The Lifecycle of Objects

DesignTO is a registered charitable arts organization that believes design can create a sustainable, just, and joyful world. From January 23 – February 1, 2026, the DesignTO Festival features 100+ free events across Toronto, showcasing hundreds of artists and designers. Known as Canada’s largest annual design festival, DesignTO has welcomed over 1 million attendees, reached 2.6 billion people through media, supported 7+ creatives, and generated $120 million in tourism impact.“DesignTO isn’t just a festival; it’s an anti-loneliness machine,” co-founder Christina Zeidler remarked, underscoring the organization’s power to foster belonging and spark vital conversations about design’s role in shaping a better world.

DesignTO

‘The Lifecycle of Objects’ is a two-part event consisting of a relaxed exchange on the ways in which objects experience cycles of change.

Trinity Community Recreation Centre

2023 DesignTO Festival

These are just some of the 100+ events happening in Toronto and online as part of the 13th annual DesignTO Festival, January 20-29, 2023. To see the full Festival schedule, visit https://designto.org/2023-festival-schedule/

‘The Lifecycle of Objects’ is a two-part event consisting of a relaxed exchange between artists and designers on the ways in which designed objects, like humans, experience the cycles of living and change.The conversation between Angela Cho, Hilary Arellano and Marceline Siu will delve into how each artist explores the idea of a lifecycle whether in a literal or implied manner with their projects. How do transformative processes like repair and upcycling create new cultural meaning and connections between us and the objects we use?For the second part of the event, guests are invited to bring personal objects whose purpose/presence they feel are ready for a change. Thinking together, the group will consider how things can take on a new purpose or function. After the event, guests are invited to explore the 10 window installations and exhibitions happening in the neighbourhood. Maps provided by the Trinity Bellwoods BIA.

Organized by DesignTO and supported by the Trinity Bellwoods BIA.DesignTO brings people together to design a better future, one that is more sustainable, just, and joyful. We curate exhibitions, presentations and educational programming to increase the public’s knowledge and appreciation of design, and hope to embolden all Canadians to participate in making a future where people and planet are thriving again.<h3>Speakers</h3>Hilary Joyce Arellano is a self-taught ceramist and deep ecologist dedicated to sharing clay magic as a powerful tool for collective dreaming. Based out of Toronto, Hilary hosts workshops that exercise clay’s freeform flow and ritualistic repose. Her work embodies open expression, grounded in themes surrounding movement, internal conflict, and enchantment. Reimagining earth materials as a medium for recreational therapy is fundamental to her practice and service to the community. Angela Cho is a designer, ceramicist, and educator. Her research is driven by a preoccupation with the ethics and ironies of preservation efforts in architecture, which she investigates through casting processes, predominately in plaster. In her ceramic work, her pieces tend to evoke bodies—human bodies, plant bodies—without crossing into being representational. Across all disciplines, her interest is in material itself and in letting her work bear figural and textural signs of manual process and manual thinking. She holds her Master of Architecture from the University of Toronto, and a Bachelor of Interior Design from Toronto Metropolitan University, and now teaches at both universities.Marcelline Siu is an architecture student and multimedia artist. Her initial explorations into art began immaterially – in digital artwork – and gradually evolved to incorporate physicality, scale and material studies. With a background in environmental design, she looks for opportunities to create works that synthesize space and art together. Her work is interested in excavating embodied meanings within different material explorations.

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The Lifecycle of Objects

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The Lifecycle of Objects

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