This lecture introduces the work of ReHousing, a design-forward, non-profit organization addressing housing challenges through applied research, consultation, and education. ReHousing brings together practitioners from LGA Architectural Partners and academic collaborators from the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto to explore real-world housing solutions through interdisciplinary experimentation.

Over the past three years, the team has developed a catalogue-based approach to housing design, spanning scales from home-to-multiplex conversions to small-scale apartment buildings. This research investigates the relationship between building typologies and planning policy, resulting in commissioned zoning studies for the Cities of Toronto and Ottawa.

ReHousing’s methodology aligns with national initiatives led by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) to expand small- and medium-scale infill housing. Both LGA and ReHousing have been selected by CMHC to develop projects that apply this catalogue-based approach. The lecture will present key research findings, highlight LGA’s commissioned National Housing Catalogue, and introduce ReHousing’s new web platform for citizen-developers, funded through CMHC’s Housing Supply Challenge. Together, these initiatives demonstrate how systematic, replicable design strategies can accelerate the delivery of much-needed housing across Canadian cities.

Janna Levitt

BA, B.Arch, OAA, AAA, FRAIC

Partner, LGA Architectural Partners

Janna Levitt co-founded LGA Architectural Partners in 1993. As Partner in Charge, her projects include the Laurentian University's new McEwen School of Architecture, the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, the MabelleArts Park Pavilion, the CMHC National Housing Catalogue and the Ulster Multiplex Condo. She is currently teaching in the Housing/Urbanism Studio at U of T Daniels Faculty, having also been an Adjunct Professor at both the University of Waterloo and Dalhousie Schools of Architecture. Janna lectures widely on architecture and the arts and is an active jury member and panellist on architectural and urban design issues across the country. From 2011 to 2015 she served on the Canada Council Venice Biennale Advisory Committee. Janna is currently on the Waterfront Toronto Design Review Panel.

Samantha Eby

Co-founder and Executive Director, ReHousing

Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, University of Waterloo School of Architecture

Samantha Eby is an architect and researcher based in Toronto. She is a Co-founder and the Executive Director of ReHousing, a nonprofit organization focused on supporting housing creation through applied research, consultation, and education. She is also the Director of this—office, an architecture and spatial research practice. Her work investigates how design, policy, financing, and ownership structures intersect to shape the built environment, with particular attention to housing and affordability. In 2020, she was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Prix de Rome for Emerging Practitioners. In addition to her architecture and research practices, Samantha is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture.

Michael Piper

Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design

Co-founder and Director of Research, ReHousing (Canada)

Michael Piper is an Associate Professor of urban design and architecture at the University of Toronto, and cofounder and director of research at ReHousing. His applied design research addresses real-world challenges, particularly how methods like typology can inform zoning policy. His interests include suburban retrofit, infill housing, and developing social and cultural bases for design. He pursues these interests by creatively reimagining political and economic challenges. At ReHousing, he develops frameworks and working methods for educational tools, policy consultation, and research. Piper's teaching foregrounds local challenges through engagement with community, institutional, and industry partnerships.

Can we design good places with tall buildings? Can tall buildings be 'good neighbours'? Can they become part of the 'fabric' of cities? Can a tower be a ‘background’ building?

Towers are a particularly difficult typology for city making. Most tall buildings aim to emphasize their singularity, their formal aspects, literally aiming to stand out. On the other hand, the increasing densification of our cities makes them a seemingly unavoidable ingredient of urban centres. This seems to be particularly important in cities like Toronto and London where most new large projects of urban regeneration push for higher densities and taller buildings.

Alfredo’s lecture will dwell on Allies and Morrison’s experience tackling these challenges. He will show both buildings and places in London and Toronto.

Alfredo Caraballo is a partner at Allies and Morrison in London working across a range of projects from conceptual stages through to completion. He enjoys the dialogues that come from the design process and has particular interests in the sensitive densification of urban sites and in large, complex masterplans.

Alfredo is the partner in charge of several international projects, including four projects in India, a new residential quarter on the edge of the old city of Beirut and the redevelopment of the Expo Site in Milan for Lendlease. He undertook an urban study for the prime Midtown Manhattan site at Penn Station for Vornado Realty Trust and has led the award-winning masterplan for new high-density sustainable city in Oman. A central voice for Toronto work, he is currently designing several new neighbourhoods in this fast-growing city; from a 11-ha post-industrial waterfront site in Toronto to the redevelopment of an industrial site into mixed-use transport-led community, Beltline Yards.

In London, he led the design for Keybridge, a hybrid residential-led development incorporating a new school. And he has been involved in the practice’s work at Canada Water, developing the design for Plot A1 containing the tallest tower in the scheme. Other schemes have included One Vine Street, part of our masterplan for the Crown Estate at Regent Street and plans for the extension for Westfield White City.

A native of Caracas, Alfredo studied at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and London Metropolitan University. He taught for several years at Kingston University and has held lectureships and critic positions in U.K. and Latin American universities and lectured in the U.S. and Asia. He is co-chair of the International Council of the Van Alen Institute in New York and sits on the Lambeth Design Review Panel.

In this public lecture, Isabel Okoro, the Faculty’s inaugural Filmmaker-in-Residence, will explore her world-building practice from the conception of the visual universe Eternity to the present. Okoro will discuss influences, research and current ideas on the project—highlighting ways in which imagination is a radical act, and how exploring her own has provided the freedom to reshape her personal world, as well as suggest ideas for an alternate plane of existence.

The world is greying. By 2050 the global population age sixty-five and older is projected to nearly double—from 12% to 22%, and while many older persons continue to experience relatively good health, contributing importantly to society as family members, volunteering, and in the workforce, others will be at high risk of becoming unhoused, experiencing mental health and cognitive disorders, and comorbidities. 

Resilient architectural responses are needed to anticipate the needs and aspirations of older persons, particularly against the backdrop of the global climate crisis. Broad trends are examined in relation to progressive architectural case studies in the field of architecture and aging with particular focus on the long-term care housing crisis in Ontario.

Speaker Bios

Diana Anderson, MD, M.Arch, FACHA

Dr. Diana Anderson is a triple-boarded professional healthcare architect (ACHA-American College of Healthcare Architects), internist and a geriatrician. She earned her MD from the University of Toronto (OT8). As a “dochitect,” she pioneered a collaborative, evidence-based model for approaching healthcare from the medicine and architecture fields simultaneously. A past Fellow of the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, Dr. Anderson explores the ethics of built space related to design for aging. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Boston University, and a recipient of an Alzheimer's Association Clinician Scientist Fellowship. She is a healthcare principal at Jacobs, contributing her thought leadership at the intersection of design and health.

Molly Chan

Molly Chan is a principal with the firm of NSDA Architects, a diverse and dynamic architectural practice based in Vancouver, BC. A six-time recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s award, the firm focuses on a wide range of projects including special needs, social purpose housing, affordable rental, healthcare and multi-family residential. Current projects include YWCA Housing for Women and Children, The Salvation Army Harbour Light facility, and Foxglove Supported Housing and Shelter.

Stephen Verderber, Arch,D., NCARB, ACSA Distinguished Professor

Dr. Stephen Verderber is Professor of Architecture, Director of the Centre for Design + Health Innovation in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, and Adjunct Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health/IHPME at the University of Toronto. 

A Registered Architect in the U.S. and co-founder of R-2ARCH (Research to Architecture), he is sole author of seven books, co-author of two, and has published over one-hundred peer reviewed scholarly and professional articles. His most recent books are Innovations in Transportable Healthcare Architecture (2016), Innovations in Behavioural Health Architecture (2018) and Innovations in Hospice Architecture (Second Edition, 2020). His first book, Healthcare Architecture in an Era of Radical Transformation (2000), has become a standard reference. 

Principal investigator of numerous externally sponsored research projects and reports, he holds one of only two North American faculty cross-appointments linking architecture and public health. Dr. Verderber has delivered invited keynotes at numerous international conferences on evidence-based health research and design, educational pedagogy, eco-humanist health-centric design, and has received numerous awards for his interdisciplinary contributions to the advancement of the discipline, profession, and broader community.

Architecture of Health: 
The Annual Zeidler-Evans Lecture 

The Zeidler-Evans Lecture honours Dr. John Evans, the ninth president of the University of Toronto (1972-78) and the first dean of McMaster University’s School of Medicine, and his dear friend, renowned architect Eberhard Zeidler. The annual public lecture focuses on the Architecture of Health to address complex health and design challenges that will help us to build stronger and more inclusive societies.

Between 1967 and 1972, Zeidler and Evans collaborated on McMaster’s Health Sciences Centre, revolutionizing hospital design and education in the process. Zeidler served as an adjunct professor at the Daniels Faculty from 1983 to 1995 and established the Eberhard Zeidler Scholarship with his wife Jane in 1999. The Eberhard Zeidler Library, housing 37,000 volumes in the Daniels Building, is also named in his honour.

In the 2024 George Baird Lecture, Elizabeth Whittaker will focus on how the work of her firm MERGE has evolved from small-scale material explorations to transforming housing typologies in Boston, Detroit, and throughout the US. The presentation will explore contemporary interpretations of varying contexts, as MERGE reimagines the vernacular of each unique site and region at the missing middle scale of housing. The need for more modest scale housing, in particular, offers immense opportunity for experimentation and the revitalization of many neighborhoods throughout the country. As the housing crisis in the US has reached a fever pitch, we cannot rely on big development to satisfy our collective housing needs and changing lifestyles. Whittaker will discuss how MERGE is translating known residential building types in both form, function, and material to address this demand for tectonic and social diversity through their research and built work on the flat, maisonette, duplex, triple-decker, and Chicago 6-flat, among others.

Elizabeth Whittaker is an Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she has been teaching Core Architecture Studios since 2009. Elizabeth is also the founding principal of MERGE architects, a practice that aims at developing contemporary craft, transforming typologies, and addressing social ecologies throughout the US. Her practice operates at multiple scales through commercial, institutional, retail, private residential, multi-family housing, graphic and furniture design. The work combines both digital fabrication and the hand made by working through a cross-disciplinary as well a cross-production process.

The George Baird Lecture honours the legacy of Professor Emeritus George Baird, alumnus (BArch 1962), former dean, and beloved friend of the Faculty. Professor Baird was a preeminent figure in the history and evolution of both the Faculty and the architectural profession. As an architect, scholar, educator and mentor, his contribution to the discourse and practice of architecture was profound, progressive and international in its reach. Established by colleagues, family, and friends, the annual George Baird lecture brings scholars and practitioners from around the world.
 

This lecture will delve into Chris Cornelius’ journey—showcasing their innovative approach to architecture that honors and integrates Indigenous traditions and values, and the profound impact their cultural heritage has on their design practice.

He will share insights into how Indigenous philosophies, storytelling, and sustainable practices have influenced their designs, resulting in structures that are not only aesthetically stunning but also deeply meaningful to the communities they serve.

Chris Cornelius is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, and Chair of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. Cornelius is founding principal of studio:indigenous founding and creates architecture and artifacts that dismantle stereotypes surrounding Indigenous design and offer a distinct vision of contemporary Indigenous culture. 

His awards include the Miller Prize from Exhibit Columbus and multiple Best of Design and Best of Practice Awards from the Architect’s Newspaper. His work has been exhibited at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial. He has been a visiting professor at Yale University and Columbia University.

In conjunction with their upcoming publication, In Depth: Urban Domesticities Today,  SO – IL founders Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg will discuss their practice's decade-long pursuit of transforming the paradigm of urban housing today—towards a denser, more human and communal environment.  

Appealing to students and professionals alike, In Depth examines how housing might promote the well-being of its inhabitants by presenting new typologies for our ever-more urbanized world. The design office’s attempt to “hack” the codes, cores, courts and corridors takes center stage, exemplified by a selection of  SO – IL’s most recent projects, exploring concepts including porosity, connectivity, community and orientation in urban living.  

Jing Liu, born in 1980 in China, is a founding partner at  SO – IL. She grew up on three continents and in five cities, and most of her childhood homes were lost to rapid urbanization. She teaches at universities on the East Coast of the United States and works from her current base in Brooklyn, New York. Florian Idenburg is co-founder of SO – IL and Professor of the Practice at Cornell University. His grandmother’s house was designed by her great-uncle H. P. Berlage. On her veranda, he learned firsthand the benefits of the space in between. 

Liu and Idenburg are the 2024-2025 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chairs in Architectural Design.  

Tune in to a virtual lecture on April 1 with Teddy Cruz and Fonna Forman as part of Selected Topics in Urban Design (ARC367).

Cruz and Forman are principals in Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, a research-based political and architectural practice in San Diego, investigating issues of informal urbanization, civic infrastructure and public culture, with a special emphasis on Latin American cities.

Blurring conventional boundaries between theory and practice, and merging the fields of architecture and urbanism, political theory and urban policy, visual arts and public culture, Cruz and Forman lead a variety of urban research agendas and civic/public interventions in the San Diego-Tijuana border region and beyond.

ARC367, taught by the Daniels Faculty’s Mariana Leguia and Angus Laurie, asks students to take a critical look at some of the dominant ideologies of urbanism, seeing the city through different, often opposing lenses. More specifically, it approximates the city at different scales, from the regional to the human. At the same time, the course looks at the city through the lenses of different urban disciplines, using different lectures to focus on urban design, landscape, architecture, and mobility. Throughout the semester, students have heard from a series of international experts including Alfred Caraballo, Francesco Careri, and Gil Peñalosa.

Join Zoom Meeting

https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/87395716499

Meeting ID: 873 9571 6499

Passcode: 389777

Join the Daniels Faculty’s Lukas Pauer for a discussion of his integrated practice, research and teaching—an effort to recentre the study of how sovereignty is acquired and disputed as a practice-based matter of space and power. In recent years, Pauer has worked on a series of projects aimed at decoding and deconstructing built objects that political actors around the world have used to project power. As such, his academic practice seeks to empower marginalized, underrepresented and vulnerable individuals and communities.

This event is part of the Daniels Faculty’s Winter 2024 Public Program. Pauer has also curated a corresponding exhibition, How to Steal a Country, on view in the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery at 1 Spadina Crescent from March 6 to May 14, 2024.

Daniels Faculty Emerging Architect Fellow Lukas Pauer is a licensed architect, urbanist, historian and educator. His Vertical Geopolitics Lab, an investigative practice and think tank at the intersections of architecture, geography, politology and media, is dedicated to exposing intangible systems and hidden agendas within the built environment.

Join architectural and art historian Mark Crinson, Birkbeck (University of London), for a special guest lecture on Monday, March 11, hosted by the Daniels Faculty's Architecture, Landscape, and Design PhD program.

In this talk, Crinson will focus on the early years of a new understanding of infrastructure, and uses various forms of representation (brochures, a feature film, architectural drawings) to explore the phenomenon in the case of the international airport just after the Second World War when infrastructural projects came into existence not only as “signs of themselves, but as trope, rhetoric, image, poetics.”

London (Heathrow) airport became the main location for the film Out of the Clouds (1955), interpreted here as a training manual in how to learn the airport, namely how to negotiate infrastructure either/both because you don’t really know it is there or/and because you understand it as demonstratively sensitive to human craft and experience. The film’s treatment of infrastructure has continuing associations to contemporary conversations about forced labor, central state planning, territoriality, immigration, and citizenship.

All members of the Daniels community, and interested members of the public, are invited to join. No advanced registration required. 

Mark Crinson is emeritus professor of architectural history at Birkbeck, University of London, and previously taught at the University of Manchester (1993–2016). He served as vice president and president of the European Architectural History Network. Recent books include Shock City: Image and Architecture in Industrial Manchester (2022, winner of the 2024 Historians of British Art Prize); The Architecture of Art History: A Historiography (2019, co-authored with Richard J. Williams); Alison and Peter Smithson (2018); and Rebuilding Babel: Modern Architecture and Internationalism (2017). His current book, titled Heathrow’s Genius Loci, will be completed in summer 2024. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2023.