This year, as in many years past, the annual gala dinner to announce the winners of the Association of Registered Interior Designers of Ontario (ARIDO) Awards sold out weeks in advance, with 600 guests in the Toronto Hilton ballroom paying $200 a head. The event recognizes excellence, innovation and creativity in interior design.
The dinner was bookended fore and aft in the ballroom lobby, by a networking cocktail reception and a post-dinner party featuring a doughnut wall. (Doughnuts are a defining trait of our national character. Canadians are fiercely loyal to their home-grown Tim Hortons doughnut shops, foiling Krispy Kreme’s northern expansion).
Notably absent was the celebrity guest-of-honor speech. ARIDO’s grandees decided to axe this increasingly controversial segment after one gala-speech disaster too many. These included Craig Kielburger, the child’s-rights activist founder of Free the Children, who had addressed the august crowd as “decorators,” blissfully unaware that this is the most horrible insult one can hurl at an interior designer and the raunchy gay-bathhouse stream-of-unconsciousness rant by actor Scott Thompson.
As guests polished off their chicken à l’Orange, the final podium segment, by time-honored custom, was the charity exhortation to ARIDO members by Mahesh Babooram, manager, A&D Communities Canada, Interface; and Dayna Bradley, VP business development, Brigholme Interiors Group.
The dynamic duo urged guests to participate in the seventh annual Art by Designers (AxD), an art exhibition and charitable auction of original 10” x 10” works on canvas by interior designers. Proceeds from the Oct. 18 event will benefit Sketch, billed as “a non-profit community arts initiative that helps homeless and marginalized youth experience the transformative power of the arts.”
This year’s team of judges is comprosed of Donna Dolan, director of Interior Architecture, Kearns Mancini Architects; Laura Fyles, adjunct professor, Academy of Design Faculty at RCC Institute of Technology; Linda Makins, principal, Makinsachange Creative Environments; Neal Prabhu, co-director, nkArchitect; Maia Roffey, principal, Black Sheep Interior Design; and Dorothy Stern, professor, Algonquin College, Ottawa. (Designers and projects are located in or near Toronto unless otherwise noted.)
20 Awards of Merit and four Awards of Excellence were presented. In the second group were:
Google Phase 1, Waterloo, Ont., by Deanna Hayko and Anthony Orasi, partners at iN Studio (they worked on Google while at B+H Architect) and team members Douglas Birkenshaw, Pete Kitchen, Kristin Maxwell, Jenny Noh, Jackie Prawecki, Mike Taylor and David Zhou.
Mackage flagship retail store by Diego Burdi, partner, Burdifilek, with Sally Choi, Paul Filek, Yoonah Lee, Amir Maddah, Daisuke Matsuura, Jeremy Mendonca, Rene Ng, Jacky Ngan, Michael Del Priore, John Seo and Tannaz Torabi.
Parkside Student Residence by Bryan Chartier, director of Interior Design, Diamond Schmitt Architects, with Stephanie Huss, Aleksandra Janus, Donald Schmitt and Gary Watson.
And Ryerson University Student ServiceHub by Valerie Gow, partner at Gow Hastings Architects, with Allan Banina, Jim Burkitt and Remi Carreiro.
For photos of the winning teams see the photo gallery below. For a complete list of winning projects, design teams and project descriptions and images, please see: ARIDO winners.
David Lasker is president of David Lasker Communications in Toronto. He can be reached at david@davidlaskercommunications.com.