Via emergentfutures:
Flexible condos can be reconfigured and resized
It’s a fact of life that people’s needs change over time, and that’s as true in housing as any other industry. Aiming to create condominiums that are flexible enough to accommodate some of that change, Canadian architectural firm Sweeny Sterling Finlayson & Co. has created a new, modular design for living spaces that allows them to adapt when needed.
Full Story: Springwise
Reimagining Toronto’s public transit system:
The Toronto Transit Commission is said to be considering the idea of selling naming rights for its subway lines and stations. In response, the helpful folks at Torontoist have chimed in to offer several station-renaming suggestions, including one for Christie station – to be known as “Mr. Christie,” in acknowledgment of Kraft Foods’ Mr. Christie’s cookie brand.
Read the rest (including Ossingston station, dubbed “Hugo Bossington”): Welcome to Your New SUBWAY™ System, Toronto.
Well done, Torontoist.
“Photos of ice formations on Toronto’s waterfront have been steadily appearing in the blogTO Flickr pool for about a month or so. Surprisingly compelling, the best of these images conjure up the work of abstract expressionist masters like Jackson Pollock and invite the viewer to imagine faces and figures popping out from the patterns.”
(via Dazzling ice formations on the Toronto waterfront - blogTO; photo by ~EvidencE~)
Auto-reblogging my Unconsumption post because:
a) the project is in Toronto, and involves b) adaptive reuse of old buildings, c) the preservation of green space / creation of a nature preserve, d) a public-private (non-profit) partnership, e) a farmers’ market, f) a repurposed shipping container, g) community gardens, and h) sustainable building principles, among other things that are of interest (to me)!
Via unconsumption:
A retired shipping container, known now as the Welcome Hut, helps to orient visitors as they enter the grounds of Toronto’s Evergreen Brick Works (EBW), a new 40-acre nature preserve / redevelopment project — billed as “Canada’s first community environmental center.” EBW is a project of Evergreen, a national charity dedicated to bringing nature into public spaces, schools, and homes.
Several components of EBW’s master plan have been completed on the site that was, for more than a century, a brick factory with massive kilns (decommissioned in the 1980s), with adjacent clay/shale quarry in a ravine along the Don River.
From an August 2010 Toronto Life story:
In an earlier age, Toronto would have torn down the brick sheds, but we are beginning to see new value in these old places. We don’t just come for the food or the chit-chat with a charming artisanal cheesemaker. We also come for the worn-down bricks and the history immersion. We crave these historic buildings that can root us in our city’s past and tell us where we came from. The fashion for ruins was also hugely popular in 18th-century England. Back then, people were leaving the land to work in factories. Similarly, as our factories close, we’re developing a nostalgic appreciation for manufacturing.
EBW’s offerings are slated to include a sustainable garden center, farmers’ market, demonstration gardens and kitchens, conference and event facilities, community bike space, art exhibition areas, and programs for families and kids.
The Welcome Hut — Dwell.com slideshow here — was designed so that it could be relocated elsewhere on the property, to serve other purposes as needed.
(spotted on Twitter, via Dwell’s Miyoko Ohtake, @miyokoohtake)
Art matters:
Woohoo! The Tumblr-verse is a better place now that the Art Gallery of Ontario is in it.
I like how AGO staff members are using Tumblr: their Art of the Day posts featuring images and information are helping to educate us about various works in the museum’s collection.
[Disclosure: I’m a loyal AGO fan: During my Toronto years, I worked as a volunteer at the museum almost every Sunday. :) ]
The photos pictured above and here are phone-cam shots captured during a 2009 AGO visit.