This year the Winter Stations international design competition returned to Toronto’s lakeshore for a temporary architecture exhibition intended to surprise and delight visitors in the coldest, most depressing months of the year. The ninth annual edition of Winter Stations welcomes five winning designs to Woodbine Beach alongside structures from student teams at three different Canadian universities. This year, one digital installation joined the IRL projects.
The hundreds of competition entrants were asked to respond to the theme of “radiance.” As far as installation design, almost anything goes, with the only parameter being that the structures incorporate the beach’s empty lifeguard chairs.
This year, Melissa Agostino, Michaela MacLeod, Mary-Margaret McMahon, and Stefan Novakovic served on the competition jury, with Bradford returning as co-chair. Toronto firm RAW Design and three local politicians spearheaded the 2023 event.
“It’s been a reflective couple of years, but we’re making our way to better and brighter days and we wanted to reflect that change in this year’s theme,” said RAW Design Architect Dakota Wares-Tani in a news release. “Whether it’s your first time seeing the exhibits or you’re returning for another year, we hope you enjoy the fun, interactive, and colorful winning designs that the artists worked so hard to create. Thank you to everyone who submitted to the competition and our partners for making it happen. We are hoping to garner additional sponsors to expand programming of the event further.”
The public will be able to get up close and personal with the interactive structures through the end of March. In the spring, the Winter Stations will be re-installed in Sir Casmir Gzowski Park in Etobicoke’s Sunnyside neighborhood.
Below is a look at the winning designs now on view at Woodbine Beach. The designers’ statements for each winning work can be found in AN’s winning pavilion annoucement. A full list of past winners can be found here.
CONRAD
Novak Djogo & Daniel Joshua Vanderhorst | Canada
the(Home)
Scott Shields Architects (Yulia Belova, Andrew Shields) | Canada
LIFE LINE
WeatherstonBruer Associates (James Bruer, Nick Roland, Jacqueline Hampshire) | Canada
3 Surfaces Pavilion
S-AR (César Guerrero, Ana Cecilia Garza, Orlando Garcia) | Mexico
delighthouse
Nick Green & Greig Pirrie | United Kingdom
Ripple Hut
Cesar Rodriguez Perfetti, Jake Kroft, Breno Gualter, Dean Roumanis; lead by Associate Professor Vincent Hui, Toronto Metropolitan University Department of Architectural Science
We[AR]
Saina Amin, Craig Klomp, Lauren Mac Isaac, Catherine Yan (design team) and Mahmoud Afshari, Kaveh Eshraghian, Roozbeh Moayedian (tech team); lead by Assistant Professor Afshin Asari, University of Guelph, School of Environmental Design & Rural Development
Winter-net
Chiun Lee, Diana Si, Justin Park, Razmik Garboushian, Likhita Varikuti, Simon Liao; supervised by David Correa, Fiona Lim Tung, University of Waterloo Department of Architecture
