By Steve Kupferman

Toronto’s Pan Am Games are happening in 2015, and with the bad (cost overruns, transit planning that is arguably rushed) comes the good: interesting new development in the mostly barren West Don Lands, where the Athletes’ Village, destined to become a mixed-income neighbourhood after the games are through, is set to be constructed. Waterfront Toronto and Infrastructure Ontario are still in the process of reviewing proposals for the site, but that didn’t stop the American Institute of Architecture Students, a student association based in Washington, DC, from holding a contest to see who among their members could design the snazziest awards pavilion. Renderings of the winners and honourable mentions, designed by student architects from as far away as Switzerland, are above. They’re on display at this week’s American Institute of Architects convention in New Orleans.
These designs are the result of a theoretical challenge, meaning they won’t actually be built. They all incorporate vinyl as a building material, because one of the competition’s sponsors was the Canadian Plastics Industry Association. Yuriy Napelenok, spokesperson for the AIAS, tells us that his organization holds a few of these contests every year, and that they decided to set this one in Toronto in part because they had their annual meeting here in January.
We won’t know what the actual plans for the Athletes’ Village are until later in the summer (according to a January press release), but if this stuff is any indication of what modern architectural minds think the Don Lands need, we’re in for some surprises.
See fuller descriptions of all the designs on the AIAS website.