Located in the heart of Toronto’s emerging Queen Street West arts district, Camera—a multi-purpose space combining a comfortable lounge and café-bar, with an innovative, 51-seat, digital screening room, is part of a larger project housing two related spaces: Mongrel Media Inc. and the Stephen Bulger Gallery. Housed in a turn-of-the-century building, the former hardware store was gutted and restored to combine original features with new elements. These elements are complimented by contemporary interventions including a lead-coated copper canopy, oak and limestone flooring, teak and oak windows. Two spaces occupy the ground floor: Camera to the west and the Stephen Bulger Gallery of photography to the east. Mongrel Media’s film distribution offices are on the second floor.
Synergies between the three occupants are supported architecturally. A sense of unity, playful symmetry, and consistent materials and colour run between all of the spaces. The ground floor frontage is a sliding wall of glass, which glides from Camera into the Stephen Bulger Gallery, allowing flow between the interior and the street, and also creating a physical link between the spaces. Inside, a wall between the bar and the gallery can be opened up to allow flexibility and movement between the spaces. Camera’s formal entrance is shared with Mongrel Media to give visitors a suggestive glimpse of the staircase to the private offices above. Inside and out, the building has a robust nature, to blend with the rugged feeling of the Queen streetscape.
Camera’s interior mix of old and new, light and dark, smooth woods and tactile furnishings create a sense of drama as well as a warm and welcoming atmosphere. A contemporary walnut bar and a communal table with Thonet chairs, are accented by an antiqued mirror and a crimson, velvet curtain. A lounge at the back of the café-bar has comfortable furniture and carpeting, adding a domestic feeling. With candlelight, a working fireplace and hanging filament lights, Camera emits a soft glow internally and externally.
2005 National Post Design Exchange Awards
Honourable Mention—Architecture Commercial
2005 Toronto Architecture & Urban Design Awards
Camera Bar—Honourable Mention
