My Time to Shine

My Time to Shine, Toronto

Giaimo, Toronto Photography: Giaimo

Once a year, artists and designers are invited to transform rooms in The Gladstone Hotel into experimental canvases as part of the popular Come Up to My Room exhibit, itself a crowd-pleasing pillar of the city-wide DesignTO Festival. The output is eclectic, with creators tapping into a diverse spectrum of influences, but at this year’s event, Giaimo didn’t have to look far for inspiration: the building itself became their muse. As Toronto’s oldest continually operating hotel with a history stretching back nearly 130 years, The Gladstone carries a rich architecture accented with delightful ornamental embellishments that the designers wanted to highlight. The process began by studying and documenting the building’s details, then reimagining and configuring them on large printed acetate sheets which were framed on wall surfaces and the floor, and then illuminated by a captivating interplay of light and shadow textures that animated the room.