Come Up To My Room at the Gladstone showcases alternative design

February 11th, 2009  |  Darrell Corriveau

Held at the Gladstone Hotel from February 5 to 8, Come Up to My Room is an exhibition showcasing compelling alternative design from Canada and around the world. Many of the rooms, usually reserved for paying customers, are converted to design and art installations.

Standouts included a room designed and constructed by Studio Junction Inc. that featured a drop ceiling and a room-length, floor-to-ceiling bench all constructed with narrow slats of wood in varying hues. Strategically placed backlighting gave the room a warm glow that evoked a calming Nordic sauna.

The Inside Out House was a project by Laura McKibbon and Jasna Sokolovic. A bathroom transformed into a postmodern fairytale with trees, grass and moss overflowing the sink, toilet and bathtub, amongst which sat a variety of red ceramic birds. Glittering plastic stars dangling from the ceiling added to the surreal effect.

Perhaps my favorite (pictured above) was a simple concept by duo Matt Carr – who is Director of Design at Umbra – and Joyce Lo that used common rope lights from Home Depot to spell “cant get enough” on the walls. Attached to strings dangling from the ceiling were a series of small metal-rimmed ‘peepholes’ that when spied through, rendered the points of light as small glowing hearts – cleverly completing the phrase.

Condo goals prove too lofty?

September 18th, 2008  |  Darrell Corriveau

British architect Will Alsop received props in a recent review in The New Yorker magazine for his work on the Sharp Center for Design at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. In the article, author Paul Goldberger mentions Alsop’s other completed Toronto project, a sales center for Westside Lofts on Queen St. West right across the street from the Drake Hotel.

The structure is described as “a three-story plywood box whose sides are punctuated by amoeba-shaped windows with frames in green, orange, yellow, white, black, and pink. These walls do double duty as giant billboards, with huge letters advertising lofts at nine hundred and ninety dollars a month.”

It’s too bad then that the playful design of the building obviously wasn’t enough to sell units as quickly as the developer would have liked. Now giant clashing fabric banners touting a sweeter deal than the original aforementioned “nine hundred and ninety dollars a month”, drape both sides of the structure. It’s probably safe to say that Alsop Architects wasn’t consulted on the change of plans and the subsequent defacement.