The DesignTO Festival will be returning to Toronto to celebrate its 15th anniversary.

The festival, which will be taking place from January 24 to February 2, 2025, will feature over 100 free events, installations, tours, talks and exhibitions by more than 300 designers and artists.

“It’s incredible to see how much we’ve grown,” said Jeremy Vandermeij, executive director and co-founder of DesignTO. “We’ve welcomed over one million attendees, reached 2.6 billion people through media, supported more than 6,500 artists, and generated $120 million in tourism spending. And there’s more to come!”

DesignTO supports a vision of design that is more than aesthetics, but that rather aims to be a tool for problem-solving, solution-building, organized change, experimenting, innovating and evolving toward a better future.

This year’s festival will put a spotlight on how design impacts joy, justice, and sustainability.

From immersive experiences that help the community slow down and reconnect to artworks addressing endangered creative practices, DesignTO will offer many ways to participate in the festival schedule.

The festival will kick off with an official launch party on January 24, which will feature a one-night-only installation by Toronto-based artist Asli Alin. It will also offer guests an opportunity to see ‘REVIVE,’ a DesignTO-curated group exhibition featuring the work of seven local and international artists and designers.

From January 1 to 31, 2025, there will be an exhibition of photos that explore ideas of the self through costuming by Toronto-based, Ghanaian-Nigerian photographer and visual artist Delali Cofie on five digital screens at Sankofa Square (formerly Yonge and Dundas Square).

The festival will also feature Studio Rat’s immersive inflatable installation and lighting concept quilted from reclaimed waste plastics at 55 St. Clair Avenue West, and a site-specific installation at the Mason Studio Cultural Hub that emphasizes sensory extremes.

Organized by DesignTO in partnership with the Toronto Society of Architects, ‘Ideas Forum: Labour in Architecture’ will take place virtually. It will feature five fast-paced presentations representing diverse organizational structures, including co-operative, union, and employee-owned. It will also feature a BIPOC Portfolio Collaboration hosted by Gensler, and an installation by Christopher Rouleau called “Amazon Sucks” that will take place at 918 Danforth Ave.

This year’s DesignTO festival will also feature a talk on sustainability, a design exhibition called “Dwell,” that will offer opportunities to slow down and connect in Union Station and Wind Up Radio’s video and sound installation/cautionary message from the Server Farms of Miscellanea at the Drake Hotel.

For more information and to view the full schedule, click here.

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The Toronto Society of Architects’ (TSA) has issued a call for submissions for their fifth annual Gingerbread City event, which aims to bring together architects and designers to create unique edible creations that celebrate architecture with a holiday twist.

TSA Gingerbread City initially started in 2020 to help bring together Toronto’s architectural community. This year’s edition will include both a virtual exhibit and a small in-person showcase at The Maker Bean Café located at 1052 Bloor Street West in Toronto.

Those interested in participating must register here prior to December 2 as there is limited space for the in-person display. Submissions will need to be dropped off on Dec. 11 between 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. at Maker Bean Café. All digital submissions will be required by December 11.

Past Gingerbread City showcases have included everything from iconic Toronto landmarks and landscapes to edible retrofits and residences. This year’s creations will be on display beginning December 12. There will also be an opportunity to meet the makers at the official launch of this year’s Gingerbread City on December 14 from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Returning to this year’s Gingerbread City is also the TSA’s popular Kids’ Main Street workshops, a program for the youngest designers in the family, that invites children to be a part of Gingerbread City and learn about city building as they design and decorate their very own Main Street façades. Two workshops will be held on December 7 and tickets are currently available on the TSA’s website.

Gingerbread City is open to all and is free to enter via the TSA’s call for submissions, and all makers are invited to take part in this year’s festivities.

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In mid-October, downtown Toronto was host to a surreal sight—a 2.7-kilometre-long run of two-metre-tall dominoes. Made of lightweight concrete, the 8,000 oversized dominoes snaked down sidewalks, meandered through parks, and even wandered into buildings: a library, stores, a condo tower lobby.

Setting up the dominoes took the better part of a day. Then, at 4:30 pm, it was go-time: the first domino was tipped over, and the chain tumbled through the city.

The production was hosted by The Bentway and curated by Station House Opera, a British performing arts company that premiered Dominoes as a way to link the five host boroughs of the 2012 London Olympics. Since then, the site-specific performance has toured to cities including Copenhagen, Melbourne, Marseilles, and Malta. For Toronto, the artists chose a path tracing the development of the city’s west end: from the Victorian residential fabric south of King West, to the industrial-inspired Stackt Market, then weaving its way through the waterfront’s high-rise neighbourhoods before ending at Lake Ontario.

Putting together the event was a logistically complex undertaking, including negotiating with city agencies for crossing streetcar tracks, getting sign-off from more than 40 site partners, and setting up with help from some 300 volunteers. Near the end of the run, the line of dominoes crossed Lakeshore Boulevard. The busy street could only be closed for six minutes—a tense window in which time the dominoes were quickly set up, knocked down, and cleared away.

The enormous effort was worth it, says Ilana Altman, co-executive director of The Bentway. She explains that while The Bentway is anchored in its eponymous space—an urban park and public art venue under the raised Gardiner Expressway—the organization’s mission centres on revealing opportunities and connections in the urban landscape. “Dominoes helped Toronto to really see these possibilities in a compelling and convincing way,” says Altman.

The Bentway is looking to make those connections more permanent. Its own site is growing: its first phase, designed by Public Work, opened in 2018, and this fall, the organization named Field Operations and Brook McIlroy as the designers for its second phase. Earlier this year, Toronto City Council endorsed a public realm plan that outlines a comprehensive vision for the remainder of spaces below and adjacent to the 6.5-kilometre expressway.

Beyond the physical links that were created by the line of dominoes, the event created important social connections. “It was quite moving to see the level of interest we got from volunteers,” says Altman. “People were passionate and invested in it; people were meeting neighbours for the first time.”

On show day, my seven-year-old son and I delighted in rediscovering pockets of downtown, in chatting with the volunteers setting up the dominoes, and in seeing the clever ways that the white slabs had been laid to climb hills, zigzag through open areas, and even hop over a park bench. It was a sunny fall afternoon, and hundreds of people were out, engaging with an openness facilitated by the charming installation. As 4:30 pm approached, the crowds grew along with the sense of anticipation. My son and I were stationed at the end of the run, and cheered alongside a throng of Torontonians as the dominoes fell one by one—and the last domino splashed into Lake Ontario.

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A new exhibition has opened at the Mitchell Art Gallery (MAG) in Edmonton, Alberta.

The immersive exhibition, by artist Hazel Meyer and media historian Cait McKinney, is called GLAD YOU CLOSER HOME / NEW WHITE WHISKER MARY and imagines the spaces between the correspondence, amateur 8mm film recordings, and modernist buildings that architects Mary Imrie (1918 – 1988) and Jean Wallbridge (1912 – 1979) left behind. The title of the exhibition was borrowed from a telegram in the collection.

Imrie and Wallbridge operated the first architecture firm in Canada run by women at Six Acres, the home they built for their work and life together in west Edmonton.

Since 2014, Meyer and McKinney have been collaborating to explore their shared attachments to queer histories and accessibility politics through research, writing, video, and archival interventions. Together, they take up experimental methods for livening up archives related to sexuality and LGBTQ history.

McKinney and Meyer’s collaboration is rooted in how queer history lives in research and archives. Past projects have explored topics such as ruins, the feminist sex wars in 1980s Vancouver, and the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives porn VHS collection. Their work treats archives as sites for “fantasizing, questioning, and feeling amongst objects and ephemera,” and the relevance those items hold in the contemporary moment.

Alongside the exhibition, the MAG is also collaborating with various community partners to put a spotlight on the legacy of Wallbridge and Imrie.

At a time when homes they designed are being torn down to build new infill properties, these tours and talks aim to be a bridge between the legacy of these architects, their modernist buildings, visions for social housing, and the importance of queer history.

The exhibition will run from now until December 7, 2024.

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Later this month, the Bentway will be introducing Dominoes, a larger-than-life, moving sculpture that will stretch across multiple downtown neighbourhoods.

The sculpture, created by artists Station House Opera, aims to unite neighbours by setting up and setting off a 2.5 km trail of giant dominoes. This day-long event will bring together more than  250 local volunteers and thousands of audience members, and connect vital public spaces and the people who live in them to imagine an alternative vision of the city.

The route will tumble across city streets and sidewalks, public spaces, inside homes and businesses, and through local landmarks while activating massive domino sculptures along the way. It will feature 15 points of interest and five key spectacle moments, that will encourage visitors to explore and cheer on the entire route.

The Bentway anticipation will build towards the “first push” at Wellington and Niagara where the chain reaction will be set off and run through the city. The domino trail will then sprint through Canoe Landing Park and into Bentway Staging Grounds under the Gardiner Expressway. After a 30-minute run, the route will end at Toronto’s waterfront, just east of Bathurst.

The event will take place on September 22 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and is supported by presenting sponsor Choice Properties. This is Dominoes’ first presentation in North America.

For more information about Dominoes visit thebentway.ca.

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In celebration of the 50th anniversary of UQAM’s School of design, the Centre de design is presenting an exhibition that aims to resonate with a public curious to discover the design milieu.

The exhibition, called Parcours, will present the trajectories of fifty graduates from the School of Design’s six academic programs, and include their first student works to their most recent ones.

All generations that have passed through the school since 1974 are represented in this exhibition. A total of five decades of creative archives have also been searched to put a spotlight on the evolution and interconnectivity of the design disciplines taught at the school. These include graphic design, industrial design, architecture and urban design, fashion design, transportation design, event design, and modern patrimonial studies.

Through this exhibition, the public will be able to explore the diversity of design practices as well as the importance of design in our everyday lives.

“Parcours explores the past, confronts the present, and imagines the future. Our team took on the challenge of creating an archeology of the school by uncovering unique student projects and artifacts,” said Patrick Evans, director of the Centre de design and co-curator of the exhibition. “It’s a must-see exhibition to understand how design has accompanied the social, environmental, and technological transformations of the last fifty years.”

Those featured in the exhibition include Alain Carle, of Atelier Carle; Ying Gao, fashion designer and professor at the School of design; Marie-Josée Lacroix, the City of Montreal’s first design commissioner; Philippe Lamarre, founder of Urbania; Denis Lapointe, head of design at Bombardier Recreational Products; Catherine Lebrun, director of product design at lululemon; and Melissa Mongiat, co-founder of design studio Daily tous les jours.

A “tribute wall” featured in the exhibition aims to celebrate the contributions of almost 700 faculty members and employees of the School of design. Anecdotes and artifact descriptions reveal key moments from the school’s history.

Additionally, the exhibition evokes the memory of various important members of the teaching staff who left their mark on the careers of a large number of graduates. A library is also available to the public. More than 200 works that showcase the excellence of the research carried out at the school can be consulted on site and are made accessible in large part through collaboration with the UQAM Library Service and donations from professors.

The exhibition will take place from September 12 to November 10, 2024.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary milestone, the École de design is also organizing the colloquium MUTATIONS: Où va le design?  from September 18 to 20, 2024. Experts from Montreal and beyond will share their visions for the future of design from four themes which inlude social commitment, environment, (de)materiality, and artificial intelligence. Emanuele Quinz, PhD in aesthetics, art science and technology, art and design historian and lecturer at Université Paris 8, will kick off the symposium with an opening lecture.

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What are the boundaries of architectural practice? For three firms in Western Canada, they lie far beyond buildings. Patkau Architects, designer Omer Arbel, and Sputnik Architecture have developed branches of their work dedicated to the fabrication of products, furniture, lighting and artwork. All three of them deploy these parallel practices as forms of research, with a significant impact on their architectural thinking.

Patkau Architects began their fabrication practice over 30 years ago, with what John Patkau refers to as “analytical models” of their own built work—not intended as representations, but as tools for working through the formal characteristics of their buildings. As John puts it (with considerable modesty and a touch of irony) “our firm was never ‘successful’,” which led to slow periods when they had to generate their own activity. During these fallow periods, their “well-provisioned” workshop became the site for the analytical models, and eventually, at the instigation of Patricia Patkau, for bolder experiments with materials. A cluster of bent plywood shelters was one of the first full-scale prototypes to emerge from this work, developed as a contribution to Winnipeg’s Warming Huts project, then dispatched to London’s V&A Museum. That project’s experimentation morphed into the steel Cocoons for the Tokyo flagship store of fashion house Comme des Garçons. This was only possible because alongside the Patkau’s research into origami—the elusive quest for a sheet structure generated by a single fold and a single bend—they had developed original breakform processes, with new machines of their own invention. Their fabrication work has since expanded into furniture, lighting design, and production, most of it carried out in-house. 

While it’s clear that their formal discoveries are often made during hands-on testing of materials, the Patkaus don’t shy away from digital tools. Their competition entry for Daegu Gosan Public Library in Korea deployed parametric modelling software Grasshopper to translate sheet-inspired research into a reciprocal structural frame made of timber components. They took a similar approach for the Temple of Light in Kootenay Bay, British Columbia. Completed in 2017, this project evidences collaboration with other skilled makers: they worked with local, internationally experienced timber fabrication firm Spearhead. The Temple applies discoveries about form and material assemblies made on the library and other unbuilt projects, perching eight petal-like shells on existing foundations to enclose a sanctuary. While they are currently developing a products division distinct from their architectural practice, the Patkaus fundamentally see their fabrication work as research into the design and construction of architecture.

One of the many talented individuals who have spent time working in the Patkaus’ office is Vancouver-based designer Omer Arbel. Besides the Patkaus, Arbel has worked for architects including Enric Miralles and Peter Busby. From each of them, he took away a different experience of practice—from what he describes as the “operatic” mode of Miralles’ office to the “quiet prayer” of the Patkaus. But while Arbel came “within a hair” of getting licensed, he grew disillusioned with what he saw as the dominant role played by the architect in North America: as a service provider. 

A unique opportunity led him down a different path. While still at Busby’s office, Arbel independently produced four prototype furniture designs for display at New York Design Week in 2005. Uncomfortable with the number four (stemming from a personal sense of numerology), he felt he needed a fifth element, more as a compositional anchor than as a design for production—but his furniture fabricator had gone bankrupt. In the few weeks left before the event, he worked with friends to put together a hand-cast glass luminaire to be that anchor piece. It was a hit, and that piece—the first Bocci light—remains in production today. The success of this product eventually led him to launch the lighting firm Bocci with friend and client Randy Bishop. 

Since then, Omer Arbel Office has produced, besides an array of lighting products, glassware, furniture, set designs, sculptures, a book and—yes—architecture.  Rather than a name, each design bears an accession number—as though each is a distinct realization of an essentially undifferentiable and potentially infinite font of creativity. All of the work comes from direct and daring experimentation with materials. Arbel, perhaps drawing on his early experience with Miralles, seeks a “celebratory” approach to making, rather than what he sees as the overly critical culture nurtured in schools. In contrast to work born of an author’s imagination—including the products of parametric design—he finds it much more exciting to “let the form occur.” He reflects, “If you explore what materials themselves want to do, you can discover a much more radical form, with a fraction of the resources.” 

The result is a dizzying array of over 100 material and formal experiments, and counting. Arbel says of these experiments: “They fail all the time, they’re a total failure!” Yet it’s impossible to look at this body of work and not see success. From the extremely slow accretion of nickel to copper wire in the jewelry of 71.2, to the sandblasting of pine to produce chair 68.3, Arbel embraces growth and decay, creation and destruction, in equal measure. Seemingly uncomfortable juxtapositions of material—the blown glass and copper wire of vase 84.0, or the hay-cast, saw-cut concrete of Bocci’s headquarters 86.3—result in a strange, even excruciating beauty. In his clifftop house (94.2), he salvages cedar burls as concrete formwork and then, audaciously, repurposes them as cladding. Such works are testimony to Arbel’s willingness to risk everything: perhaps a glassblower’s attitude, applied to architecture.

Grains seem to be having a moment in maker culture. Hay—or in this case, flax straw—was also the focus of a recent project by Anvil Tree, the fabrication satellite of Winnipeg’s Sputnik Architecture. Peter Hargraves, founder of Sputnik, created Anvil Tree as a sister company that could help realize Sputnik’s designs, and a home base for his life-long interest in sculpture. Flax straw is the key material in Lantern, a project inspired by conversations about the European tradition of straw structures between Anvil Tree creative director Chris Pancoe and visual anthropologist and artist Vytautus Musteikis. Pancoe and Hargraves met Musteikis while building a room for Sweden’s ice hotel in 2022; they brought him to Canada to work with them on Lantern and continue the dialogue. 

Lantern was woven from agricultural waste and salvaged wood last fall as part of Holiday Alley, a Selkirk event celebrating creativity.
Left on display over the winter, it was set ablaze for this year’s spring equinox. The intention is to make the burning of a straw sculpture an annual community event in Selkirk, as it is in agronomy-based cultures around the world. 

Such social—even ritual—events are a forte of Anvil Tree. The firm is responsible for the fabrication of most of Winnipeg’s Warming Huts—an annual event for which Sputnik was a founding organizer, and for which the Patkaus built their bent plywood shelters in 2011. Anvil Tree carries out ice harvesting and installation for ice carving competitions in Winnipeg, as well as for rural events like the Trappers’ Festival in the Pas, northern Manitoba. Their grove of glowing bicycles, suspended from trees, has become a prominent part of Winnipeg’s Culture Days celebrations. 

While Lantern was assembled by hand, Anvil Tree is also dextrous with parametric modelling and plasma cutters. Lean In is the first of a number of anticipated artistic/urbanistic interventions for Sputnik’s masterplan in Fort Francis, Ontario, where they are working with Rainy River First Nation. A new box office for Winnipeg’s Dave Barber Cinematheque used plasma-cut perforated steel to solve several tricky service and security problems for Winnipeg’s main art-house cinema. They’ve also built a restaurant in remote Churchill, Manitoba—a tricky logistical challenge. In such work, the company demonstrates a tight symbiosis with the architects and interior designers of Sputnik Architecture. 

But Anvil Tree’s first love remains art. For artist Wayne and Jordan Stranger’s monument to Indigenous leader Chief Peguis at the Manitoba Legislature, the Strangers are casting the bronze for the 14-foot statue in Peguis First Nation. The steel interior armature was fabricated by Anvil Tree in their workshop in Winnipeg. 

It’s in this facility—a former welding workshop that now includes a woodworking studio, a metal shop, a finish shop and ancillary buildings for materials and equipment—that Hargraves plans to see the full realization of Anvil Tree’s mission. “The goal is to have this constant collaboration with artists that are here; and now, if they want to do something big, they have access to a workshop,” says Hargraves. The second-floor workshop spaces will be used to train visiting artists in fabrication techniques, as well as to host design-build studios for architecture students.

As they carry their architectural practices into new realms, Patkau Architects, Omer Arbel, and Anvil Tree manifest a broader definition of the Greek architektōn—master maker—than is encompassed by professional practice alone. From “quiet prayer” to operatic ambition, their fabrication practices provide a wealth of lessons in the artistic, technical and social potential of architecture.

Lawrence Bird, MRAIC, is an architect, city planner and visual artist based in Winnipeg. 

As appeared in the September 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) is presenting HOME: A Space of Sharing and Strength, an exhibition which will highlight recent acquisitions made by the NGC that explore the idea of home as a “powerful but fragile site.”

The exhibition, which opened earlier this month, will run until December 15, 2024.

Six artists will be featured in the show, including Sarah Anne Johnson based in Winnepeg; Jimmy Manning, Inuk, based in Kinngait [Cape Dorset]; Siwa Mgoboza, Hlubi, based in Cape Town; Curtis Talwst Santiago of Trinidadian heritage, based in Edmonton; Frank Shebageget, Anishinaabe, based in Ottawa; and Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, born in Botswana, and now based in The Hague. All six artists wil depict the global reach of art practices based in local and community concerns.

The 16 works on view include photography, sculptures, paintings and prints that were acquired by the National Gallery of Canada between 2020 and 2024.

HOME: A Space of Sharing and Strength suggests that home is “a place of respect, enriched through shared experiences, values and memories.”

“This show invites visitors to spend time and reflect on the meaning of home in today’s context and understand how it might have a different definition for different people. The artists we highlight express home in diverse ways, inspired by their own experiences and roots,” said Andrea Kunard, senior curator, photographs collection at the NGC. “This exhibition is also a unique occasion to discover in a shared space how NGC’s newest acquisitions reflect some of the most pressing concerns in contemporary artistic practice.” 

In this exhibition, the artists will showcase how communities resist destructive legacies of government agendas by means of embracing memories of both home and community. They also depict how home can be a “non-human, natural site” that is shared between species.

“This exhibition presents these newly acquired works together in dialogue with decolonial curatorial methods and dynamic critical art practices rooted in concepts of place making and belonging,” said Rachelle Dickenson, associate curator, Indigenous ways and decolonization at the NGC. “From Inuk, Anishinaabe, Canadian and Hlubi artists comes an assemblage of unique perspectives of the meaning of home, and we are pleased to bring well-deserved attention to these artists at the NGC.”

HOME: A Space of Sharing and Strength is supported by the Scotiabank Photography Program at the NGC and is the result of a curatorial collaboration between the NGC’s Contemporary Art, Indigenous Ways & Decolonization (IWD) and Photography curatorial departments represented by Kunard.

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Artist Kapwani Kiwanga’s installation in the Canada Pavilion at this year’s Venice Art Biennale is a stunning delight. Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and curated by Gaëtane Verna, Kiwanga’s Trinket features millions of suspended Venetian conterie, or seed beads, whose presence transforms the pavilion’s surfaces with their delicate, shimmering appearance. Enfolded within the beads’ elusive beauty is a provocative commentary upon the exploitative imbalances which fuelled colonial commerce, for which seed beads were often used as currency. Trinket thus reminds its viewers of Venice’s history as a centre for artisanal glasswork and expansionist mercantilism, thereby querying the sources of the wealth behind the city’s grandeur. 

The care with which the beads have been installed offers a beautiful homage to the BBPR-designed 1957 Canada Pavilion, one of the great works of postwar Italian modernism. While the pavilion is sometimes critiqued as a difficult space in which to exhibit, Kiwanga’s installation is perfectly calibrated to its surroundings. The details of the suspended strings of beads are exquisite, and bear the close scrutiny of an in-person examination. Just as the pavilion itself was thoughtfully designed around two trees growing on its site, the strings of beads have been carefully installed around exit signs, fire alarms and other accoutrements which punctuate modern buildings. A temporary raised floor, slightly removed from the walls, allows the beads to fall into a shallow reveal. The resulting effect emphasizes the vertical continuity of the iridescent bead surfaces. 

Displayed within the pavilion are several sculptures made from more beads, and from other valuable materials used in colonial commerce, such as blown glass, Pernambuco wood, copper, bronze, and palladium leaf. The resulting composition honours not only BBPR’s design, but also the Renaissance city’s tradition of using sculpture and painting to complete architecture.

Curated by São Paulo Museum of Art Artistic Director Adriano Pedrosa, this year’s Biennale was organized under the theme Foreigners Everywhere, and celebrates Indigenous, queer, and folk artists—many now deceased—whose works have not previously been shown at the Biennale. The theme stands in defence of multiplicity and outsider-ness (for we are all strangers in certain contexts) against current xenophobic trends in global politics and culture. While the national pavilions are free to chart their own courses, it is fruitful to reflect upon Kiwanga’s work through this lens. At the pavilion’s opening, Elissa Golberg, Canada’s ambassador to Italy, described Canada as a place where one finds foreigners everywhere. While such a comment invites further scrutiny (especially when seen from the perspective of Indigenous Canadians), one could find far worse places to begin defining our national identity.

While Kiwanga’s masterpiece is on display in Venice until November 24, 2024, another exhibition at the National Gallery in Ottawa this summer helps to complete our understanding of beadwork as a medium of material culture, artistic endeavour, and collective identity. Radical Stitch features Indigenous artists’ beading works—many of which are truly stunning—in a celebration of this medium of cultural self-expression. Taken together, Trinket and Radical Stitch elevate beadwork while inviting us to question: which materials have value, and why?

Architectural historian Peter Sealy is an Assistant Professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

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The first chapter of the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s (CCA) new exhibition and film project, Groundwork, has officially opened to the public.

Groundwork aims to ask how we understand the making of architecture in the present moment, and how architects situate themselves in relation to changing natural and disciplinary boundaries. The exhibition aims to ask questions such as: ‘What to build, or not build?’ ‘Is a building the end point of architectural production?’ ‘What to do with the existing building stock?’ ‘How to intervene in the landscape?’ and ‘How to engage with the increasing environmental and social complexities of a site?’

To explore these questions, the exhibition will delve into a journey with three contemporary practices that “cultivate deep relationships and forms of engagement with project sites and their ecosystems.”

Into the Island is the first chapter of the three-part project, and follows Xu Tiantian of DnA (Design and Architecture) to Meizhou Island. There, in collaboration with local communities and her team, she creates a set of small, distributed interventions to mediate pressures of heritage policies, tourism, and farming on marine ecology.

By recording Xu Tiantian’s dialogues with villagers, fisherfolks, and biologists, the CCA aims to focus on the significance of field research as well as the conceptual work that stems from it.

The result of the first journey is an exhibition which is centred on a documentary film, alongside artefacts, documents, specimens, and site fragments as evidence of an ongoing creative process.

“We decided to primarily use film as a tool to witness how research and encounters on-site affect architectural thinking.  The project deploys a small-footprint, intimate, and journalistic approach with director Joshua Frank, to tell overlapping stories of the communities of Meizhou Island and their engagement with the land, while presenting the conception and development of Xu’s interventions. Into the Island is a narrative composed through the fragments of an evolving culture and fluctuating landscape,” said the CCA.

In the upcoming months, Groundwork will take the public to Berlin with b+ and to Minas Gerais with Carla Juaçaba, where they will continue to examine methodological approaches to question, subvert, and redefine what architectural practice can be in present day.

The exhibition will be on display until September 14, 2025.

For more information on the exhibition, click here.

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Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank will receive 71,000 cans of food from the AED industry, thanks to donations from the 22nd edition of CANstruction Toronto, a competition which aims to raise awareness and support Toronto’s hunger gap.

Since 1999, Canstruction Toronto has been bringing together the local design community to create canned sculptures for a competition food-raiser that gives back to people struggling with hunger. Each year, unique structures are exhibited to the public in Toronto and are eventually deconstructed, brought back to the Daily Bread Food Bank and distributed to people in need over the summer months.

This year, a total of 21 teams from different architecture and engineering firms across the city put their creativity to the test by building sculptures using cans of shelf-stable food.

Each entry was judged by a jury of industry experts during the Awards Ceremony. Some of this year’s designs include an illuminated Care Bear structure and a Terminator skull. This year also marked the introduction of a new award category: Most Cans Used, in which the winning entry used 9,972 cans.

To date, Canstruction Toronto has donated over 1 million pounds of food to Daily Bread Food Bank. This year, 71,000 cans were used across all 21 designs.

The total weight of food collected this year was 83,590 lbs, which is up from 67,138 lbs last year and is equivalent to an increase of 25 per cent.

Below is the full list of winners.

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Best Meal Award
Core Architects Inc.

Can-necting the Hungry City, which used 5,208 cans, represents the journey the  community is taking to arrive at a place where all have reliable access to food.

Honourable Mention Award
Gensler Architecture & Design Canada Inc.

Cantunator used a total of 4,630 items. Like the Terminator reimagined, this project aimed to hold the promise to lead humanity into an age of prosperity and abundance. This sculpture also aims to be a symbol of the positive potential of AI to address global challenges, including hunger and food security.

Structural Ingenuity Award
Diamond Schmitt Architects

Using 5,332 items, Sharing Can Bear Care, uses the popular Care Bear brand, and represents the image of Care Bears as their food sculpture. The team borrowed the imagery of the Care bears and the associated values and lessons taught to children in the show: care, love, bravery, friendliness, and compassion.

Best Use of Labels Award
DIALOG

Using 3,215 cans, Global Fever aims to raise awareness of global warming by reimagining the blue planet turning red and forming the red bulb of a thermometer.

Best Original Design Award
LEA Consulting and CS&P Architects

This project, which used 4,896 cans, is called Just Keep Swimming, which serves as a commentary on food security and sustainability. The can-structed fish aims to showcase how a single can of food is bigger than one may initially think. Using tuna also aims to reflects on the depletion of the ocean’s resources.

Most Cans Award
Turner Fleischer Architects Inc.

SOS: Hunger Emergency used 9,972 cans and is a bottle adrift in the sea of food insecurity crashing onto the shore and shattering, aiming to represent a call for help from 1 in 10 Torontonians who rely on food banks.

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The City of Calgary, in partnership with Chinook Blast, the city’s winter festival celebration, is celebrating the winners of the 2024 Winter City Design Competition.

This year’s winners are 1000 Faces, (p)arc, and Fancy Meeting You Here, all of which reimagined public spaces during a Calgary winter and created interactive exhibits that pushed conventional boundaries.

These three winners were selected out of over three dozen submissions.

For the past three years, the City has invited the design community to experiment with outdoor spaces as well as re-imagine a winter experience that encourages the public to go outside and explore the city. “We are so excited about the 2024 winning teams and to partner with Chinook Blast,” said Kate Zago, the City’s project lead for the Winter City Design Competition. “The winning installations are amazing examples of creative and immersive designs that will definitely have people talking.”

Patti Pon, Chair of Chinook Blast and CEO and president of Calgary Arts Development said, “Chinook Blast is excited to celebrate the 2024 Winter City Design Competition winners with The City of Calgary. These exhibits embody the spirit of Chinook Blast, transforming winter into a season of excitement and exploration. Get ready to engage with these designs!”

Below are details about the three winners.

1000 Faces: A Mesmerizing Symphony of Nature

Location: Eau Claire promenade near 6 Street SW
Dates: Jan. 24 to April 15, 2024

Artist Alejandro Figueroa, who has won events like the VR contest at the Phi Center in 2016 and ArtWorkTO 2021, is the leader of the creation, 1000 Faces. This installation, suspended on a 40-foot high arch, is made up of 1,779 plexiglass tiles moving independently to mirror nature’s rhythm. Canadian artist +AMOR has also collaborated with Calgary-born artist Dillan (King Aurorus) to produce an original soundtrack.

Project team:

• Alejandro Figueroa
• Dillan Schmitz
• Robert Tita
• Amélie Robitaille

(p)arc: A Warm and Welcoming Experience
Location: 228 8 Avenue SE
Dates: Feb. 2 to 19, 2024

Designed by Jonathan Monfries and Madisen Killingsworth, (p)arc offers an interactive experience as users traverse through the installation. The design, which acts as a gateway to Olympic Plaza, focuses on sustainability, minimizing landfill material, and supporting inclusive artistic programming.

Project team:

• Jonathan Monfries
• Madisen Killingsworth
• Mauricio Soto-Rubio

Fancy Meeting You Here: Engaging Place for People to Gather
Location: Historic Fire Hall # 1 Courtyard (140 – 6 Avenue SE)
Dates: Feb. 2 to Feb. 19, 2024

Designed by The Communication + Design Lab, Fancy Meeting You Here: Engaging Place for People to Gather encourages people to stop and connect during winter. The intent of the installation is to transform a dark space in downtown Calgary with an interactive lighting design that provides a warm place for people to gather.

Project team:

• Shaheed H. Karim
• Karim Manji
• Natasha Karim-Manji

The competition is part of The City’s Winter City Strategy, which aims to celebrate Calgary’s unique winter opportunities, extend its festival and event season and find ways to improve safety and accessibility and the economy, especially in the downtown core during the winter.

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The 13th annual Architecture + Design Film Festival (A+DFF) is returning this month to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The festival presents critically acclaimed films focusing on the importance of architecture and design in everyday life and will cover a range of topics from architecture and urban design to graphics and product design.

A+DFF is the only Canadian film festival that is devoted solely to architecture and design. This year, the event will feature a special fundraising screening of Deco Dawson’s Diaspora at the West End Cultural Centre (WECC) with funds going to support Ukraine.

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Among the winning projects of this year’s Winter Stations is NOVA, an installation designed by a group of architects students at Metropolitan University (TMU) including Jake Levy, Emily Lensin, Luca Castellan, Nathaniel Barry, Sabeeh Mobashar and Mikayla Burmania.

Nova represents a star that crashed on top of a lifeguard station and illuminates Woodbine Beach at night. The project aims to highlight TMU’s past decade of Winter Stations, inspired by the origami, materiality, and form of Snowcone, Lithoform, and S’Winter Station.

The project also introduces 3D printing, a textile canopy, and a steel pipe connection to create a pavilion with “Resonance.” Additionally, the star pavilion encourages users to engage with their surroundings, and the lifeguard station allows them to access panoramic views of the beach.

“Enthusiastic students were excited to introduce 3D printing, modularity and prefabricated construction to NOVA and create a star that shields occupants from the strong wind and snow gusts experienced on the beaches,” said Levy.

“Being part of the 10th year of Winter Stations was truly incredible. TMU’s enduring legacy in this competition has been pivotal. Over the past six months, students have had the opportunity to explore new materiality and fabrication methods, and we express gratitude for the unwavering support from the University, the Department of Architectural Science, dedicated staff members, professors, and the Winter Stations community.”

Winter Stations was launched by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates, and Curio in 2014. In celebration of its 10th year, this year’s theme for Winter Stations is Resonance, which challenged designers to go on a journey to reinvent and reimagine cherished installations from Winter Stations’ history.

The selected winners saw their visions realized by the support of Anex Works, a Toronto-based fabrication group. NOVA, along with the other public art installations will be on display from now until the end of March and can be found at Woodbine Beach, Woodbine Park, Kew Gardens, and Ivan Forest Gardens.

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Winter Stations, launched by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates, and Curio in 2014 has launched the winning stations selected from hundreds of submissions.

This year, the theme for Winter Stations, which is back for its 10th year, is Resonance. As a result, designers were challenged to go on a journey to reinvent and reimagine cherished installations from Winter Stations history.

The selected winners saw their visions realized by the support of Anex Works, a Toronto-based fabrication group. The nine public art installations will be on display from now until the end of March and can be found at Woodbine Beach, Woodbine Park, Kew Gardens, and Ivan Forest Gardens.

The winning designs are being showcased alongside three student installations that were designed and built by the Toronto Metropolitan University, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Guelph, respectively. Two designs from the Winter Stations Archive are also on display.

“The launch of Winter Stations brought smiles to the hundreds of people, families, and dogs that came out to see this year’s exhibit. After ten years of consecutively bringing bright and bold art to Toronto’s public realm, the impact of Winter Stations resonates directly with our innate playful nature and we hope to continue this impact for the years to come,” said RAW Design architect Dakota Wares-Tani.

Plans are currently in development for more exhibits later in 2024, sponsored and hosted by Northcrest Developments.

This year’s competition was made possible by the support of RAW Design, Northcrest Developments, and the Beaches BIA along with CreateTO, Sali Tabacchi Branding & Design, Meevo Digital and Micro Pro Sienna.

The 2024 Winter Stations winners are:

We Caught A UFO! by Xavier Madden and Katja Banovic, Croatia and Australia

“We Caught a UFO!” builds upon the project “In the Belly of a Bear,” which used the lifeguard chair by lifting the public above ground into a cozy space, transporting them into a new world. This station reimagines these qualities by referencing the rumours and whispers of the many UFO sightings across Lake Ontario.

A KALEIDOSCOPIC ODYSSEY by Brander Architects Inc (Adam Brander, Nilesh P., Ingrid Garcia, Maryam Emadzadeh), Canada

A KALEIDOSCOPIC ODYSSEY invites viewers to step into an experience where they “challenge where reality ends and imagination begins.” Visitors are able to explore the limitless depths of perception with this adaptation of Kaleidoscope of the Senses, 2020.

Making Waves by Adria Maynard and Purvangi Patel, Canada

Making Waves is a whimsical piece of furniture that represents “the ways that simple actions can ripple outwards to ‘resonate’ across time and space, moving and impacting others in surprising ways.” The installation takes the form of an exaggerated couch and forms an unusual urban living room where neighbours can gather and sit by the water.

NIMBUS by David Stein, Canada

This station was inspired by the airy strands that make up the 2016 installation Floating Ropes. Nimbus’s playful shapes and colours evolve the concept and materials by adding  blue ropes hanging below a bubbly white structure. The station asks visitors to “consider the presence and absence of rain in our contemporary world by referencing both severe storms and flooding” as well as trends of lack of rain, drought, and desertification.

Bobbin’ by Max Perry, Jason Cai, Kenneth Siu, Simon Peiris, Yoon Hur, Angeline Reyes, Oluwatobiloba Babalola, Yiqing Liu, Kenyo Musa, Ali Hasan; University of Waterloo School of Architecture

Bobbin’ invites visitors to a place where moments and memories result in reflection. The seesaws draw from the playground-like Sling Swing and Lifeline projects and its form within the landscape reflects HotBox and Introspection. Each material has been sourced from previous student projects and salvaged materials from the community of Cambridge.

Nova by Jake Levy, Emily Lensin, Luca Castellan, and Nathaniel Barry; Toronto Metropolitan University – Department of Architectural Science

Nova is a star that has crashed on top of a lifeguard station and illuminates Woodbine Beach throughout the night. This station highlights TMU’s past decade of Winter Stations, inspired by the origami, materiality, and form of Snowcone, Lithoform, and S’Winter Station. Nova also introduces 3D printing, a textile canopy, and an elegant steel pipe connection to create a pavilion with “Resonance.”

WINTERACTION by University of Guelph – Department of Landscape Architecture (Afshin Ashari, Ali Ebadi, Jacob Farrish, Cameron Graham, Ngoc Huy Pham, Ramtin Shafaghati, Zackary Tammaro-Cater) and Ashari Architects (Amir Ashari, Sara Nazemi, Anahita Kazempour, Hakimeh Elahi, Yasaman Sirjani, Zahra Jafari)

WINTERACTION resonates with OneCanada and WE[AR] projects and is a dual installation in Iran and Canada that fosters solidarity and social interaction between the two nations. Visitors are invited on a journey through a labyrinth that appears when an AR app is activated on their phones, which symbolizes a challenging quest and leads from “confusion to enlightenment, to reach inner peace.”

The two stations set to make their return from the Winter Stations Archives are CONRAD by Novak Djogo and Daniel Joshua Vanderhorst, and Delighthouse by Nick Green and Greig Pirrie.

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Four projects have been selected for the 25th edition of the International Garden Festival in Grand-Métis, Quebec, called The Ecology of Possibility.

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, Ève De Garie-Lamanque, artistic director, has invited designers to imagine the future of the garden. A total of 216 projects were submitted by designers from 30 countries.

The four gardens selected for the 2024 edition include the following.

Couleur Nature by Vanderveken, Architecture + Paysage | Saint-Lambert, Québec, Canada

Couleur Nature is a study into the roles gardens play in society. The installation strives to juxtapose two visions of the garden. It compares the great areas of utilitarian lawn and individual leisure devices with poor social and ecological indicators with contemplative gardens with high reflexive and ecological indicators. Additionally, it demonstrates the “absurdity of a dominant mono-culture.”

FUTURE DRIFTS  by Julia Lines Wilson | United States

In the first year of the festival, priority plant species were identified for habitat protection in the St. Lawrence Vision 2000 Action Plan. Among these species was the Anticosti Aster, a cross between New York and Rush Asters. Despite habitat protection, the Anticosti and Rush Asters remain endangered species 25 years later. This garden poses the following as a question on the past and future: “If New York and Rush Asters crossed again, what would that look like? What possible futures can be sown by these species’ interactions?”

Rue Liereman / Organ Man Street by Pioniersplanters | Belgium

In densely populated and urbanized areas such as Flanders, the fraction of land occupied by domestic or private gardens is estimated to be 12 per cent which is equivalent to four times the total surface area of natural areas in the region. As a result, domestic gardens have the potential to help reduce the effects of climate change and stop the impoverishment of biodiversity as long as they are designed and maintained naturally.

Superstrata by mat-on | Italy

This year’s theme, The Ecology of Possibility emphasizes the value and interconnectedness of life forms and ecosystems. The garden proposal illustrates “the tension between nature’s freedom and humanity’s inclination to impose order” and uses a geological map as a metaphor. The installation highlights the co-creation of landscapes by human and non-human entities and showcases the interconnected nature of their interactions.

This year, three projects also received a special mention from the jury. They include Welcome, Yellow Bricks Garden, by Azzurra Brugiotti (Italy), En Équilibre, by Sonia and Natalia Dacko (Spain), and Aguas, by Jomarly Cruz Galarza and Virgen Berrios Torres (Puerto Rico).

This year’s jury included Ron Williams, architect and landscape architect AAPQ CSLA, FCSLA FRAIC, Jérôme Lapierre, architect OAQ, founder of Jérôme Lapierre Architecte, Marie Claude Massicotte, senior landscape architect AAPQ CSLA and member of the Festival’s board of directors, Alexander Reford, director of the Reford Gardens / International Garden Festival, Ève De Garie-Lamanque, artistic director of the International Garden Festival, and François Leblanc, technical coordinator of the International Garden Festival.

This year’s edition of the festival will take place from June 22 to October 6, 2024. In celebration of its 25th anniversary,  various projects including a symposium are on the agenda.

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