Come Up To My Room, is an annual design event in its 7th year at the Gladstone Hotel. For the first time this year, CUTMR joins up with the Toronto International Design Festival (TIDF) for a 4 day event featuring a whopping 50 designers, 11 rooms and 14 public space installations that push the limits of art and design.

Bound by intense artistic secrecy (or maybe just for the hell of it), not even the curators know what the artists are doing until the show starts.

Founder Christine Zeidler says it's like Christmas day - the artists have less than a week to set up their installations, but it isn't until opening night the curators have a chance to view their selections, and as usual they surpass expectations. She loves to see the look on people's faces as they approach each door, unsure as to whether or not to enter - wondering if what they're seeing is a just a bathroom, or an out of world experience.

Artists are chosen by a juried panel of curators, and they are chosen based on the artist - not on the installation.

Once the designers are selected, they have total freedom to take what's in their creative imagination, and explode it into a full scale installation. Toronto is a collaborative city, Zeidler says, so this is a really great opportunity for artists to join together to create works that inspire conversation.

Some of the highlights include "Can You Remember My Dream" by Julia Hepburn - a surreal bedroom scene featuring a little black bird, tucked snugly beneath the bedsheets and surrounded by floating dioramas of what she says are the dreams of birds.

In another room, Jamie Webster and Berkeley Poole combine rubber hose, stockings, balloons and black light make for an thoughtful experience examining the themes of health and disease, restoration and decay.

Ballroom is the brainchild of Jennifer Davis and Jamie Phelan, an architect and interior designer respectively - who took nearly 10 000 used tennis balls to create a thoroughly intriguing space, playing with the art of perception.

The Gladstone's resident artist Bruno Billio works with light sculptor Orest Tataryn to turn Billio's living room into one of the installations, with neon tubes of light chaotically flowing through an otherwise orderly and stately living room.

Interactive, touch activated light and wood stools, one of the pubic space installations not only provided a place to sit, but also served as great conversation starters in the main room.

Come Up To My Room is an real experience, taking over the entire second floor of the Gladstone Hotel. It runs from Friday January 22nd to Sunday January 24th. Admission is 8$ for the general public, and 1/2 price (Friday only) for students with a valid student ID.