---
title: "In Toronto, public furniture starts with a pile of bricks"
locale: "en"
url: "https://irz.fr/en/articles/toronto-construction-leftovers-public-space-en"
markdown_url: "https://irz.fr/en/articles/toronto-construction-leftovers-public-space-en.md"
category: "craft"
tags: ["architecture", "reuse", "construction", "Toronto", "public space"]
published_at: "2026-08-23T16:24:00.000Z"
author: "Camille Morel"
translation: "https://irz.fr/fr/articles/toronto-stock-dechets-espace-public-fr.md"
---

# In Toronto, public furniture starts with a pile of bricks

On Ookwemin Minising, GXN and Ha/f did not design a pop-up first and order the materials later. They began with what Toronto already had available.

A pile of reclaimed bricks rarely announces itself as a design method. Most of the time it looks like a storage problem: a truck to schedule, a few pallets everyone hopes will not lose another corner, and a corner of the yard that suddenly has to become useful.

On Ookwemin Minising, Toronto's new island, the Waterfront Neighbourhood Space begins there anyway: bricks, blocks, timber, utility materials, milk crates and even Muskoka chairs already available in the city.[1](https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/turning-space-place-ookwemin-minisings-pop-community-space)[2](https://www.designboom.com/architecture/gxn-toronto-construction-leftovers-pop-up-public-space/) GXN and Ha/f Climate Design did not start with a perfect object and then search for a more sustainable version of its parts. They reversed the sequence.

First the inventory. Then the drawing.

The result is a temporary public space near Fire Hall 30, south of Commissioners Street, with shade, seating, event infrastructure and a simple job: give a piece of an emerging neighbourhood somewhere to gather.[1](https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/turning-space-place-ookwemin-minisings-pop-community-space) Waterfront Toronto describes it as a pop-up open through late fall 2026, developed with the City of Toronto, C40 Cities, GXN, Ha/f, AKT II and Arcana Materials.[1](https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/turning-space-place-ookwemin-minisings-pop-community-space)

The interesting part goes beyond the reclaimed material itself, because plenty of projects place a few leftovers inside a very clean rendering while keeping the old design sequence intact. Here, the stronger idea is that the available stock shaped part of the construction language.

## Before drawing

Waterfront Toronto states the reversal directly: instead of designing first and sourcing later, the GXN and Ha/f teams identified available materials, then assessed each item for its history and reuse potential.[1](https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/turning-space-place-ookwemin-minisings-pop-community-space) Designboom adds that the team studied dimensions, condition and provenance before deciding what those materials might become.[2](https://www.designboom.com/architecture/gxn-toronto-construction-leftovers-pop-up-public-space/)

That sentence changes the centre of gravity, moving architecture away from a product catalogue and toward a catalogue of opportunities.

An old brick arrives with more than patina: an actual size, defects, remaining mortar, partly known or unknown strength, and a colour that cannot be ordered twice. A concrete block from a recent job site carries a different imaginary from a salvaged timber piece, while manhole covers and utility elements bring another logic again: weight, circularity, robustness, but also constraints on use.

> **The method has three moves**
> - map the stock that actually exists: 1
> - test what its dimensions and condition allow: 2
> - design demountable assemblies around those constraints: 3
> IRZ synthesis from Waterfront Toronto and Designboom.

Ha/f presents itself as a studio working with designers, builders and policy makers to reduce emissions from the built environment, combining design thinking with technical knowledge.[5](https://halfclimatedesign.com/) That context matters, although the open sources stop short of proving the carbon performance of this pop-up. They publish no full life-cycle assessment for the Waterfront Neighbourhood Space, so the claim has to stay narrow: the project demonstrates a method for reuse and disassembly, not an audited carbon result.

## Stack, strap

The most useful construction detail is blunt: the elements are stacked and strapped.

Waterfront Toronto describes a “stacking and strapping” approach in which bricks and blocks become column bases, bench legs and other supports.[1](https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/turning-space-place-ookwemin-minisings-pop-community-space) Designboom adds that the bricks and blocks are tightened rather than mortared, while salvaged timber beams and columns are bolted so individual pieces can later come apart without being sacrificed.[2](https://www.designboom.com/architecture/gxn-toronto-construction-leftovers-pop-up-public-space/)

The detail is doing practical work. If the material is variable, the assembly has to accept that variability; mortaring old bricks into a new form can make sense in a building, but it can also turn reuse into a new end-of-life problem, whereas straps and bolts keep a door open: disassemble, sort, use again.

The pop-up then becomes one stop in a material circulation rather than a final destination.

That nuance matters because a lot of circular language stops at the first visible reuse: salvage, build, photograph, then leave the object itself to become the next complicated waste stream. Here, the stated ambition is different: the principal assemblies are meant to remain demountable so bricks, blocks and timber can re-enter circulation when the installation disappears.[1](https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/turning-space-place-ookwemin-minisings-pop-community-space)[2](https://www.designboom.com/architecture/gxn-toronto-construction-leftovers-pop-up-public-space/)

## Hidden limit

The project is modest. Construction reuse in Toronto remains a much larger problem; this pop-up shows a way to work at the scale of a temporary public space.

Arcana Materials helps explain why that modesty is honest. In a June 2026 reflection on salvaging bricks from the Danforth Baptist Church, the company says it received more than 200 tonnes of mixed brick and masonry rubble, spent more than 500 person-hours cleaning it, and ended with, among other outputs, 3,000 clinker bricks, 15,000 B-grade/tumbled bricks, 4,000 A-grade bricks, 1,800 concrete bricks and dozens of cubic yards of broken brick rubble.[3](https://www.arcanamaterials.co/stories/danforth-church-lessons-learned)

Arcana's conclusion resists the neat slogan. The company writes that the ideal version would involve deconstruction experts much earlier, with pre-evaluated material yields, planned dismantling, on-site cleaning and a destination already defined for the materials.[3](https://www.arcanamaterials.co/stories/danforth-church-lessons-learned) The real case was more compromised: mechanically demolished bricks, heavy handling, more waste volume than saleable product, and labour costs that mattered.[3](https://www.arcanamaterials.co/stories/danforth-church-lessons-learned)

That is where the Waterfront Neighbourhood Space becomes useful, because the pop-up says more than “look, saved materials”. It makes a deeper condition visible: reuse works better when it enters the project before the final design.

## City inventory

The site adds another layer. Ookwemin Minising is not neutral ground. The new island belongs to the larger Port Lands Flood Protection project and the staged opening of Biidaasige Park. Waterfront Toronto says the flood-protection work safeguards 174 hectares from extreme flooding and has enabled a new Don River mouth, wetlands, public spaces and future island neighbourhoods.[4](https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/torontos-largest-park-in-a-generation-just-got-bigger)

The pop-up is tiny against that infrastructure, which is also why it is legible. The big numbers around parks, housing and hectares explain the urban transformation; the strapped bricks explain how a construction culture could shift at a scale people can touch.

The criticism is obvious: a temporary pop-up does not yet prove that an apartment block, school or entire street can be designed the same way. The sources also do not give the total reused mass, comparative cost, build time or final recovery rate after dismantling. Those unknowns prevent it from becoming a complete demonstration.

But as a prototype it asks a useful question of architects and cities: what if the brief no longer began with “here is what we want to build”, but with “here is what we already have”?

The shift is small, almost unglamorous. It forces people to look at pallets, awkward dimensions, incomplete stock and materials that are not always beautiful. Good. That is where reuse stops being a texture added at the end and becomes a design constraint.

## References

1. [Waterfront Toronto, Turning Space into Place](https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/turning-space-place-ookwemin-minisings-pop-community-space)
2. [Designboom, GXN and Ha/f stack Toronto’s construction leftovers](https://www.designboom.com/architecture/gxn-toronto-construction-leftovers-pop-up-public-space/)
3. [Arcana Materials, lessons from salvaging Danforth Baptist Church bricks](https://www.arcanamaterials.co/stories/danforth-church-lessons-learned)
4. [Waterfront Toronto, Biidaasige Park opens 10 new acres](https://www.waterfrontoronto.ca/news/torontos-largest-park-in-a-generation-just-got-bigger)
5. [Ha/f Climate Design, studio presentation](https://halfclimatedesign.com/)