Midday Talk: Forestry and Design Series

Dr. Sandy Smith, Daniels Faculty, “Urban Forests”

Dr. Sandy Smith is the newly appointed director of the Daniels Faculty's forestry graduate programs. She specializes in forest health and urban forests, specifically using natural controls to address invasive species, with research focused on biological control of forest insects, earthworms, and plants such as dog-strangling vine and Phragmites. She has published over 140 papers and reports, served as guest editor and reviewer for numerous refereed journals, NSERC panels, and on scientific panels for managing invasive insects such as the Asian Long-Horned Beetle and Emerald Ash Borer.

Sandy is best known for her contributions augmenting native natural enemies for biological control in forested systems, widely cited work still definitive in the field, however, her current research explores hypotheses around displacement of native species in order to better understand our ability to manage the invasion process in forest ecosystems. Her specific interests are in the population and community ecology of natural enemies following the introduction of exotics or disturbance.

Midday Talk: Forestry and Design Series
Mass Timber Institute

Craig Applegath (Dialog Design)
Robert Wright, Daniels Faculty
“Mass Timber Buildings”

Robert Wright has a BSc from the University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in Open Space Planning, with a minor in Ecology and an MLA from the University of Guelph, Ontario Canada. Professor Wright’s work is design centered and extremely eclectic in nature. His notion of design does not privilege the traditional professional disciplines of Architecture, Landscape Architecture or Urban design. He places his work within a more contemporary and trans-disciplinary framework. As Both an educator and as a design practitioner, he holds a strong belief that “Design is built theory” meaning that the translation from thought and concept to built works is primary and essential to design discourse. Having had training in both Ecology and Landscape Architecture places design as a practice that must at its essence deal with context. As a self confessed “Modernist” with Minimalist and Situationalist tendencies. The art of design is not merely “object” making but rather the interplay of Nature, Person, Community, City and Place. Rob is the Principle of iz an open and exploratory design practice. His practice seeks to develop creative design experimentation not only in Architecture, Landscape Architecture or Urban design but also in fashion, furniture, art and the industrial arts. He collaborates with all manner of artists, designers and practitioners over the full range of the creative arts.

Mr. Wright is also the Director of the Centre for Landscape Research. His efforts on behalf of the CLR focus on bringing the University’s expertise together with Community, Industry and government research Interests. He is a full member of the OALA and a Fellow of the CSLA. Mr. Wright has also been in the past, the Director of the Landscape Program (8 yrs.), Associate Dean (4 yrs.) and Director of the Knowledge Media institute (4 yrs.)

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Craig Applegath is the founding principal of DIALOG’s Toronto Studio, and a passionate designer who believes in the power of built form to meaningfully improve the wellbeing of communities and the environment they are part of. Since graduating from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University with a Master of Architecture in Urban Design Craig has focused his energies on leading innovative planning and design projects that address the complex challenges facing our communities, as well as on his advocacy of sustainable building design and urban regeneration and symbiosis. Craig’s area of practice includes the master planning and design of institutional projects, including cultural and museum, post secondary education, and healthcare facilities, as well as the design of innovative industrial and manufacturing facilities.

Craig was a founding Board Member of Sustainable Buildings Canada, a Past President of the Ontario Association of Architects, and the current moderatorof SymbioticCities.net. Craig has lectured or taught at Harvard, the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, as well as at many professional and sector related conferences around the world. In 2001 Craig was made a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada for his contributions to the profession of architecture.

Midday Talk: Forestry and Design Series

Dr. Danijela Puric-Mladenovic, Daniels Faculty " The Southern Ontario Forest"

Danijela is a faculty member working for the Ministry of Natural Resources, Science and Research Branch, Natural Heritage Information Center. Her research and professional work is focused on forests in settled and urban landscapes. Her research has a specific focus on conservation, restoration and integrated spatial planning and management of forests in urban, peri-urban to rural landscapes and their interfaces. Within this research framework she has a special focusses on: development and application inventory and monitoring protocols; spatial conservation and  landscape planning; spatial design of green systems and networks; quantifying values of forests and green systems in the contest of green infrastructure; determining thresholds and landscape and vegetation reference conditions; spatial prioritization of restoration; predictive modeling and mapping under current, future and past (pre-settlement vegetation) environmental and climate conditions; vegetation analysis and assessment; development of monitoring criteria and indicators, and application of spatial analysis and decision tolls to forest and landscape conservation. In collaboration with Dr. A. Kenney Danijela co-developed Neighbourwoods, a single tree inventory and monitoring protocol, and Vegetation Sampling Protocol, inventory and monitoring protocol applicable to forests and other vegetation.  Dr. Puric-Mladenovic collaborates with partners from different levels of governments, NGOs, academia and community groups engaged in forests and natural resources conservation across urban and settled landscapes.

Midday Talk: Forestry and Design Series

Jane Hutton, Waterloo Architecture Faculty, “Wood Urbanism"
followed by Book Launch

Jane Hutton is a landscape architect, whose research looks at the extended relationships of materials in design, examining links between the landscapes of production and consumption of common building materials. From 2011-2016, she was an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and previously taught at the University of Toronto. Her design research has focused on material flows and urban change, and has been published and exhibited in venues in Canada, the US, the UK, and China. She is a founding editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy, and is co-editor of Issues: 01 Service, 02 Materialism, and 06 Mexico D.F./NAFTA. She has practiced with Toronto-based PLANT Architect Inc. as a Senior Designer as well as with architectural firms in China and Mexico City. Hutton holds a Master of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Toronto, where she received the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects Medal for Design Excellence, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and Environmental Sciences from McGill University, Montreal, where she studied the ecology of culturally and economically significant palms in Eastern Panama.

Midday Talk: Forestry and Design Series

Dr. Sean Thomas, Daniels Faculty, "Forestry, Architecture, and Sustainability"

Dr. Sean Thomas has been preoccupied with the comparative biology of trees and forest responses to the intentional and accidental impacts of humans for some 25 years. Sean has been at the University of Toronto since 1999, and is currently appointed as an NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Biochar and Ecosystem Restoration. Dr. Thomas’ research focuses on how trees and forests respond to human impacts – intentional impacts through forest management, and unintentional impacts via local, regional, and global changes in the environment. In this effort, he tries to link an understanding of functional ecology and ecophysiology of trees (“how trees work”) to patterns of growth, mortality, recruitment, reproduction, at the population scale, to patterns community composition, and to ecoysystem processes, in particular carbon flux (“how forests work”). Sean Thomas’ lab is currently involved in projects in temperate and boreal forests in Canada, and tropical forests at a variety of sites.

Midday Talk: Forestry and Design Series

Dan Handel, Tel Aviv, "Forest Primers"

Dan Handel is an architect and curator whose work focuses on research-based exhibitions with special attention to underexplored ideas, figures, and practices that shape contemporary built environments. He was the inaugural Young Curator at the at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, has developed exhibitions for the Venice Biennale and the New Institute in Rotterdam, and was curator of architecture and design at the Israel Museum. Handel holds an MArch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and PhD from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. His writing has appeared in Harvard Design Magazine, e-flux Architecture, Thresholds, Frame, San Rocco, Pin-Up, Bracket, and the Journal of Landscape Architecture (JOLA), among others. He is the editor of the publications Aircraft Carrier (Hajte Cantz, 2012), Yasky and Co. (Tel Aviv Museum. 2016), and Manifest, a journal of American architecture and urbanism. He is the recipient of grants from the Graham Foundation for Manifest (2012, 2014) and Carpet Space (2019)

Jason Long is a partner at OMA, based out of the New York Office. Since joining the firm in 2003, Jason has been involved in OMA’s architecture and urbanism practice and its think tank, AMO. He has brought a research-driven, interdisciplinary approach to a wide range of OMA’s projects internationally. From concept design to completion, Jason served as the project manager for a new national museum in Quebec City and the Faena Forum, a multi-purpose venue in Miami. Jason leads the office’s portfolio in Washington DC, which currently includes numerous urban planning projects that provide an innovative approach to recreation, public health and equitable development: the 11th Street Bridge Park, an elevated public park; a sport and recreation masterplan for the RFK Stadium-Armory Campus; and the revitalization of the streetscape around the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. He is also developing new approaches to public space in California with a mixed-used development in Santa Monica and a new programmed park for Downtown Los Angeles. Currently, he is also overseeing the construction of a high-rise tower in San Francisco’s Transbay district. Read More...

The Relevance and Resilience of (super) High Rise Architecture

with Gerard Loozekoot (Partner / Senior Architect) and Harlen Miller (Senior Architect / Associate), UNStudio

The high-rise typology has always been synonymous with modernist notions of a futuristic utopia. The grand impressions of spires rising from the urban fabric while piercing the sky have shaped our collective culture over the last century through our writing, film, public policy, means of transportation, economic stratification and urban disposition. Towers have become targets for sharp criticism where they boarder on being icons of egotistical opulence, to a sociopolitical byproduct of greed.

Yet despite the critique, we remain in an ever challenged world, with a growing populous in need of food, energy, and ultimately space… leaving only one option for us to move forward… but to build upward. Once the spectacle of constructing upward has faded from the conversations of pop culture, what will keep this typology relevant? The high-rise, in the end, will have to demonstrate resilience and true value through its functionalist and utilitarian character.

Gerard Loozekoot received his Master of Architecture from TU Delft, after which he joined UNStudio in 2000. Alongside two other partners, Gerard has been part of UNStudio’s management team since 2008. Gerard has extensive experience and interest in complex design processes with a focus on typological innovation. As a UNStudio Partner and Senior Architect, Gerard is actively involved in all phases of the design and construction process.

Harlen Miller is a Senior Architect and Associate who joined UNStudio in 2012 after moving to the Netherlands from Los Angeles. He currently stands as the Coordinator of the Computational Knowledge Platform which assists office-wide in numerous projects of varying scale and complexity. As a lead designer, his work is integral to developing strategies and tools for rationalizing buildings and facade systems through computational and parametric modelling.

Jia Yi Gu is an architectural historian, designer and cultural producer. She is currently a doctoral student in UCLA Critical Studies in Architecture. Her research work focuses on the use of scientific and form-finding models in postwar architectural practices. She is currently director and curator of the exhibition space Materials & Applications, and co-director in Spinagu. Read More.

Mitchell Akiyama is a Toronto-based scholar, composer, and artist. His eclectic body of work includes writings about sound, metaphors, animals, and media technologies; scores for film and dance; and objects and installations that trouble received ideas about history, perception, and sensory experience. He holds a PhD in communications from McGill University and an MFA from Concordia University and is Assistant Professor of Visual Studies in the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.