Shipping containers were used to transport temporary seating into the Hearn, then arranged into balconies and box seats enclosing the pop-up theatre. Photo by Jonathan Friedman / Partisans
This June, Jörn Weisbrodt, the outgoing Artistic Director of Luminato, changed the script for the Toronto arts festival. Instead of holding the two-week festival?s exhibitions and performances throughout the city, Weisbrodt chose a remarkable single venue: the Hearn Generating Station in Toronto?s Eastern Portlands.
The Hearn is an enormous former electricity generating plant, first fired by coal and later by gas. Since being decommissioned in the 1990s, it has languished in semi-ruin, emptied of its equipment and scavenged for valuable scrap. Its role as a power plant has been usurped by a newer energy big-box next door. Even in its neglected state, the Hearn has remarkable spatial power, with a turbine hall three times larger than the Tate Modern. The hall is bookended by tall ribbon windows that give the appearance of an industrial cathedral. With the original upper floor demolished, the remaining turbine bases form a procession of arches that hold up nothing but air. South of the turbine hall, the complex is a sequence of vast, interconnected vertical spaces. The dangling remains of conduit and twisted equipment mounts give a raw character to the spaces there.
To address the challenge of adapting the Hearn to the requirements of hosting a festival with art installations, live theatre...