The New Stone Age: Towards an Ethical Architecture champions the versatility, sustainability, and beauty of stone as a load-bearing material in contemporary architecture. Curated and produced by UK-based architects GROUPWORK, The Stonemasonry Company, and Webb Yates Engineers, the exhibition features three large-scale stone-and-timber installations that showcase the possibilities of building with ‘augmented’ stone. Alongside these structures, the exhibition traces the historical use of stone and features projects by leading international architects. Seen together, The New Stone Age argues that stone is a viable, low-carbon alternative to conventional building materials such as reinforced concrete and steel.

Le Corbusier published Towards a New Architecture over a century ago, introducing the ‘free plan’ and ‘free façade’ as the result of material innovations in reinforced concrete and steel. Today, this system has become the default building strategy worldwide, applied indiscriminately across both single and one-hundred story structures. Such blind assumptions have come under increasing scrutiny in the era of climate crisis where the construction industry drives 40% of global carbon emissions, and in the next 50 years, the world’s building stock will double. Unless we radically rethink how we build, this growth will lock in catastrophic levels of emissions. Stone offers a compelling solution. Compared to reinforced concrete and steel, stone can contain up to 95% less embodied carbon, be assembled more quickly, and more cheaply.

This exhibition is a call to action - inviting students, architects, engineers, contractors, planners and manufacturers to rediscover the potential of structural stone and to help build a more sustainable future.

The exhibition opening event takes place on Thursday, January 22 at 5:00 p.m. ET and will be followed by a lecture with the curators at 6:30 p.m.  

The Daniels Faculty and curators thank PICCO Engineering for their generous financial and in-kind support for the local installation of this exhibit. PICCO Engineering is an award-winning structural engineering and consulting firm known worldwide for our expertise in natural stone façades, masonry, and anchoring systems design.

Lead Image: Stone Demonstrator, by Bas Princen. Gallery Image Credits 1-2: 15 Clerkenwell Close, photographs by Tim Soar. 3: Caroline Place, photographs by Tim Soar. 4: Finchley Road Superstructure Test, photograph by Groupwork. 5: Quarry, photograph by Banberger Natursteinwerk Hermann Graser. 6-8: Stone Demonstrator, by Bas Princen.

“Sikumit Aisimajugut / At Home on Ice” chronicles ideas of home and housing in Inuit Nunangat from the intimate scale of domestic spaces to the large-scale policies and logistics that shape the making of homes in the region. Inuit Nunangat is the homeland of Inuit across the four regions of Nunavut, Nunavik (northern Quebec), Nunatsiavut (northern Labrador), and the Inuvialuit Settlement region (Northwest Territories), in the Arctic region.

The exhibition consists of (1) a large panoramic drawing, (2) a series of tables with embedded documents and other printed matter, and (3) a custom typeface and artworks by Mark Bennett. The large wall-sized drawing illustrates the duality of both the “inside-out” and “outside-in” conditions and experiences of home in Inuit Nunangat, showing some 30 different notions of home. The tables, shaped as ice floes, are lodged into the gallery niches to create reading rooms inviting visitors to browse the documents, pamphlets, books on home and housing representing the four regions of Inuit Nunangat since the 1950s. Artist and designer Mark Bennett developed a custom typeface for the exhibition title and texts inspired by writings found on buildings in Labrador in the 1970s. In addition, Bennett created a reconstructed summer and winter home in the niche walls.

Exhibition photos above by Samishka Naidoo.

Drawings by Lateral Office; Photographs by Lola Sheppard; Typography by Mark Bennett. 

“Sikumit Aisimajugut” is by Mason White (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto), Lola Sheppard (University of Waterloo), and Jessica Babe (MArch 2024), with Mark Bennett (BAAS 2027). Project assistance came from Meghan Lum (MArch 2026) and Cameron Manore (MArch 2028) for drawing and fabrication, respectively.

A roundtable event will run parallel to the exhibition on January 16, 2026, and will bring together speakers with expertise and/or lived experience in housing across Inuit Nunangat. 

The exhibition and research is supported by The Irving Grossman Fund in Affordable Housing.

Design tools shape how we think as designers. This exhibition explores experiments using interactive design technologies and architectural tools of design, to resist the flattening tendencies of screen-based workflows by reintegrating bodily knowledge into creative practice. Drawing from research at the intersection of architecture, AI, craft, and human-computer interaction, "Unruly Intelligences" presents projects spanning real-time VR sketching, generative AI workflows, robotic fabrication, and sensors, each positioning the designer's body as an active site of knowledge production.

About Humbi Song:

Humbi Song is an Assistant Professor and Emerging Architect Fellow at the University of Toronto. Her work focuses on the intersection of architecture, technology and human-computer interaction. She investigates the evolving relationships between human creativity and interactive technologies, such as physical computing and AI, in the context of broader societal and technological influences on how designs are conceived, created and experienced. In her practice, she builds spatial installations and fabrication experiments to explore these co-creative processes between designers, responsive interactive technologies and AI.

The exhibition opening takes place on February 26 at 5:00 p.m. in the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery, followed by lecture by Humbi Song at 6:30 p.m. in the Main Hall, DA170.

Register 

Images 1: Photopolymer gravure with gampi chine collé (Nishimura). Image 2: Woodblock prints reproducing the cedar siding of a Japanese-Canadian internment shack (Akiyama & Nishimura).

United Contemporary is proud to announce Paradise, an upcoming exhibition by Mitchell Akiyama  (Assistant Professor, University of Toronto) and Emma Nishimura (Assistant Professor, OCAD U). Lifelong family friends, the artists’ first collaboration takes the form of a multimedia installation responding to their Japanese Canadian families’ shared histories of internment during the Second World War. Taking place concurrently will be a presentation of selected works by Norman Takeuchi and Akira Yoshikawa in our adjoining gallery, in an exhibition program that will explore the enduring impact of the wartime period on Japanese Canadian artists across generations.

The exhibition’s title, Paradise, refers to a childhood summer day that has become family lore. Akiyama, Nishimura, and their siblings spent an afternoon catching frogs and built an elaborate structure out of sand for their captives, which they called “Frog Paradise.” For four mixed-race children, raised with a sense of safety and belonging that was in stark contrast to their Japanese grandparents’ upbringing, this moment was a utopia. This was less so for the frogs, who likely didn’t live out the day. For Akiyama and Nishimura, this experience led to the realization that one person or group’s utopia might be another’s nightmare. Ostensibly seeking to maintain a largely white, settler nation’s safety, the Canadian government forcibly relocated and interned its Japanese Canadian citizens, many of whom had never visited Japan. The various prints, sculptures, and video works included in Paradise represent Akiyama and Nishimura’s efforts to understand the complexities and paradoxes of this legacy as it moves and shifts across generations.

Thanks to a grant from the JC Legacies Society, Akiyama and Nishimura were able to visit locations in British Columbia to document sites where their grandparents were interned. Responding to this research, their installation features an experimental, documentary film that draws on documentation of their trip and archival, family footage, including a VHS video capturing the event that inspired this exhibition: the construction of Frog Paradise. The exhibition also includes a series of hand-carved woodblock prints that reproduce the grain of the cedar exteriors of internment shacks.

The installation’s fragile walls define a memorial that houses an array of objects, including new print works by Nishimura that document archival family photographs from her grandparents’ internment within their present-day landscapes. A temple bell used in Japanese Buddhist purification rituals hangs from a stand crafted by Akiyama from reclaimed lumber. The film is displayed on a now-obsolete analog television, which sits on a table, which Akiyama handcrafted using techniques drawn from traditional Japanese joinery. In its first incarnation, the table was a mundane piece of western-style furniture given to Akiyama by his grandmother, which he has reworked into a Japanese-style low table. This transmutation of form, which complicates notions of culture and provenance, reflects the various ways in which Paradise addresses the resonances and distortions that arise and accumulate over generations.

Mitchell Akiyama is a Toronto-based scholar, composer, and artist whose work explores themes like sound, perception, and media technologies through various mediums. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto's Daniels Faculty and co-founder of the interdisciplinary art and design practice MAYB Studio with Maria Yablonina. His projects include writing, composing scores, creating installations, and developing new ideas in visual studies and art.

Based in Toronto, Emma Nishimura works with a range of media, including printmaking, photography, sculpture and installation. For the past decade, her research and art practice has focused on the experiences her family and thousands of other Japanese Canadians endured throughout their forced incarceration during the Second World War. Nishimura has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is in a number of public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Japanese Canadian National Museum and the Library of Congress. She is the recipient of the Queen Sonja Print Award 2018. Nishimura received her MFA from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her BA from the University of Guelph. She is an Assistant Professor at OCAD University.

To mark National Indigenous History Month in June 2024, the Daniels Faculty will launch Reconciliation Reflections: Six Student Projects—a temporary installation of student work from two graduate studios developed in response to Wecheehetowin ‘Answering the Call’ University of Toronto–Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) Calls to Action.  
 
The installation features projects from Architecture Studio 2: Site, Matter, Ecology, and Indigenous Storywork and Landscape Architecture Studio 2: Land(scape) and Memory—both studios aim to be concrete responses to Call 17 to integrate Indigenous curriculum content. 

The six projects on view from the Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture programs were selected by the Daniels Faculty’s First Peoples Leadership Advisory Group: Amos Key Jr., Trina Moyan and Dorothy Peters.

Reconciliation Reflections will be on view in the Historic Stairwell Gallery to honour National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21. The exhibition will remain through September for the National Month for Truth and Reconciliation and November for Treaties Recognition Week and Louis Riel Day. 

Architecture Studio 2: Site, Matter, Ecology, and Indigenous Storywork 

Architecture Studio 2 considers the concept of site and landscape as an action in reconciliation, ecology as a study in relationships that define inhabitation, and Indigenous storywork as a method of research and design-work. 

With Crawford Lake as their site, students were asked to design a museum for Indigenous art that builds on the knowledge they gained through workshops and guest lectures on Indigenous cultural competency, ways of being, ways of knowledge, Indigenous cultural and design practices.

The four works on display in Reconciliation Reflections are group projects for the assignment "The Artifact and The Room," which involved the consideration of five contemporary artworks.

ARC1012 Studio Coordinator: Behnaz Assadi; Instructors: Chloe Town, Anne-Marie Armstrong, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Brian Boigon, Aleris Rodgers, Julia Di Castri. The syllabus for this studio was initially developed by Adrian Phiffer and James Bird (Knowledge Keeper of the Dënësųłinë́ and Nêhiyawak Nations and Residential School Survivor).

Landscape Studio 2: Land(scape) and Memory 

Landscape Studio 2 introduces concepts, terminology, and design research tools for academic and professional work that requires attentiveness to cultural and political history, history telling, cultural practices, community engagement, multi-cultural collaborations, as well as the creation of spaces for ongoing public participation, dialogue, stewardship, shared governance, and civic expression.

The two works on display in Reconciliation Reflections were developed thorough engagement in three design research explorations: 1) Memory, Healing and Cultural Resurgence: Reconstructing the Counter Monument, 2) Land-Based Mapping: Visualizing Environmental Histories and Landscape Changes, and 3) Memory, Land Relations and Indigenous Futurisms: Imagining the University of Toronto as an Indigenous space. 

LAN1012 Instructors: Liat Margolis, Terence Radford 

Project Statements

1. “Resilience” by Issac Valle and Susan Xi (ARC1012) 

The adverse effect of rising land costs has affected and participated in the explicit gentrification of the Indigenous peoples specifically in Vancouver, where Anishinaabe artist, Rebecca Belmore expresses her artwork, The Tower and Tarpaulin. Her art often symbolizes political, economic, and social issues facing Indigenous peoples in Canada. We drew from these socio-political and economic issues and interpreted the architectural envelope to voice the resiliency of Indigenous peoples. These gestures as a parallel between the common narrative of resilience that Indigenous peoples have in the face of adversity, as they continually press-on through past genocide and present dehumanization. Resilience is meant to be felt through the physical, emotional, environmental and intellectual realms through each art piece and the environment that shelters it.” 

2. “Manoomin (The Good Seed): How the Erasure of One Plant Represents a Relentless History of Deprivation” by Claire Leverton (LAN1012) 

“Across Southern Ontario, wild rice or manoomin once grew in abundance. For the Anishinaabeg people every transition of this plant’s life is intrinsic to cultural grounding and sovereignty.  As with the principles of the Honourable Harvest, manoomin harvesting revolves around respect and care for the plant. In the gentle nature that the plant is seeded and harvested, as well as the resources that are left to allow the plant to regain its strength. We have taken sacred gifts from All our Relations and created commodities out of them. As a society we continue to accept the loss of Indigenous peoples’ land- and human rights, including current-day boil water advisories and lack of clean drinking water on reserves. We must remember that Manoomin is only one plant that is deeply entwined with regional landscape management cultural and political systems. Yet its history encompasses century-old and ongoing land dispossession. What more could we find by digging into the histories of just one more plant?” 

3. “Hug” by Abida Rahman and Sammi Ku (ARC1012) 

“Inspired by Michael Belmore’s Somewhere Between the Two States of Matter, this project studies the natural formation of river rocks on how time and water places and shapes them and how they intersect with one another. The tension in the voids between the rocks is the area of interest in this project. Thus, the gallery space in our project is the ‘in-betweenness’ between two rock forms as they hug and embrace. Inherently, collecting and displaying artifacts is a very colonial ideology. This design starts to depart from the colonial discourse, through the close study of the material culture and material treatment of the Anishinaabe peoples.” 

4. Inspired by Walking with Our Sisters by Christi Belcourt
Marly Ibrahim, Christopher Law and Anvi Nagpal (ARC1012) 

“Walking with Our Sisters by Christi Belcourt is an installation art piece that commemorates missing and murdered Indigenous women and children. The sacred circle, which the vamps are organized around, symbolizes infinity, so that the women may never be forgotten, creating an ongoing memorial. With this in mind, our design aims to further amplify this experience through a procession walkway, spanning 10 meters, leading into a circular light frame timber structure that further opens up to a conical oculus. Since the opening of the sacred circle traditionally faces east, where the sun rises, the oculus angles towards east as well.” 

5. Inspired by Ursula Johnson’s Mi’kwite’tmn (Do You Remember)
Denise Akman and Noel Sampson (ARC1012) 

“Ursula Johnson’s Mi’kwite’tmn (Do You Remember) is a work of performance art. The work sees the shaving of ash wood, a wood that is both sacred and culturally significant to the Mi’kmaq First Nations. In her performance, the wood is stripped down into thin ribbons traditionally used within Mi’kmaq basket weaving. Through this, she challenges the prevalent Western-centric approach of archiving Indigenous cultural traditions still active within contemporary practice and placing them within anthropological sections of Western museums and galleries. Our design seeks to elevate both Ursula herself and the tension she works to expose. Populating and inhabiting the rings of a silo-like form gives relevance to the feat of her performance and a lasting space for her to practice and share her work.” 

6. “Seed Keeping and Knowledge Keeping: Storying Seeds through Past, Present and Future Practices” by Georgia Posno and Ram Espino (LAN1012) 

“Many heirloom seeds show their story in their physical form. The wild goose bean is cream coloured with black speckles, the eye of the bean has an orange hue, and if you hold this seed in your hand, you may think that you are reading a book. Seed keepers across Turtle Island have preserved the physical forms of seeds and thus, the stories and sovereignty embedded into them. As we began our project, we knew we wanted to evoke a sense of community and cultural resurgence in our research. So, we became very interested in knowing who the caretakers of the seeds are, and how we can make visible their teachings.” 

USING TREES AS THEY ARE—an exhibition by Zachary Mollica, Emerging Architect Fellow at the Daniels Faculty—is on view in the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery from December 11, 2023 to February 26, 2024.

Known for projects that demonstrate ways to put together non-linear bits of tree, Mollica has started to apply the same set of tools for close observation to a broader range of materials and their sources.

“This exhibition is about trees and an approach to working with the best properties of their products that I have been refining both intentionally and not, for years. When we build with wood as we do, using just a few species and forms, we directly contribute to an ongoing and pervasive simplification of forest ecosystems around the world. If we could re-diversify the ways we build with wood, we could actively encourage the re-establishment of healthier systems by the act of building.”

Gallery Address
Larry Wayne Richards Gallery
1 Spadina Crescent
Toronto, Ontario
M5S 2J5

Hours of Operation
Monday–Friday: 9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Saturday and Saturday: Closed

Gallery Address

Architecture and Design Gallery
Daniels Building
1 Spadina Crescent
Toronto, Ontario M5S 2J5

NEW Hours of Operation

Monday: 9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Tuesday: 9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Wednesday: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Thursday: 9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Friday: 9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Saturday and Saturday: Closed

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home is on view in the Architecture and Design Gallery at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design until March 22, 2024.

The Indigenous-led exhibition organized by and first presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, was co-curated by Joar Nango (a Norway-based Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art - Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA).

The exhibition showcases installations by Indigenous designers and artists, reflecting on how Arctic Indigenous communities relate to land and create empowered, self-determined spaces of home and belonging. Through the exhibition, as well as its accompanying publication and programming, ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home aims to have long-term impact, opening new forms of dialogues and ways of thinking about Northern Indigenous practices of designing and building that are not normally considered in the canons of architecture.

Work on view includes Taqralik Partridge and Tiffany Shaw’s The Porch, a transitional space unique to Northern living that welcomes Indigenous visitors into an institutional setting that has historically excluded them. Geronimo Inutiq’s I’m Calling Home presents a commissioned radio broadcast that recalls the central role that radio plays in both connecting Inuit communities and expediting colonialism. Nuna, an installation by asinnajaq (in conversation with Tiffany Shaw), is a tent-like structure that invites both sharing and reflection while evoking the four elements. Offernat (Votive Night) by Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson is an altar featuring a birch burl that evokes the burning of Sámi drums during Christianization in the 1700s.

The exhibition also facilitated the Futurecasting: Indigenous-led Architecture and Design in the Arctic workshop (co-curated Ella den Elzen and Nicole Luke) that brought together nine emerging architectural designers and duojars (craftpeope) to convene across Sapmi and Turtle Island to discuss what the future of design on Indigenous lands might become.

The full list of contributors includes: asinnajaq, Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson, Geronimo Inutiq, Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory. The original exhibition design was by Tiffany Shaw, Edmonton with graphic design by FEED, Montréal.

Land Acknowledgement

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful  to have the opportunity to work on this land. The land of 1 Spadina Crescent has been the home and an important trail of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Spadina is synonymous with Ishpadinaa, meaning “a place on a hill” in Anishinaabe. 

Image credits: 1) The Porch, Taqralik Partridge and Tiffany Shaw. ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home exhibition view, 2023. Photo by Scott Norsworthy. 2)  Nuna, asinnajaq. ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home exhibition view, 2023. Photo by Harry Choi. 3) Offernat (Votive Night) by Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson. ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home exhibition view, 2023. Photo by Scott Norsworthy. 4) I’m Calling Home, Geronimo Inutiq.  ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home exhibition view, 2023. Photo by Scott Norsworthy. 5-6) ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home exhibition opening. Photos by Harry Choi.

Join us for the Toronto opening of ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, an Indigenous-led exhibition organized by and first presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. The exhibition will be on view in the Architecture and Design Gallery at 1 Spadina Crescent from October 25, 2023 – March 22, 2024.

The opening event will feature remarks from the co-curators and a performance by artist Geronimo Inutiq. Light refreshments will be served.

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home was co-curated by Joar Nango (a Norway-based Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art - Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA). The exhibition showcases installations by Indigenous designers and artists, reflecting on how Arctic Indigenous communities relate to land and create empowered, self-determined spaces of home and belonging.

The Daniels Faculty presentation of ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home is organized by Jeannie Kim, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream. The exhibition was originally mounted by the CCA and co-curated by Joar Nango (Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art–Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, Indigenous Ways and Decolonization, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA). 

Born 1979 in Alta, Norway, Joar Nango is a Sámi architect and artist living in Norway. Nango’s work investigates nomads’ conceptions of space, territory and ideas of home. He focuses on different ways of dealing with materiality, movement and space.

Taqralik Partridge is an artist, writer and curator originally from Kuujjuaq, Nunavik. Previously the director of the Nordic Lab at SAW Gallery in Ottawa, where she brought together artists from across the circumpolar world to collaborate and create new work, she is currently Associate Curator, Indigenous Art–Inuit Art Focus at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She is also an adjunct curator at the Art Gallery of Guelph, where she is working on a series of exhibitions on the theme of Qautamaat/Everyday. Her mixed-media textile works have toured Canada and overseas and have been seen at the Owens Art Gallery (Sackville, NB) and at Mimosa House (London, UK).

Jocelyn Piirainen is an urban Inuk originally from Iqaluktuuttiaq, Nunavut. Previously the Associate Curator of Inuit Art at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and Qaumajuq, she is now Associate Curator, Indigenous Ways and Decolonization at the National Gallery of Canada. A graduate of Carleton University, Piirainen was educated primarily in the arts, particularly in film and new media. When not working as a curator, she works with analog photography and film in her artistic practice—mostly experimenting with Polaroids and Super 8 film—and hones her crochet and beading skills. She has contributed to publications such as Canadian Art, Canadian Geographic and Inuit Art Quarterly.

Rafico Ruiz is a settler (Northwestern Ontario/Ecuador) researcher and curator. His work addresses infrastructure building in the Arctic, post–global warming ice, and practices of settler accountability. Ruiz is the author most recently of Slow Disturbance: Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier and the co-editor (with Melody Jue) of Saturation: An Elemental Politics, both published by Duke University Press. He is also the Associate Director of Research at the CCA.

Photomontage: Nicole Luke, Arctic Buildings, Nunavut, 2021. © Nicole Luke

Assembled from the private collection of Singapore-based RT+Q Architects, this exhibition showcasing the buildings of Le Corbusier (1887-1965) features dozens of scaled models of the iconic Swiss-French architect’s work. Through the years, it has been a tradition at RT+Q for interns to spend their first week studying and building a model of a Le Corbusier project, the aim being to acquaint them with his diverse design legacy.

This exhibition will run in the LWR Gallery until November 6.

RT+Q was founded in Singapore by Rene Tan and TK Quek in 2003. The physical models are the work of the firm’s interns, who traditionally spend the first week of their internships building a model of Le Corbusier’s architecture. Original supporters of the exhibition include Alliance Francaise Singapour (AF), Fondation Le Corbusier (FLC), National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore University of Technology & Design (SUTD) and Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA).

This temporary installation of student artwork in the Historic Stairwell between the second and third floors in the Daniels Building is a reflection of multiple and diverse interpretations of Black flourishing and diverse reflections of Blackness in design and in community.

In response to an open call by the Daniels Art Directive and the Daniels Faculty during the Winter 2023 term, these six artists offer their creative expression of Black traditions and futures of excellence. In alignment with the broad objectives of the University of Toronto’s Anti-Black Racism Report (2021) and the Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism and Black Inclusion in Higher Education: Principles, Actions and Accountabilities (2021), this installation celebrates and promotes Black art and representation in university spaces.

Artist Statements

Black Flourishing by Ally DeLuca 

“This work explores the concept of ‘Black Flourishing’ and the ample consciousness and understanding of black human power. The viewer will notice the portrait is in black and white, which conveys that race, ethnicity and one’s background do not impact one’s creative capabilities, which are represented by the bright and colourful explosion of imagination that is emanating from the subject’s mind.”

To Become by Renée Powell-Hines 

“I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about the big bang.’ The sun said, ‘It hurts to become.’ ” - Unknown

“To Become centres around my interpretation of change. The focus of this piece is the toll of change, and the impact of the hand, forever taking, on our natural environment, struggling to give. This concept of the toll of change can be seen and felt in many aspects of everyday life; in contrast, sometimes monotony can take just as much of a negative toll. A lack of change can perpetuate a tendentious system, and if that system alienates or neglects a set group of people, this creates a barrier to success. Unfortunately, the onus to enact change is often placed on that neglected group, which already struggles due to a lack of support and is then further weighed down with the responsibility to lift itself and its people up. They are forced to give every part of themselves to a system that holds one hand out and conceals a wealth of untapped resources in the other; but still, the alienated will press on, with the hope that the next generation will benefit from their timeless efforts.”

Boxed In by Kodi Ume-Onyido 

“In my acrylic piece, Boxed In, I explore the relationship between myself, a black student, and the work environment at the Daniels Faculty. In order to reveal the subtle yet extreme differences in experiences between myself and other students, I recreated the everyday happening of working in the studio. The architecture materials sprawled upon and under the table depict the willingness and tenacious work ethic that black students display, but also our responsibility to succeed under any circumstance. Ghosted figures interact with one another as I am surrounded by empty chairs in a deconstructed black box that symbolizes the discrete lack of relationality I feel as the only black male in second year. The box is “exploding,” rather than being completely enclosed, to represent the openness and inclusivity that Daniels focuses on and is progressively improving. This aligns with the theme of the open call due to the piece representing the common black experience at the Daniels faculty. Although the painting seems to show isolation, it actually promotes the idea of representation and multiculturalism that the University of Toronto strives to achieve and strengthen through the placement of chairs. Rather than being tucked in and unapproachable, the seats are scattered and facing figures that appear to have just gotten up, inviting them to once again take a seat at their leisure.”

Who We Are by Tamilore Ayeye 

“As Black students, we are often questioned about our identity and values but that should never be the case. I often ask myself, ‘Who are we?’ ‘What are the values that embody the Black community?’ My intention for this mural is to celebrate and honour the richness and diversity of Black culture and identity. I aim to showcase the words that highlight the resilience and strength of the Black community and to create a space that affirms Black students, staff and visitors in our school. Through this mural, I hope to empower and inspire Black students to embrace who they are and truly believe in their uniqueness within their heritage with pride and to recognize their full potential to thrive and succeed. I have chosen the values of ‘Bold, Love, Action, Courage, Kind’ as the words centres on the mural in a college with leaves in the background signifying growth as a community. These words are not just an answer to the question of this mural but to also embody the values and aspirations of the Black community and to inspire everyone who sees this mural to embody these values in their own lives. I believe that this mural will serve as a beacon of hope, resilience and affirmation for the black community at Daniels and I am excited to see the impact it has on the community at Daniels.” 

Black in the crux of Design by Julien Todd 

“I wanted to create a piece which depicted the connection Black people have with the construction of modern Turtle Island. I would describe the piece as constructivist. The building centralized in the artwork is a historic image of a building at Bloor and Bathurst, a historically Black neighbourhood in Toronto. It forms a trifecta image with an anonymous Black woman and a depiction of the mountain scape in Banff, Alberta, a place where, historically, Black people were excluded from bathing in the natural springs. This image is representative of the Black experience in Canada with regard to the natural landscape and urban setting. Black people have historically experienced exclusion in both settings yet remained in Canada and left a mark on the cultural fabric of the country. Bloor and Bathurst, often referred to as “Blackhurst,” was a haven for Black immigrants to the country and is a testament to their resilience. The piece depicts how, even though Black people immigrating to this country were not welcomed on the land, they still found connection and established a home. This home is represented as still in construction within the work. The work empowers the spirit of Black resilience and prides Black constructivist design in a social and physical context.”

See Me by Tomi Bamigbade 

“The art piece highlights the representation of Black identities and Black experience. Often Black people are put in a box, identified by their hair and other physical appearance. This artwork highlights that Black people should not be put in a box due to their physical features but be seen for who they are on the inside. They are people who are more than their appearance and are capable of accomplishing amazing things. This digital art piece is also meant to bring light to digital art and afrofuturism. Black people are capable of having a place in the technology world.”