Post by hulia-j

MOVE: Transportation Expo at the Brick Works in Toronto, Canada.

MOVE is a multi-media, multi-facetted exhibition that explores the past, present, and future of urban transportation in Toronto, and around the world. The expo is the result of a collaboration between Evergreen and the Institute without Boundaries (IwB).

The actual exhibition is located in the Kilns Building at the Brick Works — the former brick factory which supplied bricks to a large part of the city up until as late as the 1980s. After sitting vacant for years, Evergreen, a Canadian non-profit dedicated to greening cities, transformed the site into an urban oasis and environmentally focused cultural centre.

The exhibit is set amongst the old brick making kilns at the Brick Works.

There are five central themes to the exhibit — Energy, Land Use, Infrastructure, Health, and Environment. These concepts are seen through the elaborate presentation, which includes video and media screens, a timeline of transportation in Canada, a chronological mobile of the history of transportation throughout the world, and a collection of antique bicycles and other vintage vessels.

A large part of the material at the exhibit originated from a massive design charrette that took place in Fall 2011 at the Institute without Boundaries at George Brown College. The IwB led this three day event which included over 100 mobility experts from industry, government, and academia, including CUP’s very own Nick and Julia.

During the charrette, ten interdisciplinary teams each explored a specific mobility challenge from the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA). The focus was on creating sustainable and realistic solutions. Professionals from industry and academia met with each team throughout the weekend. In the end, teams combined universal concepts with new innovations, and presented their ideas. These ideas and solutions were then fine-tuned, polished, and professionally produced by a team at the IwB. The end results are impressive and include a series of slick panels, videos, renderings, and even life-size future car model.

Another part of the exhibit is the large, 15 foot, 2(and a half)D mobile/sculpture located at the entrance. Julia worked with a team at the IwB to design, fabricate, coordinate, and ultimately string together the entire piece. The design features 100 transportation modes throughout history, from the dugout canoe and the pack animals (from 8000 BC and 5000 BC, respectively) through to the electric sports cars we see today. The lattice is arranged chronologically across and vertically by land, sea, and air. When viewing from left to right there are several definite trends — basic to high tech, water & land based transportation to air & land, and the speed of innovation (slow development to rapid.)

Of course not every technology could be included, but if you look closely there is an early gondola, a modern day urban gondola, and even a hanging monorail (Wuppertal Schwebebahn.)

The exhibition will be at the Brickworks until October 28, 2012. If you’re in Toronto, I recommend that you check it out!

For more information: ebw.evergreen.ca/move

There will also be INNOVATION TALKS every Tuesday through October 9. Learn more and register here.

Photos courtesy of the IwB.