Archive for the ‘Exhibits & Events’ Category
Monday, May 17th, 2010
Tim Fraser for National Post
Swipe and BUILT are pleased to announce that we will be hosting Margaret and Phil Goodfellow, authors of the newly released Guide to Contemporary Architecture in Toronto, as they meet the public and answer questions about Toronto’s architectural renaissance on the opening day of Doors Open, Saturday May 29th, in the lobby lounge of 401 Richmond Street West from 2 pm to 3:30 pm. Please join us!
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With Doors Open Toronto 2010 just around the corner, we here at Swipe and BUILT are more thankful than ever to be part of the extraordinary arts and culture complex at 401 Richmond Street West. A prime destination during the festival, 401 is expecting several thousand visitors over the weekend of May 29th and 30th. Accordingly, Swipe and Built will be open Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm, and Sunday from 10 am to 5 pm.
In celebration of this celebration of our city’s cultural, social and architectural heritage, BUILT offers a selection of Torontoniana published since last year’s post, beginning with a tremendously significant new release that documents one of the most exciting moments in Toronto’s long architectural history. That moment is, you may have guessed, right now.
A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Toronto
✍ 2010: Margaret and Phil Goodfellow 
The past two decades have seen an explosion of building in our city, and while from an urban-planning perspective much of this development might be viewed with suspicion, from a purely aesthetic perspective, many of these buildings are thoughtful, challenging and truly beautiful. Authored by Toronto Society of Architects stalwarts Margaret and Phil Goodfellow, this up-to-the-minute guide documents sixty projects completed between 1992 and 2010 that form the core of this Toronto architectural renaissance. Organized by neighbourhood, this pocket-sized guide is equally delightful whether readers choose to hit the streets or do their site-seeing from an armchair. (2010: Douglas & McIntyre; ISBN 9781553654445)
$24.95
Please join us as we host Margaret and Phil on the opening day of Doors Open, Saturday May 29th in the lobby lounge at 401 Richmond Street West at 2 pm. In the meantime, listen to an interview with Phil by Peter Stock of CIUT 89.5 FM:
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The Edible City: Toronto’s Food from Farm to Fork
✍ 2009: Alana Wilcox & Christina Palassio, editors
New from the uTOpia team, the 40 essays in Edible City examine all aspects of the way that Torontonians feed themselves, from fancy restaurant to urban slaughterhouse, from disappearing farmland to balcony container garden. (2009: Coach House Books; ISBN 1552452190)
HTO: Toronto’s Water from Lake Iroquois to Lost Rivers to Low-flow Toilets
✍ 2008: Christina Palassio & Wayne Reeves, editors
With its harbour and sprawling lakeshore, two major river systems with a network of ravines and creeks, and a massive sewer and water-supply system, Toronto is a city of waterways. This fourth volume in the influential uTOpia series explores the city’s relationship with water, both in the landscape and in our domestic and industrial lives. (2008: Coach House Books; ISBN 9781552451946)
Historical Atlas of Toronto, paperback
✍ 2009: Derek Hayes
In this new addition to the acclaimed series, geographer Derek Hayes charts Toronto’s history, presenting more than 200 period maps that together provide a unique visual record of the city’s development. (2008: Douglas & McIntyre Ltd; ISBN 9781553654971)
The Shape of the Suburbs: Understanding Toronto’s Sprawl
✍ 2009: John Sewell
A meticulous and thoughtful account of how Toronto became ‘Greater’ Toronto, expanding on the author’s classic study The Shape of the City. John Sewell includes anecdotes on the origin and purpose of Toronto’s expressway system, the economic and political history of infrastructure in the 905, and the unlikely connection between the QEW and Adolph Hitler. (2009: University of Toronto Press; ISBN 9780802095879)
Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto
✍ 2010: Shawn Micallef & Marlena Zuber
Shawn Micallef, Eye columnist, senior editor at Spacing and a co-founder of the [murmur] project, explores Toronto’s buildings and streetscapes as dynamic cultural entities, examining not only their structure and purpose but also the ways they are used and experienced by the people who inhabit them. The thirty-two featured walks, guided by hand-drawn maps from illustrator Marlena Zuber, invite the reader to experience the city at a pace that celebrates the details as well as the grand vision. (2010: Coach House Books; ISBN 1552452263)
The Edible City: Toronto’s Food from Farm to Fork: $24.95
HTO: Toronto’s Water from Lake Iroquois to Lost Rivers to Low-flow Toilets: $24.95
Historical Atlas of Toronto: $34.95
The Shape of the Suburbs: Understanding Toronto’s Sprawl: $24.95
Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto: $24.95
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To purchase any of the products or titles mentioned here, please visit our downtown Toronto location, call us toll-free at 1-800-56-swipe or e-mail us at: info@swipe.com.
Posted in Architecture, Architecture Links, Built Books on Architecture & I.D., Canadian Architecture & I.D., Exhibits & Events, Landscape Architecture, Socially Responsible Architecture & I.D., Urban Issues |
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs
✍ 2010: Stephen A. Goldsmith & Lynne Elizabeth
To coincide with the annual Jane’s Walk series of free neighbourhood walking tours, Built and Swipe have, by an exclusive arrangement, received advanced copies of this timely revisitation of the ideas and work of urban-activist Jane Jacobs. Heeding Jacobs’ collaborative approach to city and community building, What We See presents the personal and professional observations of thirty practitioners across the fields of economics, social activism and urban planning as they seek to refresh Jacobs’ theories for the present day. The resulting collection of original essays offers the generalist, the activist and the urban planner practical examples of the benefits of community participation, pedestrianism, diversity, environmental responsibility and self-sufficiency. (2010: New Village Press; ISBN 9780981559315)
$32.95
One Jane’s Walk in particular, King-Spadina: One of ‘The Two Kings’, guided by Paul Bedford and Margie Zeidler (Saturday, May 1, 2010 at 10:00 am), quite conveniently, passed right by Swipe Books at 401 Richmond Street West, where copies of What We See were available for purchase. And, of course, always on offer are works by Jane Jacobs herself, a range of interesting titles directly related to Jacobs’ legacy, and an unrivaled selection of books and journals on urban issues and architecture in general.
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To purchase any of the products or titles mentioned here, please visit our downtown Toronto location, call us toll-free at 1-800-56-swipe or e-mail us at: info@swipe.com.
Posted in Architecture Links, Built Books on Architecture & I.D., Exhibits & Events, Landscape Architecture, Urban Issues |
Thursday, January 21st, 2010
Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books
✍ 2009: Jo Steffens, editor; with an essay by Walter Benjamin
A great way to annoy friends or loved ones with an interest in popular culture is to consistently look past the celebrities in the glossy magazines at the books on the shelves behind them (“Look at her arms; do you think she’s anorexic?” “I don’t know, but don’t you think she’s a bit old to be reading Ayn Rand and Hermann Hesse?”). More than any other conceit, an individual’s library provides reliable insight into their their self image. This delicious little book, based on an exhibition at Urban Center Books (The Architecture Bookstore of the Municipal Art Society of New York), showcases the libraries of twelve renowned architects, simultaneously cataloguing their intellectual influences and betraying their intellectual affectations. Editor Jo Steffens, who previously edited Block by Block: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York City, offers a series of photographs of each library with the books in place on their shelves, recording the library’s aesthetic and organizational context along with its contents.
In addition to the photographs, each participant is asked to provide a reading list of the ten books that have most influenced them and interviews allow each to assess the importance of their libraries to their careers. One wonders if, after the initial flattery of being approached for the project, any of the twelve experienced trepidation at the thought of all those strangers looking at their books. While allowing guests to snoop our books is something that we readily tolerate, one’s library is undoubtedly more revealing than the medicine cabinet we keep locked, or the porn collection and notebook of juvenile poetry we hide so scrupulously. (2009: Yale University Press; ISBN 9780300158939)
$22.95
Oh, and the architects whose libraries and reading lists are featured are:
Stan Allen
Henry Cobb
Liz Diller & Ric Scofidio
Peter Eisenman
Michael Graves
Steven Holl
Toshiko Mori
Michael Sorkin
Bernard Tschumi
Todd Williams & Billie Tsien
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To purchase any of the products or titles mentioned here, please visit our downtown Toronto location, call us toll-free at 1-800-56-swipe or e-mail us at: info@swipe.com.
Posted in Architecture, Built Books on Architecture & I.D., Exhibits & Events |
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
11 am to 6 pm: Thursday to Saturday, November 19th to 21st
Okay, so we don’t really have a sidewalk so, yes, technically, it’s more of a really long hallway sale, but 50% off on great design is still 50% off and you won’t get rained on, have leaves blowing around your head, or diesel exhaust to deal with just great design at great prices, at a building you love having an excuse to visit.
Bring a print of this page and, in addition to 50% off on selected merchandise, you’ll get 15% off all regularly priced gift items and 10% off all regularly priced books!
Posted in Books on Communication Design, Children's Books & Products, Exhibits & Events, Products, Sale |
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
Do Good Design: How Designers Can Change the World
✍ 2008: David B. Berman
As ethics chair for the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, David Berman was responsible for the develpement of the RGD and GDC code of ethics, now used by Icograda as a template for national graphic design organizations worldwide. In Do Good Design Berman goes beyond conventional design ethics, taking to task a profession that, too often, is paid to create deceptive or exploitative images in support of a highly destructive form of consumerism based on invented needs. “Overconsumption,” he writes, “is fueled most powerfully by clever visual arguments to convince everyone (including larger, growing Developing World populations) to consume more and more. Our impact as designers and as consumers of design is huge. We should be held responsible”.
The great American industrial designer Raymond Loewy famously refused only one job in his career: that of creating a more lethal anti-personnel hand-grenade for the American military. Berman could rightly be accused of overestimating designers’ influence in the battle between global consumerism and more humane values. Yet, while designers didn’t start the war, there is no denying that they often do help make the “weapons of mass deception” more lethal. Designers are not defense lawyers, they are not obliged to defend their clients’ malevolent actions, indeed they are ethically bound to refuse to do so (and even defense lawyers are legally prohibited from knowingly lying). Designers must not excuse their involvement in the creation of damaging messages by hiding behind the design brief. Rather Berman demands that they be guided by the overwhelming contemporary imperative to do good. (2008: Peachpit Press; ISBN 9780321573209)
$26.99
Watch here for news of a possible upcoming Toronto panel-discussion featuring Mr. Beman. In the meantime, listen to the a pair of interviews with the author, the first is Author Talk with Peachpit Press publisher Nancy Aldrich-Ruenze, about the book itself:
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the second, about the democratization of design, is from CBC Radio’s All In A Day with Adrien Harewood:
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To purchase any of the products or titles mentioned here, please visit our downtown Toronto location, call us toll-free at 1-800-56-swipe or e-mail us at: info@swipe.com.
Posted in Advertising, Books on Communication Design, Canadian, Design Theory, Exhibits & Events, Friends & Links, Graphic Design, Graphic Design Ethics, Socially Responsible Graphic Design, Sustainable Graphic Design |
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009
With Doors Open Toronto 2009 just around the corner we here at Swipe and BUILT are more thankful than ever to be part of the extraordinary culture complex at 401 Richmond Street West. A prime destination during the festival, 401 is expecting several thousand visitors over the weekend of May 23rd and 24th. Accordingly, Swipe and Built will be open both days from 10 am to 6 pm.
In celebration of this celebration of our city’s cultural, social and architectural heritage, BUILT offers the following selection of recently published Torontoiana, beginning with a look at the history of local urban sprawl from one of the most sagacious figures in Toronto municipal affairs, ‘Mayor Blue Jeans’ himself, John Sewell.
The Shape of the Suburbs: Understanding Toronto’s Sprawl
✍ 2009: John Sewell
A meticulous and thoughtful account of how Toronto became ‘Greater’ Toronto, expanding on the author’s classic study The Shape of the City. When BUILT opened it’s doors for the first time last week a photo was needed for the 401 Richmond Street newsletter and it was (rightly) deemed unnewsletterworthy to simply shoot one of us behind the counter so, on the flimsy pretext of a book signing, former Mayor John Sewell was lured down to the shop where he graciously agreed to have his picture taken. After recounting a series of fascinating anecdotes, taken from the book, on the origin and purpose of Toronto’s expressway system, the economic and political history of infrastructure in the 905, and the unlikely connection between the QEW and Adolph Hitler, Mr Sewell was off on his bicycle and back to work (despite the fact that he has every right just to sit at home all day muttering “I told you so.” over and over). Hard to imagine that, back in the Seventies, riding a bike to Council meetings was an occasion for snide derision in the Toronto SUN and elsewhere. (2009: University of Toronto Press; ISBN 9780802095879)
$24.95
Toronto’s Visual Legacy: Official City Photography from 1856 to the Present
✍ 2009: Steve MacKinnon, Karen Teeple & Michelle Dale
This unexpectedly beautiful book, published in conjunction with the City of Toronto Archives to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the city’s incorporation, brings together a selection of official City of Toronto photographs chosen by City archivists from their collection of hundreds of thousands of images. Among our favourites, this 1913 scene at 21 Elizabeth Street with the perfect juxtaposition of poverty and power which, unfortunately, characterizes the area around City Hall to this day. (2009: Lorimer; ISBN 9781552774083)
$44.95
Art Deco Architecture in Toronto: A Guide to the City’s Buildings from the Roaring Twenties and the Depression
✍ 2009: Tim Morawetz
With a friendly and accessible writing sytle, Art Deco Architecture in Toronto combines the elegance and flair of a coffee-table book with the accurate, practical information and anecdotal background of a guidebook. This important new book will provide the lay-person, architectural historian or Art Deco aficionado with a meaning ful appreciation of this important architectural style as it manifested itself in Toronto.
Concrete Toronto: A Guidebook to Concrete Architecture from the Fifties to the Seventies
✍ 2007: Micheal McClelland & Graeme Stewart
Concrete Toronto acts as a guide to the city’s extensive inventory of significant concrete buldings and re-examines the unique value of the material and design idiom. Included are the insights of many of the original concrete architects along with a wealth of new and archival photos and drawings. (2007: Coach House Books; ISBN 1552451933)
Endangered Species
✍ 2007: John Martins-Manteiga, ed.
In partnership with The School of Design at George Brown College, Dominion Modern catalogues twenty-six formative examples of Canadian Modernist architecture threatened with demolition and seeks to engender a wider debate about the value of this aspect of Canadian design heritage. (2007: Dominion Modern; ISBN 9780968193327)
GreenTOpia: Towards a Sustainable Toronto
✍ 2007: Alana Wilcox, ed. with Christina Palassio & Jonny Dovercourt
In this third volume in the influential uTOpia series, green-minded Torontonians are invited to imagine a more environmentally responsible and humane city. Included is a directory with profiles of green organizations in the GTA, as well as a how-to guide and a fun-facts section. (2007: Coach House Books; ISBN 9781552451946)
Historical Atlas of Toronto
✍ 2008: Derek Hayes
In this new addition to the acclaimed series, geographer Hayes charts Toronto’s history with more than 200 period maps, providing a unique visual record of the city’s development. (2008: Douglas & Mcintyre Ltd; ISBN 9781553652908)
Inside Toronto: Urban Interiors 1880s to 1920s
✍ 2006: Sally Gibson
Recognized with a Heritage Toronto award in 2006, this lovely book combines 260 vintage images with extensive original research to document the rarely recorded places where Torontonians lived and worked at the turn of the last century. (2006: Cormorant Books; ISBN 189695195)
Mean City: From Architecture to Design: How Toronto Went Boom!
✍ 2007: John Martins-Manteiga
Mean City captures the spirit of an unparalleled boom period in Toronto architecture and industrial design when, from 1945 to 1975, young architects and designers attempted to defy convention in a most conventional city. The book also persuasively laments the indifference that has lead to the loss of so many great modernist buildings in Toronto. (2007: Key Porter Books; ISBN 1556239126)
TSA Guide Map: Toronto Architecture 1953-2003
✍ 2005: Toronto Society of Architects
This Guide Map is intended to encourage the public to explore modern architecture in the City of Toronto, cataloguing both well known buildings and those deserving of wider recognition. We are happy to report that he TSA is currently working on a new Guide Map on Open Spaces, which is scheduled to be completed later this year.
Unbuilt Toronto: A History of the City That Might Have Been
✍ 2008: Mark Osbaldeston
A tremendously engaging approach to the social history of architecture and urban planning, Unbuilt Toronto examines the aspirations of the city by looking at significant building projects that were never realized, from St. Alban’s Cathedral and Eaton’s magnificent College Street tower, to the Spadina Expressway and the Queen subway. The book inspired a very successful exhibition at the ROM last winter, which is currently being remounted at Urbanscape in the Junction. (2008: Dundurn Press; ISBN 1550028359)
Art Deco Architecture in Toronto: $39.95
Concrete Toronto: A Guide to Concrete Architecture from the 50s to the 70s: $29.95
Greentopia: Towards a Sustainable Toronto $24.95
Historical Atlas of Toronto: $49.95
Inside Toronto: Urban Interiors 1880s to 1920s: $59.95
Mean City: From Architecture to Design: How Toronto Went Boom!: $26.95
TSA Guide Map: Toronto Architecture 1953-2003: $7.95
Unbuilt Toronto: A History of the City That Might Have Been: $26.95
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To purchase any of the products or titles mentioned here, please visit our downtown Toronto location, call us toll-free at 1-800-56-swipe or e-mail us at: info@swipe.com.
Posted in Architecture, Architecture Links, Built Books on Architecture & I.D., Canadian, Exhibits & Events, Friends & Links, Urban Issues |
Thursday, May 14th, 2009
The rumours are true, Swipe has opened a second shop in a beautiful, high-profile suite on the ground floor of 401 Richmond Street West. BUILT, Books on Architecture is hoped, in the fullness of time, to fill the void left by the (really, really depressing) closure last year of the venerable Ballenford Books. For more than 30 years a succession of Susans served the community with a commitment and a level of expertise that we cannot hope to match, at least in the short term. In fact, so as not to make matters worse for our colleagues, Swipe avoided architecture as a subject area altogether for as long Ballenford was in business, with the result that we now feel embarrassingly ill-prepared and uninformed. So … um … help!
E-mail us and let us know what you need, want, or would just like to see at the new shop. Or drop by and see what’s here and what’s missing. We’re open Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm and we’ve even got windows! Please help us to make this your community bookstore.
Posted in Architecture, Architecture / Urbanism Magazines, Built Books on Architecture & I.D., Exhibits & Events, Industrial Design, Urban Issues |
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
Swipe is pleased to announce an exclusive and intimate event celebrating the launch of The Worst Hotel in the World: the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel Amsterdam. Heineken™ tallboys and stale pretzels all ’round.
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Meet Erik Kessels and ask the question on everyone’s mind: How the f@#% do you get a client like that anyway?
Space is very limited so here’s how it’s gonna have to work :
Entry will be by advance reservation only on a first come basis. Send an RSVP with your full name to info@swipe.com and we will reply with your personal ticket. You’ll absolutely need this ticket to get in the night of the event. And if you find that you are unable to come please send a quick e-mail so we can make space for someone else. OK, so now we can reveal the date:
Friday May 1st, 2009 from 7pm to 10pm at Swipe.
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UNFORTUNATELY, NO ONE WILL BE ADMITTED WITHOUT A TICKET AND WITHOUT HAVING REGISTERED IN ADVANCE. Our sincere apologies in advance to everyone who doesn’t find out soon enough to get a ticket – we’re just a small store with a big guest.
Think Small. We Try Harder. Absolut Whatever. And Now Even More Dogshit in the Main Entrance. KesselsKramer’s ongoing marketing campaign for Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam is genuinely epochal. So Millennial even the irony is ironic: the Worst Hotel in the World really is the worst hotel in the world. Erik Kessels and longtime Brinker manager Rob Penris share the sort of client / designer affinity that most designers wait in vain for their entire careers.
The Worst Hotel in the World: the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel Amsterdam
✍ 2009: Erik Kessels & KesselsKramer
Designed by KesselsKramer, this 280 page retrospective includes every advertisement and promotional item created for the hotel over some 15 years. Daring, confrontational, and occasionally just plain offensive – and spectacularly successful at connecting with a notoriously fickle target market. (2009: Booth Clibborn Editions; ISBN 9781861543110)
$45.95
Posted in Advertising, Books on Communication Design, Dutch Graphic Design, Exhibits & Events, Friends & Links, Graphic Design |
Monday, February 9th, 2009
Starting February 10th, Spacing Magazine will be displaying the winning entries to the urban design ideas competition ThinkTORONTO (a summary may be seen in the in the current issue of the magazine) in the Urbanspace Gallery directly adjacent to Swipe at 401 Richmond West. For those who haven’t seen the issue, Spacing invited Torontonians 35 years old or younger to submit creative ideas on how to improve the city’s public spaces. Even if you’ve studied the issue it’ll be worth a visit as the exhibit includes several entries that didn’t quite make it into the magazine.
Opening Reception:
When: Thursday, Feb. 12, 7-10pm
Where: Urban Space Gallery, 401 Richmond St. W. 1st floor
How Much: free
RSVP: Facebook listing
Personally, as a non-driver (Junction 40 bus to Dundas West station, subway to the Spadina streetcar and down – all with a two-year-old in tow), I loved the proposal for a smartphone driven social-network on the TTC . And I can’t think of a better place downtown for a public park than the parking lot at the corner of Queen and Soho. My first bookstore job (circa 1980) was at an antiquarian shop in the building that was torn down to create this open space in the first place. A couple of years later I was working for Marc Glassman at Pages who should be credited (along with 401 Richmond neighbour Martin Heath at CineCycle) with bringing outdoor cinema to Toronto, with shorts and features projected on the exterior wall of the rattan warehouse that later became the Bamboo (you cannot imagine what a feat it was to get away something like that in the era of the Ontario Censor Board). It’s a space resonant with history for me and for culture in this city. – David
And remember, always available at Swipe:
Spacing Subway Stations Buttons
✍2005: Spacing Magazine
If you love your ’hood, what better way to wear your heart on your sleeve than by wearing your station on your lapel.
Spacing Subway Stations Buttons, Singles: $2.00
Spacing Subway Stations Buttons Downtown Set: $15.00
Spacing Subway Stations Buttons Complete System Set: $48.00
Spacing Magazine
Celebrating its fifth year, Spacing Magazine is the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors ‘Magazine of the Year’, and is also possibly the best issues-oriented magazine ever published in Canada. 
Spacing Magazine Current Issue: $7.00
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To purchase any of the products or titles mentioned here, please visit our downtown Toronto location, call us toll-free at 1-800-56-swipe or e-mail us at: info@swipe.com.
Posted in Apparel, Architecture / Urbanism Magazines, Built Books on Architecture & I.D., Exhibits & Events, Friends & Links, Magazines, Products, Urban Issues |
