Digital Regionalism: Identity, Place and the Ottawa Train Station

The Critical Regionalist ethos was born of a staunch distrust to the utopian visions of Internationalism, succeeding in a retreat back to an architecture of local identity. With the onset of the globalized 21st-century architecture practice, digital design tools have subsequently come to homogenize a transnational working methodology where the importance of regional peripheries is receding over time. This thesis questions the role of digital design and regionalism in contemporary architecture. How can architecture reconcile regional identity drivers with the increasing use of digital design tools for complex projects? This thesis uses a digital tool set to interpret natural wood phenomena that constitutes a novel design system. It expands the analysis to interpolate multidirectional patterns that otherwise go unseen. In doing so it reinterprets the genius loci of place for a contemporary digital regionalism. This thesis proposes an amalgamated transit terminal at the Ottawa Train Station.