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As part of the run-up to its third edition, the International Garden Festival at Jardins de Métis (Reford Gardens) is launching a competition open to all Canadian architecture, design, landscaping and visual arts professionals. The challenge is to create the "ideal garden shed." The garden shed, that omnipresent structure in our urban and suburban environments, is primarily a utilitarian object, too often standardized to the point of banality. Yet it can also be an exercise in playful architecture, an opportunity for gardeners to express themselves and their desires. The competition launched by the International Garden Festival on this theme is intended to be an interdisciplinary creative happening, challenging participants to adapt the shape and function of that most banal of objects in our daily environment and create an architectural achievement in which imagination is key. The competition is being held with the support of the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications of Québec. Ten of the proposals received will be selected and built as part of an exhibition presented in Métis and Montreal. As part of the UK … OK ! event, celebrating cultural exchanges between the United Kingdom and Quebec, the exhibition will include the garden sheds selected in this competition and another ten sheds (or "huts," as they are known in the UK) by British designers, most of which were exhibited at "The Ideal Hut Show" in Glasgow in 1999, during celebrations to mark its designation as "Glasgow, UK City of Architecture and Design." The project organizers are Denis
Lemieux, Festival Director; Neil Baxter, Commissioner/Initiator, UK;
Marie-Josée Lacroix, Guest Commissioner, Quebec; Jean Beaudoin,
Professional Competition Consultant and designer
; and Galerie Monopoli, Montreal.
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