Toronto's urban street furniture collection of late has been messily schizophrenic and oft-criticized, but final prototypes from the Coordinated Street Furniture Program have just been unveiled, with installation slated for 2009. The furniture plan involved a private Request For Proposals (RFP) from three advertising conglomerates, who pitched their designs last year in the hopes of securing the lucrative 20-year monopoly with the City of Toronto. The covenant was awarded to Astral Media, much to......

Torontoist presents an imagined inside look at the creative process behind the AGO's shiny new logo, above. Designer: Bruce Mau Client: Art Gallery of Ontario Due: May 15, 2008 Creative Brief: Design a "distinctive new logo that will represent the Gallery well beyond its Fall 2008 opening." Logo should capture "both the stability of the century-old institution and the forward-looking energy of the new Gallery." (If that proves too challenging, refer to graphic design......

When we first got a tip from Andrew Hunter that "someone has installed a new type of bike post along Yonge north of Lawrence," we were concerned that it might be the vanguard of the Coordinated Street Furniture onslaught of mass-produced uniformity. When we went down (yes, down) to visit the area, however, we were quite relieved to discover not Kramer-designed brontosaurus ribs but elegant, artfully crafted flourishes of metallic whimsy. Inspired by a......

The public service announcement on the left is courtesy of the TTC. The public service announcement on the right is courtesy of the MTA. On Friday morning, Accordion Guy Joey deVilla juxtaposed the two on his blog, along with the question "who plagiarized whom?" Well, presuming that plagiarism is defined as the lack of attribution for an idea, then fortunately neither. This particular TTC poster, like a number of others (and even some of......

One year ago today, City Council's Executive Committee approved [PDF] the awarding of the street furniture contract—for the purposes of designing, building, owning, and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, ad pillars, and more for a period of twenty years in exchange for advertising rights—to Astral Media Outdoor, despite the fact that the company had absolutely no experience with "street furniture" and maintains dozens of illegal billboards in defiance of City Council.......

Every Saturday morning, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today. Palmerston Boulevard, looking south from Harbord Street, 1908. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 7200. Palmerston Boulevard is one of the best examples of an intact turn-of-the-century residential street in the city. Stone gates at College and Bloor mark not only a name change—where Palmerston Avenue becomes Palmerston Boulevard—but also a......

There's been much debate in recent days over whether or not the TTC should remodel its crumbling, 50s-era "bathroom tile" subway stations (since now they can). A vocal proponent of the renovation plan has been TTC Commissioner and Councillor Sandra Bussin, who thinks that the common masses aren't design-savvy enough to hold an opinion of much weight. "I come from an art background," she says, justifying her critical authority on the currently "boring" subway......

Jarvis Street, circa 1910. (City of Toronto Archives) Torontonians should be ashamed at what happened to Jarvis Street. The city's first paved road was once the grandest tree-lined boulevard around, bracketed by the mansions of some of Toronto's wealthiest movers and shakers. Then, in the 1940s, the stately Jarvis boulevard was transformed: trees were pulled down and sidewalks ripped up to make way for the automobile. Jarvis Street was turned from a gorgeous historical......

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The organizers of Nuit Blanche held a launch event at OCAD this morning to announce this year’s curators—Wayne Baerwaldt, Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design; Dave Dyment, Director of Programming at Mercer Union, Toronto; Gordon Hatt, a writer and curator who lives in Kitchener; and Haema Sivanesan, Executive Director of Toronto’s South Asian Visual Arts Centre—and allow them to outline their individual......

Since January 2006, quirky black-and-white brushstroke illustrations have graced the back page of the The New York Times Magazine. The work is that of Toronto-based designer and OCAD teacher Bob Hambly, who just completed his 500th illustration—a bus—for the prestigious Sunday newspaper supplement. "Even after twelve years, I still get that little pang in my stomach each time a new story is sent to me," he says. "I feel a great sense of responsibility for......

Image: Cicada Design/Diamond + Schmitt Architects If you seem to be noticing Ryerson everywhere these days, you're not imagining it. Though it's been around since 1948 and been granting degrees since 1971, it's only during the last few years that the university has embarked on a massive expansion plan and branding campaign, drastically raising its physical and academic profile. Devoid of any real charm for decades (save for the 1852 partial façade of the......

With Rogers' plan to move Citytv, OMNI Television, and the Fan 590 to the southeast corner of Dundas Square, those familiar with the current streetfront studios on Queen Street have wondered if the former Olympic Spirit building will be opened up in a similar way. Though merely an preliminary concept rendering, Rogers and Quadrangle Architects seem to have grand designs for the space, currently dubbed Rogers Television City, as evident in this image supplementing......

At the Interior Design Show this past weekend, British innovator-icon Tom Dixon lamented the impossibility of creative rebellion in today's art and design world. In the eighties, he said, postmodern design values were near-universal, and thus easy to subvert. In the oughties, however, the aesthetic is increasingly fractured, and there is no one standard to either strive for or strain against. If anything goes and nothing is new, how are today's students to design......

Heads up on the hands-down coolest things at the Interior Design Show: most of them spring from our own backyard. And literally, too. There is a flourishing trend toward the incorporation of nature in contemporary design—a welcome wandering off from the hard lines and materials often associated with modernism—and local designers are embracing it wholeheartedly. Toronto installation artist Rob Southcott's "United We Stand" (pictured at right) is actually a seat of sorts, a grouping......

Photo by aardvark from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Transit vehicles are being diverted and streets have been closed near Queen and Bathurst as firefighters battle a six-alarm blaze this morning. The fire broke out about 5 a.m. and spread through eight low-rise buildings on the south side of Queen, consisting of fourteen addresses between Bathurst and Portland. The destroyed block contained commercial properties Suspect Video, Duke's Cycle, National Sound, Preloved, the Jupiter head shop,......

A project by architect Johnson Chou and distributor Sound Solutions, part of IDS 08 Collaborations exhibit. Three days, over three hundred exhibitors: Toronto's Interior Design Show moves into the Exhibition Place this weekend, and holy mother of invention, where do you start? Well, there's the opening night gala, of course. Promisingly titled "Decadence," the party takes place this Thursday, February 21, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. at the Direct Energy Centre; $50 in......

Last February, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released the NYC Condom, with packaging echoing the city's iconic subway signage and distributed for free by street teams in heavily-trafficked areas. In time for Valentine's Day this year, the rebranded LifeStyles condoms have been redesigned, accompanied by a multimedia campaign under the slogan "Get Some." But one of the campaign's new banner ads will look strangely familiar to Torontonians—it features a......

According to Rafael Fajardo, absolutely. In the midst of last Wednesday's snowstorm, Fajardo spoke to a half-filled auditorium at OCAD as part of the Faculty of Design's speaker series. He is currently the Director of Digital Media Studies and Electronic Media Arts Design at Denver University, as well as the Director of SWEAT, a collaborative of video game designers who strive to push gaming beyond the realm of entertainment. Fajardo sees video game design......

Our favourite Bloor Street comic emporium is having an event tomorrow that sounds totally neat. The Labyrinth proudly hosts its first-ever group show tomorrow evening, an event called Vinyl Graffiti. They accepted submissions of art in any medium for which an old vinyl record sleeve could be used as the canvas. The event starts at 7:00 p.m., but at 8:00 p.m. they will begin a Character Design Face Off competition. Anyone who shows up......

The last time we looked at accessible pedestrian signals (APS), those chirping and cuckooing crossing indicators for the visually-impaired, it was with some surprise at the city's claim that it simply couldn't afford to install APS at more than a handful of intersections each year. Instead of allocating enough money to improve availability of a fairly basic service to visually-impaired residents, the city instead looked for corporate sponsors to pick up some of the......

The verdict is in, and the umbrellas are going up! Following an invited competition to design a new public space for the Jarvis Slip, Waterfront Toronto has revealed the winner, unanimously chosen by the design jury: Claude Cormier Architectes Paysagistes Inc. As outlined in our competition coverage, the Cormier plan—dubbed "Sugar Beach"—will bring an HtO Park-style "urban beach" to the foot of Jarvis Street, dotted with charming steel umbrellas and Muskoka chairs. The sandy......

Behold what might eventually become of Sniderman's Corner: an attractive first rendering of the Ryerson Student Learning Centre. To be built at Yonge and Gould on the former sites of Sam The Record Man and the freshly-vacated Future Shop, the building represents Ryerson's desperately coveted access to the Yonge Street strip. To be designed by critical darlings KPMB Architects and Daoust Lestage, the institutionally glassy building will incorporate the historically designated Sam's marquee, which......

We love the TTC—we really do—but they make it hard to like them sometimes. The Commission does a good job behind the scenes keeping an enormous fleet of vehicles running, in reasonable repair, and reasonably on time, but where they really drop the ball is when it comes to the actual transit rider. Frustratingly, they have no shortage of passionate, inventive, and resourceful riders who seem to be happily at their disposal (gratis, even!),......

Moving insect legs! A dazzling shimmer wall! Faux beach, part deux! Waterfront Toronto has selected three proposals for the redevelopment of the Jarvis Street slip area, which currently features a dumpy, underutilized parking lot and not much else. Already part of the greater Waterfront Revitalization Plan, Lower Jarvis and Queen's Quay will soon be home to some new architecture (namely First Waterfront Place, the headquarters and studios of Corus Entertainment) and will be the......

Selected quotes from "Toronto's Type and Tile Heritage" by Edward Keenan, from the November 14th issue of Eye Weekly: Joe Clark: "The trick is trying to prevent the destruction of the subway system as we know it. What are these [TTC] commissioners doing, exactly? Through malign neglect, they are beginning a 35-year process of destruction. Because if they make over Pape station so that it doesn’t match any of the other stations, if they......

For reasons that were surely thoroughly considered, York Mills was not a stop on the recent Type & Tile Tour of the Yonge-University-Spadina line. Nevertheless, due largely to escalator maintenance that has been ongoing for over a year, it is still quite the treasure trove of wacky signage. Here are some recent highlights: Top left photo: On the collector's level, riders are directed to the buses and subways via laser printouts that fail to......

Regardless of how you choose to celebrate (or not) the upcoming holiday season, it’s hard not to embrace a spirit of generosity that seems unique to this time of year. Students from the Ontario College of Art & Design’s Think Tank program are hoping that giving mood will be alive and well among restaurant patrons on Thursday, December 6, as they unveil the inaugural Bread Project. A joint project between OCAD’s Think Tank and......

Photo by David Topping. A mysterious bag discovered in an alleyway beside the Royal Ontario Museum at about 7:00 p.m. tonight has shut down all traffic––pedestrian and vehicular––on Bloor between St. George and University and on Queen's Park southbound from Bloor and Harbord. UPDATE (10:45 p.m.): CTV is now saying that police have found "what appears to be a pipe bomb," and that the building was (half-)evacuated (contrary to what we were originally told).......

Urbanist is a photo series that will look at developments, architecture, trends and activities happening in various cities––including our own––to inspire the urbane urbanist at home to make Toronto a better place. December will bring about the demolition of the building at the southeast corner of Yonge and Bloor to make way for the gargantuan condo development known as One Bloor East. Urbanist is generally supportive of the condo boom since it means more people......