Seen...Snowed-in in Kensington

Seen...Yonge's Bikes Bedecked

We assume this odd installation of tricked- out rides chained to lamp posts on the east side of Yonge Street is part of the Celebrate Yonge festival running until September 18th. They made us smile!

Seen...Purple Carded

Hipster wheels at King and Spadina

IDS 12- The Interior Design Show Trade Day Report- Part 1

Well, the unfortunate glitch of having our keys and our downloading cables locked in the office over the weekend has prevented us from getting this posted in a more timely manner, but since it is a re-cap of Trade Day, it's not like there is information here that would have been crucial to your enjoyment of Saturday and Sunday's general public days. So if you did venture to the show over the weekend, we hope you enjoyed it, and let us know what YOU though of it. Do you concur with our observations and standouts below? We thought Friday was a pretty successful day, and we must congratulate the organizers of the Interior Design Show for staging yet again a really top-notch event.

Over all impressions? The show continues to solidify itself as the premier residential design show in the city, and probably the country (although we haven't seen their IDS West in Vancouver). Where IIDEX/ NeoCon Canada's annual autumn show is more heavily oriented towards the commercial market (and, indeed, is partnering even more closely with the architectural community this coming year), IDS has over the years continued to focus more consistently on the residential market. And yet, the Azure speaker series at IDS regularly outpaces IIDEX's offerings, even in the arena of speakers with greater appeal to the commercial sector of the design industry. And it is because of those speakers that IDS is a "must attend" event for us.

We'll return to the speakers in our next post, but first some general observations about the exhibition portion of the show:

• Kitchens and baths probably comprised about 40% of the exhibitors. Some impressive stuff if you're in the market, but uniformly outside of our snack bracket.
• A good amount of condo furniture as well. It's very interesting to see that a lot of occasional seating is shrinking in scale to fit smaller apartments, while sofas, especially sectionals, continue to get bigger. The trend seems to be towards a living space whose boundaries are defined by an oversized sectional sofa acting as both seating and a space divider. Probably makes sense in open kitchen/ dining/ living environments, otherwise best suited to the Great Room in your Muskoka monster cottage.
• The rest was mostly a mix of outdoor furniture, rugs, fireplaces, home entertainment, lighting, and an assortment of this and that. Many of these exhibitors are well out of their league by being at this show, especially in a design sense.
• We noted that Natural Walnut seems to finally be on the wane although, to be sure, there was still plenty of it on view. Lighter and whiter woods are coming on stronger. Keep an eye out for unstained White Oak.

We didn't make it to the  How Do You Live "feature exhibit"- only so much you can squeeze into a day, especially when about 4 hours are devoted to the Trade Talks series. Did you see it? What did you think of the various vignettes presented?

image courtesy blogTO

Our standouts on the exhibition floor?

The Lissoni  Lounge, featuring outstanding products designed for various manufacturers by Italian master Piero Lissoni.

 Photo above courtesy ramblingrenovators.blogspot.com. More of their pictures of the Lissoni Lounge at the end of this post

Stonetile's Patricia Urquiola- designed collection of porcelain tiles for Mutina- these are a couple of years old, but they're stunning!

 Photo courtesy stonesource.com

Jardin de Ville- this new-to-Toronto Montreal- based furniture house has some great contemporary looks, designed for outdoor use, but so sexy they work equally well indoors. They also have a great line of bags made from their outdoor fabric.

The super-hot Biomega bicycles repped by Expedition Toys from Ottawa. We have a serious craving for this "Copenhagen" model.

Brent Comber's Shattered Spheres in the Offsite/Onsite space on the lower level. We've seen beautiful furniture from this BC-based artisan before, but these art pieces are gorgeous!

photo courtest brentcomber.com

 

Many of the low- slung, luxe pieces from Edmonton- based IZM. 

 ...and as always, a lot of the exhibitors in the ProtoType area featuring Canadian small crafters, including this great toy train set from Ayu Larasati

 

 Thom Fougere from Winnipeg with this table using Manitoba's native tyndall limestone

  Aloisi's lovely screen

And a nice pendant lamp from Dystil

The media this past weekend was full of coverage, so no doubt you already have a good idea of what the show was about even if you were unable to attend, but here's a bit of blogTO coverage from Friday evening.

In our next post we'll take a look at the three speakers' presentations we attended during Trade Day- stay tuned!

Snow Day! Adventures on Two Wheels...

As anyone here in Southern Ontario knows, last Friday brought our first real winter storm. It wasn't a bad one, as winter storms go, but it put a little wrench in Bee's bicycle wheels. We have a Bixi subscription (earlier Bixi post here) so we can use their sturdier bikes on days when it's a little messy underfoot, but Friday was just a little more than we bargained for. 

There is a "shared motivation" group out there on Facebook that we've joined called The Winter B-icicle Challenge (Facebook page). It provides our incentive to keep cycling on lousy days, so there was no way we were about to let a little wind and snow deter us. And so, off we went...

One of the "tools of the trade" is a sturdy brush to get rid of the frozen rain droplets that have coated the seat.

It was tough going. The snow was thick and wet, so staying in control was a challenge. And just when you had things in hand, the gale force winds pushed you back into the deep stuff. Splatter from passing cars was also an issue. The City had salted the streets but there had been no actual snow clearing. The bike lanes were mostly obstructed except for an 18 inch wide strip where the action of the traffic had melted the snow, so riding was done perilously close to the cars. We tried a couple of quiet side streets, but they were much worse.

We made it most of the way, but called it off at a Bixi docking station about 4 blocks before our intended destination. Oh, well...props for trying, we told ourself. Luckily, things were much better by the end of the day, and we managed to cycle back home without any trouble.

One thing we'll say about riding in the snow- the effort involved is gonna keep you nice and warm! It may have been  -10C outside, but underneath all our layers we were working up a sweat. We arrived at the office with red cheeks and a feeling of exhilaration- not a bad way to start a work day!

Last minute wish list...just a couple of extra ideas!

OK, thank god you're all like us and wait till the last minute, otherwise our tips to you for what we'd love to see under our tree would be so wasted! Here are a couple of additional ideas for all you procrastinators, once again from our friends at Remodelista.

After all, we plan to cycle right through the winter this year! Thank you soooo much!

seen...late night pit stop...

...somewhere along Queen St. W.

#11ElevenLive- 12:00EST

Lunch Hour stroll- the usual territory, but leaving the routine behind:

 the back stairwell

 the park across from the office

 memorial to run down skateboarder

 Symmetrical ductwork

 behind the youth hostel

 flat tree

 graffiti alley

 graffiti alley meets Queen St. W.

 Looking Up at Queen and Spadina

Lunch rush on Spadina

#11ElevenLive- 09:00EST

Old reliable just before the ride to work, 

in front of a little "fall colour"

We're Ready to be Copenhagenized!

We are loving this little clip from Copenhagenize! It's a great example of that "delight of discovery" that can occur when you're moving through a place using your own energy. And it's a great example of how small thoughtful additions to the public realm can make everyone's life a little happier.

Copenhagenizing Copenhagen from Copenhagenize on Vimeo.

Copenhagenize is a consulting company founded by ex-pat Canadian Mikael Collville- Andersen (who also runs the popular & trend-setting Copenhagen Cycle Chic blog). The city of Copenhagen has been so sucessful in implementing integrated urban infrastructure, with a massive emphasis on bicycle use (as opposed to "cycling" which is a segregative term), that its citizens are able to provide consulting services to the rest of the world on how to "Copenhagenize" their own cities! Amazing!

An Island Getaway...Toronto Islands, that is!

On a Friday afternoon earlier this summer we hopped on our bike and headed for the ferry docks. Destination? Ward's Island. We had decided it was time to check out The Rectory Café, which happens to be a stone's throw from the Ward's Island terminal. It was also a good chance to visit a place we really hadn't been to in a number of years, and while we were at it, we thought "why not cross that little bridge and check out Algonquin Island for the first time ever?"

Lunch at The Rectory was a delight, (check out our posting here) and it was the perfect way to ease into "island time", meaning that we were more inclined after eating to mosey around exploring the backroads, rather than blasting from one end of the islands to the other.

After lunch we headed over the arching footbridge to Algonquin Island and had a look around. The properties seemed a little more spacious than at Ward's Island, and the feeling was less intimate. But boy, some of them have killer views!

Ward's Island (history here) still had the great character we remembered, even despite the rampant renovations that have gone on. The paths are narrower than at Algonquin and the whole place has a more overgrown and intimate feel. And yes, there are some gems there, too.

With some heavy clouds building on the western horizon, we reluctantly hopped back on the ferry that would take us home to the concrete jungle.

What a great afternoon! We'll be back next year.