Why writer Tabatha Southey and artist-architect Philip Beesley are smitten with Toronto
The place: C5 at the ROM. The people: writer Tabatha Southey and artist–architect Philip Beesley. The subject: why they’re smitten
Globe and Mail columnist Tabatha Southey is known for her quick wit, but her latest project was a slow burn. Ten years ago, her son Basil’s school asked parents to compose a valentine for their kids. Southey wrote a poem about the make-believe house she wanted to build for Basil, a burgeoning architecture fan. That poem is now a storybook, It Must Be As Tall As a Lighthouse, illustrated by starchitect Will Alsop and recently published by Parkdale’s new artisanal press The Book Bakery, which focuses on small print runs of beautiful, visually driven books. Think of it as the locavore movement for the lit set.) Artist and architect Philip Beesley is equally at home in the world of whimsy. An international figure in the trippy field of responsive architecture, he creates structures that change form, colour or shape depending on their environment. This month, he unleashes his hovering, undulating art installation, Sargasso, on the Brookfield Place atrium as part of the Luminato Festival. We brought the design-obsessed duo to one of the city’s most divisive architectural attractions, the ROM Crystal, sprang for lunch and listened in.
Sargasso
Philip Beesley
June 8 to 18
Brookfield Place
It Must Be As Tall As a Lighthouse
Tabatha Southey
On shelves May 1
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- “When I was little, I thought Toronto was quite ugly. All I saw was ordinary warehouses and three-storey buildings. On the surface, the city doesn’t really declare itself. But then you find jewels, like Kensington Market and its accretion of porches and sidewalk sales.”
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- “You have to train your eye. There’s an aesthetic adjustment if you’re coming back from somewhere like Paris. You have to look for the beauty, but it is here. I love Massey College and Will Alsop’s OCAD building.”
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- “I think that a lot of the great art and music in the next decade is going to come out of Brampton and Mississauga. I resented how the last municipal election was positioned as a war between the city and the inner suburbs. Think of Don Mills. Fifteen years ago, some of our great writing talents—Barbara Gowdy, Paul Quarrington—came out of Don Mills.”
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- “I think there are radically different agendas at work for the city and the suburbs. I like being grounded in a specific area. I don’t like this idea of lumping everything together—it’s incredibly bland.”
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- “When I travel, people are always saying that Toronto is an amazing urban laboratory. There’s such a sense of possibility here.”
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- “The people who live in Toronto now are more curious and more wedded to the city than the generation before. When I moved here from Guelph at 16, a lot of people wanted to leave. Now everyone wants to be a part of it. People are blogging and Twittering about every building on every corner.”
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 Artist and architect Philip Beesley is equally at home in the world of whimsy. An international figure in the trippy field of responsive architecture, he creates structures that change form, colour or shape depending on their environment. This month, he unleashes his hovering, undulating art installation, Sargasso, on the Brookfield Place atrium as part of the Luminato Festival. We brought the design-obsessed duo to one of the city’s most divisive architectural attractions, the ROM Crystal, sprang for lunch and listened in.
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ART
Sargasso
Philip Beesley
June 8 to 18
Brookfield Place
BOOKS
It Must Be As Tall As a Lighthouse
Tabatha Southey
On shelves May 1
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