Celebrating An Amazing 2024 Doors Open Weekend
Wednesday May 29, 2024
Last weekend, sites across the city opened their doors to the public as part of Doors Open Toronto—an annual two-day event that invites people to visit sites of architectural, social, historical and cultural importance in the city that are typically not open to the public. And as we have every year since the start of this initiative in 2000, the TSA put together a roster of special programs that celebrated and explored our built environment through tours, talks, and other activities. Thank you to the over 8,000 attendees who participated in this year’s TSA festivities!
The weekend kicked off with not just one but two different TSA tours, as we explored the hidden histories of the St. Lawrence and Church and Wellesley Neighbourhoods. While it was a rainy start to the festivities, that didn’t stop dozens of Torontonians from joining us on walk and learning more about their city. In total we led 9 different tour groups, led by tour guides Kurtis Chen, Rania Matta, Vikkie Chen, and Joël León Danis.
As always, our Open Studio program was a festival highlight with 14 studios in 11 different locations opening their doors to the public. Attendees were able to spend some time with the people helping shape our city and take a peek into the process of how buildings go from ideas to reality. Many of the studios organized kids’ activities, finding ways of sharing their passion for architecture with even the youngest of attendees. We want to give a big thank you to all of this year’s participating studios and their staff—Barbora Vokac Taylor Architect, Carlo Parente Architecture Inc., Design Workshop Architects, Dubbeldam Architecture + Design, DTAH, Guido Constantino Projects Inc., HOK, Hariri Pontarini Architects, Project Studio Architects, Q4 Architects, RAW Design, Stephane LeBlanc Architects, SvN Architects + Planners, and Taylor Hazell Architects—for their time, hospitality, and enthusiasm!
In addition to our studios, this year we were also able to provide support to three other related sites: the Department of Architectural Sciences at Toronto Metropolitan University, the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto, and the Ontario Association of Architects Headquarters. At this last site, we held our first ever Paper City, a special weekend-long family workshop that invited kids and their families to design their own paper structures and contribute to an ever-growing metropolis. You can learn more about this activity—and see some very creative structures—here.
Capping off this eventful weekend was one of our most popular forums, our Architects Talk, a yearly collaboration between the TSA and the City of Toronto reflecting on Doors Open Toronto’s annual theme. This year the talk was held at Evergreen Brick Works, the perfect setting to talk about our city’s many layers. Our speakers delved into issues of heritage, preservation, and the imperfect nature of practice when it deals with conservation and telling all the stories of Toronto. Our hats off to our incredible speakers—Alex Bozikovic, Jon Johnson, Linda Zhang, and Mitchell May, who delivered speedy yet insightful presentations, and to our moderator Shawn Micallef for leading such an engaging Q&A.
If you missed the talk, a recording of it will soon be available in our Past Lectures Library.
None of this weekend would have been possible without the tremendous support of over 100 TSA Volunteers who generously gave their time and skills to support our tours, TSA sites, and Paper City — thank you all! We also want to give a shoutout to our volunteer Initiative Leads Varsha Kumar and Laura Salamanca Moreno for Open Studio, Heather Breeze and Kfir Gluzberg for Architects Talk, Rania Matta for Walking Tours, and Heba Al Fayez, Ramy Bakir, and Pamela Bruneau for Paper City, for making this weekend such a success. And of course to our hard-working staff Rebecca Ford, Desiree Armstrong, and Joël León Danis who have been working for months to bring our TSA Doors Open programming to life. Thank you as well to the City of Toronto staff who were such allies in making all of these initiatives possible and to the Ontario Association of Architects and Evergreen Brick Works for hosting our activities.
We’ll leave you with some pictures of this year’s event. Thank you again to all those who attended this year’s Doors Open Toronto! We hope this has further fueled your curiosity to explore, learn and share about our built environment.
About Doors Open Toronto
Each May, Doors Open Toronto invites the public to explore the city’s most-loved buildings and sites, free of charge. The event provides rare access to buildings not usually open to the public and free access to sites that would usually charge an admission fee. Since its inception in 2000, it has attracted more than two million visits to nearly 700 unique locations and remains the largest event of its kind in Canada.
The TSA has been an active partner of this city-wide initiative for the last 24 years, providing architecturally focused programs throughout the festival weekend.