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2024 DesignTO Awards

The DesignTO Awards recognize design excellence.

We are pleased to announce the 12th annual DesignTO Awards, supported by KPMB, for the 2024 Festival.

The DesignTO Awards recognize design excellence at the DesignTO Festival, Canada’s leading and largest annual design festival that celebrates design as a multidisciplinary form of creative thinking and making. Supported by KPMB, the DesignTO Awards celebrates the talent, expression, and diversity of designers from Toronto and abroad.

 

Founders’ Award

This award recognizes the jury’s selection for the project that best aligns with DesignTO's purpose to bring people together to design a better future. Prize sponsored by the DesignTO Festival Founders.
TAS, Giaimo Architects, Ouroboros Deconstruction, Ha/f Climate Design, and Haley Anderson Consulting

Emerging Artist/Designer Award

This award recognizes the jury’s selection for the best work by an emerging artist/designer across the festival.
The Bittersweet Memory of the Plantation
Yassine Ben Abdallah

Best Product/Object Design Award

This award recognizes the best in custom work and limited-edition collections including furniture, lighting, glass, ceramics, textiles and surface design. Prize sponsored by IDS Toronto.
Ephemeral Embraces: Milkweed Fibres from Land to Body
Safaa Alnabelseya

Best in Festival Awards

These awards recognize the jury’s selections for the best exhibition, window installation, and event across the festival.
Best in Festival
Window Installation
The Goodman Studio with Brad Turner
Best in Festival
Exhibition
Best in Festival
Event

People's Choice Awards

These awards are determined by public vote.
People's Choice Awards
Favourite Event
Elizabeth Lane and Milena Tasic
People's Choice Awards
Favourite Exhibition
DesignTO and Umbra, with work by Annaka Hoelk, Atelier Fomenta, Hsiao-Chien Hung, Lara Knutson Studio, Jordi Lopez Aguilo, Mark Malecki, NONUMENT, Polymetis, Stephanie Singh, and Kenyon Yeh
People's Choice Awards
Favourite Window Installation

Juror's Choice Awards

These awards are given by individual jurors for their favourites in any category, including events, exhibitions, window installations, and individual works in the Festival.

Selected by Alexandra ‘Alita’ Gonzalez-Vučina

The Case at Harbourfront
elsewhere Collective
Talie Shalmon

Selected by Kendra Jackson

Lanterns: The Journey of Guiding Light
Maria Shanina
Yi Zhou and Carlos Portillo, commissioned by The Bentway
Variations on an Elegy (For a Wasteland)
Cole Swanson

Selected by Martin Gomes

Mjolk Wall Light
Thom Fougere
Part of Mjolk
Cate McGuire
Vessels + Sticks and Ashley Botten Design

Selected by Myriam Tawadros

Adrienna Matzeg and Betty Wood, with work by Adrienna Matzeg, Aliyah Salmon, Baylee Schmitt, Betty Wood, Claudia Gutierrez, Elycia SFA, Laura Carwardine, and Yaw Tony
Rebecca Sun Collins, Sarah Yao-Rishea, Elizabeth Lenny, Julian Gregory, Eric Kirwin, Jiacheng Huang, PRPS (Reggy St-Surin, Paul Pointet), Darius Laprise, Laurent Lavoie, Marc-Olivier Desjardins, Laurence Boire and Marion Paquette, and Étienne Vernier

Selected by Renée Powell-Hines

Marney McDiarmid
Revisiting Sycorax
Charmaine Lurch
What is grief if not love persisting?
Kimberly Hoang

Selected by Quan Thai

Clothes Ladder
Maxwell Perry
DESIGNwith, in collaboration with the Regent Park Sewing Studio

How the Awards work

An annual jury of designers and industry experts vote for the Founders’ Award, Emerging Artist/Designer Award, Best Product/Object Design Award, three Best in Festival award categories and for three Juror’s Choice awards each, while the public votes for three People’s Choice awards.

Awardees are recognized and celebrated through DesignTO’s extensive network.

Eligibility Criteria

Jurors can consider any Festival project for an award.

A selection of exhibitions and installations are visited by the jurors in person during the Festival. Then the jurors reconvene for a jurying session after the Awards application closes.

Awards Jury

Design experts and one former awardee are invited each year to participate in jurying the Awards program.

Jurors: Alexandra ‘Alita’ Gonzalez-Vučina (principal and creative lead, AxD), Kendra Jackson (Deputy Editor, Azure Magazine), Martin Gomes (writer and composer; 2023 Award winner), Myriam Tawadros (Senior Associate, KPMB Architects), Renée Powell-Hines (executive member, BAIDA), and Quan Thai (Associate, SvN Architects + Planners; founder, Never Only Architecture).