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Let There Be Lightbox
The arduous, lengthy, and expensive quest to name the Bell Festival Centre is over. The Star described the process for finding a new moniker for the home of the Toronto International Film Festival Group in dramatic terms: “[it] has gone on for years,” wrote Martin Knelman, “involving high-priced consulting firms and a committee of board members and gurus, climaxing with a think-tank meeting at a retreat in Cambridge, Ont.”
No small feat, then, determining the name. And the decision this morning, the culmination of the work of those years, those high-priced consulting firms and gurus and board members and think-tanks? The Bell Lightbox, a name that sounds more like the latest piece of Adobe software (with a software-y logo to go with it) than a proper name for a building.
The building itself has an awkward design to go with its awkward name, all weird rectangles shoved on top of other weird rectangles––maybe calling it a “box” isn’t so incorrect, then. In the end, TIFF’s new home comes off as more of a strange but boring five-storey condo or some overdesigned mega-club than the headquarters for a company that wants to be world-renowned for the art it curates. Nonetheless, they’re still shoving a thousand-storey condo––Festival Tower––on top of it anyway.
See more renderings after the jump.
All renderings courtesy of Bell Lightbox’s website.