MASON mason-studio.com
Last week in a chilly warehouse north of Woodbine Racetrack, some of our country’s brightest design minds were converting six bright-blue shipping containers into conceptual rooms. When the Interior Design Show (page 28) opens tonight (Thursday, January 26), they’ll be stacked high for an installation called How Do You Live, which comments on the seemingly never-ending condo boom in Toronto.
Stanley Sun and Ashley Rumsey of the Junction-based studio Mason might be the newbiest of the teams participating – they founded Mason less than a year ago, though both have considerable experience on big international projects with other firms and made a name for themselves locally with the Show Off exhibition of 20 designer works in 13 Dundas West storefronts in the fall – but that just makes their slick creation stand out more.
“We wanted to challenge what a kitchen and bathroom can be,” says Sun. “One is a completely private space, and the other is completely public.”
To make them work together, the duo broke down each area to its functional rather than social use. In the middle of the container, water flows from a pot filler faucet into a long oak trough before passing under a cooking platform and cascading into a garden. The phrase “Our Home and Native Land” glows in a neon light mounted on a back wall of charred pine boards.
“There is less delineation between cooking, dining, living and working spaces,” says Rumsey about the reality of living in a shoebox-sized apartment. “Our exhibit aims to challenge the way you can live within a space.”
