Skip to Main Content
Advertisement

Fall In Love With Toronto’s Newest Green Space

Advertisement

Set the date! The grand opening of Love Park takes place June 23

After much anticipation, Love Park is officially open to the public this Friday June 23! This Waterfront Toronto project broke ground in July 2021 as part of the organization’s efforts to revitalize the city’s Harbourfront and increase green spaces in a downtown dominated by skyscrapers. Designed by CCxA (formerly Claude Cormier et Associés) in collaboration with Gh3 and Arup, the park’s instantly iconic heart-shaped pond and lush, surrounding grounds replacing the Gardiner Expressway’s offramp at York Street and Queens Quay West.

Love Park

Love Park, CCxA, Image courtesy of Waterfront Toronto.

This two-acre park is designed as a meeting ground and communal space, featuring 12 café-style tables, 51 moveable chairs, nine bronze-casted animal sculptures of native-Canadian species, a 255-square-metre, off-leash dog park and, of course, the main muse of the park: the heart-shaped pond framed in hand-laid Mexican Smalti mosaic tile fabricated by Mosaika.

Love Park tiles Toronto green space

Love Park, CCxA, Image courtesy of Industryous Photography.

The pavilion, designed by Gh3, was among the features that earned the park a winning title at the 2018 international design competition held by Waterfront Toronto and the City of Toronto Parks. Originally created to visually represent the transition between urbanism and nature with its stainless-steel structure, mirrored finish, and bold crimson interiors, its final form sees a metal trellis with abstract interloping rods covered in flowering wisteria, creating a beautiful juxtaposition of the industrial landscape and natural elements. Underneath, the foundation integrates a soil system that supports the growth of large vines.

Love Park Toronto Canada

Rendering of Love Park, CCxA, Image courtesy of Waterfront Toronto via gh3.

Beauty is not the only thing that Love Park offers, but also environmental support and safety; its design retains and filtrates 90% of all rainfall on the site, which is used by the park’s trees or returned to the groundwater table.

Love Park, Toronto Trees

Love Park, CCxA, Image courtesy of Waterfront Toronto.

Alongside its architectural features, Love Park is now home to 38 new trees, including ginkgoes, dawn redwoods, lindens, Dutch Elms, American elms, tulip trees, London plane trees, weeping willows, and silver maples. Among this collection, a mature Northern Catalpa tree stands out in the centre of the pond, surrounded by water.

The surrounding pathways were designed for short and long-term flexibility, creating space for pop-up markets and event staging, along with a new sidewalk along York Street to ease the Financial District’s bustling traffic. Beyond all the noteworthy adornments, Love Park gives visitors great vantage points of Queens Quay Terminal Clock tower – and a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Advertisement
Advertisement

The Bentway’s playful installation of 50 trees in shopping carts shines a light on climate resilience and green equity

In a city grappling with rising temperatures, accelerated development and increasing inequity in green space accessibility, Moving Forest arrives not as a solution, but as an invitation to rethink our relationship with nature. Designed by NL Architects as a part of The Bentway’s Sun/Shade exhibition, this outlandish yet purposeful installation transforms a fleet of 50 shopping carts into mobile vessels for native trees—red maples, silver maples, sugar maples and autumn blaze—that roll through some of Toronto’s most sun-scorched plazas, creating impromptu oases of shade and community.

Advertisement

Newsletter

Your Weekly Dose of Modern Design

Sign up for the Designlines weekly newsletter to keep up with the latest design news, trends and inspiring projects from across Toronto. Join our community and never miss a beat!

Please fill out your email address.

The Magazine

Get the Latest Issue

From a sprawling family home in Oakville to a coastal-inspired retreat north of the city, we present spaces created by architects and interior designers that redefine the contemporary.

Designlines 2024 Issue