The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is pleased to launch the Architecture and Design Gallery, a unique, experimental space — the only gallery of its kind in Toronto — located in the lower level of the Daniels Building at One Spadina Crescent.

Curated by Professor Richard Sommer and New York-based designers, Pillow Culture,

the Gallery’s inaugural installation, New Circadia (adventures in mental spelunking),

prompts participants to ask: What would happen if we disconnected from standard time and external stimuli within a dream-like space specifically designed for relaxation, reflection, and repose?

New Circadia (an approximate translation from Latin for “New Day”) has been conceived to engage the city and the University of Toronto community alike in an immersive environment— an underground, cave-like, soft utopia.

“Architecture today is inextricably bound up in the urbanization of the planet, and it needs to pay as much attention to the marking of time, as it traditionally has to the shaping of space,” says co-curator, Richard Sommer, Dean and Professor at the Daniels Faculty. “With New Circadia, we are acknowledging architecture’s complicity in an increasingly stressful and zombie-like world by presenting an antidote to the over-mechanization of everyday life and our plugged-in, 24/7 culture. Might it be time to put architecture to sleep?”

The interactive installation will be made up of three zones. Beginning at the east entrance of the Daniels Building, visitors will enter a subterranean space through a Transitory Zone or “mouth of the cave,” illuminated with an artificial skylight created via digital technology. Here, visitors will store their belongings and choose from a variety of body wearables or “spelunking gear”.

Then, moving through a felt envelope, participants will enter the main cave space, an uncanny Dark Zone, with a large yet soft rock-like lounge-scape, animated with responsive sound and light. Oneiroi will invite visitors to anonymously record their personal dreams and listen to those recorded by others. Throughout the installation, visitors will be encouraged to make use of the cave’s soft infrastructure, including its felted floors and walls, to engage in self-directed rest and meditation.

Inspired by both the 1938 Mammoth Cave Experiment (the first staging of a scientific research laboratory for studying natural human cycles of sleep and wakefulness) and the synesthetic happenings of the 1960’s and 70’s, this haptic installation will offer visitors a variety of experiences, including a series of thematic lectures, multidisciplinary performances, dialogues, film screenings, and nocturnes. New Circadia’s events and programming will be organized around six time-based themes: story time, deep time, wasting time, break time, marking time, and dream time.

“We have transformed the new Architecture and Design Gallery into a soft utopia to conjure a greater sense of geological, mythical, mechanical, and biological time, and to explore how we might nurture a more sustained interior life by incubating dream-like states of rest, reflection, and reverie,” say co-curators Natalie Fizer and Emily Stevenson of the firm Pillow Culture.

Both the space and programming of New Circadia is aimed at demonstrating that idling, whether by sleeping, dreaming, napping, or meditating, is not lost, unproductive time, but rather an essential state of mind and body, connected to experiences vital to our survival and evolution.

Exhibition support is provided through the Lorne M. Gertner Fund.

Please join us in exploring New Circadia at the launch event on November 7, 2019 at 7:30pm.

The installation and affiliated events will run until April 30, 2020. Children must be supervised at all times.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Sunday, 9:00am to 9:00pm

Please check the Daniels Faculty website and/or social media for details on upcoming talks and events associated with the installation.

On January 23rd we’ll be launching Virtuous Hour…it’s like happy hour but better! During Virtuous Hour you’ll be able to take advantage of great deals and specials including Kombucha on Tap for 3 dollars, garlic knots for 4 dollars, 1 an ounce wine…and the list goes on! See your yourself…we’ve outlined the specials that we’ll be offering and the hours below!

WHEN

·      Monday | All Day

·      Tuesday – Friday | 2.30pm – 5.30pm

·      Friday + Saturday | 10pm till close

·      Dine in only

DRINKS

·      Kombucha on Tap | $3

·      Cans of Beer | $2 off

·      Pints of Beer and Cider | $2 off

·      Wine by the Glass | 6oz $6

·      Wine by the Bottle (3/4L) | $22

PIZZA

·      $2 off ALL pizzas!

SMALL PLATES |  $2 off

·      Garlic Knots | $4

·      Broccolini | $7

·      Mac + Cheese | $9

ICE CREAM

·      Ice Cream Flight

New weekly comedy night! Great Performers and a new format.

Booked shows start at 8

Sign up for open mic starts at 5

Open mic starts at 10 and goes till it goes

Come brunch with us! On January 26th we’ll be offering brunch every Saturday and Sunday 10:30am – 2:30pm. Our new menu will offer a range of mouth-watering and nutritious options, so you’ll be able to enjoy things like our Sausage + Egg Breakfast Pizza with beyond hot Italian sausage, potato cream, tofu scramble, oven dried tomatoes, and kale, or THE CURE Breakfast Bowl, with a mix of roasted vegetables, tater tots and chorizo, topped with avocado, tofu scramble + cashew hollandaise sauce!

As African countries gain recognition as 21st-century global leaders, the Aga Khan Museum celebrates the continent’s power — past, present, and future — with its fall season, Africa!

In line with their mission to connect cultures, the Museum partnered with African nations and members of the African diaspora to bring Toronto the groundbreaking exhibition Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time; an Afrofuturist art installation made of Lego©; and world-class thought leaders and performers who reveal new dimensions of this vast and complex continent.

Opening September 21, 2019, Caravans of Gold takes you back to medieval times, when western Africa fueled the economies of three continents with culture-changing ideas, much sought-after luxuries, and treasured commodities such as salt, ivory, and gold — a world-shaping story largely left out of our Western history books.

The Museum simultaneously presents Building Black: Civilizations, an Afrofuturist art installation made exclusively of black Lego bricks by contemporary Ghanaian- Canadian artist, Ekow Nimako. His series of surrealist sculptures, featuring a six-foot wide centerpiece, links medieval Africa’s advanced civilizations with a vision of the continent’s powerful future.

The longest-running and most prestigious nature photography competition in the world returns to the ROM for the seventh year in a row.

Whether you’re a nature lover, aspiring photographer, or simply love a perfectly captured moment, you will appreciate the talent and technical expertise required to photograph such rare and surprising glimpses of the diverse life on this planet.