I’ve talked about Liberty village a few times – industrial lands out in the west end of downtown Toronto, now being turned into a diverse integrated neighbourhood. But this is not the only massive project to increase housing options in the city, and turn disused industrial lands into a hip living space.
The Canary district, and it’s “front street promenade” – as this run is now officially designated, was kickstarted by a project to prepare athlete housing for the Pan Am games, a couple of years ago – and has now filled in considerably to run along Front St from the Don Valley at Bayview over to the huge new George Brown student residence at Cooperage (which looks pretty nicely inhabitable, as such places go), with a nice long park facing it on the south, with lots of play space.
Garden of Future Follies – by Hadley and Maxwell
(top photo, and below)
This collection of deconstructed sculpture is really wonderful – so many classical themes played with, and turned right on their head – tons of irony and outright hilarity, too (reminded me of seeing Rousseau work, because it also made me laugh out loud, then again, as I studied it more closely).
The water guardians – Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins
I must admit, there’s a lot of steelwork sculpture around the city that doesn’t do it for me, but this piece works both for it’s anthropomorphic style, and it’s playfully monstrous scale. Cute (like Godzilla!)
Behind the ‘guardians’ is one of those funny new fountains that will send an unexpected jet of water up from the pavement at you, by computer control. Really nice treat on a hot day (and no water-wastage, when no audience)
Those green domes and blue waves are that (recycled) soft rubber material, I mentioned before, from underpass park.
untitled (Toronto Lamp Posts) by Tadashi Kawamata
Here’s another piece that made me laugh out loud with delight. I don’t know whether they all light up at night (we can only hope) but even if they are only inert shapes, the whole alphabet of city lighting is funny to see in one place.
(again, Godzilla comes to mind, this time as optimal artist’s assistant)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
