Discover "Building with Bio-Based Materials," an exhibition at TMU's Paul H. Cocker Gallery celebrating a bold experiment in sustainable architecture. Earlier this year, the Toronto Biobuild Collective united more than 60 volunteers and six Toronto firms — B+H, Dialog, KPMB, MJMA, studioDeep, and SvN — with TMU Building Science graduate students and assistant professor Dorothy Johns to design, test, and build wall assemblies made entirely from bio-based materials. These full-scale mock-ups assess how viable such materials are across building types, while surfacing real challenges and barriers to wider adoption. 

The show is a culmination of that research, yet also a starting point: current codes still limit many bio-based materials, even as the Collective sees transformative potential in them. More than a display of prototypes, it's an invitation — inspiration urging architects, students, and the public to rethink how we build, toward a future that considers all life around us.