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A rest area on Main Street in Blue River, B.C.

University of British Columbia

The Blue River Rest Area is a study of the marginal condition of the roadside. It is placed within a town as a strategy for improving both the road and the roadside community through a cross fertilization of experiences and economies. Blue River is an accumulation of services responding to the infrastructure links running through the North Thompson valley. These include the Yellowhead Highway, the Canadian National Railway, the Trans Mountain Oil Pipeline and a power transmission corridor. The town remains isolated from the highway through berming and a system of largely unused frontage roads. As a margin between the highway and the town park space, this rest area is an investigation of perspective and ground. It seeks to mediate the relationship between the view from the road, the view of the resting traveler, and the experiences of the facility from the town itself. The picturesque notion of the road passing through a natural landscape is physically imbedded in the site through a blurring of distinction between land, roadside, and roadside facility. The rest area attempts to exploit the discrepancies between the views and eye levels of the different user groups and to find resolution in disparate, possibly intimidating elements through the creation of new vantages and vistas. It attempts to use overscale and even ugly elements of the road to create unexpected opportunities for rest and reflection.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-04-20

For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/7396

Architecture

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace