Explore seven vibrant neighbourhood hubs rich with local heritage, Canadian design history, and more.
Hello again from DesignTO! We’re just one day away from the 2026 DesignTO Festival and we can’t wait to see you at the 100+ exhibitions, installations, and events across the city. Over ten days the city will come alive with new ideas, fresh perspectives, thought-provoking design, and more. With so much to explore, it can be hard to know where to start. Check out one (or more) of the seven neighbourhood hubs highlighted below for a walkable, discoverable, and inspirational DesignTO experience.
DesignTO believes that design can create a sustainable, just, and joyful world and we are committed to curating exhibitions, presentations, and educational programming that increases the public’s knowledge and appreciation of design. Each year our 10-day Festival brings together both the local and international art and design community to celebrate design as a multidisciplinary form of creative thinking and making, inviting the public to join in on the fun. See you out there!
These seven neighbourhood hubs offer a selection of exhibitions, installations, and events featuring photography, embroidery, lighting, glass, and more. Keep reading to learn what to expect from these unique and dynamic pockets of art and design across the city.
Seven neighbourhoods to explore during DesignTO 2026
401 Richmond
Where to start:
Slow Furniture: Recent work from the Studio of Heidi Earnshaw
Jan 14 – Feb 28, 2026
Craft Ontario Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 108, Toronto
Since its founding in 1986 in Rome, the Slow philosophy has grown into a global movement—one that deeply resonates with furniture maker Heidi Earnshaw. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to explore Earnshaw’s practice through a selection of objects, client commissions, speculative works, and made-to-order samples.
Other programming to explore nearby:
YONGE + ST. CLAIR
Where to start:
DesignTO Tours: Material Memory
Jan 25, 2026
40 St. Clair Avenue West, Toronto
Join DesignTO for this walking tour inviting participants to explore artworks that reflect ongoing dialogues between artist, object, and environment. Moving through the neighbourhood, you’ll encounter works that have been added to and layered over time, highlighting how material practice becomes a vessel for memory, care, and interconnection.
Other programming to explore nearby:
Roncesvalles
Where to start:
In Drift
Jan 23 – Feb 6, 2026
PHILA OPTICAL, 359 Roncesvalles Avenue, Toronto
The abstract screen prints featured in this window installation explore the dialogue between geometric and natural forms, permanence and impermanence. Echoing fluid natural patterns, they capture fleeting moments where order meets flow, suggesting that even stable shapes can drift, shift, and briefly become something else.
Other programming to explore nearby:
Trinity Bellwoods
Where to start:
DesignTO Talks: Within the Weave
Feb 1, 2026
Collective Arts Toronto Taproom, 777 Dundas Street West, Lower Level, Toronto
Featuring Jennifer Coghill, Helen Kong, Amanda Rataj, and Kathleen Morris, this conversation will trace the meeting points of material and memory. Through dialogue, the panel of artists will reflect on how material practice becomes a form of storytelling—revealing how the landscapes we inhabit might be translated by incorporating elements of repetition and irregularity, the familiar and the abstract.
Other programming to explore nearby:
STACKT Market
Where to start:
Invisible Weight
Jan 23 – Feb 1, 2026
STACKT Market, 28 Bathurst Street, Toronto
This mixed-material installation visualizes the unseen weight of internal struggle. A suspended cloth, shaped by uneven sand pockets and shifting light, invites viewers to experience fragility, tension, and resilience—transforming emotional burden into a shared, tangible space of reflection.
Other programming to explore nearby:
King East Design District
Where to start:
Contemporary Textile Art x Contemporary Design
Jan 23 – Feb 1, 2026
Minimal Toronto, 260 Richmond Street East, #100, Toronto
This exhibition explores imagination through manual and digital processes with tactile materials that integrate technology with nature. Textile art blurs boundaries of art, craft and design, combining artistic vision with technical skill and fine material engineering.
Other programming to explore nearby:
Waterfront & Harbourfront Centre
Where to start:
Traces
Jan 23- Mar 29, 2026
Gallery 235, Harbourfront Centre 235 Queens Quay West, Toronto
This group exhibition features the work of ten local and international artists, designers, and collectives, exploring the weight of migration, forced relocation, and preserving culture and identity: what we carry, what we leave, and how we belong again.
Other programming to explore nearby:
View the full Festival schedule and start planning your 10-days of DesignTO today!
