Excitement is building around a new park coming to downtown Toronto, not just because of the reprieve the green space will offer in the heart of the Entertainment District, but also because of recently released renderings that showcase the planned design.
Though the City announced the winning concept for the park at 229 Richmond last year, one particular rendering used for new ads promoting the project is only just getting attention due to the fanciful cast of characters it depicts.
These types of images are known to be populated with a wide array of people that have in the past included Drake as Jimmy from Degrassi, Batkid and eerily disembodied heads, but some of the people, animals and objects in one imagining of the public space are sending locals.
Designed by renowned Dutch firm West 8, the portrayal shows some sort of brightly-lit utopia where the park is full of all sorts of residents eager to use it — including a group of Finnish goths, Buddhist monks, a somewhat-frightening giant puppet head and a wild tortoise roaming free.
People questioning the rather eclectic party have taken to social media to share their delight and confusion. In the Weird Toronto Facebook group, the rendering has garnered hundreds of reactions.
“The park looks nice, but what is happening with this rendering?” the original poster asked. “Is that something from Monty Python on the left? Are giant tortoises permitted to be off-leash in parks?” They also noticed some break dancers on the righthand side of the depiction.
Commenters are finding the inclusion of all of these elements to be hilarious, writing things like “the fact that they have giant tortoises, Rastafarians, Buddhist monks and breakdancers all hanging out in the park together has my interest piqued” and “this is the way parks should be, people of all walks of life enjoying the park and a good luck tortoise.”
Others said that the rendering feels “purposely bizarre” but lauded the fact that it was almost comically diverse — one person joked that perhaps an employee at the design firm was told to “add some diversity to the new park poster before you leave for the weekend.”
A post on the subject of the rendering in the Weird Toronto Facebook group has 296 reactions and 133 comments at the time of writing.
Some even went as far as doing the legwork to find the peculiar sources of a few of the inclusions: The giant puppet head, for example, is a character used in the opening ceremony of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. And the goths are YouTubers from Finland who create South Park parody videos.
“They have very little following, so who knows how they ended up in a stock photo!” the person who discovered that fact wrote.
Staff at West8 indicate that there is no inherent significance to the aforementioned components aside from populating the rendering. (Though the tortoise does bring to mind Turtle Island, the name some Indigenous peoples use for the continent. And, as one commenter noted, turtles are considered good luck in the Chinese practice of Feng Shui.)
In response to all the attention, they tell blogTO that “all of the artist impressions for this project were created in-house. As for the images themselves, we enjoy hearing what people notice and are happy to leave meaning up to interpretation.”
They add that they are “excited to share further updates of the design as we implement feedback from the public consultation.”
The selected design, called Waawaatesi (which means Firefly in Anishinaabemowin), was a collaboration between West 8, hcma Architecture and Design, the Native Art Department International, MinoKamik Collective, ARUP, KG&A, ERA Architects and A.W. Hooker.
Another rendering of the winning design for 229 Richmond.
It was selected by a jury based on positive public response, along with the fact that it was able to “meet the eight ambitious design goals while communicating a clear and poetic narrative.”
The team’s idea of adding a second level to the park with a balcony was a particular hit, as was its “thoughtful approach to providing a green oasis, with particular attention to the location of trees, the planting palette and the intent to provide shade tolerant planting” among other things.
The park at 229 Richmond will replace the long-running Rendezviews patio, the biggest in the city. blogTO has also reached out to other stakeholders in the design, like MinoKamik Collective, for comment on this specific rendering.
