Design : Featured Stories

Installations invite Toronto to Winter Stations on the waterfront

Toronto is getting its manufacturing groove back. We take a look at the contemporary companies making manufacturing, and locally made goods and products, a priority. 

Move over Siri, there's a new voice-activated computer in town. Meet Ubi, a small computer with a remarkable understanding of natural language, and two other distinct Toronto-based user interface innovations. Over the next three to five years, we will see a renaissance in UI and experience design. 

Peekapak is a new curated monthly arts and education package that brings healthier ideas about the world to today's young minds. Featuring protagonists involved in STEM fields, Peekapak challenges traditional homework and ideals. 

The Stylist Box is a first for Toronto, a showroom of designers including emerging and established Canadian labels alike, and a one-stop shop for busy actresses getting ready for TIFF. Jaime Woo takes a look behind the scenes of this celebrity showroom.  

Find out how a group of Toronto-based startups are rethinking how stores, brands, and retail floors interact with consumers. As customers become more informed shoppers, stores need to match and expand their expertise. 

How professionals and community youth collaborated to bring a new landmark to East Scarborough's Kingston-Galloway-Orton Park neighbourhood. The Sky-O-Swale is at once an eco-friendly water filtration system and a community gathering space. 

Thirty-one new murals will be painted across Toronto over the next week in an effort to beautify alleyways, improve walkability, and enhance the safety of Toronto's laneways. It's part of a larger strategy to imagine what the future of this city's story could be, a narrative as told by artists. 

Our roundup of some of the architecturally, historically, and culturally coolest places to see at this year's Doors Open TO celebrating "Secrets & Spirits."

A series of 25 murals celebrate Islington Village's past, while looking to its future. Igor Bonifacic reflects on how the street art represents his own experiences growing up in the area as a new Canadian, and what it means to the neighbourhood now.

Toronto has already ensured the PanAm/ParaPan Games will leave the city with a healthy legacy, more than a year before they kick off. We look at some of the changes coming to the city's infrastructure and what it means for housing, communities, and transit.

I hear the bomb go off. I am a reporter and suddenly I am rushing to bandage the wounds of a bleeding soldier. His screams startle me and I pull the headset off. I am not in a warzone after all. I am in George Brown College's School of Design. 

As the LRT construction chews its way along Eglinton, local businesses are teaming up with the Business Improvement Area to counter the construction chaos with creative placemaking. 

Open data is revolutionizing public access to complex government information. It's allowing entrepreneurs to build new apps based on regional data--from bus times to safe beach databases--all while making the City and its citizens more informed and involved.