Sustainable forest management involves balancing multiple competing objectives for a limited resource.  In this session, Rob Keron from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry shares challenges and experience from strategic forest management planning in Ontarios Great Lakes – St Lawrence Forest region.

Rob Keron graduated from Lakehead University with an H.B.Sc.F. in 2010. He then completed an M.Sc.F. from Lakehead University in 2013 specializing in operations research and supply chain management in forestry strategic and tactical planning. Rob has worked with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry since August 2013, most recently as a Regional Resources Analyst in Peterborough Ontario. Rob provides data and analytical support to forest management plans being written for the Great Lakes – St Lawrence Forest Region of Ontario.

Co-organized by the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto and Building Equality in Architecture Canada (BEA/Canada)

Marina Tabassum will share her research on the Meghna estuary and its impact on climate change coupled with a complex land inheritance system introduced by British Colonial rule that to date governs the dynamic landscape of the Ganges Delta. Marina will share the development of a modular mobile home unit to be distributed to landless families living in coastal areas.

Photo Credit: Sandro Di Carlo Darsa

Marina Tabassum is the principal of MTA (Marina Tabassum Architects), founded in 2005 and based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. MTA seeks to establish a language of architecture that is contemporary yet rooted to place. Their built work includes community centres, public schools, museums and eco resorts. Ms. Tabassum graduated from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 1995. In 2016, Ms. Tabassum received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the Bait ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka. Also in 2004, she received the Architect of the Year Award (AYA) from India for the NEK10 project in Dhaka. She is a recipient of 2005 Ananya Shirshwa Dash award, which recognises women in Bangladesh for their exceptional achievements.

Ms. Tabassum is the academic director of the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements. She was the Aga Khan Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in Autumn 2017 and serves as a member of the Aga Khan Program Advisory Group. She taught Advanced Design Studio as visiting professor at the University of Texas in 2015 and at BRAC University from 2005 to 2010. Ms. Tabassum serves on the Board of Directors of Prokritee, a fair-trade organisation that empowers Bangladeshi women through the export of handcrafted objects. Working with Platform for Community Actions and Architecture, she has initiated “$2000 Home” projects in several villages surrounding Panigram Resort, currently under construction. In 2011, she worked with Hyder Consulting Middle East to create the Abu Dhabi Mosque Development Regulations and Guidelines.

Safoura Zahedi (MArch Class of 2016) is a designer at Superkül with a background in architecture and interior design and experience on a diverse range of projects, including residential, commercial, institutional, cultural and civic buildings. Her award-winning independent work operates at the intersection of art and architecture exploring geometry as a universal design language and digital fabrication. She is highly committed to the design community and acts as Programs Coordinator at the DesignTO Festival and Executive Committee member at BEAT (Building Equality in Architecture Toronto), where she co-founded the annual BEAT Forum, devoted to addressing issues of diversity and inclusion in the design and architecture industry. In addition, Safoura is currently a part-time lecturer at the Ryerson School of Interior Design.

Sarah Rafson (BAAS Class of 2010) is an architecture writer, researcher, editor, and curator, founder of Point Line Projects, an editorial and curatorial agency for architecture, art, and design. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Bachelor of Arts in Architecture Studies and Columbia University's Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices program, she has worked on books with Kenneth Frampton, Bernard Tschumi, and Barry Bergdoll, and collaborated on exhibitions at MoMA, Centre Pompidou, Center for Architecture in New York, and the Parsons School of Design. She was awarded the 2017-18 Ann Kalla Professorship in Architecture at the Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture, where she continues to teach and direct the school’s yearly exhibition and publication, EX-CHANGE.

About the What's Next Speaker Series

AVSSU, GALDSU and FGSA are excited to bring to you What’s Next, an alumni speaker series. Speakers will be presenting their work and career paths since graduating from the different programs at Daniels. 

You will hear about the various industries and areas of work, skills you can transfer from university to the workplace, networking and more!

The lecture will start with a short presentation by the guests, followed by a moderated discussion with student(s), and ending with an open Q&A with the audience.

If you are unable to attend, please send in any questions you may have, and we will be sure to ask them for you. The talks will be recorded and can be found on Youtube. If you are a student and are interested in moderating a discussion, please reach out to your respective student union representative (see below).

AVSSU - Randa Omar
GALDSU - Juliette Cook
FGSA - Nicole Tratnik

What's Next Graphic Credit: Randa Omar

This lecture is a presentation on the Great Lakes dunes, Southern Ontario prairies and savannahs, Northwestern Ontario prairies and savannahs, and alvars. The presentation will include habitat photos, and the plants that grow in these areas.

Wasyl Bakowsky is the Community Ecologist for the Natural Heritage Information Centre. The centre manages data about the location of species of conservation concern, plant communities, wildlife concentration areas, and natural areas in Ontario. Wasyl complies information on rare plant communities, as well as exemplary examples of communities which are not rare, such as old growth forests. Compiled information includes plant community descriptions, species lists, and digitized polygons. This information is used for biodiversity conservation planning, environmental assessments and natural resource management. 
 

BES (planning), MArch (2011), OAA, RAIC
 

Drew Adams (M.Arch 2011) is a designer with a background spanning architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. He is an Associate at LGA Architectural Partners in Toronto with nearly 10 years experience leading innovative and high-profile public interest design projects. This includes affordable housing projects like Eva’s Phoenix to the Evergreen Brick Works carbon neutral Kiln Building while his own speculative work has been distinguished in numerous international design competitions. This work has received recognition ranging from the Mies Crown Hall America’s Prize nomination to material innovation awards and publication features ranging from Fast Company to Architectural Record. Drew recently co-authored a series for Azure on design and climate change, is a frequent speaker and guest critic, and occasional adjunct professor. He received the Irving Grossman Prize in 2011 for his final thesis on innovative and sustainable housing design. In 2020, Drew was named recipient of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Emerging Architect Award.

About the What's Next Speaker Series

AVSSU, GALDSU and FGSA are excited to bring to you What’s Next, an alumni speaker series. Speakers will be presenting their work and career paths since graduating from the different programs at Daniels. 

You will hear about the various industries and areas of work, skills you can transfer from university to the workplace, networking and more!

The lecture will start with a short presentation by the guest, followed by a moderated discussion with student(s), and ending with an open Q&A with the audience.

If you are unable to attend, please send in any questions you may have, and we will be sure to ask them for you. The talks will be recorded and can be found on Youtube. If you are a student and are interested in moderating a discussion, please reach out to your respective student union representative (see below).

AVSSU - Randa Omar
GALDSU - Juliette Cook
FGSA - Nicole Tratnik

What's Next Graphic Credit: Randa Omar

Filipe Magalhaes, Ana Luisa Soares and Ahmed Belkhodja of fala present "Methodic Optimism". 

"The method doesn’t always pay off, and comes with a good deal of frustrating moments and necessary plot twists. Projects we love are regularly thrown in the trash bin. But more often than not, they leave place for even more lovable ones. In short, we have to be resilient and stubborn. Being optimistic is an enjoyable burden."

Fala is a naïve architecture practice based in porto, founded in 2013. Led by Filipe Magalhães, Ana Luisa Soares and Ahmed Belkhodja, the atelier is hedonistic while restrained, taking lightness and joy very seriously.

Fala has lectured at different universities and institutions, including the architectural association, the RIBA and the Barbican in london, the GSAPP in New York, the Graham Foundation in Chicago, the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, the Versailles’ Faculty of Architecture in Paris and the Casa dell'Architettura in Rome; besides the current positions in Toronto, Geneva and Lisbon, among others, fala has taught at the faculties of architecture in Venice, Munich, Porto and London. The atelier’s work has been exhibited at the Architecture Biennials in Venice and Chicago, the Serralves Foundation and the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris, and in single exhibitions in Panama, Italy, Macedonia, France and Portugal. Fala's work has been widely published in international media platforms, including DOMUS, L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui and the Architectural Review. The atelier published ’01’, a collection of early projects by the atelier and AVproyectos #098 is dedicated to its work; the international architecture magazine 2G dedicated its monographic issue #80 to fala’s work. Among other honors, fala was awarded the spotlight award by the Rice University and selected as one of the 50 most relevant young offices in the world by domus magazine in 2020.

Graphic by Mariah Meawasige (Makoose)

Image Description & Credit: 069, houses within lines and dots; fala

Space Popular directors Fredrik Hellberg and Lara Lesmes will discuss their latest projects in both the physical and virtual realms with a focus on how new technologies are changing both how we think of and experience architecture.
 

Space Popular creates physical and virtual architecture, concentrating on how the two will fuse in the near future. Founded in Bangkok in 2013 by architects Lara Lesmes (Spain) and Fredrik Hellberg (Sweden) the studio has since completed buildings, exhibitions, public artworks, furniture collections, and interiors across Asia and Europe, and virtual architecture for the Immersive Internet. Space Popular is currently based in London. Lesmes and Hellberg are both graduates from the Architectural Association School of Architecture, where they also teach a master studio exploring the future of virtual gathering spaces. From 2020 Lesmes and Hellberg also teach a master studio at University of Toronto.

Image: The Venn Room 2019. Immersive film and installation depicting a series of possible scenarios of cohabitation in which issues of integration, interface, exposure, overlap, representation, storage and ownership in the augmented future for our domestic environments are put into perspective through everyday narratives. First exhibited at the Tallinn Architecture Biennale 2019.

Julia Smachylo is an urban designer as well as a registered urban planner in Ontario and the United Kingdom. As a doctoral candidate at Harvard, she is a member of the Urban Theory Lab, a Canada Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and has completed a doctoral specialism in Critical Media Practice. Julia’s research is situated in urban and landscape theory and political ecology, and aims to render visible the impacts of policy that connect resource territories to urban processes. Within this context her recent work traces the rise of incentivized environmental conservation in southern Ontario, focusing on forest landscapes. Using film as a method of investigation, alongside mapping, interviews and archival analysis, her research documents incentivized forest management to reveal the extent to which these landscapes are tied to the social, economic and political histories of production and conservation within the region. Within this framework she brings a particular focus on environmental stewardship as a form of collective praxis through which to engage the production of more environmentally sane and socially just cities and landscapes.

Jackie Hamilton, MFC, RPF (she/her) is a forester, arborist and admirer of trees and all the people that live with them. A 2015 graduate of U of T's MFC, she has worked on and led urban and peri-urban forestry and applied research projects in the GTA and continues to work on forest conservation in and around cities. Jackie has experience working in environmental science and forestry in the UK and eastern Ontario.

Jackie will discuss her career path from arboricultural consulting and backyard tree planting to research on urban forest monitoring and planning. Insights will include weird skills she learned at U of T that have proved useful, why she likes to work with Daniels and how to network
as an introverted tree nerd.
 

About the What's Next Speaker Series

AVSSU, GALDSU and FGSA are excited to bring to you What’s Next, an alumni speaker series. Speakers will be presenting their work and career paths since graduating from the different programs at Daniels. 

You will hear about the various industries and areas of work, skills you can transfer from university to the workplace, networking and more!

The lecture will start with a short presentation by the guest, followed by a moderated discussion with student(s), and ending with an open Q&A with the audience.

For the winter of 2021, we have an exciting line-up of speakers from the MFC, MUD, MVS, MLA, BAAS, and M.Arch programs, so be sure to mark the dates in your calendars. If you are unable to attend, please send in any questions you may have, and we will be sure to ask them for you. The talks will be recorded and can be found on Youtube. If you are a student and are interested in moderating a discussion, please reach out to your respective student union representative (see below).

AVSSU - Randa Omar
GALDSU - Juliette Cook
FGSA - Zoe Bedford

What's Next Graphic Credit: Randa Omar

Dr. Abid Mehmood, a senior research fellow at the Sustainable Places Research Institute, at Cardiff University, will be leading this lunchtime lecture.

He writes: "Considering cities as complex adaptive systems, the talk will critically examine the (re)emergence of nature-inspired trends in urban planning and design as a way of exploring new relationships between people and places. Although the use of metaphors is not new when describing the state of a city, the recent turn is more concerned with achieving optimal efficiency and overall sustainability of the built environment through observations and experiences from nature. I would further argue that such approaches should aim for integrating citizens’ needs, inclusion, and empowerment for a holistic view to the science of cities."

This event is hosted by the Urban Genome Urban Challenge Initiative.

Click here to register

As the domain where different vectors of the current climate crisis meet and interact, and where conflicts around its regulation are emerging, the atmosphere also produces multiple localities where these transformations can be observed and understood—and sites of mediation can be imagined. Far from being understood in all of its complexity, the atmosphere continues to elude our ability to model its dynamics—or to compute future scenarios. 

In Thinking with Landscapes: The Fourth Atmosphere, ongoing research (conducted together with Marco Ferrari and Jingru (Cyan) Cheng at the Royal College of Art, London) examines how established and emerging plans—including large-scale weather modification proposals such as China’s Tian He (Sky River) and Pleistocene Park in Siberia, both seeking to govern water in various forms, is leading to the rise of a new planetary imaginary, extending well-known concepts of land sovereignty into the domain of the atmosphere. 

Elise Misao Hunchuck is a Berlin-based landscape researcher, editor, and educator trained in landscape architecture (MLA, Daniels, 2016), philosophy and geography (University of Toronto). She is a Visiting Lecturer at the Royal College of Art School of Architecture (London), a Senior Researcher and Teaching Fellow in the landscape architecture programme at The Bartlett School of Architecture, an Assistant professor, teaching stream, at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, a member of the editorial board of Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy, and editor for transmediale (2021–2022).