This past September, I drove out with Pat Hanson, director of the firm Gh3*, to see her most recent Toronto build, a sculptural folly in the city’s Port Lands district. A 13.5-metre-tall cylindrical concrete column with four arched openings, it affords sweeping views of Leslie Lookout Park, a new public space by the late, great landscape architect Claude Cormier. The park is paved with asphalt, the permeable kind that absorbs rainwater, and it features a sandy expanse on a shipping channel. On one side is a suite of silos belonging to a concrete manufacturer; on the other are mountains of dusty aggregate. “It’s a great place to have a beach,” Hanson said, without a hint of irony.
It’s also a great place to view one of her designs,...
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For almost two decades, architect Pat Hanson and her firm, Gh3*, have been bringing uncommon beauty to sustainable urban infrastructure in Toronto and Edmonton – and she’s only just begun.