We were under the Gardiner Expressway, and the zoom of cars overhead blended with a low, irregular hum: the sound of a thousand heartbeats, thumping together. A lattice of light bulbs pulsed in time to their rhythm.
The Bentway has announced the six shortlisted teams for the Waterfront ReConnect design competition, a collaboration with the City of Toronto, the Waterfront Business Improvement Area, and the Toronto Downtown West Business Improvement Area.
Picture Berczy Park in Toronto – before the cute dog statues were added to the fountain. On a hot summer day at this modest little slice of green in an otherwise busy downtown area, a woman decides to sit on the fountain’s edge.
Toronto has long been a city of cyclists, but since the COVID crisis began, biking has surged in both popularity and relevance. People looking for alternatives to public transit during the pandemic are taking up biking as a way to navigate the city. And with the acceleration of cycling-friendly initiatives and infrastructure this past summer, many who were once hesitant about biking in the city, now feel safe enough to do so—though much work remains to be done to reach a “vision zero” benchmark of road safety.
Cities around the world have reimagined public space throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to help residents get moments of exercise, fresh air and some sort of distanced social interaction. In Toronto, entire roads were closed to make way for cyclists and joggers as part of ActiveTO. Its sister program, CafeTO also closed roads so that restaurants could extend outdoor patios in lieu of indoor dining. Circles were painted on the grounds of Trinity Bellwoods park so that people could still gather while physical distancing.
U.K. artist Luke Jerram’s The Museum of the Moon will arrive at the Bentway, the 1.75-kilometre public space and outdoor gallery located underneath the Gardiner Expressway. The Museum of the Moon is a giant balloon, seven metres in diameter, built to 1:500,000 scale using NASA imagery, illuminated from the inside to provide an up-close view of the Moon’s rocky craters, dead volcanic cones and lava flows.
New Monuments for New Cities is a public art exhibition in which artists were asked to imagine new monuments. Their designs will travel to five cities next year, to be displayed in industrial reuse spaces, beginning in Buffalo Bayou in Houston in February, and ending on the High Line in New York in October.
The Bentway’s urban designer, Ken Greenberg, discusses successes and lessons from his forty-year career, the innovations of cities around the world that inspire him, and the challenges of addressing the complexity of today’s urban issues.
Ian Garrick Mason’s short film highlights the importance of making space for parks in unlikely places, from under the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto to an elevated railway on Manhattan’s west side.
When Manhattan’s High Line opened on the west side in 2009, locals and visitors alike flocked to the revitalized railroad trestle to marvel at its transformation into a gorgeous and walkable park. Arguably the most famous urban adaptive reuse project in America, the High Line made industrial reuse cool and prompted a wave of creative development.
