Time to get walking

This is usually an exciting time of year for those of us who love buildings. Construction ramps up with the warmer weather; condos that were barely at grade when you shuffled miserably past them in January suddenly seem to sprout towers like daffodils. Trees bud and flowers poke through, making every neighbourhood look that much better. Possibility, like lilacs, scent the air. I know, that’s not the most masculine sentence I ever wrote, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t feel that the world is a slightly better place in those first few weeks of spring.

Since it snowed again last week and is supposed to be cold and rainy tomorrow, I’m jumping into the one sunny day of our abbreviated “spring” to encourage you, and me, to get out and walk.

Toronto is actually a pretty walkable city, in spite of my occasional complaining. Even though truly pedestrian-friendly enclaves are few, we’ve got numerous neighbourhoods that encourage the activity by having some varied architecture, lots of shops and cafes, shady spots to linger and a variety of things to do. The Beach, even though it can be smog-choked with cars, still invites a linear stroll down Queen East; Bloor West Village is another. Even a native Torontonian can explore Queen West, Kensington Market and the Entertainment District, up and down side streets, and discover things — whole streets — they had no idea existed. The Annex and Cabbagetown are among the best choices for people who simply like to gawk at cool houses. The Distillery District, which paradoxically is a pedestrian enclave, doesn’t encourage walking as much as it encourages idle patio eating and drinking, also good fair-weather pursuits.

But you knew that. As great as shopping, dining, and sipping overpriced coffee are, though, they get expensive and make you fat, so I’ve decided this year to do something I keep telling myself I’m going to do — I’m going to make myself a DIY Toronto public art tour.

While some of Toronto’s most conspicuous public art — like the highly controversial punters by Michael Snow that hang off the sides of the Rogers Centre — has been high-profile, some of the most compelling was commissioned and installed by condo developers almost under the radar.

Urban Magazine has called the requirement for large buildings to make a contribution to public art one of the “more progressive aspects of Toronto’s planning framework,” and the developers themselves know that it’s good for business. Public art enhances buildings and makes them even more attractive to purchasers, said Ontario Home Builder a few years back. The official city plan goes so far as to say, “A partnership between the public and private sectors is to be nurtured to transform Toronto into a large public art gallery with installations throughout the city.” A lofty goal, but a worthwhile one.

In Toronto, the city “recommends” that developers contribute 1% of their gross constructions costs to The Percent for Public Art Program, which City Planning administers. One requirement of the program is that artwork be clearly visible at all times from publicly accessible areas, which means it’s never secreted away in resident-only courtyards, but rather becomes part of the streetscape itself, “instant place-makers” as Cityplace said in their public art plan back in 1999.

You’re not going to love it all. I don’t. “Mitosis” by Pierre Poussin at Cityplace has something to do with cell division, but sounds like it has something to do with bad breath, and the two dozen spotted columns that comprise the installation always look to me like they have some kind of creeping fungus. But even art you don’t love does its job — it makes you stop and look, think about things in another way, perhaps evokes an emotion or a buried memory. Cityplace alone, in fact, has more than a dozen outdoor art installations, some stunning, some puzzling, and some notable for their poignant Canadianness, like Douglas Coupland’s Canoe Landing Park and the Terry Fox homage Miracle Mile. Chilean artist Francisco Gazitua’s creations, two giant metal sculptures, were created in his workshop in the Andes Mountains and shipped to Toronto.

“Sculpture must not only be in museums in this specialist, cloistered world,” the artist told Yonge Street magazine, “but must return to the street where it should never have left, in order to fulfill its duty: to harmonize the spaces of the city and the daily lives of the citizens."

Sometimes, it’s as simple as a paving detail, like the leaves on the sidewalk outside the upscale Prince Arthur Condominiums in Yorkville, or Festival Walkway by Reinhard Reitzenstein outside 10 Bellair, which features both some intricate stainless steel/cast bronze grapevines along a corridor that connects Bloor to Cumberland, and the light effects they create after dark, when the lamps mounted above them throw leaf and twig silhouettes onto the ground. Sometimes it’s a fence, a lawn, or a pedestrian bridge, and if you didn’t know to look for it, you might miss it.

When a developer does make the commitment to public art, it’s an involved process. First, they bring on an art consultant to help sift through possible artists, then there are interviews and requests for proposals to be gone through, and finally, all public art must be approved by the Toronto Public Art Commission, who clearly have more eclectic ideas of what Toronto should look like than the city planners do, thank goodness.

The skeptical (dare I say jaded?) among us accuse the developers of using their public art components as branding tools, and to some extent that’s true. They commission artists whose themes dovetail with their marketing, but a) why wouldn’t they? and b) these pieces are often so abstract that the theme remains a mystery unless you read the press release.

Of course, getting out there on your own Toronto public art tour has the added bonus of taking you on a Toronto condo tour, but that, too, is a fine fair-weather pursuit.