Winter Stations Unveils Six Winning Installations at Toronto's Woodbine Beach in 2025Save this picture!Ascolto by Ines Dessaint, Tonin Letondu, France. Image Joel Gale ImagingThe Winter Stations annual design competition celebrates its 11th edition in 2025. The competition challenges international artists and designers to reimagine lifeguard stations as captivating, interactive art installations. Designed to harmonize with the environment at Woodbine Beach in Toronto, Canada, these installations encourage immersive engagement with art in a public space, offering a transformative experience. Following its 10th anniversary in 2024, Winter Stations introduced an additional challenge, inviting participants to consider the future of the stations and their evolving relationship with the public and the environment. The theme for the 2025 edition, Dawn, calls on designers to explore how the stations can adapt, grow, and transform in the coming years.This edition features four winning designs selected from hundreds of submissions worldwide, along with two student designs from Toronto Metropolitan University and the University of Waterloo's Department of Architecture. The selected installations were announced on February 17 and will be on display until March 30, 2025. Additional exhibitions are planned, with details to be announced later in the year. The winning designs include a small cast of follies, a solar-aligned structure capturing the equinox, an acoustic shelter, a blinking box designed to enhance the experience of dawn light, an interactive land art installation, and a sculptural installation that amplifies sunlight and air effects.Discover below the six winning designs for the 2025 Winter Stations, along with descriptions provided by their creators. Related Article Discover the Winning Projects of the Upcoming 2025 Edition of Concntrico Festival in Logroo WATCH by Trae Horne, United StatesSave this picture!As the morning sun crests above Lake Ontario's horizon, a new day dawns on a crisp morning, and a wood canvas basks in the light. WATCH reflects on the specific point in time that it and visitors are within. The large, canted faade acts as a leaning respite for watchers of the sunrise and lake. Facing due east, WATCH is a solar-aligned structure anticipating the equinox. Just as ancient civilizations marked the earth in ways to signify the time of the year and an important place, so too does WATCH. Three metal lines embedded in the sand follow the shadows throughout the three days: the day Winter Stations open, the equinox, and the day the Winter Stations close. The a-framed structure captures the equinox in Toronto as the architecture becomes perfectly aligned with the sunrise when light spills in a straight line through the open threshold.Parade by Jesse Beus, United StatesSave this picture!Parade is a celebration of those who live in the warm dawn of self-acceptance. It is comprised of six characters each with their own unique colour, shape, purpose, and identity. Together this eclectic cast of follies proudly march together in an unstoppable procession and invite all to join them! Users join the parade through an archway and move from character to character discovering each's personality and interactivity, including sliding, sitting, and shading. Despite anything that might try to get in their way, these six friends will march on until love has dawned on all hearts.Ascolto by Ines Dessaint, Tonin Letondu, FranceSave this picture!In Ascolto, the sound experience is commemorated. This acoustic shelter welcomes the user in a contemplation space, not only visually but also audibly. Supported adjacent to the lifeguard tower on one side and buried in the sand on the other, the object creates a sound capsule. The simple and minimalist shape is explicit and refers clearly to a sound-amplifier object (horn, wind instruments, gramophone, etc.). Built in wood, the inner space is big enough for 2 or 3 people for a more intimate experience. Visitors to the station bring the project to life by choosing their desired purpose and through this process adapting to it: hearing nature and its surroundings; appreciating the music chosen on their phones; or creating a musical performance. Usable as a horn on one hand, the project can also be utilized as an Ear Trumpet: the two sides are both the sender's side and the receiver's side.Slice of Sun by Cludia Franco, Mariam Daudali, Thomas Byrom, PortugalSave this picture!For a moment, we recall our summer memories. When you live in a city, dawn is mainly brought to you by glimpses of orange light scattered from your neighbour's windows switching from one to the other. One wonders how many dreams can fit into the blinking box of orange curtains. We invite you to enter our slice of sun and feel embraced by dawn light at any time of the day.Peak by Anita Hu, Catherine Zheng, Isaac Walsh, Jason Cai, Nadine Hijazi, Ricardo Espinoza, with faculty supervisor Fiona Lim Tung, University of WaterlooSave this picture!Emerging from the soft and organic beachscape are angular peaks that frame perspectives and form pathways. Consisting of repeating structures of select shapes and sizes, Peak is an interactive installation that visually contrasts the existing site and offers refuge from the cold winter environment. The design of the structure appears to shift and settle with the ground as the sand moves and collects within the alcoves and sloped surfaces from the wind. Peak welcomes contemplation and new beginnings, it offers opportunities for individuals to freely explore and admire the surrounding natural landscape and intends to give agency to the ever-changing and unpredictable conditions of the site.Solair by Arjun Jain (Lead), Jade Wong (Lead), Finn Ferrall, Marko Sikic, Nick Kisil, with faculty supervisor Vincent Hui, Toronto Metropolitan UniversitySave this picture!Solair is a sculptural installation that captures the ephemeral beauty of dawn through the interplay of light, wind, and reflection. Inspired by the delicate transition from night to day, Solair amplifies the forces of nature sunlight and air transforming them into a dynamic, ever-changing visual and sensory experience. Standing as both a literal and metaphorical beacon, Solair is designed to reflect and refract sunlight while channeling the waterfront breeze to cultivate a distinct auditory expression. The installation's dynamic surfaces respond to the movement of wind, creating rippling shadows and flickering patterns of light, echoing the energy of the first rays of morning and lasting glimpse of sunset. As visitors move around and through the installation, they become active participants in this amplified natural performance, immersed in the harmony of air and light.Previous editions of the festival have focused on creating original designs to reactivate seasonally inactive spaces, such as lifeguard stations. These temporary installations serve as a means of revitalizing public spaces, calling for dialogue through art. Similar objectives are pursued this year by other events and festivals in the fields of architecture and design. This month, Desert X unveiled 11 installations in California's Coachella Valley, and this week, the winning projects for the upcoming edition of Festival Concntrico in Logroo were announced. On the occasion of Ramadan and the Ramadan Festival 2025, Zarah Hussain and Fatima Mejbil designed a pavilion in Bradford, while MVRDV created an installation made from recycled plastic for Bangkok Design Week 2025.Image gallerySee allShow lessAbout this authorCite: Antonia Pieiro. "Winter Stations Unveils Six Winning Installations at Toronto's Woodbine Beach in 2025" 21 Mar 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1028192/winter-stations-unveils-six-winning-installations-at-torontos-woodbine-beach-in-2025&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream