how we still are able to access the space, although it's under surveillance. Additionally, working with the light effect, the plastic sheets project different colour-toned light onto the ground from different angles, showing how different audiences could give different meanings and definitions to the site.
At the exhibition, we encourage people to rotate and view the cube from different directions under different light conditions and hope that could help people build up a better understanding of the site and its story.
digital model for the exhibition site design
the photo collage of the connection between the site and the exhibition
the photo with our Professor Reza Nik (the middle) my teammate (the left) and I (the right)
Takeaways: I mainly learned how design is built upon research and observations. We observed the relationship of the building with the surrounding environment, how people occupy the spaces and what materials consist of the spaces. Together with our research on the site's history, we make the interaction space with visitors to allow them to redefine the site's future. I also learned how to make the installation on the gallery and control the visiting flow, yet leave the rooms for visitors to interact with. More importantly, I learn team collaboration which is always resilience to those voices against you and open-mindedness to accept any different ideas.
