How Do You Live? Exhibition Explores Future Small Space Dwelling

A highlight of this year’s IDS12 show in Toronto was a special exhibition exploring living ideas for small spaces. Six different Canadian design firms were each tasked with creating a concept room within a two-story structure built out of shipping containers. The exhibition contained elements relating to sustainability, food traditions, local heritage and creative use of small spaces.

Fresh City Farms, an Ontario organization which helps people start urban farm businesses set up a mini garden at the entrance to the exhibition. FCF operates farms of their own and have a greenhouse located in the geographical center of Toronto. Within a few four by eight foot plots, they demonstrated how to grow an entire fresh vegetable section from a grocery store.

“The Last Supper” is a concept dining room created by Rick Mugford and Caroline Robbie of Quadrangle. Meant to be tongue in cheek interpretation of the iconic religious image, this room creates a new dialog about modern dinner rituals and how a dining room might reflect them. The walls are wrapped with a mural depicting over-scale vegetables and fruit in a classical still-life painting style. Interspersed in the image are touches of modern life including a smartphone showing a text message conversation.

Ashley Rumsey and Stanley Sun, of Mason pushed the idea of one space living to the limit with their conceptual kitchen and bathroom space. Their intention was to deconstruct the public and private spaces with a home in response to their functional properties instead of traditional usage. The designers carefully created a path for water which aims to make use of it more efficient. The sink and dining table are merged and water flows from a wash station of one end through a trough under dining pads at the other end. Eventually the water cascades into garden which also intersects with the bathroom, which is totally open. Mason drew inspiration from primitive rituals associated with the uses of these rooms and reinterpreted them from a modern viewpoint.

“Layered” is a space created by Mazen el-Abdallah of Mazen Studio. Within the confines of a standard shipping container, Mazen artfully fit a living and office area composed of vintage furniture. While the placement of every piece was executed with tetris-level mastery, it goes to show that space-saving furniture doesn’t have to be ultra modern and new.

Jill Greaves of Jill Greaves Design showed the most grounded room of the exhibition. This will likely appeal to a lot of people because it contains modern elements but doesn’t look like the set from a sci-fi movie or magazine stylist. Not much in the way of flashy colors instead Greaves showed some spacial tricks to expand a tiny space. The primary tactic was a monochromatic palette on the walls and furniture to keep the eye moving around.

Walking through the exhibition itself was interesting in that each room appeared from walking around a corner. From the second level, which was a deck built on top of the ground level shipping containers, different vantages could be seen of the rooms below as well as the overall show floor. The level of execution of the exhibit for only being open three days was impressive.