How to celebrate light?

The art of photography is about capturing light, yet over time light threatens photographs. This conundrum is at the heart of the Ryerson Image Arts Centre. Solving it inspired our design.

After the anonymous donation of the revered Black Star Collection, Toronto Metropolitan University had something special. The School of Image Arts knew they could elevate their program by adding gallery space appropriate to its new holdings.

At the time of the donation, the School was housed in a windowless yellow-brick warehouse that had never been designed to accommodate students and staff. Diamond Schmitt won an invited competition to create the purpose-built space for the School. Rather than tear down the existing building, which would be costly and environmentally unsustainable, we proposed opening it up and giving it new life.

We also suggested connecting the building to the street with glazed student space and re-cladding the rest of the building with laminated glass suffused with LED light. These panels’ illumination, the heart of the design, can be animated by artists or be crowd-sourced via digital app.

By inviting the public into photography’s darkroom, the building sheds light on the medium while protecting the collections.