Cross-posted from No Mean City, Alex's personal blog on architecture This is a building that works. Yes, it looks sexy and impractical: a cascading Jenga stack of glass, cement board and steel, punctured by bright shots of colour, hanging gardens and an atrium, heavy blocks of apartments hanging in the air. But this new co-op residence by Teeple Architects has substance, too. It has the gutsy but practical spirit of Toronto's best architecture: It’s green, hardy, and very inexpensive, and provides 85 large and comfortable apartments for Toronto Community Housing tenants.

The following is a reprint of my recent psychogeography column in Eye Weekly looking at the future of Ontario Place. The photos included in this post are from Not My Father's Slides, Tanja Tiziana's wonderful project that rescues abandoned Kodachrome slides she finds at estate and yard sales. The pictures used here, of an unknown family, are dated to July 1973. They are very much like the golden-hued ones I write about below. Happy days at Toronto's happy day machine. Check out Tanja's site when you're done reading. In one of the photo albums I grew up with, one that contained snapshots of my parents’ lives before I was born, there were a handful of pics taken in 1971 at Ontario Place, the year it opened. They’ve all got the golden tint that photos from that era have acquired — the troubles of the day seem far away as everything is muted by that gilded patina. One that always stood out is of a polyester-clad choir singing what I imagine is the old Expo ’67 Ontario anthem “A Place to Stand.” It all looked so optimistic and young, the brilliant future of Ontario and Canada. The future is old now — nearly 40 years old — and it’s easy to drift into nostalgia about a place like Ontario Place, one of those civic spaces that are nostalgia machines. Everybody of a certain not-too-old age has a memory of either romping or working around here or heard stories passed down from a baby-boomer parent of working here in the early 1970s.

Each week we will be focusing on blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues. • A report released Monday by the New York City Department of Transportation paints a fascinating picture of pedestrian safety. The study examined over 7000 crashes between 2002 and 2006 resulting in death or serious injury and yields some startling statistics. "Jaywalkers were involved in fewer collisions than their law-abiding counterparts who waited for the “walk” sign, though they were likelier to be killed or seriously hurt by the collision." "80 percent of city accidents that resulted in a pedestrian’s death or serious injury, a male driver was behind the wheel." "[L]eft-hand turns were three times as likely to cause a deadly crash as right-hand turns." "[T]hree-quarters of the crashes occurred [at intersections". As the New York Times reports, the study is providing a quantitative basis for the city to continue its program of re-engineering the street grid. • Portland, Oregon is the proud owner of new and improved bike wayfinding signs. The green signs feature distances and directions and travel times to popular destinations. Residents can thank a $1 million federal stimulus grant for the improvement, says Bikeportland.org

The Brick Works have been acknowledged by photographers, urban explorers, graffiti artists, homeless people, and underground events promoters as the perfect place to do… just about anything. The long-unoccupied Kiln Buildings are now covered from wall-to-wall, kiln-to-kiln with so many pieces of artwork that Evergreen, the group restoring the entire Brick Works facility, considers the graffiti a representation of its history – the abandoned years. As part of the plan to keep the Kiln Buildings as original as possible, at least 70% of the graffiti art is going to stay. But they’ve added another element to the long spray-painted walls – sticker portraits. Dan Bergeron was contacted by Diaspora Dialogues, a company that has done many art installations in buildings around the city (including at Union Station for Doors Open Toronto in 2009), and wanted to do something to the Brick Works that represented its history. Bergeron considered the proposal for a while and discarded their idea of archival images of the quarry and building in favour of a concept that is familiar to him. Bergeron has done mass scale portraits around Toronto, such as his Regent Park Portrait Project, and decided to photograph some of the living employees of the Kilns. Those who traversed the Brick Works during Doors Open this year may have already seen the larger-than-life portraits created by Bergeron and an assistant. The faces of the six men, portrayed high up on the walls, represent not only the people who worked in the kilns, toiling away in front of 2,000 degree Fahrenheit fires, but the history of Toronto's structures. “They built the city,” Bergeron said, and he wanted to pay homage to them.

If you live in a place without air conditioning than you can relate to my current plight: the heat wave is making it difficult for me to sleep at night. When I find myself wide awake and sweating buckets at 3am, I sometimes sit on my couch, place the fan directly in front of me and watch a bit of late night TV. The other night/morning, the TV gods were kind to me: they offered up a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza is handing out a scholarship, in honour of his late fiancée, to a kid who aspires to be an architect (George's fake occupation). The recipient later changes his mind and wants to be a city planner, which earns George's wrath: he revokes the scholarship. The kid ends up in a gang who later confront George by demanding that he give back the scholarship and let the kid become a city planner.

This is part of a series of posts by students in OCAD’s Cities for People summer workshop (click the link to read a bit about what the class is about). This post is a follow up to Gillian Herold, Daniel Kim, John Koutoulakis and Max Pravosoudov's first post exploring Alexandra Park. This is their design proposal for the neighbourhood. Illustrated  psychogeographic map of Alexandra Park by Max Pravosoudov. Concept Statement The advantage that Alexandra Park has is its location. Located in between areas with rich cultural development, Alexandra Park has the potential to become one of the best places to live in Toronto. Our proposal will attempt to preserve the identity and history of Alexandra Park, while enhancing community life and engaging neighboring communities. Alexandra Park is a community driven neighborhood with a history of engaged residence and community members that have brought positive change to the area. Based on the diverse culture of Alexandra Park and the need to break down barriers, we will design a public space that supports existing programs within the community and allows for their expansion, while encouraging public life and creating a venue for neighboring communities to mingle. Alexandra’s Walk An illustration of how the banners would display art done by members of Alexandra Park.

The final design for the St. Lawrence Market North building was announced this morning, and the main component? Glass, and lots of it. The indoor atrium will be completely surrounded by glass to create an open and airy atmosphere for the Saturday farmers’ market and Sunday antique market space, to create the illusion of being in an actual open air market. This concept will work wonders for the markets winter months when an actual outdoor market is unrealistic, and will be a drastic change from the confined indoor space of the current market. The four-storey building will easily allow anyone inside to see surrounding Front Street, Jarvis Street and Market Lane Park because of tall glass windows on every level. While the market will consume the entire first floor, the second, third and fourth will act as court rooms and offices for the Toronto Court Services offices. Underground, there will be a parking garage that will accommodate 250 cars. The building also boasts a green roof and geothermal system using natural lighting and a unique ventilation system with opening vents in the roof and walls that allow for air flow in the cooler months. The heritage of the St. Lawrence market neighbourhood is to be maintained by incorporating the view of St. Lawrence Hall into the design of the new market. The open atrium allows for a view of The Hall to the north as well as the south market building. Design concepts, which were laid out in reports by a team of community members and City staff, are to match those of the surrounding neighbourhood in material and form and be unobtrusive.

Just in time for Doors Open this weekend, the John Street Roundhouse Park National Railway and Heritage Centre staged its grand opening today. The 17-acre park includes four full-sized locomotives dating back to 1944 as well as Toronto’s own car, No. 1, built in Kingston, Ontario in 1950. (Hurry, though, if you want to see it; the roundhouse will soon be fenced off as part of the security buildup to the G20.) There are also three freight cars and two passenger cars in ...

ED: You may remember at the Fort York Toronto the Good party the Soft City exhibit in one of the Block Houses (a stuffed and sewed together skyline). Part of that collective, Rose Bianchini and Jason van Horne, have an opening tonight that is a kind of "tiny Doors Open" on this, the (big) Doors Open weekend. Rose is also the filmaker behind our "Reasons People Love Toronto" video made at our 5th anniversary party last year. WHAT: A collaboration between Rose Bianchini and Jason van Horne. An art show of magical and interactive miniatures. Peer into the private lives of an eclectic group of people as they dream, watch TV, stare out the window and ponder the lives of their neighbours. Neighbourhood Watch brings to life a cast of whimsical characters who live in ramshackle and darling little homes. It is a show about where we live and how our space defines as much as our work and family. WHERE AND WHEN:  AWOL art gallery 76 Ossington, May 27- June 6, 2010 Gallery Hours: Thursday to Saturday, 12pm - 6pm, Sunday 1pm - 5pm, or by appointment  Reception: Friday, May 28 from 7pm WHY: We strive to make work that shows the symbiotic relationship between people and architecture. While we enjoy mimicking the real world in miniature form we also love to re-imagine and create worlds that are much more mysterious and peculiar.

In each issue of Spacing we have a feature called Public Goods that highlights cool stuff for the discerning urbanist. We've showcased items such as Andrew Alfred-Duggan's MASH MAPs, Yasmine Louis' skyline-inspired shirts and pillows (pictured above), coffee cup holders for commuting cyclists, and ties that replicate the street grid of specific cities. We need your help to keep uncovering these gems: let us know if you see any products we could feature in our upcoming issues. Our criteria is simple: it should be Toronto or city-inspired stuff. You can leave ...