Gardiner Gateways

Gardiner Gateways is a creative lighting project that transforms busy intersections into safer, pedestrian-friendly connections. This urban design and wayfinding strategy improves visibility, navigation, and placemaking beneath Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway, shaping a brighter future for pedestrian-first public spaces. 

Gardiner Gateways is an innovative public realm strategy that transforms key intersections beneath the Gardiner Expressway into north-south gateways. Through column-mounted lighting fixtures, large-scale painted surfaces, and integrated wayfinding elements, the project reimagines these underpasses as welcoming, legible, and connected parts of the public realm.  

Designed in collaboration with Light Bureau (Norway), an internationally recognized lighting design studio known for its work across complex civic and infrastructure environments, Gardiner Gateways transforms high-traffic urban spaces in Toronto into experiential public destinations. Responding to the unique conditions of the Gardiner’s understory, the project explores how creative public lighting can strengthen identity, improve navigation, and cultivate a stronger sense of place between the waterfront, CityPlace, and Fort York neighbourhoods. 

Currently installed at Dan Leckie Way (bents 111 and 112) and Bathurst Street (bents 102 and 103), the project introduces a scalable model for future improvements beneath the Gardiner, advancing the recommendations of the Under Gardiner Public Realm Plan while demonstrating the potential for design-led interventions to improve visibility, safety, and connectivity in dense urban environments. 

Gardiner Gateways is an exciting piece of The Bentway’s ongoing project of transforming the Gardiner Expressway into a connected civic corridor that supports movement, discovery, and public life. Learnings from these sites will help inform a cohesive long-term lighting strategy that will extend from Dufferin Street to the Don Valley Parkway.