Azure Magazine: Inside 307, Sidewalk Toronto's Experimental Hub
Azure Magazine: Inside 307, Sidewalk Toronto's Experimental Hub
Azure Magazine has written an article about all the innovative things to explore at 307, Sidewalk Labs' New Toronto HQ, Designed by Lebel & Bouliane.
From Azure Magazine:
"Dynamic streets, outdoor comfort zones, tall timber buildings, digital electricity and more. We stepped inside Sidewalk Labs’ 307, a newly opened prototyping space, to find out what the future of Toronto’s most anticipated (and not quite green-lit) development might look like.
Since the announcement late last year that Sidewalk Labs would develop a proposal for a chunk of Toronto’s Port Lands, the Alphabet/Google entity has hosted many roundtables, panel discussions and info sessions. This community engagement has been a proactive way of showing the city and its residents how transparent its smart-city enterprise is and will be – and of assuaging concerns about how data will be collected and personal privacy protected – and emphasizing the importance of community feedback and collaboration. But concrete details were scarce about the still-tentative project (Sidewalk Labs has been invited by Waterfront Toronto to present a plan but the city will still need to green light it) and many have struggled to visualize what Toronto’s smart city on a 12-acre L-shaped chunk of waterfront property would look like.
That changed this past weekend when Sidewalk Labs opened 307, its Lakeshore Blvd. E. hub, and shared with the public the tangible ideas it’s exploring in partnership with numerous architecture, planning, and technology firms. Over 1,000 locals dropped in to the space (designed by Lebel & Bouliane) to once again provide feedback, take in talks and participate in workshops; this time, they were also able to see and interact with physical prototypes of buildings, technologies and infrastructure."