In 1980, Toronto's Polish community—and the general public—got more than it bargained for. Six years previous, the Canadian Polish Congress held a meeting where, among other things, a decision was made to erect a monument in Beaty Boulevard Park (1575 King Street West) to the thousands who died at Katyń forest as part of the invasion of Poland. Back when public art was selected from a talented crop of international and local designers, Katyń's......

So we're, uh, pretty sure that Bell's behind those mystery "er" ads after all. A poster at RedFlagDeals leaked some second-phase ads yesterday—including one for the Samsung Instinct that proclaims it an "apple eater"—which have since been confirmed by a few Torontoist readers as the real deal. The second phase is being revealed all around the city now (one revealed one is near where the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway meet; others are......

King Street East is known for its high-end furniture retailers like Roche Bobois and UpCountry, so it's a bit of a surprise to see the logo for everyone's guilty pleasure, IKEA, on a classy King Street storefront. Torontoist reader Sofi Papamarko asked us to investigate this mysterious downtown presence of the eco-conscious Swedish giant, suggesting that it could be an office furniture location or a boutique IKEA (similar to the Leon's planned for the......

Students of George Brown College are about to get some premium lakefront property. Waterfront Toronto has announced that the college will build a new campus within the upcoming East Bayfront development on a .83 hectare (two-acre) site at the south side of Queens Quay Boulevard, flanked by Lower Jarvis and Lower Sherbourne [map]. The centre is scheduled for completion by 2011, and will house George Brown's Centre for Health Sciences. According to George Brown......

When Phase 1 of the National Ballet School was completed just north of Jarvis and Carlton Streets, the "Grand Jeté" project was lauded for its modern but neighbourhood-appropriate design, as well as its restoration of incorporated heritage structures like the former Havergal Ladies' College and Northfield House. Once the flagship school was complete, a less ostentatious but just as impressive renovation was quietly conducted on another property owned by the NBS at Maitland and......

On Monday morning, Astral Media unveiled prototypes of its new line of "street furniture" at City Hall. On Wednesday, we took a look at the garbage bins. On Thursday, the advertising pillars. Yesterday, the transit shelters. Today, everything else. (Also check out Karen von Hahn's disparagement of the street furniture in the Globe.) A lot of people who otherwise hate what the Coordinated Street Furniture Program has wrought like the idea of the multi-publication structures......

On Monday morning, Astral Media unveiled prototypes of its new line of "street furniture" at City Hall. On Wednesday, we took a look at the garbage bins. On Thursday, we looked at the advertising pillars. This morning, the transit shelters. (Be sure also to read Christopher Hume's review, which makes our less-than-kind assessments look like raves.) The "Basic" shelter. (The blue "Toronto" ribbon was present for ceremonial cutting purposes only and is not part of......

On Monday morning, Astral Media unveiled prototypes of its new line of "street furniture" at City Hall. Torontoist was going to review all of the items at once but decided that some merited their own posts. Yesterday, we took a look at the garbage bins. Today we look at the advertising pillars. Friday, the transit shelters, and on Saturday everything else. (Be sure to read Spacing's coverage, too.) "Isn't two dollars a bit high for......

In the opening voiceover for his Oscar-winning animated short Ryan, Chris Landreth explains, "I live in Toronto, a city in Canada where I see way too many shades of grey for my own good health." This line occurred to us as we attended the official unveiling of Toronto's new "street furniture" at City Hall Monday morning, a celebration of the all-new shades of grey about to trickle onto our streets. Courtesy of Jeremy Kramer......

Remaining virtually unchanged for about a decade, nobody would argue that the TTC's brutal web site wasn't in need of a total revamp. We even teamed up with Spacing Wire, Reading Toronto, and blogTO to solicit a fantastic amount of useful feedback, which we then forwarded to the Commission with high hopes. Now the TTC has launched a sneak peek at a beta version of the new design. We're still kicking the tires and......

A man carrying a coffee cup through the doors of a downtown theatre is stopped by an usher. Usher: Oh, excuse me—sorry, you're only allowed to bring water into the theatre. (The man begrudgingly accepts, then walks past a garbage can and starts squishing the cup through the narrow slit opening of a recycling bin marked "paper/newspaper," spilling coffee onto his hand and around the opening of the bin.) Man, to no-one in particular: This......

Remember last week, when Marc Lostracco took a look at Astral's final street furniture prototypes and promised that "Torontoist's Jonathan Goldsbie will have a more in-depth analysis of the new street furniture next week"? Well, there's been a slight problem. On Wednesday night, Astral Media invited BIAs (Business Improvement Areas) to a sneak preview of the new furniture. Goldsbie—Street Furniture Campaign Coordinator of the Toronto Public Space Committee, and an open critic of Astral......

Toronto's urban street furniture collection of late has been messily schizophrenic and oft-criticized, but final prototypes from the Coordinated Street Furniture Program have just been unveiled, with installation slated for 2009. The furniture plan involved a private Request For Proposals (RFP) from three advertising conglomerates, who pitched their designs last year in the hopes of securing the lucrative 20-year monopoly with the City of Toronto. The covenant was awarded to Astral Media, much to......

Torontoist presents an imagined inside look at the creative process behind the AGO's shiny new logo, above. Designer: Bruce Mau Client: Art Gallery of Ontario Due: May 15, 2008 Creative Brief: Design a "distinctive new logo that will represent the Gallery well beyond its Fall 2008 opening." Logo should capture "both the stability of the century-old institution and the forward-looking energy of the new Gallery." (If that proves too challenging, refer to graphic design......

When we first got a tip from Andrew Hunter that "someone has installed a new type of bike post along Yonge north of Lawrence," we were concerned that it might be the vanguard of the Coordinated Street Furniture onslaught of mass-produced uniformity. When we went down (yes, down) to visit the area, however, we were quite relieved to discover not Kramer-designed brontosaurus ribs but elegant, artfully crafted flourishes of metallic whimsy. Inspired by a......

The public service announcement on the left is courtesy of the TTC. The public service announcement on the right is courtesy of the MTA. On Friday morning, Accordion Guy Joey deVilla juxtaposed the two on his blog, along with the question "who plagiarized whom?" Well, presuming that plagiarism is defined as the lack of attribution for an idea, then fortunately neither. This particular TTC poster, like a number of others (and even some of......

One year ago today, City Council's Executive Committee approved [PDF] the awarding of the street furniture contract—for the purposes of designing, building, owning, and maintaining bus shelters, garbage bins, ad pillars, and more for a period of twenty years in exchange for advertising rights—to Astral Media Outdoor, despite the fact that the company had absolutely no experience with "street furniture" and maintains dozens of illegal billboards in defiance of City Council.......

Every Saturday morning, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today. Palmerston Boulevard, looking south from Harbord Street, 1908. City of Toronto Archives, Fonds 1244, Item 7200. Palmerston Boulevard is one of the best examples of an intact turn-of-the-century residential street in the city. Stone gates at College and Bloor mark not only a name change—where Palmerston Avenue becomes Palmerston Boulevard—but also a......

There's been much debate in recent days over whether or not the TTC should remodel its crumbling, 50s-era "bathroom tile" subway stations (since now they can). A vocal proponent of the renovation plan has been TTC Commissioner and Councillor Sandra Bussin, who thinks that the common masses aren't design-savvy enough to hold an opinion of much weight. "I come from an art background," she says, justifying her critical authority on the currently "boring" subway......

Jarvis Street, circa 1910. (City of Toronto Archives) Torontonians should be ashamed at what happened to Jarvis Street. The city's first paved road was once the grandest tree-lined boulevard around, bracketed by the mansions of some of Toronto's wealthiest movers and shakers. Then, in the 1940s, the stately Jarvis boulevard was transformed: trees were pulled down and sidewalks ripped up to make way for the automobile. Jarvis Street was turned from a gorgeous historical......

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The organizers of Nuit Blanche held a launch event at OCAD this morning to announce this year’s curators—Wayne Baerwaldt, Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design; Dave Dyment, Director of Programming at Mercer Union, Toronto; Gordon Hatt, a writer and curator who lives in Kitchener; and Haema Sivanesan, Executive Director of Toronto’s South Asian Visual Arts Centre—and allow them to outline their individual......

Since January 2006, quirky black-and-white brushstroke illustrations have graced the back page of the The New York Times Magazine. The work is that of Toronto-based designer and OCAD teacher Bob Hambly, who just completed his 500th illustration—a bus—for the prestigious Sunday newspaper supplement. "Even after twelve years, I still get that little pang in my stomach each time a new story is sent to me," he says. "I feel a great sense of responsibility for......

Image: Cicada Design/Diamond + Schmitt Architects If you seem to be noticing Ryerson everywhere these days, you're not imagining it. Though it's been around since 1948 and been granting degrees since 1971, it's only during the last few years that the university has embarked on a massive expansion plan and branding campaign, drastically raising its physical and academic profile. Devoid of any real charm for decades (save for the 1852 partial façade of the......

With Rogers' plan to move Citytv, OMNI Television, and the Fan 590 to the southeast corner of Dundas Square, those familiar with the current streetfront studios on Queen Street have wondered if the former Olympic Spirit building will be opened up in a similar way. Though merely an preliminary concept rendering, Rogers and Quadrangle Architects seem to have grand designs for the space, currently dubbed Rogers Television City, as evident in this image supplementing......

At the Interior Design Show this past weekend, British innovator-icon Tom Dixon lamented the impossibility of creative rebellion in today's art and design world. In the eighties, he said, postmodern design values were near-universal, and thus easy to subvert. In the oughties, however, the aesthetic is increasingly fractured, and there is no one standard to either strive for or strain against. If anything goes and nothing is new, how are today's students to design......

Heads up on the hands-down coolest things at the Interior Design Show: most of them spring from our own backyard. And literally, too. There is a flourishing trend toward the incorporation of nature in contemporary design—a welcome wandering off from the hard lines and materials often associated with modernism—and local designers are embracing it wholeheartedly. Toronto installation artist Rob Southcott's "United We Stand" (pictured at right) is actually a seat of sorts, a grouping......

Photo by aardvark from the Torontoist Flickr Pool. Transit vehicles are being diverted and streets have been closed near Queen and Bathurst as firefighters battle a six-alarm blaze this morning. The fire broke out about 5 a.m. and spread through eight low-rise buildings on the south side of Queen, consisting of fourteen addresses between Bathurst and Portland. The destroyed block contained commercial properties Suspect Video, Duke's Cycle, National Sound, Preloved, the Jupiter head shop,......

A project by architect Johnson Chou and distributor Sound Solutions, part of IDS 08 Collaborations exhibit. Three days, over three hundred exhibitors: Toronto's Interior Design Show moves into the Exhibition Place this weekend, and holy mother of invention, where do you start? Well, there's the opening night gala, of course. Promisingly titled "Decadence," the party takes place this Thursday, February 21, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. at the Direct Energy Centre; $50 in......

Last February, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene released the NYC Condom, with packaging echoing the city's iconic subway signage and distributed for free by street teams in heavily-trafficked areas. In time for Valentine's Day this year, the rebranded LifeStyles condoms have been redesigned, accompanied by a multimedia campaign under the slogan "Get Some." But one of the campaign's new banner ads will look strangely familiar to Torontonians—it features a......