See more objects with the tag reuse, park, infrastructure, public space, share, urban fabric.

Object Timeline

  • We acquired this object.

2007

  • Work on this object began.

2014

  • Work on this object ended.

2016

2025

  • You found it!

Underpass Park

This is a Project. It was landscape architect: PFS Studio and The Planning Partnership and collaborator: Paul Raff Studio and made for (as the client) WATERFRONToronto. It is dated 2007–14.

Design interventions reclaim derelict, leftover space below elevated overpasses into an inviting, spirited public commons. Underpass Park in Toronto, Canada, offers safe, engaged pedestrian passage reconnecting 2 neighborhoods and parks. The overhead structure offers protection for year-round activities, and plantings in voids, where sunlight can reach, transform portions of the site from gray to green. Weaving disconnected neighborhoods and forgotten spaces, often the result of highways cutting through the urbanscape, back into the urban fabric can improve the health of the entire city.

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition By the People: Designing a Better America.

There are restrictions for re-using this image. For more information, visit the Smithsonian’s Terms of Use page.

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If you would like to cite this object in a Wikipedia article please use the following template:

<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://www-4.collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/420778011/ |title=Underpass Park |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=6 February 2025 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>