WIND GARDEN

Openwork shades for the facade of an affordable housing building by Saint Clare’s Multifaith Housing at 1120 Ossington, Toronto

February 2025

Wind Garden is a permanent architectural art installation at 1120 Ossington, an affordable housing development by Saint Clare’s Multifaith Housing.

It comprises a series of openwork screens which project from the building beside apartment windows to provide shade and privacy for tenants. The openwork pattern consists of a grid of about 1500 unique square cells. Each cell is created by layering transformations of geometric rudiments hand-drawn to resemble the growth patterns of indigenous and indigenized plants from the Great Lakes region - particularly maple, which is to feature in the building’s landscaping. Since each cell is unique, each one allows different amounts of sunlight to pass through. The cells are arranged in a local dégradé on each storey, from light at the bottom to dark at the top, to recall the canopy of an Ontario forest. They are also arranged in a global dégradé: the top storey of the building, most exposed to the sun for the longest part of each day, casts the densest shadow.

This pattern is designed to stretch across the entire face of the building as a grid and is made apparent in the areas where shades have been installed. It is also stretched and curved to recall wind blowing through a forest: present everywhere, and made apparent in the movement of the trees. The curvature of each panel flows into the next and is obvious from certain sidewalk vantages.

Wind Garden is the third architectural installation I have made for Saint Clare’s in this style. The first two function as historical calendars. The first, Saint Clare’s Garden, comprises 1000 unique cells cut from steel and presented as a fence. Each cell is parameterized by the density of its foliage pattern and an additional motif of cedar buds and chamomile flowers. They are arranged in rows according to these parameters to describe 1000 days of Toronto’s weather with markers for the first days of months and seasons. Specifically, they describe the weather of Toronto during the span of time that the building was being built. In doing so, they attempt to describe the experience of having lived exposed for a period in such a way as to now provide privacy and security. Further, they suture Torontonians’ shared experience of the natural landscape into the built landscape. This is done in a quiet manner: a fence is easy to ignore. My artwork comes to life in the moment when it’s been noticed, forgotten, and noticed again 1000 days later when you pass by it on your way to your daily chores. It is meant to become part of the landscape: unobtrusive, but always receptive and rewarding to the attention of daily passersby.

Wind Garden uses a similar motif to achieve a different experience. Whereas Saint Clare’s Garden (and its successor Sun Garden) describes specific spans of time in subtle cues, Wind Garden is sensitive to the daily passage of the sun and clearly articulates that sensitivity in the language of the forest canopy and wind every sunny morning. At sunrise each day, the shadows and reflections of each openwork shade begin to traverse the building. Close to noon, the shades fall under one another’s shadows before the sun is occluded by the building and the artwork rests until the next daybreak. This is beautiful and dramatic from the street, but the shadows are also cast through the windows into the apartments. I grew up in the forested Ontario countryside and can think of few more welcome intrusions of the woods into my home than the morning shadows of budding branches cast on my bedroom wall in the Spring. If this is a good experience for the tenants when they start their days, then the work is successful.

In affordable housing there always seems to be a shortage of money, time, and attention. This building took a great deal of care to be built. But because of those shortages, the evidence of that care can be washed out of the result. The role of my artwork in this context is to preserve the evidence of care. It has to indicate to the people living here that, at some point, the building team got together and did their best to protect their intentions of providing a safe, beautiful, welcoming, special home in the chapters of life when such a home is most needed and least available.

As an artist, it is difficult to find straightforward ways to be of service. A major throughline of the conversation around public art in Canada is that it builds community. It can, but I tend to have the contrary perspective that investing in a garden or barbeque builds more community faster. And, while Saint Clare’s is appreciated for supporting local artists, as one of those artists I am more grateful for the opportunity to make work oriented towards supporting others. So what are we up to here? In creating Wind Garden, I am trying to provide private moments for individual tenants and neighbours. By presenting such a painstakingly detailed kind of work in way that reduces its detail to a homogeneous surface, and which is most striking when through shadow, silhouette, and reflection it receives a projection of its environment rather than standing in relief against it, I am trying to cultivate the context for a simple thought which I believe is especially rare and precious in the built landscape: “The closer I look at this, the better I see it is; the more attention I share with it, the more I see the care that someone else is sharing with me.” And perhaps that demonstration, that the people who built the building want the tenants to predictably have nice moments in their mornings, unique only to them, can be a small part of a strong foundation for a community of neighbours after all.

Made for the tenants of Saint Clare’s Multifaith Housing.

Fabrication by Sixpenny Architectural.

Installation by SM Cladding and GTA Cladding. Digital design assistance by Zoë Ëoz (troubleshooting) and Benjamin Fridman (Python scripting). This work is a continuation of an earlier collaboration with artist Margaux Smith, Saint Clare’s Garden.

Building concept by Mo Anvari (St Clare’s). Architecture and design by Smart Density, Assembly Corp, and mcCallumSather. Construction by Assembly Corp and Loftin. Photos by Arthur Mola Photography, Cammie Mulligan (Assembly Corp), myself & others.