7 Trends Spotted at Toronto's Design Week

By Hannah Martin

Driving around Toronto, you can't miss the cranes. They're everywhere, erecting sky-high condos and other mixed-use buildings at a breakneck pace. And as countless new projects rejigger the skyline, the city's burgeoning design landscape is shape-shifting too. AD PRO took off to Ontario's capital last weekend to canvas its 22nd annual Interior Design Show (IDS) and 10th annual DesignTO. The fair, a citywide design festival, featured collaborations, exhibitions, and new collections across Toronto. Below, we spell out seven trends that emerged over the course of the festivities.

Karben's small-batch hardwood furniture is made in Toronto.

1. Timber to remember.

Perhaps it's not surprising—as timber is one of the nation's top exports—but Canadian designers across IDS were exploring the possibilities of wood. Lauren Reed used an ash plank to create a lean-to floor lamp. Odami teamed with Patrick Murphy of One Wood on a chunky chair made from a 100-year-old red oak tree from Murphy's parents property, which had to be cut down due to rot. Atelier Arking's Shaker-inspired seats were made from mostly locally sourced timber. And Karben debuted a series of Windsor-like chairs and benches carved from Pennsylvania ash felled in a mandatory harvest due to a destructive ash worm infestation. Even the famous redevelopment of the Toronto waterfront, executed by the Google-backed Sidewalk Labs, proposes housing built exclusively with good old wood.

Mjölk, a popular design shop in Toronto's Junction neighborhood, debuted new designs by Norwegian firm Anderssen & Voll and Canadian designer, Thom Fougere, both shown here.

2. A nod to the Nordic.

Perhaps Canadians see some of themselves in the freezing, forest-covered nations of Northern Europe, because there were nods to Nordic design across Toronto's design week. Mjölk, one of Toronto's best-known design shops, has made its name with a Japandi look that nods to Scandinavian and Japanese style. And for its 10th anniversary, the store introduced new furniture collaborations with Norwegian studio Anderssen & Voll and Canadian studio Thom Fougere. This time, all of the pieces were produced in Canada. Across town, an exhibition called "Danish Desires" celebrated the Nordic nation's heritage brands, including Carl Hansen & Son, Fritz Hansen, and Georg Jensen.

Chairs by Common Accounts (front) and Rebecca Claire Ford (back) with a line composition by Sylvain Beaudry in the "Themselves" exhibition.

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3. Art you can use.

The fuzzy line between art and design offered a steady drip of fun-to-look-at things in Toronto. At "Themselves," an exhibition in the shipping container complex called stackt market, curators Briar Gill and J. Thomas Kim showcased works that "occupy the space between the boundaries of art and design," such as the Frumpy Chair by Jamie Wolfond, made of polypropylene and the imposing Empty Continent—Throne by Kit Howland, made of steel and sheepskin. Meanwhile, at IDS, Ryan Spotowski showed colorful concrete extrusions and Detroit gallery Next:Space highlighted the furniture-sculpture hybrids from Detroit-based studio, Zuckerhosen.

Faina Design's new Ztista furniture is made from recycled metal, cellulose, wood chips, and clay.

4. Materials that let you sleep at night.

Beyond the emphasis on ever sustainable wood, designers were experimenting with novel materials that are okay for the planet. At IDS, Ukranian studio Faina Design debuted sculptural furniture made from a mix of recycled metal, cellulose, wood chips, and clay, and Only One Yes unveiled an avant-garde table that turned out to be made from used coffee grounds and limestone that allow it to decompose naturally after use, rather than sitting for centuries in a landfill. Meanwhile, feel-good materials were a subject that came up frequently during some of IDS's brilliant keynote talks by sustainability-forward architects, including Francis Kéré and Frida Escobedo.

Blobs by Chifen Cheng, a piece from "Aluminum" at ESP Gallery, curated by MSDS Studio and Jamie Wolfond.

5. A conversation about mass production.

Two of Toronto's most famous design firms—MSDS Studio and Good Thing founder Jamie Wolfond—are best known for their industrial designs, specially engineered for mass production. But for this year's DesignTO, they teamed up to curate a show called "Aluminum" at ESP Gallery in Toronto's West End that would push that envelope. For the show they asked 13 other Canadian designers to design something in machined aluminum, which would be produced by a factory in China. Because the process is subtractive, almost like carving, it does not lend itself to mass production, making the results, which range from lamps to vases, virtually one of a kind. A similar conversation unfolded at stackt market, where MUKË set up its studio for a limited time, assembling small functional objects by hand out of industrial materials.

Jonathan Adler with his Caesarstone installation at IDS.

6. Stone doesn't have to be cold.

Leave it to Jonathan Adler to bring warmth (via a massive rainbow and cartoonish clouds) to Toronto in January. Surfaces brand Caesarstone, whose product is made from natural quartz, tapped the fun-forward designer to create an installation for IDS. The results, according to Caesarstone's Elizabeth Margles at the dinner they hosted in the clouds, atop Toronto's iconic CN Tower, "just make you happy."

A rendering of Reset Home, designed by Hummingbird Hill Homes, VFA Architecture + Design, and VTLA Studio, IDS's annual Concept Home.

7. The outdoors are coming in.

With so many housing developments emerging across the city, there are lessons to be learned not just in decorating spaces, but also in developing them. Reset Home, designed by Hummingbird Hill Homes, VFA Architecture + Design, and VTLA Studio, was exhibited as IDS's annual Concept Home, and it put an emphasis on green spaces and the way they can enhance the everyday. In a similar spirit, across the Convention Center was a verdant Healing Habitat, an oasis in the trade show where visitors could participate in group meditations, getting in tune with nature as well as themselves.