The Toronto Winter Stations design competition has selected the five professional and three student teams that will add sculptures to the Toronto beachfront this winter for the third edition of the annual event. Under the theme of “Catalyst,” the jury sought installations that “open up the waterfront landscape and reinvent the space for visitors,” while considering how materials may be repurposed or reused for future iterations.
"Winter Stations 2017 delivered, once again, gutsy and lyrical transformations of ordinary lifeguard stands," says Lisa Rochon, Winter Stations Design Jury Chair. "Visitors will be able to touch and feel their way along the beach, experiencing luminous shelter from the wind, warming waters for their feet, and designs that celebrate the Canadian nation of immigrants," says Lisa Rochon, Winter Stations Design Jury Chair.
“The idea of reuse is particularly relevant as we have found many of the Winter Stations installations have taken on a second life after the competition,” says Winter Stations co-founder Ted Merrick of Ferris + Associates.
Founded by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates, and Curio, the Winter Stations Design Competition was envisioned as an opportunity to use design to inspire Torontonians back outside. Check out this year’s winners below.
Winners
I See You Ashiyu / Asuka Kono and Rachel Salmela
This installation uses the idea the Japanese hot spring and warm water to provide physical relief from the cold. By creating a landscape-based gathering space on the beach, this installation emphasizes the contrast in the seasons and recalls memories of a summer beach.
North / studio PERCH
Using the poetic concept of the great "North”, this installation conjures a powerful and eternal image that transports visitors to an imagined forest. The work suspends 41 fir trees in midair creating an evocative and colour-saturated canopy that stands out against the white of winter.
Collective Memory / Mario García and Andrea Govi
Inspired by the statistic that by 2031 nearly one-half of the Canadian population over the age of 15 will be foreign-born or the child of a migrant parent Collective Memory aims to be the catalyst of present and shared anecdotes. Constructed out of recycled bottles – the archetype for the lost message – two translucent walls will shield the existing lifeguard structure, creating a threshold between shore and city.
BuoyBuoyBuoy / Dionisios Vriniotis, Rob Shostak, Dakota Wares-Tani and Julie Forand
Capturing the impression of a series of buoys moving in the waves, BuoyBuoyBuoy uses many small parts to create a whole. Each component is the silhouette of a buoy from afar creating a fog or a cloud around the lifeguard station like drops reflecting and refracting the light.
The Beacon / Joao Araujo Sousa and Joanna Correia Silva
The concept translates into the archetypical lighthouse conical shape, reduced to its simplest expression and conformed to the lifeguard stand proportions and wrapped in aged wood. The Beacon will act as a temporary drop-off location for non-perishable items such as canned food or clothes.
Collegiate Teams
Flotsam and Jetsam / University of Waterloo
Project team: Nicola Augustin, NegarBehzad Jazi, Anne Cheung, Bryce Clayton, Catherine Cohen, Mona Dai, Sarah Donaldson, Parshan Fatehi, Allegra Friesen, Golnaz Jamshidi, Carly Kandrack, Ryan Pagliaro, Elida Pletikapic, Alexandra Sermol, Kirsten Sheppard-Neuhofer, Eric Sviratchev, Joel Tremblay and Danny Wei
As visitors approach from the vantage of the city the 20-foot high sculpture generates curiosity and invites a closer look. The installation reveals the realities of plastic consumption, resulting waste and its effects on the aquatic biodiversity of the planet we share.
The Illusory / Humber College School of Media Studies & IT, School of Applied Technology
Creative Team: Jenessa Atkinson, Aaron Bavle, Jason Carreiro, Gabriela Merka-Derez, Kimberly Michelle Czornodolskyj, Karun Ramani, Trish Roque, Roxanne Van Dam, Qiao Wang, Project Faculty Advisors: Marcin Kedzior, Professor, School of Applied Technology
From afar, the structure is incognito, reflecting the surrounding environment and fading into it. Entering the space, the explorer views misconstrued, mirroring illustrations of themselves and their surroundings.
Midwinter Fire / Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto
Creative Team: John Beeton, Herman Borrego, Anna Chen, Vikrant Dasoar, Michael DeGirolamo, Leonard Flot, Monika Gorgopa, James Kokotilo, Asuka Kono, Karima Peermohammad, Rachel Salmela, Christina Wilkinson, Julie Wong, Rotem Yaniv. Faculty Advisor: Pete North, Assistant Professor
Midwinter Fire provides visitors with the opportunity to engage with an augmented winter forest creating an immersive experience that reframes Southern Ontario’s vegetation in contrast with the exposed winterlandscape of the beach. This installation uses the simple idea of reflectivity to expand the illusion of an urban forest and to make the project disappear into the surrounding landscape.
The 8 installations will be constructed from February 13 to 19 along Kew, Scarborough and Balmy Beaches in the heart of The Beach community, and will continue on display until March 27, 2017. For more information, visit the Winter Stations website, here.
News and project descriptions via Winter Stations Design Competition.
