Doors Open Toronto 2023 was such a success!
This year, the TSA’s three special programs—Open Studio, Architects Talk, and walking tours—together welcomed over 6,600 attendees from all across the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. It was amazing to see so many enthusiastic Torontonians going out to learn more about their built environment and the creation process, and to be able to listen to their questions, concerns and ideas as our city continues to grow and change.
The weekend kicked off with The Shape and Sound of Performance, a special one-hour long walking tour prepared specifically for this year’s Doors Open explaining the relationship between performance, sound and architecture through case-studies in our city’s Entertainment District. The tour was held 6 times throughout the weekend, led by tour guides Joël León Danis and Pamela Bruneau.
As always, our Open Studio program was a festival highlight with 17 studios in 15 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. We want to give a big thank you to all of this year’s participating studios and their staff—Altius Architecture Inc, Arcadis | IBI Group, B+H Architects, Barbora Vokac Taylor Architect Inc., Brook McIlroy, Carlo Parente Architecture Inc., DTAH, Gow Hastings Architects, KPMB Architects, Moriyama Teshima Architects, Q4 Architects Inc., RAW Design Inc., RevelHouse|, Stephane LeBlanc, SvN Architects + Planners, Workshop, Zeidler Architecture—for their time, hospitality, and enthusiasm!
Capping what was an eventful weekend off was the return of our Architects Talk, a collaboration between the TSA and the City of Toronto reflecting on Door Open Toronto’s yearly theme. This year we were incredibly fortunate to host the lecture in a packed Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, a perfect space to talk about acoustics. Our hats off to our incredible speakers —Amanda Robinson, Brigitte Shim, Joseph Clarke, Bob Sims, and Tor Oiamo—who delivered speedy yet insightful presentations, and to our moderator Stefan Novakovic for leading such an engaging Q&A.
If you missed the talk, we’ve got you covered! A recording is available in our Past Lectures Library.
None of this weekend would have been possible without the tremendous support of over 80 TSA volunteers who generously gave their time and skills to support the tours and 18 TSA-supported sites. We also want to give a shoutout to our volunteer Initiative Leads: Barbora Vokac Taylor, Varsha Kumar, and Pamela Bruneau for making the weekend such a success and 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 Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema for hosting our talk.
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 23 years, providing architecturally focused programs throughout the festival weekend.