Plastic Ornaments, 2019
Design TO

Studio Rat was commissioned to design and fabricate an pneumatic installation for DesignTO’s 2019 Opening Night event at St. Lawrence Hall. The project consisted of a series of playful inflatables at varying scales which plasticized the venue as a site-specific response to St. Lawrence Hall’s soaring bubblegum pink finishes and superfluous ornamentation.

Photography by Curtiss Randolph.

Special thanks to Deborah Wang & Jeremy Vandermeij for support with this project, and Jacqueline Hampshire for install assistance.

St. Lawrence Hall,
Toronto, ON.

Constructed in 1850, the St. Lawrence Hall is one of Canada’s  first social public establishments and a cornerstone of Renaissance Revival architecture within Toronto. The interior of the hall stretches 30’ high and 90’ long, which allowed us to design larger than life inflatables that defined new malleable interior conditions within the greater space. We designed and built a sculptural garden of interlocking inflatables archways and ellipses that filled the room with a dreamy organicism and carved out unique moments of negative space for guests to experience. A spectrum of warm colours were projected onto the translucent plastic shapes and the surrounding interior, resulting in a dreamlike experience. 

Made with pink polyethylene plastic sheeting, tape, MDF, air. Various sizes.



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