SITUATE | DESIGN | BUILD

DISCUSSING THE MARGINAL, URBANSPACE GALLERY EXHIBIT

In the urban realm, millions of forms of life and ways of living are superimposed in the same space. The increase in privatized spaces, along with stricter zoning and program regulations, limit the power of genuine public uses. The marginal is always a space of plurality that resists the imposition of a generalized and homogenous framework on life. Alternate forms of thinking, moving, relating, and living develop in the margins, on the periphery of the dominant city, just as marginalia in a book informally comment on the given text.

This exhibit maps marginal spaces in Toronto including spaces adjacent to highway, railway and hydro corridors. A series of diagrams examines unexpected scalar relationships between commonplace components of Toronto. This exhibition is simultaneously a map of Toronto's marginal spaces, an abstracted landscape, and most of all a space for Discussing the Marginal, in the etymological sense of “discussing” as literally shaking apart. Through a series of discussions, various movements in Toronto including Laneway Project, DeRAIL, Undergardiner, Greenline, and Tower Renewal Project are brought together. These spaces elude conventional ideas about program and call into question stable concepts about a city. The exhibition and discussions also address the problem of how to frame a city in the first place. Perhaps the city is not representable through form and images and is primarily a literary problem or the sound of multiple voices from the margins?

Design Team

Marcin Kedzior, Hilary Bonnell, Rami Dawood, Eliot Callahan, Will Fu, Andrea Norris, Isabel Ochoa, Josh Sam-Cato, Joshn Silver

Featuring a discussion that included Helena Grdadolnik (Director of Workshop Architecture Inc.), Kristina Ljubanovic (AGO), Michelle Senayah (Director of The Laneway Project), Graeme Steward (Tower Renewal), Victoria Taylor and Gelareh Saadatpajouh (====\\DeRAIL)