Wednesday May 29, 2024
Paper City wasn’t built in a day… it was built in two!
Last Saturday and Sunday as part of the TSA’s special programming for Doors Open Toronto 2024 we hosted our first Paper City—a new family workshop that invites kids and their families to design and build their own paper structures to contribute to an ever growing metropolis.
Inspired by Foster + Partners #architecturefromhome initiative and held at the Ontario Association of Architects Headquarters, over 80 children and their families participated in this educational activity, designing and building one (or several) buildings, structures, parks, and even city infrastructure to contribute to an ever-growing city. Together we learned about how cities get built, the different roles involved in shaping the built environment, how to identify the shapes all around us, and more—all while being creative and having a blast! As the city grew, we also explored topics like density and infill development as each group worked around what others had already designed and built. And like any large city, there was also a race to the sky as budding architects and builders tried to make the tallest structures.
By the end of the weekend over 80 different structures and spaces had been built, with little paper people (and even a panda) bringing the city to life!
Thank you again to our amazing team of TSA Volunteers that made this weekend such a success, including our volunteer Initiative Leads Heba Al Fayez, Ramy Bakir and Pamela Bruneau. Thank you as well to our TSA staff and our University of Toronto placement student Cherisse Teves for preparing all the materials required for the activity, including developing our paper templates and street grid. And finally a special shout out to the Ontario Association of Architects for hosting our activity.
Paper City now joins Gingerbread City’s Kids’ Main Street and our private tours for school groups as part of a growing list of TSA activities specifically designed to increase access to kids and youth learning opportunities on topics related to the built environment.
We welcome everyone to explore above some of our favourite pictures of this year’s event! If you’d like to see all our photos from the event (and try to spot your creation!), you can do so here. Want to share one of these images? Email us at tsa@torontosocietyofarchitects.ca
We look forward to our next build together!