A "soft utopia" takes shape in University of Toronto's experimental gallery

The University of Toronto's Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design has debuted a new 7,500-square-foot "experimental gallery" that seeks to have visitors lose themselves in "states of repose and reverie."

The new gallery, according to a news post issued by the school, includes an installation designed by New York-based designers Pillow Culture that is centered on having participants disconnect from their technological devices. The exhibition, titled New Circadia (adventures in mental spelunking), asks visitors to leave their belongings in a separate area before becoming immersed in a "dream-like space specifically designed for relaxation, reflection, and repose."

“Architecture today is inextricably bound up in the urbanization of the planet, and it needs to pay as much attention to the marking of time, as it traditionally has to the shaping of space,” writes co-curator, Richard Sommer, Dean an...