talk20 is not a lecture but a gathering, an open forum for the dissemination of ideas in art, architecture and design. It provides a open stage for artists and designers to informally present their work and ideas to a greater audience. Produced in cities around the world, talk20 seeks to spark a conversation across ideological, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. talk20 is curating a roster of professionals, educators, and students working across the fields of spatial practice including art, media, architecture, urbanism, and landscape. talk20 has emerged as a live catalogue of contemporary creative production that seeks to ...

Madelon Galland reports on his Tree Stump project in SuperNaturale. I remember seeing one of the stumps last time I was in New York and always wondered what the story was: The STUMP project began in 1999 on the sidewalks of New York City — the sidewalk plots where there are tree stumps are generally neglected spaces left to collect debris. The tree stumps reminded me of the childhood story, The Giving Tree by Shell Silverstein, in which a tree has given of herself to the point of being diminished ...

Who could resist a moonlight bike ride on a fine August night? Quiet, peaceful, and lit by streetlamps, the city takes on a new, almost more personal, character after dark. Saturday, August 19, starting at 10pm and ending at midnight. The meeting point will be Healy-Willan Park, located at the intersection of Ulster and Euclid. The course will include laneways, Yonge Street, some public art sites, at least one industrial area (perhaps near King and Niagara), and the Bike Arch at Queen's Quay.

As gas prices rise Toronto's transit and cycling infrastructure is under attack. First it was the bike rings now it is the transit shelters. Meanwhile in Qatar, oil money is building new mist-cooled cycling paths - a warm weather solution to an international need.

In September 2004, the University of Waterloo School of Architecture relocated into an abandoned factory warehouse in the urban core of Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. By relocating to the abandoned silk mill, the school has triggered a revitalization of Downtown Galt which had fallen into decline. This injection of new minds has begun to initiate conversations concerning the role of the School and its contribution to public space in its new urban setting. Taking the challenge into their own hands a group of students designed and built a temporary installation of a pocket park beside ...

Here is some functional street furniture from the UK.  McChesney Architects designed a series of innovative swivelling wind shelters on Blackpool's South shore promenade. The flowing form of each 8m high shelter was created as a weather vane that swivels with the wind to shelter its inhabitants. Let's hope Toronto gets a street furniture solution as creative as this.

The Mobile Landscape Intervention Unit is a recycled shipping container that has been transformed into a live-work space for a team of intrepid gardeners called Mousse architecture de paysage.  First displayed at the Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens, it will be camped out in Toronto at Evergreen at the Brick Works, the site of the old Don Valley Brick Works factory, June 15 to September 24, 2006.

Mis-Guide is a book and website created by Wrights & Sites, a group of four UK based artists. Mis-Guide is a guide book that can be used in any city. Instead of telling you where to go and what to see, Mis-Guide gives you the ways to see your city or environment that no one else has found yet. It suggests a series of walks and points of observation and contemplation within a particular town, city or landscape. Unlike an ordinary guide book, it is guided by the practice of ...

David Gallaugher, a student at the Dalhousie School of Architecture in Halifax, Nova Scotia, has created a grass-lined wheel to simulate an eternal lawn environment and to draw attention to what he considers a North American obsession with manicured lawns.

Nicholas Hune-Brown and J. Graham Lee write in the Toronto Star about measuring the space of the city and its sprawl by walking across it. Should be a mandatory trek for city councillors, OMB judges, planners & everyone else.