Bentway Staging Grounds

Bentway Staging Grounds is a site of active, environmental learning that continues The Bentway’s creative work along the Gardiner Expressway. Opening September 2023, visitors are invited into a living laboratory for urban ecology, with experimental gardens that use rainwater run-off from the highway above to support the growth of flowering plant species.

Bentway Staging Grounds is a temporary installation that unlocks an expanded public realm and programming opportunity for the CityPlace / Fort York neighbourhood. Transforming a vacant space below the Gardiner Expressway into a living laboratory, the project responds to the dynamic conditions of the site and educates visitors about urban ecology and stormwater management.

Designed by Agency—Agency (New York City) and SHEEEP (Toronto), with engineering by Buro Happold, graphic design by Neil Donnelly Studio, and horticultural consulting by Brother Nature, Bentway Staging Grounds collects and leverages runoff water from the highway above to irrigate oversized planters in the space below. These planters support the growth of diverse, flowering native plant species such as Milkweed, Agastache and Yarrow, while passive water filtration and retention helps to reduce the risk of local flooding.

Located at the intersection of Dan Leckie Way and Lake Shore Boulevard, the design for Bentway Staging Grounds introduces a network of ramps and elevated walkways that allow visitors to travel deep into the space as an extension of Canoe Landing Park to the north. These new pathways continue The Bentway’s ongoing efforts to transform the Expressway into a better connector for pedestrians and cyclists, celebrating their procession to surrounding waterfront parks and trail systems. Bentway Staging Grounds is a new type of public infrastructure that blends art and education, public space and experimentation, repositioning the Gardiner as a site of environmental regeneration.

Bentway Staging Grounds is an interim intervention that will remain in place until the City of Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway Rehabilitation work commences in the area (currently scheduled for late 2025).

before

after

press highlights

“How Toronto transformed a highway underpass into a vibrant public space” (Fast Company – Adele Peters)

“Infrastructure Ecology: Staging Grounds Extends The Bentway” (AZURE – Stefan Novakovic)

“Make it drain: Repurposing infrastructure as an educational garden” (The Architects’ Newspaper – Kristine Klein)

“In Toronto, highway infrastructure turns into urban ecology laboratory” (DOMUS Magazine, Italy – Romina Totaro)

awards

Bentway Staging Grounds won a Best of Design Award in the Urban Fragments Temporary Installation category of the 2024 National Urban Design Awards.

“An experiment in urban environmental change, ecology and runoff, this underutilized space has been recaptured into an expression of innovation and urban design. It is an excellent example of a cyclist and pedestrian space from a “leftover” part of a city and responds perfectly to the idea that good urban design projects must tackle abandoned spaces.” – Jury Comment

accompanying art program

Over the project’s two-year duration, The Bentway will commission artists to present original, rotating artworks on a series of scaffolding towers set to line the site facing Lake Shore Boulevard.

The inaugural commission in 2023 was by local artist Logan MacDonald. Fountain Monumental was a series of 20-foot-tall images that re-imagined the original shoreline of Lake Ontario, which traced the same path as the Gardiner Expressway today. Through his work, MacDonald challenged the notion of historical accuracy and authorship by creatively collaborating with digital tools to produce these arresting images. He presented a revisionist history and a speculative, fantastical present and future.

On the occasion of Nuit Blanche 2024, The Bentway renewed the scaffolding towers with a new work by Andrea Heimer that explores urban loneliness and the actions we can take as a city to move closer to one another. As a mirror to the community in which it is housed, The Space of Belonging underscores a common desire for cohesion in an increasingly divisive world and highlights the importance of public space as a platform for social connection. The Space of Belonging is on view at Staging Grounds now.

listening experience

Understories: A Staging Grounds Listening Experience is a series of short audio works that invite you to engage with the features and functions of Staging Grounds like never before through a mix of meditative, musical backdrops, onsite field recordings, foraged sound effects, and storytelling from Ojibwe and Black Canadian farmer, landscape horticulturist, and Staging Grounds collaborator, Isaac Crosby (Brother Nature). This three-part audio series deepens our awareness of the urban environment and offers a moment of pause and reflection in a fast-paced city.

location

Contextual map showing Bentway Staging Grounds, in relation to Bentway sites and concurrent projects along the Gardiner.

Design Teams

Agency—Agency: Tei Carpenter, Jake Rosenwald and Tanya Maneeintr

SHEEEP: Reza Nik, Connor Stevens, Sam Shahsavani

Special thanks to the City of Toronto.

collaborators

Agency—Agency

Agency—Agency is a New York City based architectural design studio led by Tei Carpenter. The studio’s work focuses on cultural and public projects of various scales, including environments, infrastructure, buildings, and exhibitions. It has been featured in publications such as Domus and PIN-UP and was honored with the 2018 AIA New Practices award and the […]

SHEEEP

SHEEEP is a Toronto-based experimental studio working within community, education, activism, culture and architecture, exploring the boundaries and possibilities of these intersecting disciplines. It is directed by Reza Nik, an artist, a licensed architect and an Assistant Professor in the Teaching Stream at the Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto.