photoxels
Doors Open Toronto and Great Gulf
Present
Utilities
FREE Admission
Yonge + Rich
26 Lombard St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada (map)
416-499-8883
Days Open: May 24-Saturday: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, Last admittance: 5:00 pm;
May 25 – Sunday: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm, Last admittance: 5:00 pm.
Construction in Vicinity
As part of the 15th annual weekend celebration of architecture – Doors Open Toronto (FREE Admission) – photographer and landscape architect Michael Cook will exhibit “Utilities” for two days at Great Gulf’s Yonge + Rich Presentation Centre.
- Utilities is an exhibit of 10 photographs that were taken by Cook in tunnels, sewers, drains and waterways beneath the streets of Toronto – the “crucial infrastructure that is normally hidden from view.”
Life in cities relies on the provision of a host of public and private utility services, most of which are delivered through underground networks that we normally never have a chance to see. From water mains and wastewater sewers, through electricity distribution, heating and cooling, telephone and network communications and transit, there is an invisible architecture buried beneath city streets.
These photographs are a window into crucial infrastructure whose doors we are likely never to open, and to the human-scale spaces attached to services that we only ever think of in the abstract. Viewing the photographs, we all have a chance to imagine and think about the systems that make the city work.
Michael Cook
- Michael Cook’s documentation of underground infrastructure has been featured in the 2012 documentary Lost Rivers and several major publications including Maclean’s, Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.
- Interior photography is permitted, including tripod.
- Interior filming is permitted, including tripod.
