TO Design Offsite: Day 1

Here’s what to see and do today at the Toronto Design Offsite Festival.

Fugitive Glue: Behind the Design
Reception: January 18, 7-11 pm
Dates: January 20 – 26
Location: FGHQ
Admission: Free

Fugitive Glue is a design studio that creates clever solutions for people, places and things. Specializing in industrial design, FG restores up-sourced materials to bring new life and identity to forgotten materials. FG’s designs explore the unlikely to build a narrative through each project and be the glue that leaves no trace. Tour the studio, chat with the designers and see a collection of their products. www.fugitive-glue.com

patternpattern
Reception: Saturday, January 18, 6-9pm
Dates: January 18 – 26
Location: Graven Feather
Admission: Free

String theory is the brainchild of textile designers Lysanne Latulippe and Meghan Price. By fusing digital design and production with delicate handwork, ST produces contemporary textiles that meet the traditional standards of their craft. Latulippe and Price work with the physics of fibres, yarns, knitting and weaving to develop structure, pattern and texture to reveal their methods for designing knit and woven textiles. Here, process becomes pattern and a collection of scarves is presented within walls that reflect their making.

100% TobeUs: 100 Cars for 100 Designers for 100 New Toy Cars
Dates: To February 9
Location: Design Exchange
Admission: DX Members: Free, Adults: $10, Students and Seniors: $8

TobeUs was born as a vent of a designer who could not stand the sight of his own children using toys for just a few hours and then tossing them. TobeUs has become synonymous with a way of design and the creation of new objects, attracting designers who want to design their own wooden cars. Made by two cuts in a wooden stump that always has the same size, this project exercises clear limitations. Matteo Ragni has gathered the the projects of the Italian designers such as Marcel Wanders, Mario Bellini, Fernando and Humberto Campana, and curated ’100% TobeUs: 100 Designers for 100 New Toy Cars’.

‘What Was Will Be’ 
Dates: To February 15
Location: Gallery 44 
Admission: Free

Through the lens of archives from the early to the mid-20th century, artists Kristie MacDonald and Christina Battle present an evocative media installation which explores the temporality of architecture. ‘What Was Will Be’ also evokes notions of memory and nostalgia, such as the piece ‘dearfield, colorado’, in which Battle pairs a video of the now ghost town Dearfield, Colorado, with firsthand archival accounts of drought across the prairies and VLF recordings of sferics. Through a deconstruction of the documentary and the archive, this exhibit aims to change notions of climate change and urban decay. gallery44.org

A Tale of New Cities
Dates: To January 31
Location: Type Books

‘A Tale of New Cities’ is a project by architecture grads Nicole Bruun-Meyer and Fernie Lai which focuses on the urban development of cities through the use of photographic collages. Based on Toronto and Beijing, two cities with increasing urban growth and densification, Bruun-Meyer and Lai use the process of collage to comment on the similarities and contrasts of each location. The collage technique uses two photographs, overlapping them into an abstract image that at different distances can be discerned from a ‘pixelated’ over-all view to a detailed fragment.

Digital Tools Prototypes | [R]ed[U]x Lab
Dates: To January 31
Location: [R]ed[U]x Lab

A long-standing tradition within the Department of Architectural Science’s Digital Tools course at Ryerson University, this project calls upon students to use digital fabrication, physical computing, and creative skills to create prototypes of interactive installations and responsive environments. The proposals are responses to the growing integration of subtle technologies in architectural design, many of which form a developmental basis for more robust initiatives at a greater scale and scope both in Toronto and across the globe. ryearchdesignlab.blogspot.ca

To see more openings and events, visit todesignoffsite.com. Produced in partnership with Toronto Design Offsite.