Client: Waterfront Toronto
Location: Toronto, ON, Canada
Completion date: 2011
Artwork budget: $1,500,000
Project Team
Artist
Jill Anholt
Jill Anholt Studio
Landscape Architect
Jennifer Nagai
PFS Studio
Landscape Architect
Greg Smallenberg
PFS Studio
Overview
Light Showers is a site specific, integrated artwork completed by Jill Anholt in collaboration with the landscape architecture firm, PFS Studio. Sherbourne Park is part of the larger redevelopment process of Toronto’s waterfront. Light Showers is highly visible from Lake Ontario, the Gardener Expressway and other points distant to the site. The work animates the park while acting as a marker in Toronto and a symbolic gateway for the City’s newly envisioned waterfront.
Goals
The overall park is a poetic expression of water purification. The artworks created for the park specifically celebrate and make visible the process of water's transformation as it is collected, cleaned and then lifted upwards into the air before releasing to fall as interactive veils of textured light and patterns that are carried out into Lake Ontario. The artwork and the park physically and metaphorically connect Toronto to its waterfront.
Process
Light Showers evolved out of a creative collaboration with the landscape architects. The work explores the relationship between nature and infrastructure; environmental sustainability played a generative role in the conceptual development, form and material expression of the work.
Additional Information
Awards: American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Professional Awards / Honor Award [2013] Toronto Urban Design Awards: Award of Merit [2013] RAIC National Urban Design Award/Special Jury Award (Sustainable Development) [2012] CSLA National Honour Award for Design [2012] Design Exchange Gold for Landscape Architecture [2011]