Built on granite-clad, terraced foundations on the northern edge of Lake Muskoka in Ontario, Canada, this modern cottage is a dynamic, volumetric response to its site as it quietly settles into its natural landscape. From the water’s edge, it gives a linear impression as its deep rooflines provide horizontality to the series of forms as they cascade down the steeply…
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Port Lands
Natural landscapes can often re-energize, bring peace of mind, and help people feel centered within their life. In larger, busier cities, where manmade infrastructure is sprawling and the population is diverse, many times nature is not as accessible to most. Though sustainable practices that help preserve nature may not often be prioritized, in Toronto, an organization known as Waterfront Toronto…
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Ecosystems of design
A current marker of the advancements in sustainability and innovative thinking of modern architecture, the AIA’s COTE® Top Ten program entered its 25th year this year, with a slew of new awards for North America’s most ecologically groundbreaking works of architecture. Projects across typologies, from university libraries and the health sciences to commercial adaptive reuse and deep tech—such as Microsoft’s…
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Flight work
When leveraging design-based research and brand strategy of one of Toronto’s largest, independent multidisciplinary design firms to create a new space for a global travel services company, the result is an award-winning, four-and-a-half floor office environment uniting staff from roughly 300 various locations throughout Toronto into one seven-story building. Designed by Figure3 to support the ever-evolving needs and culture of…
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Odeyto
Situated among a boreal garden, teaching pavilion, and sculptural mounds on the Seneca College campus in Toronto, Ontario, the Odeyto Indigenous Centre for students is an architectural and culturally inclusive embodiment of Indigenous lifeways both traditional and contemporary. The renovation and addition project, which was finished in 2018 and features 1,600 square-feet, functions as a new space for First Peoples@Seneca,…
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Ocean Intersection
Building upon its innovative and ergonomic office furnishings, the Steelcase Inc. name has come to embody a unique corporate and industrial value for sustainability. Whether through surface material partners specializing in sustainable leather or timber, or a sweeping carbon negative initiative—built off of its recent achievement of operational carbon neutrality—Steelcase Inc. of Grand Rapids, Michigan has been invested in sustainable…
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IFWTO: expression in fashion
In a celebration of Indigenous expression in fashion and the arts, the second edition of the biennial Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto hosted runway presentations from 16 designers, a series of panel discussions on topics like land-based fashion and fashion journalism, a virtual art exhibition, and more, online last week November 26 through November 29, 2020. Co-founded by Artistic Director Sage…
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Systems of design
“People find their own ways of using things regardless of how prescriptive it can be,” said Lee Fletcher, principal and co-founding partner of Fig40, an award-winning, multi-service, industrial design firm based in Toronto, Ontario. “We need to have a sensitivity to that.” This intention to the intrinsic human nature of design underscores the Fig40 portfolio, which Fletcher has been building…
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OUI
Indigo Books & Music Inc. is a Toronto based company that doubles as a world cultural department store, filled with curated collections of books, music, art, and lifestyle products. Its fashion branch spans jewelry and sleepwear to backpacks; while its curated home goods branch includes décor, glassware, furnishings, and more. Recently, an exclusive new brand, called OUI, has joined Indigo’s…
