The DesignTO Festival’s Take on Sustainability
Dear friends,
Mark your calendars and join us January 24–February 2, 2025, to celebrate 15 years of the DesignTO Festival! The Festival schedule is live, offering over 100 events and exhibits designed to deepen your appreciation of design and its role in shaping a sustainable, just, and joyful world.
With so much to explore, we’re spotlighting each Festival pillar in our newsletters. Last time, we focused on Joy, featuring 11 uplifting events. Today, we highlight Sustainability, with 14 compelling programs that rethink the 3 Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle.
Can we move beyond “doing no harm” to creating lasting positive change? The design world is already embracing “net negative” approaches, but the 2025 Festival pushes further with “net positive” – giving back to nourish and repair the earth. This concept inspires new ways to rethink sustainability: reviving slow, traditional craft practices, using low impact building methods to reinvigorate landscapes, questioning the cost of convenience, and reimagining the pace at which we live and create.
Below, you’ll find 13 events and exhibits (arranged alphabetically) that challenge us to go greener. We can’t wait to see you out there and explore what sustainability looks like today – and in the future!
January 24 – February 2, 2025 | on view 24/7
Secret Planet Print Shop, 918 Danforth Avenue
Online shopping hides immense costs. Amazon profits from tax evasion, poor working conditions, and environmental harm. Inspired by Warhol’s Brillo boxes, this installation by Christopher Rouleau exposes how mega-corporations exploit consumer complacency while crushing small businesses. These cartons urge us to rethink our choices – supporting local businesses can drive meaningful change and resist harmful systems.
Blood, Water & Bathurst Street
January 13 – February 15, 2025 | see listing for hours
Urbanspace Gallery, 401 Richmond Street West
Reception: January 18 | 3 – 6pm
‘Blood, Water & Bathurst Street’ is a textile-based mapping project by Naomi Daryn Boyd, exploring the histories and communities shaping the lands along Bathurst Street. This participatory work uses wool and natural materials to engage the public in sustainable material experiments, inviting contributions to an evolving map and dialogue on local histories.
January 31, 2025 | 2 – 6pm
Ace Hotel Toronto (Interspace), 51 Camden Street
This half-day talk explores how design can shift from “less bad” to “more good” by addressing the climate crisis through abundance. Experts in regenerative design, urban infrastructure, and ecological restoration present innovative approaches to creating thriving, sustainable systems that integrate humans as part of nature, not apart from it.
January 24 – January 29, 2025 | see listing for hours
35 John Street, Suite #500
Reception: January 24 | 5:30 – 8pm
This multi-sensory exhibition by Toronto architecture studio, DIALOG, explores how design connects to the human experience through sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. The interactive installations highlight sustainable design practices, showing how architecture, engineering, and landscape design can create meaningful, human-centered spaces that address climate change, inclusivity, and ethical development.
Fragments of a Disappearing Landscape
January 24 – February 15, 2025 | see listing for hours
Collision Gallery, 30 Wellington Street West, Unit G114
Reception: February 15 | 4 – 6pm
This exhibition by Toronto-based studio Polymetis explores the fragile relationship between human activity and natural environments. Featuring clay impressions of Ontario’s endangered Oak Ridges Moraine, it captures its ancient topography while urging reflection on the impact of urbanization, climate change, and the urgent need for environmental preservation.
January 24 – February 2, 2025 | on view 24/7
Lynch + Comisso: Architecture + Light, 570 Annette Street
Lynch + Comisso: Architecture + Light presents a 24-hour installation exploring sustainable housing through mirrors, lighting, string, and found materials. This diorama envisions lasting, resource-efficient housing solutions while inviting dialogue on design’s role in shaping resilient communities. The exhibit extends beyond DesignTO, continuing the studio’s mission of engaging the public in architectural solutions.
February 1, 2025 | 1 – 3:30pm
Online
DesignTO invites designers and thinkers to an online Drift moderated by Judith van den Boom, designer, and course leader of MA Regenerative Design at Central Saint Martins. This session explores design responses to the climate crisis, focusing on how we can create whole systems that foster more restorative, regenerative, and relational practices and partnerships.
Neighbours of the Lake: A Creative Discussion on the Port Lands
February 1, 2025 | 4 – 6pm
OCAD U Waterfront Campus
130 Queens Quay East, Toronto
This panel discussion will explore the transformative role of sustainable and creative approaches in urban design, focusing on how innovative, eco-conscious planning can reshape our cities. By integrating multiple perspectives, we can create a dynamic blueprint for carbon-neutral, creative, and active urban spaces.
New Narratives in Design: Salvage, Reuse, and Toronto’s Evolving Aesthetic
January 25 – January 29, 2025 | see listing for hours
Plural Projects Studio, 1468 Dundas Street West, 3rd floor
Reception: January 25 | 6 – 9pm
Tour: January 26 | 10 – 11am
This exhibition – featuring Daniel Gruetter Furniture and Objects, Ouroboros Deconstruction, Plural Projects, and photographer Amanda Large – reimagines Toronto’s design vernacular through the lens of material salvage and reuse. Focusing on sustainability, it showcases how salvaged materials can shape a resourceful, innovative future while honouring the city’s past and fostering a circular economy.
January 16 – February 23, 2025 | 9am – 2am daily
The Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen Street West
Wind Up Radio creates multimedia work addressing our fears of environmental collapse and the future. Through found footage, vintage drum machines, and public domain video, this installation reflects on the looming impact of technology and global crises, inviting us to consider sustainable futures in an uncertain world.
January 20 – February 21, 2025 | see listing for hours
Umbra Concept Store, 165 John Street
Organized by DesignTO in partnership with Umbra, ‘Surface Impressions’ showcases prototypes by nine designers, exploring sustainability through creative material processes. Featuring a new 0.6mm recycled leather, the exhibition highlights how designers can transform materials, emphasizing their innate properties and potential for innovative, environmentally conscious applications in design.
Transit Roots, Community Growth!
January 24 – February 2, 2025 | see listing for hours
The Bakery, 2 Fraser Avenue
SvN Architects + Planners explores how sustainable transit projects can foster thriving, inclusive communities. By showcasing approaches to reduce carbon emissions, integrate affordable housing, and promote civic spaces, the exhibition highlights how thoughtful design can maximize the positive impact of transit while supporting environmental, social, and economic goals.
January 24 – Feb 2, 2025 | on view 24/7
Capri Shoes, 818 Dundas Street West
Charlotte Little’s textile design project utilizes locally sourced Canadian wool, dyed with foraged plants and handwoven in Toronto. Drawing on the Fibreshed movement, this work blends traditional techniques with sustainable practices, highlighting the importance of local textile production. It embodies a shift toward resilient, environmentally conscious fashion systems in Canada.
January 24 – February 2, 2025 | see listing for hours
Duer Toronto Flagship Store, 44 Ossington Avenue
Ruth Wickremesooriya’s work at DUER uses damaged denim from the Toronto store to create a window installation exploring hope, brokenness, and resilience. The piece reflects on transforming waste into art, symbolizing growth, and renewal, while offering a meditative space to reflect on mental health struggles and the power of sustainability.
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This list is just a fraction of the 100+ events, exhibitions and installations taking place across the city of Toronto. Next newsletter we will explore the Justice pillar in which you will see plenty of programming around how to design a greener future. Start planning your 10-days of DesignTO today!
