I’m a fan of Toronto’s Doors Open festival, but my enthusiasm for the event has started to wane. Even last year, I was struggling to find places worth visiting. This year, I didn’t even realize that it was coming (no advertising) until I hit the middle of May and wondered what happened to the Doors Open weekend. I think Doors Open has evolved into a festival of religious buildings or places looking for free advertising. I wasn’t even planning on going, except that Pauline and I had some errands to run downtown.

We started our day at the George Brown Chef School. This was an opportunity for George Brown to promote their courses and their restaurant opening in September. I think it’s a pretty good location for the school, being close to St Lawrence Market. The restaurant is pretty neat as well, and if I didn’t go, I wouldn’t have been aware of it. So it was mutually beneficial. For our troubles, we also got a free scone!

Next, we walked along King St East and randomly decided to go to St James Cathedral. I’ve seen enough churches that they all end up being the same, and this one was no different. What was different though (except for the huge amounts of cameras and tripods), was that we were able to go onto the stage at the front (where the ceremonies are performed) and hear the organist play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. He then took some questions so I learned some stuff and it was more interesting than expected.

Next (and something that was actually on our agenda) was King James Place. This was supposed to be a development that gentrified the King St East block in the late 90s, but I was horribly disappointed because all we were allowed to do was go inside a lobby atrium. After lunch at St Lawrence Market and some time off to run our errands, we headed over to Moriyama & Teshima Architects.

I had this place picked out for a couple of years as being interesting and different, but never got around to visiting it since it was a bit out of the way, and not a popular destination. The building was interesting in that it was a converted mechanic garage that had become a fairly large office (I estimate that maybe 15 people work there daily). M+T have worked on several high profile projects including the Bata Shoe Museum, the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, and the Toronto Reference Library. It was interesting to see how a small office was setup, and to see the models and diagrams that architects use.

Next we headed over to the Japan Foundation. There was no interesting architecture here, but rather an exhibition on Washi (Japanese paper). There were the typical things, like orgami, but also more intricate objects such as dolls that were made from paper. Our day finished up at the Gardiner Museum, where we went through the Object Factory special exhibit. This exhibit displayed the intersection between utilitarian ceremics and art, producing ceremic objects that were entirely unpractical. I couldn’t suppress my pragmaticism to fully appreciate cups with holes or dishes with embedded objects.

Surprisingly, I still got a lot out of Doors Open this year. In fact, I’ve come to look at the festival not so much as visiting interesting architectural aspects of Toronto, but a day with free admission to museums and other historical places.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: diary, doorsopen, japan, toronto