Toronto Waterfront Ideas Competition (2000)

The Toronto Waterfront Ideas Competition was an international competition in the year 2000 organized by the TSA which drew in roughly one hundred entries from around the world. The competition brief contained very few restrictions and no program requirements were assigned – the only concrete request was that ideas be limited to sites along Toronto’s waterfront from Ontario Place to Leslie Street, the goal being to provoke ideas from a broad range of designers to feed a dialogue on the shape and potential of Toronto’s future waterfront revitalization. The competition was inspired by the discussions of Robert A. Fung’s published report on the potential of the waterfront and associated debates around Toronto’s bid for the 2008 Olympic Games.

Responses to the TSA’s Waterfront Ideas Competition were well-received by the general public and design community. Entries ranged from proposals for site-specific installations to large-scale urban design and landscape master plans. The most common themes among the proposals were how to deal with issues of transportation, how to revitalize the waterfront environment, and where might new cultural attractions be inserted along the waterfront to catalyze redevelopment. A public exhibition of all of the competition’s submissions was held in October 2000 at the Queens Quay Terminal building, and was heavily trafficked during its tenure. The current shape and continued evolution of Toronto’s waterfront was undoubtedly influenced by this competition, and by the focus it put on this vital resource within our city.