The exhibition “Canadian Modern,” on view at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum during the launch party for the city’s 10-day DesignTO Festival, posits that one thing that sets Canadian design apart is the way it represents the country’s landscape — either in its forms or in its material palette.

Building on that tradition, several of the standout introductions at DesignTO and IDS Toronto led design lovers on a walk in the woods (see: new launches from local showroom Mjölk and furniture studio Coolican & Company). Others channelled the bright, optimistic hues of a garden in bloom and the romantic allure of a glowing sunset.

But designers also had nature on the mind in other ways. Made from recycled plastic filament, Cyrc’s 3D-printed vases can be mailed back — with free shipping — and melted down to support future production runs if someone ever grows tired of their original forms.

These circular homewares were one of several concepts highlighted at IDS Toronto’s “Moving Parts: Design for a Complex World,” an exhibition dedicated to sustainable solutions. DesignTO also kept sustainability top of mind during its two-day symposium, Trash Talk, and climate change–themed group exhibition, “Forecast.”

Indeed, some of the festival’s best exhibitions set out to design a new environmental and social agenda. At the Stackt shipping container market, “Ontario Place: Narrating Past, Present and Potential” (by architect and educator Quan Thai and the collective OP-ED) held an informal referendum on a controversial redevelopment plan that would fell some 850 trees to turn a portion of the waterfront park into a private spa.

And over at The Local Gallery, the Native Women’s Association of Canada presented “Change the Bill,” a collection of proposals for new $20 banknotes featuring notable Indigenous women such as Elsie Knott, the country’s first woman to be elected as a chief. After all, part of celebrating Canada’s landscape is paying due respect to its original custodians.