Development of a Public Space: Rossdale Power Plant Building, Collaborative Placemaking Using Virtual Reality

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Alizadeh Rabiei, Reyhaneh

• The River Crossing area in downtown Edmonton is evolving into a vibrant community and a unique place in the city. The ongoing redevelopment of west Rossdale plan involves a variety of projects including expanding land uses in residential, commercial and institutional concepts. The City of Edmonton’s goal for these projects is to make a positive collective impact on the town and the neighborhood in order to make the Rossdale area a more vibrant and diverse community.
  This thesis project focuses on the Rossdale Power Plant building that is recognized nationally as one of Canada’s Historic Places. The Power Plant buildings were decommissioned eight years ago between 2011 and 2012 and the station no longer generates power. This thesis project’s primary objective is to introduce Virtual Reality as a creative design method for bringing a new life to the Rossdale Power Plant.
  This project aims to understand and acknowledge the challenges that the city encounters with the redevelopment of the Rossdale Power Plant building and define new opportunities to solve the possible problems and enhance the quality of engagement in this place. The research methodology will include taking a community-led design approach, conducting in-person surveys, utilizing VR as a creative design method for developing possible concepts and receiving feedback on the feasibility of those concepts. In this project, from the community perspective, the focus will be on the community’s concerns for the Power Plant, and employment of their information, and ideas for conceptualizing activities in the early design phase.
  The purpose of using Virtual Reality (VR) technology in this research is to connect the individuals with the stakeholders through an immersive virtual interaction in two separate stages. First, for developing the possible concepts and second for receiving feedback on those concepts. The redesigned virtual environment in the second stage communicates the design objectives and helps individuals better visualize the redefined space in the physical reality. Furthermore, the employment of this technology provides an excellent opportunity to improve the concepts and reduce costs before the physical alteration.

• Date created

  2019-09-04

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Rossdale Area
  • Placemaking
  • Place Identity
  • Public Place
  • Community-led Design
  • Co-creation Design
  • Virtual Reality
  • Creative Design Method

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-r3v5-yh39

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International