Project: Fine Line Location: Toronto, Canada Firm: RAW, Canada

Equal parts chandelier, vertical blinds, secret location and Instagram backdrop, RAW’s interactive installation, consisting of 12,768 strips of flagging tape suspended from a steel grid, explores the frontier between solid and permeable. Fine Line creates spatial boundaries and heightens sensory awareness for those who interact with the four-metre-wide by four-metre-deep by three-metre-high volume, which seemingly floats half a metre above the ground. The intrepid ones who dive headlong into the object land in a safe space. Fine Line was debuted at EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation & Technology in Toronto last fall.

Team: Roland Rom Colthoff with Adrienne Hossfeld, Jacob Ragetli, Nina Wang, Dakota Wares-Tani, and Heather Woolvett

Project: 18 Shades of Gay Location: Montreal, Canada Firm: Claude Cormier + Associés, Canada

Claude Cormier’s remix of his annual installation in Montreal’s Gay Village has a new colour scheme and a more pluralistic message. For the latest edition, Cormier shaded the 180,000 suspended balls of recycled plastic by expanding the six bands of the LGBTQI rainbow flag into a palette of 18 distinct hues. Without sacrificing any of the fun and fabulousness of its monochromatic pink predecessor, the change alters the work’s message to one of diversity, inclusion and nuance. Now a fixture of the district’s summer landscape, the colourful cumulus clouds still serve their original function: wayfinding in the pedestrian portion of Aires Libres, a popular art walk and revitalization project that runs from May to September.

Team: Claude Cormier, Yannick Roberge, Guillaume Paradis and Damien Dupuis with Yves Allard, Gilles Arpin, Rig-Rite Productions and Les productions du Grand Bambou