By Tina Chu
This article is the first in a series about fAd, Toronto’s annual Festival of Architecture and Design.
The month-long 4th annual Festival of Architecture and Design (fAd), has just begun and already I’ve missed too many events to count. An interdisciplinary festival in every sense of the word, the fAd event calendar is teeming with galas, exhibitions, film screenings, lectures, readings, and walking tours relevant to anyone and everyone, from design enthusiasts to academics. The only setback is being aware that you can’t attend them all.
So far, I’ve attended two Jane’s Walks. Named after writer-activist Jane Jacobs, the walks tour neighbourhoods from West Queen West to Crescent Town, and even Councillor Adam Vaughan’s walk to work. What interested me was “Growing Urban Landscapes,” led by Rhonda Teitel-Payne, Laura Reinsborough, Roscoe Handford, and James Kuhns; this walk explored the soon-to-be Green Arts Barns, Green Barn Farmer’s Market, birthplaces of Not Far From the Tree, and the Hillcrest Community Garden.
The 4.3 acres-large Green Arts Barns — originally the Wychwood TTC streetcar repair barns — are situated south of St. Clair Avenue West between Wychwood Avenue and Christie Street. Beginning as a collaboration between Artscape and The Stop Community Food Centre, the Green Arts Barns are best summarized as being a nexus of community, food, education, and heritage.
Due for completion this September, the area will be divided into The Green Barn, The Covered Street Barn, The Studio Barn, and The Community Barn; it will boast studio spaces, a year-round farmer’s market, and a compost demonstration site. To test the popularity of a farmer’s market, the Stop organized Green Barn Farmer’s Market last year, where Not Far From the Tree was born.
Not Far from the Tree is a volunteer-based project that makes sure participating backyard fruit trees are harvested, to ensure that “Toronto’s fruit gets eaten and enjoyed, not wasted.” In a similar vein, our next stop, the Hillcrest Community Garden, is a communal plot of land maintained by volunteers, a perfect system in a community where time commitment is varied. The system is maintained by both Na-Me-Res, a Native Men’s Residence, and the Tumivut Youth Shelter — two First Nations organizations whose use of the garden goes beyond cultivating plants: the Tumivut Earthkeepers Enterprise is a program that develops job readiness skills and provides job experiences to its participants.
With an increasingly globalized market, I can’t help but feel proud of these collectives’ dedication to empower one’s connection to local produce. As well, the passion with which people discussed these projects on the walk gave me an incredible sense of place and belonging, demonstrating the potency of initiatives orchestrated by people who not only live in the city, but engage it and the people around them. If you’re just as excited as I am, mark down Saturday, May 24th in your calendars; the Green Barn Farmer’s Market will be in operation from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
My second Jane’s Walk was the “Second Annual Jane Jacobs Tribute Walk: an evening ramble with the Toronto Field Naturalists“, led by Helen Juhola and Pleasance Crawford. Starting at Glencairn station, the tour meandered through parks, residential neighbourhoods, city streets, and finally the ravine — a habitat previously endangered by the proposal of the Spadina Expressway decades earlier.
Appreciating and naming the natural sights, we discovered the fierceness of our collective knowledge, where not a thing went unnamed, be it a tree or a piece of neighbourhood history; a few responses were even further enlivened by personal anecdotes. While the snippets of conversation and exercise were as enjoyable as the curious stares from passers-by, looking on at our large gathering from homes and vehicles, what I loved most about that walk was the smell of the ravine —entirely refreshing before the humidity of the summer sets in.
We walked nearly 2.5 miles that evening, back to Heath Street, where my first Jane’s Walk had started, connecting and animating neighbourhoods that, moments ago, had been — for me — rather inconsequential dots on a subway map.
For a change of pace, I attended the Toronto Society of Architects (TSA) meeting, which I entered smack in the middle of introductions, where I followed a string of, “My name is XYZ and I am an urban planner, etc.” with, “Hi, I’m Tina and I just got here.” After the chuckles died down, I was directed to the remaining front row seats beside some mini-sandwiches and polished individuals in full suits. My zebra striped T-shirt over cyan jeans perhaps wasn’t the best idea, but no one was keeping score. We were all here to talk business, the topic being, “City Transit – Transit City: How will the growth of our transit system affect the streetscape development of urban space?”
Moderated by Matthew Blackett of Spacing magazine, the guest panelists featured City Councillor and TTC Chair Adam Giambrone, One Development Corp. President Alex Speigel, and Roger du Toit, Principal of DTAH (du Toit Allsopp Hillier). Each panelist had several minutes to speak his mind, and several more to ask each other questions, until the forum opened up to all attendees of the meeting.
The dialogue developed in all possible directions, from how transit systems should complement population densities, to how transit can revitalize neighbourhoods, and help create greater accessibility. Soon, discussions were addressing not only the fragmentation of land ownership and land development, tensions between pedestrians, personal and transit vehicles on the road, and bike lanes and signal priorities, but broader visions for holistic developmental approaches that account for streetscaping, city building, tree planting, and transit engineering.
Even for enthusiasts with no formal training in an architecture- or design-related field, all topics were accessible and nothing in the discussions went unexplained. Before I knew it, it was time to call it quits. Though I still won’t say I know much about architects and architecture, I do know they put together a heck of a good time. Get cracking on that fAd calendar!
