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Canada in the winter conjures up a multitude of feelings and thoughts. Beauty, although certainly on that list, is usually directed toward the bottom of that after all the practical emotions related to the inconveniences of heavy snowfall and below freezing temperatures are considered. I believe Lawren Harris, the Group of Seven member who revolutionized Canadian art nearly a century ago, captured this beauty best through the clean lines of the icebergs and mountains of the north. A younger Harris certainly would have appreciated the Kew Beach setting of this year’s Winter Stations unveiling with the icy blues and greens of the water and sky, and the iced-over rock formations just off the shore. This is the natural Canadian beauty he championed—natural and simplistic.
This type of wintery Canadian beauty was present in the clever and minimalistic winning structures that were unveiled on Monday. Winter Stations, an annual international architecture and design competition for temporary artwork installations, had the theme of Freeze/Thaw for its 2016 theme. The theme asked designers to capture “the changing climactic conditions and transitions of the Toronto winter” and its ability to unyieldingly transition into spring, or remain steadfast in the snowy, sub-zero conditions characterized by the season.
In this vein, a few of the installations incorporated heat into their designs. “The Fire Place” by renowned Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal featured a fire pit bordered by a charred wood bench, reminiscent of the hull of a ship emerging from the sand. People huddled around it for warmth while being able to look out at the sleety waves crashing on shore.
At the opposite end of the beach, Sauna by FFLO (Claire Furnley and James Fox), made its debut. This installation, as its name suggests is indeed a small sauna complete with translucent walls and hooks for towels and bags. At night, the space is illuminated by the solar power the structure collects during the day. On Monday, brave beachgoers were inside trying it out, dressed down to trunks and bikinis, taking refuge from the temperatures that had transformed the lawn bowling green into a skating rink, a mere 30 feet away. Those even braver were surfing the waves and taking dips in the lake.
In The Belly of The Bear, an installation by Calgarian trio r.c Brown, Wayne Garrett and Lane Shordee, was another striking attraction. The large spherical installation was created to mimic what it might be like inside an ursine belly. The interior was fitted with patches of fur and a porthole window looking out to the lake. Although the real belly of a bear might be more fatty than fleecy, the imagination and excitement surrounding this submission was clear from the perpetual line of children and adults forming a queue to enter.
Beside In The Belly of the Bear was the winning submission from Toronto’s OCAD University students along with Mark Tholen, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Environmental Design. The work, titled The Steam Canoe, was created to look like a capsized canoe anchored on the shore. The work also had a heat component that used evacuated solar tubes to turn the surrounding snow into steam. It was not finished on Monday afternoon.
Ryerson University students, used light and colour, rather than heat, to create a shelter from the cold. Their submission, Lithoform was inspired by the similarly named lithosphere, the earth’s outermost layer. The work used colourful panels on the structure’s ceiling to create a sort of kaleidoscope skylight to take visitor’s minds away from the bleak landscape and nature of winter.
The other stations used in situ structures—the lifeguard stations dotted along the shore—as the framework for their pieces. Laurentian University’s Aurora Borealis, featured heat-responsive illuminated tubes that reacted to the touch of visitors, and would subsequently spin around the lifeguard station like a carousel. The piece also featured LED lighting, welded aluminum, sewn fabric to create an otherworldly effect, that brought the piece to life as a sort of warm and friendly alien visitor to brighten up the city’s bleakest months.
The Montreal submission, Floating Ropes, from MUDO (Elodie Doukhan and Nicolas Mussche) had an equally lifelike characteristic. This work, also using a lifeguard station, features a series of ropes suspended around the perimeter of the structure creating fringe-like canopy that offers fractured views of the beach and lake that shift depending on the atmosphere and windiness on the shore.
The installation Flow by Team Secret (Calvin Fung and Victor Huynh), was perhaps the most conceptually interesting of all. The work recreated a three-dimensional ice crystal created from wooden slot-fit connections, connecting with the Freeze/Thaw theme. Like the other works, it had a space for visitors to huddle, and enjoy the their surroundings.
This year’s Winter Stations winners were chose by jury consisting of Jane Hutton of Harvard University GSD; Alex Josephson of Partisans Architecture; 2015 Winter Stations winners Lily Jeon and Diana Koncan; Catherine Osborne of Azure Magazine; and 2016 Jury Chair Lisa Rochon, Senior Fellow, Global Cities Institute U of T and Founder, Friends of the Beach Parks.
Sponsors for Winter Stations 2016 include developers Great Gulf, Diamante Developments, Demirov Fine Homes, The Rockport Group, Fieldgate Homes, and Urban Capital, along with planning firm Bousfields, the Ontario Association of Architects, the Design Exchange and the City of Toronto.
Although we are not yet sure whether this winter will continue to freeze or start to thaw, we can be sure that the the installations down at kew Beach will provide a way of getting outdoors and appreciating the Canadian winter and the Winter Stations that emulate it and create a new way of appreciating and interacting with it. The installations will be on display until March 20.
