DATE | 18 June - 12 September

LOCATION | Harbourfront Centre, 235 Queens Quay West, Toronto

INFORMATION | http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/visualarts/architecture_summer10.cfm

DESCRIPTION | Brook McIlroy, alongside 548796 (Winnipeg) and Vlan Paysages (Montreal) with Atelier in Situ (Montreal) and visual artists T&T (Vancouver), exhibit a conceptual plan for transforming a magnificent post-industrial structure into a revitalized wildlife and urban waterfront sanctuary. Architecture at the Harbourfront’s Summer 2010 exhibit, Redux Park, provides novel perspectives on repurposing our cities’ unused industrial infrastructure within the greater fabric of an urban landscape.Brook McIlroy’s THUNDER BAY IOD responds to the City of Thunder Bay’s recently initiated project of converting its industrial waterfront into public trails, parks and villages. This era of transformation - predicated on embracing the waterfront as an amenity - has also seen the removal of some of its heroic industrial legacy embodied in the massive structures that line the shores of Lake Superior.

The Iron Ore Dock (IOD) designed by C.D. Howe and built in 1944, still stands today overlooking Thunder Bay’s landmark, the ‘Sleeping Giant’. Engaging these remaining heroic-historic structures as permanent elements in a waterfront park network offers a remarkable opportunity for a reinvigorated community identity.

Embedded in a ‘working’ waterfront – THUNDER BAY IOD fuses dichotomous elements into a new composite of mega structure, meadows, wetland, theatre, forest, acrobatic school, fish habitat, music hall, bird nesting, outdoor cinema, phyto-remediation lab, water park, zip line course and northern spirit sanctuary.

THUNDER BAY IOD invites visitors to experience this re-imagined waterfront park through sound, photography, video and light. Nodding to the structure’s overwhelming and magnificent size, the exhibit’s photographic montage is secured upon an overarching curved construction with a linear water garden following its base, illustrating both what exists now and what could exist.