DESIGNLINES

designlines

designlinesmagazine.com Editor-In-Chief Tory Healy Associate Editor Gregory Furgala Assistant Editor Sara Cunningham Contributors David Agnew Veronika Aquila Alex Bozikovic Stephanie Calvet Alexandra Caufin Matthew Hague Eric Mutrie Evan Pavka Amrit Phull Carolyn Pioro Catherine Sweeney Magazines Canada Fellow Sharine Taylor Art Director Vicky Lee Assistant Art Director Kari Silver Photographer Arash Moallemi Director Integrated Production Alessandro Cancian Digital Development Manager Francesco Sgaramella Branded Content Editor Stefan Novakovic Digital Designer Marielle Tolentino Web Assistant Daniella Viggiani Editorial Director / Chief Content Officer Nelda Rodger Publisher / Chief Executive Officer Sergio Sgaramella Director of Marketing Mahasti Eslahjou Audience Marketing Manager Amanda Beattie Marketing Coordinator Stephanie Galt Marketing & Sales Assistant Bethany Browne Administration Olga Chernyak Elena Zaralieva Director of Operations Jacqueline LaRonde Senior Account Manager Jeffrey Bakazias 416 203 9674 x238 jeffrey@azureonline.com Mitch Gilroy 416 203 9674 x239 mitch@azureonline.com Neil Young 416 203 9674 x230 neil@azureonline.com…

when love comes to town

February marks my 11th year at Azure Publishing, and my 10th year as the editor of Designlines. It’s been quite a tenure, but there are still days when I feel like a newbie, time speeds up and I’m super excited to get in the door to tackle the job at hand. And when I get to do everything from score a studio visit to take a feature story from first draft to final layout – well, to a design junkie like me, 11 years is really nothing at all. Plus, there’s the perk of the all-star issue. Every year, this unicorn edition is packed, from page one, with designers operating at full tilt; 2020’s Designer of the Year issue is just the latest one. First, there’s the overall winner, Superkül, which…

contributors

Vicky Lee What have you done for us lately? I designed this issue from cover to cover. How does being on set inspire your layouts? Everything comes to life when you see houses in person. You get a sense of scale, light and space – how rooms come together and how people (and dogs) inhabit them. The challenge is to translate those emotions into print. Alexandra Caufin What have you done for us lately? I interviewed Meg Graham and Andre D’Elia of Superkül, DL’s Designer of the Year competition winner (p. 70). Which Superkül-designed home would you most like to live in? As an urbanite, I often imagine a version of my life set in the countryside. For me, the studio’s Grey Highlands cabin is where their labyrinthine aesthetic comes to life; the linear layout, heated patio and separated…

hot ticket

Design Week Interior Design Show (Jan 16-19) & DesignTO (Jan 17-26) DesignTO returns with more than 100 exhibitions, window installations, talks and offbeat events (think bus-tour-through-the-’burbs offbeat). The city-wide festival brings the work of countless international and local designers to the public eye. Representing the former: the founders of German studio They Feed Off Buildings, who have perfected a technique for turning construction debris into mesmerizing, sustainable terrazzo, are the international guest speakers. Meanwhile, Mexican interdisciplinary design firm Anagrama, whose branding wizards are behind Milky’s Coffee on Dundas West, is installing vivid paper-like ribbons at the festival’s Berkeley Church opening party. Not to be outdone, Canadian designers are launching a raft of new housewares: on one end of the spectrum, a minimalist black and white lighting collection by Toronto’s Anony for EQ3, and…

one thing

Before we get to the rainbow-bright, perfectly proportioned and cushy Felt chair, let’s first address the name of the experimental design studio that made it: Stacklab. The moniker is a riff on “tech stack,” a term borrowed from the technology industry to describe the applications required to complete a task. If you are an editor, you plan in Excel, write with Word and tweak layouts through InDesign; the stack is pretty clear-cut. But if you’re a Stacklab designer, you piggyback off existing technologies, infrastructures and human resources to invent, not reinvent. “The last thing the world needs is another chair,” says Stacklab founder Jeffrey Forrest, “but it does need innovation. And sometimes a chair is a good conduit for a more important conversation.” The piece of furniture we’re talking about was…

eat here

Eataly Toronto, the 40th location for the luxury grocer and the latest addition to the remodelled Bay-Bloor intersection, is a sprawling 4,645-square-metre, three-storey complex devoted to the best of Italian cuisine. And as with the country, there’s far more here than just good food – there’s equally great design, too. That’s thanks, in part, to local architecture powerhouse Giannone Petricone. On the ground floor, Il Gran Caffè Illy offers high-quality coffee, snacks and aperitivo, while below, the concourse level’s 36-seat Birroteca – anchored by a substantial wood bar clad in untreated copper panels – sees the retailer pair up with world-class Junction-based brewery Indie Alehouse to serve exclusive craft beers made using ingredients inspired by the market above. Linking the floors is a mural celebrating Toronto’s multiculturalism by photographer Oliviero Toscani…