Place d'Orleans Reinvente: A Senior-Centric Vision for a Suburban Mall

Taking the now forty year-old suburban Ottawa's Place d'Orléans mall as its subject, this thesis critically reconciles current mall-transformation strategies with place-specific environmental, social and cultural sensibilities. Accepting the suburban mall's privileged role in seniors' lives, the thesis pursues the mall's radical reconfiguration into both ideal setting for senior living and relevant landscape for younger generations. Through strategic removals and additions, and via the "spatialization" of the mall's roof, a reinvented Place d'Orléans master plan and mall will organize commercial spaces, social programs, and housing. An interior urban forest and an agriculture production complex open the mall's mass, while naturalized parking lots reactivate local marshlands and their relationship to nearby housing. By considering future changes in transportation habits and parking requirements, and taking the new LRT station into account, the proposal aims to reconnect Place d'Orléans mall to its broader environment, and, ultimately, to reverse the effects of urban sprawl.