Douglas Coupland’s Digital Orca in Vancouver. Image: jaunted.com
This Thursday, I’ll be at the Sustainable Suburbs conference in Toronto. While it’s not about art, it will feature many architects and urban planners discussing the future of our communities, which has an impact on art.
Now that art is increasingly in the public realm (hello, Nuit Blanche and Montreal en Lumiere among others) and public art is more visible than ever in Canadian cities – with some fantastic works commissioned for the recent Vancouver Olympics, and Toronto’s Percent for Public Art program, which mandates that at least one percent of a new building’s gross construction cost be given over to public art – art is no longer as separate from citybuilding and planning as it may have been in the past.
Christian Giroux and Daniel Young’s sculpture, Reticulated Gambol – made from standard playground equipment parts, at Lee Centre park in Scarborough, Ontario.
Image: akimbo.ca
I’m looking forward to hearing Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal on how different political and economic visions can work together to create suburbs that work, and Vancouver architect Bing Thom on the urban regeneration projects that his firm is working on.
Ethan Kent, VP of New York’s Project for Public Spaces will discuss how placemaking is important to cities. It highlights how the ways in which we design public space can have a major impact on how much we enjoy living there.
Stay tuned for a recap next week!
Andrea Carson writes on contemporary art, architecture and design...
That is an example of “living” art, and will be very interesting to hear about. EC
This are good news for the city, for the community that can only benefit from such initiative, it is remarkable that some artists commit themselves to such a development of public spaces. It makes cities easier to live in.
I admit I had never seen Doug Coupland’s Digital Orca before — fantastic!
These paintings remind me of when my dog threw up on my vintage seventies carpet.