UofT taking steps to create a more inviting and beautiful campus
Right now, King’s College Circle isn’t exactly picturesque. For a lot of students flowing to and from Gerstein and Convocation Hall, walking between fenced pathways and heavy machinery has simply become a part of our daily routines. Students can often be caught squeezing between chugging machines and fences. Whilst dodging around the mud crevices, many students are left wondering just what the construction is all for.
UofT’s Landmark Project promises to establish an inviting campus space for students to interact within, surrounded with a beautiful scenery of luscious trees and gardens, as well as new communal areas for a livelier campus experience. The main areas at the St. George campus which are undergoing intensive transformations include both the Front and Back campuses, the Sir Daniel Wilson Quadrangle, Hoskin Avenue, and the fields around Hart House and the Medical Sciences Building.
Most of the construction revolves around the addition of pathways and greenery. However, some areas like Convocation Hall will be undergoing a more rigorous transformation process. The current plan for the surroundings of the building includes the introduction of a new granite plaza, which will replace the current asphalt grounds, and chairs that will allow for after-class hangouts or large-scale events. According to the UofT’s Landmark Project site, “a stunning necklace of granite pathways” will stem from King’s College Circle, as well as around “20 new gardens” which will undoubtedly prove to become a new landmark at the heart of downtown Toronto.
The Hart House circle will also become a much-needed refuge from the busy buzzing of student life. The designers are envisioning an open area of greenery and granite pathways, completely devoid of vehicles. The Hart House area involves a web of granite paths and patches of small gardens between the walking paths.
However, the most ambitious project is the geoexchange project located right beneath King’s College Circle. The developing abyss will grow to be 100 to 200 metres deep, housing the largest urban geoexchange system in Canada. The science behind the field was developed mainly by UofT’s late professor, Frank Hooper, who did work with ground-source heat pumps.
The field itself will have two main functions. First, it will modulate the temperature of existing buildings around the campus. Secondly, it will reduce the release of greenhouse gas into our atmosphere by 15,000 tonnes per year. The geoexchange field ensures that the temperature of the ground and the interior of the buildings remain between 10 to 12 ℃ by using fluid-filled pumps that capture and release heat. The source and storage of the heat is from the 370 boreholes, which are underground pockets of air that entrap excess heat created from mechanical systems. The field will be functional year-round, as it stores heat in the summer and releases it in the winter cyclically. The geothermal field will also act as both a garage and a subterranean classroom, where engineering students can see the inner workings of this ambitious Serena and it was on this contraption and delete construction and put in the word mechanism.
Updates and other information on the Landmark Project can be tracked on their website. Thanks to the hard work of everyone on the construction site and behind the scenes, the heart of the UofT St. George campus will certainly become a sight to behold and a beautiful landscape for the memories that will be made on its grounds.
