DesignTO marks 15 years of Canadian creativity | Canada Voices

Every winter, the team behind Toronto’s city-wide festival, DesignTO, endeavour to beat the winter blahs by amplifying the exuberance of contemporary spaces, furniture, objects and art. Since its founding in 2010 (when it was named the Toronto Design Offsite Festival), DesignTO has welcomed over a million visitors. According to Jeremy Vandermeij, the festival’s co-founder and executive director, they keep coming back because of its commitment to the three values being highlighted at the 2025 event: sustainability, social justice and joy. “We are positioned in January on purpose,” Vandermeij says. “January doesn’t have much going on, and it can be depressing. Even just feeling like you are part of the momentum of something really exciting can be very joyful.” To mark DesignTO’s 15th edition, which runs from Jan. 24 to Feb. 2, Odessa Paloma Parker asks contributors past and present to reflect on the festival’s impact and how it captures Canadian design today

Dennis Lin

“I started participating in the Come Up to My Room event at the Gladstone Hotel in 2004, and I kept being invited back. That eventually became part of DesignTO, and I’ve been participating in the festival formally since 2018. This year, I’ll be part of To Hold: A Group Exhibition Curated by Yabu Pushelberg in the east end, as well as presenting my recent sculpture work at my studio in Parkdale. A lot of what designers do is very insular, depending on who our client body is, and the festival is a way for us to come together as people in all stages of our careers, and get out of our own spaces and have conversations – these moments have been very generative for me.”

Peter Coolican, founder of Coolican & Company

“I’ve been involved in the festival over the years in many different ways, from talks to showcasing pieces. I had a chair in the window of the leather shop Hide the first year I was in the festival; it was the first furniture work of mine that I’d shown in public, and it was intense. As a new transplant to Toronto, I was making so many new contacts – it felt like taking the training wheels off. I think of the festival as you would particles needing to interact to create energy; DesignTO throws all these people together, and that’s what really creates a design community in a city. This year, we’ve collaborated again with the textile designer Calla Haynes for a vitrine exhibition that focuses on sustainable design at Harbourfront Centre.”

Kathryn Walter, FELT

When I started doing the festival formally in 2011, it was interesting to be involved in what I’d describe as an alternative to the commercial side of design. Of course, making money is great. But I come out of the field of visual art, so I’ve always been interested in how designers can be either playful or critical or turn things on their head in terms of ways of looking at how we consume, and how we value things. And I would say my studio’s life, which is in its 25th year this year, has run very much in parallel to the festival and a fast-growing design community. This year, I will create an ‘interior environment’ from rolls of felt at the Junction Triangle art gallery, Christie Contemporary.”

Michèle Guevara

“The first time I participated was in 2017, when it was still the Toronto Offsite Design Festival; I was part of a collaboration with a group of artists called Sumo Project. At that time in my work, I was using crochet to develop installations and objects. Then, things took a turn in my practice, and I returned to the festival 10 years later. I had learned how to weave, and in 2023 I had two window installations, and last year I had a triptych showing at Worth Gallery. I’ve also participated in the programming through artist talks. This year, I’m showing at Soft Waters in the east end. In addition to being a platform for my work, it’s allowed me to explore how my pieces can be installed. I’ve learned to be very flexible, because my pieces are very adaptable.”

Stanley Sun, creative director at Mason Studio

“Our studio was in its infancy when we started doing DesignTO; we launched in 2011 and first participated in 2013. We used a client’s giant warehouse space to create an immersive installation that explored light and sound, to see how they could shift people’s emotions and memories during the show. On the day-to-day, we work with clients and there are always constraints to each project. The way we’ve participated in DesignTO, however, has been self-driven, and allowed us to explore things that we’re passionate about. This year, our project will be one of our more ambitious ones – taking our entire studio space in the Junction and filling it with water; we’re looking at extremes in sensory experience. Every year, I’m so impressed with how diverse the ideas that are shown at DesignTO are, and I learn so much about what’s happening in the world.”

Object lessons

These three festival finds bring a bit of design joy into your own home

STONE BOLD

Ceramicist Vicky Pratt Becker found inspiration in the ancient tradition of stacking stones to create a voluptuous array of hollow, one-of-a-kind forms that passersby will be able to spy in the windows of Mellah Rugs on Roncesvalles. The “stones” that each object is composed of are hand-thrown on a pottery wheel before being carved, glazed and assembled. Their arrangements evoke the towers of stones that past civilizations looked to as points of meditation, reverence or, as Pratt Becker says, self-expression. The top of each of her cairns is a vessel with myriad unique uses.

SWISH SEAT

Studio Bimbi’s handsome Club Chair was created as part of a series of residential furniture called Home. “As a maker, my approach is rooted in creating pieces I want to live with,” says studio founding partner Paul Doherty. “I draw inspiration from design movements and artisans who emphasize honesty in construction, appearance and materials.” The collection aims to fill spaces “both private and shared within the home,” he says. Composed of sleek wooden boards of all equal width and available in American cherry, walnut, red elm, white oak and ebonized ash, the Club Chair and the rest of the Home series will be presented at the floral studio Flur in the Annex.

SHINNING EXAMPLE

For the Goodman Studio’s latest selection of hand-blown glass table lamps, executive and creative director Sylvia Lee looked to the “timeless beauty of Asian lanterns and the intricate textures of woven patterns,” she says. The aesthetic splendour of these influences is also matched by a link to the 2025 festival’s theme. “Lanterns have long been symbols of hope and celebration – a single light can guide us home, while a grouping creates a joyful moment of togetherness. Each lamp captures this spirit, featuring elegant forms adorned with sandblasted rattan-like motifs.”