Come one, come all

Sometimes, when we close an issue, we can’t help but think, “What next?” It has been 18 years, after all, since this local magazine came to be. And after 18 years of publishing projects by Gta-only architects and designers, you’d think we’d have seen it all. It’s simply not the case. New-to-us studios pop up all the time, surprising us with their ingenuity, while stalwart firms restore our wonder again and again as they shake up the standards.

This issue, our redesigned Best New Builds edition, is no exception. How could I have guessed that we’d be covering a Connecticut-style modern, straight out of the ’40s, in cookie-cutter Burlington? Yet newbie Ben Homes came calling. Nor would I have bet that Etobicoke could be home to a hyper-contemporary faceted residence – but here we are publishing just that, by burgeoning Phaedrus Studio. And who knew that a Liberty Village warehouse was where Studio Paolo Ferrari – a six-person team fashioning extraordinary interiors in faraway places – hung its shingle?

And that’s not to say that the veterans didn’t astound us, too. Back in the book is Hariri Pontarini, Post Architecture and Solid Creative, who all came through with incredible condo, bathroom and restaurant designs. This mix of work from the established and the blossoming is exactly what we hope to celebrate with our second Designer of the Year competition. We hope to see such commingling again, and encourage all studios to submit entries by August 30th to designlinesmagazine.com/call-for-submissions. We wish all who participate the very best of luck.