Design Exchange
| Established | 1994 |
|---|---|
| Location | 234 Bay Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Coordinates | 43°38′52″N 79°22′48″W / 43.64774°N 79.38011°W |
| Type | Design, Art Museum and Education Centre |
| Visitors | 225 000 + |
| President | Shauna Levy |
| Public transit access | |
| Website | dx.org |
Design Exchange (DX), a not-for-profit museum funded by its members and donors, is Canada’s only museum dedicated exclusively to the pursuit of design excellence and preservation of design heritage. Design Exchange is located in Toronto's financial district in the historic building.
The DX contains the Permanent Collection of Canadian Industrial Design and is home to the Clairtone archives, Fred Moffat archives and Thomas Lamb archives.
In the 1980s, fueled by closing of the federal agency, Design Canada, in 1985, followed by the University of Toronto's (soon rescinded) announcement in 1986 that it intended to close its school of architecture, members of the design community began to express the need for a focus for Canadian design.
In 1983 the Toronto Stock Exchange had abandoned its historic home of the last 46 years at 234 Bay Street. Olympia and York (O&Y) purchased the building which was designated a heritage property. In return for the air rights to build an office tower on the site, O&Y agreed to retain and restore the building.
O&Y commissioned a study to consider the idea of using the trading floor as a public facility. The study indicated that Toronto designers would support a cultural design centre. In January 1986, a group of designers organized an event to lobby Toronto City Hall in support of the initiative. City officials recognized a body of ten citizens as “The Group for the Creation of a Design Centre in Toronto”, which was incorporated on February 6, 1987 and came to be known as the Design Exchange.
At the prompting of the citizens' group, city staff funded a study which determined that a design centre in the old Toronto Stock Exchange “was both possible and desirable.”
In 1986, O&Y sold the Bay Street property to Cadillac Fairview and The Toronto Dominion Bank (Toronto-Dominion Centre West Limited), conditional on the design centre concept being retained. The new owner was also required to provide $500,000 to the City for 25 years, which would in turn, be passed along (minus a 10% holdback) onto the design centre to offset operating costs. This agreement, in effect, gave the Design Exchange operating rights in the historic building.
In 1988 the design centre was named the Design Exchange and the original citizens' group was made the founding board. The group established a Board of Management (which included the founding board and citizens and a couple of city councillors). Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects was commissioned to renovate and enlarge the non-heritage-designated spaces (exhibition spaces, administrative office space, the resource centre and meeting rooms).
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