Standard of Dwelling will bring together three Toronto-based architects and the developers they work with to present on a recent innovative residential project. Each pair will explore a different housing type, allowing the afternoon’s discussion to cover a variety of urban housing typologies — from the condo tower to the townhouse.

Some of the questions we’d like to address over the course of the afternoon and evening include:

• How do these projects address current housing trends and needs within the city?
• What kinds of challenges (architectural, economic, political, social, etc.) did the architects and developers face?
• How does the project contribute to a change in identity and culture of this city?
• What questions does the project raise about the relationship between architecture and real estate development in Toronto?
• What are some of the themes related to the evolution of housing in the city (whether historic or contemporary) that the project engages?
• What does this say about our ability to creatively respond to the pressures facing the provision of housing within cities, which must accommodate growth, reduce sprawl, and provide homes for a broad variety of urban lifestyles at various income levels?

Los Angeles-based architect Michael Maltzan — whose awarding-winning work has included multi-family, single-family, affordable, and transitional housing — will present the keynote lecture, providing, through an exploration of his work in Los Angeles, an outside perspective on the Toronto-focused discussion that will take place in the afternoon.

Join the conversation by using hashtag #TOdwelling on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook!
 

Schedule overview:

1:00 - 3:45pm: Dialogues

4:00 - 4:45pm: Roundtable discussion

5:00 - 6:00pm: Reception

6:00 - 7:30pm: Keynote lecture

Dialogues

1:00 – 1:45pm:

Peter Clewes, architectsAlliance, and David Wex, Urban Capital

Over 35 years of practice, Peter Clewes has developed a body of work shaped by the clarity, simplicity and functionality of modern architecture, and by a steadfast commitment to urbanism and city-building. As aA's Managing Partner and Design Director, his vision has influenced projects as diverse as the 2015 Pan/Parapan American Athletes’ Village / Canary District, ÏCE Condominiums, UofT's Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research, and the St. James Cathedral Centre. Peter is a strong advocate of the interweaving of built form and public space to ensure the vitality of the urban core, and speaks to professional, academic and civic groups across Canada and the US on topics related to design, density and urban renewal.

David Wex is a founder and partner in Urban Capital Property Group, a Toronto-based residential condominium developer with over 4,000 units developed or under development in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax and Winnipeg. Urban Capital has been a pioneer in developing residential buildings in former industrial or non-residential districts, typically setting a trend that results in flourishing new neighbourhoods. Urban Capital's developments have also been highly innovative in terms of architecture, interior design and environmental sustainability. Current Toronto projects include the dramatic and award-winning River City; Smart House, Toronto’s first micro-condos; and Tableau, a striking 36 storey tower built over a large plaza in the city's Entertainment District. Prior to establishing Urban Capital with partner Mark Reeve, David was a lawyer at Stikeman Elliott, a large Canadian law firm.

2:00 - 2:45pm:

Meg Graham, superkül, and Julian Battiston, Oben Flats

Meg Graham is known by her clients and the studio for her critical insight and passion for design. Developed over many years of practice, her expertise is broad and varied; she has successfully led a number of the firm’s projects in residential, institutional and retail sectors, along with initiatives in master-planning and adaptive reuse.
 
Since 2001, Meg has taught design at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto, and has been a visiting lecturer/critic at several architecture schools in Canada and the US. An articulate communicator and advocate for design, Meg has contributed her expertise in volunteer and board positions that speak to her strong leadership role both in and beyond the design community. A past Chair of the Toronto Society of Architects, she is a member of the City of Toronto Design Review Panel, the Fort York Precinct Advisory Committee and the Harvard University GSD Alumni Council. She currently sits on the Board of Directors of the University of Toronto Schools.
 
Meg received her professional architecture degree from the University of Waterloo (B. Arch, 1997), winning the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in her thesis year. She also holds a postgraduate degree from Harvard University (MDesS, 2003). Meg is a registered architect with the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) and a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (FRAIC).

Julian Battiston is the president and co-founder of Oben Flats, a Toronto-based development firm pioneering the concept of design-driven rental buildings in the Canadian market. With four exclusive developments in its current pipeline, one of which is slated to launch this spring, Oben Flats is bringing its own series of boutique buildings to Toronto’s vibrant rental scene. Tapping into a growing “rent-instead-of-buy” mentality, Oben Flats’ focus is on contemporary, high-end units that appeal to aesthetically conscious urban residents, promising both worry and mortgage free living. As a quality measure to ensure the premium nature of these residences, Oben Flats started their own construction company – Oben Build. By doing so, both architecture and construction align in bringing innovative, modern designs to style-savvy Canadians through a new model of living.

3:00 - 3:45pm:

Pina Petricone, Giannone Petricone Associates, and Niall Haggart, The Daniels Corporation

Pina Petricone shares her time as Principal of Giannone Petricone Associates and as a Professor of Architecture at the University of Toronto. This dual role is a defining feature of the practice, enabling Pina to contribute intellectual rigor and research to the firm’s projects and processes, as well as to give real projects academic consideration.

As an associate professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, Pina teaches design and critical theory at every level of the graduate architecture program, and has enjoyed acting as primary advisor for numerous award-winning thesis students whose proposals tend to question socio-aesthetic practices in architecture as urban constructions.

Pina has presented her work and research at several national and international conferences and symposia, in­cluding the IFWorld Conference at the Politecnico di Milano, the Banff sessions on Architecture in Banff, Alberta, the Tectonics: Making Meaning Conference at the Eindhoven Technical Uni­versity, Netherlands, and recently at the Columbia University Think Tank on the Building Intel­ligence Project. Her work and research has been published widely in Canada, the U.S., Asia and Europe. In 2012 Pina celebrated the publication of her first book, “Concrete Ideas: Material to Shape a City”, a collection of essays and studio projects she directed that speculate on whether current nanotechnologies have provoked a shift in the cultural status of concrete.

Pina received her undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Toronto in 1991 and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University in 1995. In 2014, Pina was awarded the University of Toronto Arbor Award, and in 2015 was made a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Niall Haggart is the Executive Vice President at The Daniels Corporation, a fully diversified building and development company, creating new homes and condominiums across the Greater Toronto Area. Daniels is the private sector development partner revitalizing Regent Park and has built award-winning buildings including TIFF Bell Lightbox, Festival Tower and Daniels' City Centre in the heart of Mississauga. Haggart oversees Daniels' land acquisitions and plays a key role in all of the company's initiatives, with a special emphasis on master community planning.

Roundtable discussion

4:00 - 4:45pm:

Featuring all participants, moderated by Hans Ibelings

Hans Ibelings is an architectural historian and critic. He teaches at the Daniels Faculty and is the publisher and editor of The Architecture Observer. Prior to this he was the editor and publisher of A10 new European architecture, a magazine he founded in 2004 together with graphic designer Arjan Groot. Ibelings is the author of several books, including Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalization and European Architecture Since 1890.

Reception
5:00 – 6:00pm
Refreshments will be provided

Keynote lecture
6:00 – 7:30pm
Featuring Michael Maltzan

Michael Maltzan founded the Los Angeles-based architecture and urban design practice Michael Maltzan Architecture, Inc. in 1995. Dedicated to the design and construction of projects that engage their context and community, the firm is committed to the creation of progressive, transformative experiences that chart new trajectories for architecture, urbanism, and the public realm. The practice has been recognized with five Progressive Architecture awards, 35 citations from the American Institute of Architects, the Rudy Bruner Foundation’s Gold Medal for Urban Excellence, and as a finalist for the Smithsonian/Cooper-Hewitt Museum’s National Design Award. Maltzan's designs have been published and exhibited internationally and he regularly teaches and lectures at architectural schools around the world.

Photo: Ron Eshel

MIDDLE CITY PASSAGES - TORONTO

The multi-billion dollar investment in the expansion and improvement of Toronto’s public transport system, including along portions of Eglinton, Finch and Sheppard Avenues, provides an opportunity to combine a series of small, high-impact interventions with major infrastructure projects.

The Sheppard East Light Rail Transit (LRT) line is part of this investment and aligned with municipal plans that call for growth that is less dependent upon the automobile. New development is directed to areas well-served by public transit, efficiently using existing infrastructure, and, wherever possible, making transit, cycling, and walking more attractive alternatives.

The Middle City Passages Toronto competition is an opportunity to investigate how the new Sheppard East LRT line’s infrastructure can interweave with existing local, small-scale pedestrian networks. It is also a chance to test how forging connections between local paths and to transit infrastructure can further support development and improve local living conditions. Can the design of new types of passages aid in producing a more urban condition in suburban Toronto?

Click here to download our press release on the competition launch.

Organized by Metrolinx and the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, in partnership with the Municipality and the French Institute of Toronto, within the IVM international programme “Passages, transitional spaces for the 21st century."

Middle City Passages Symposium — PROGRAM
Friday, March 6, 2015
All sessions will take place at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, 230 College Street, Room 103

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION LAUNCH & PUBLIC INFORMATION SESSION

12:30pm - Metrolinx Presentation, Leslie Woo
12:45pm - IVM Presentation, Marcel Smets
1:00pm - Passages Overview, Maarten Van Acker
1:15pm - Remarks and Conclusion, Richard Sommer

MIDDLE CITY PASSAGES SYMPOSIUM

3:00pm - Welcome, Richard Sommer
3:15pm - Passages, Lecture by Marcel Smets
4:15pm - Break
4:30pm - Roundtable - introduction by Paul Hess, moderated by Richard Sommer - with Pierre Alain Trévelo, Harold Madi, Marcel Smets, and Leslie Woo
6:15pm - Break
6:30pm - Keynote Speaker - Pierre Alain Trévelo
7:30pm - Conclusion, Richard Sommer

PARTICIPATING SPEAKERS

Leslie Woo, an architect and urban planner by profession, has a unique background in public policy, planning and development, civic engagement and project delivery, Leslie is a capable executive management expert, able to effectively establish public policy, and prioritize resources in various economic climates and differing approval cycles.

Leslie has extensive executive experience in maintaining clear communication with a Board of Directors, providing advice for both detailed tactics and strategic outlook.  She has been part of numerous executive teams responsible for corporate services. She has extensive experience in corporate change management and organization transformation.

At both the Province of Ontario and the City of Toronto she was a key negotiator with senior municipal and political officials for major redevelopment initiatives such as the Toronto Waterfront and the Portlands. Leslie also led the provincially legislated Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe from discovery through delivery.

Leslie is an Advisory Board member with the Urban Land Institute, Association of Canada’s Urban Transportation Council, the American Planning Association, the Scientific and Strategy Council of the Institut pour la ville en mouvement, and a retired member of the Ontario Association of Architects. In her current volunteer position as Vice Chair of the YMCA GTA, she is part of the oversight team for an $11.3M investment portfolio and the 10 in 10 campaign - raising $10M for 10 new Ys in the GTA.

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Maarten Van Acker is an engineer-architect and urban planner, member of the Scientific Council of IVM. He is a professor of urbanism at the Faculty of Design Sciences at the University of Antwerp,

Belgium. His research focuses on the urban integration of infrastructure projects. He is a member of the Urban Studies Institute and the Research Group for Urban Development. He serves as a consultant to the editorial board of RUIMTE, the City Commission for Urban Planning of Antwerp and several architecture and urban planning offices. He holds a PhD for his research on the impact of infrastructure design on the urbanization of Belgium since the 19th century. At PARSONS –The New School for Design in New York Maarten conducted his post-doctoral research on urban infrastructures and taught in the Urban Ecologies design studio.

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Marcel Smets is an architect and urban planner, president of the Scientific and Orientation council of IVM. He was a professor of urbanism at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. He has written articles of architectural criticism for publications such as Archis, Topos, Lotus, and Casabella, and has served as a jury member for many competitions. He was a founder member of ILAUD and visiting professor at both the University of Thessalonka and Harvard University's GSD. He was the chief developer of the transformation of the area around Leuven station, and for town planning projects, which include Antwerp city center, Hoeilaart, Turnhout, Rouen, Genoa, and Conegliano. He was the Flemish Government architect. He is today in charge of the urban project of l’île de Nantes in France.

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Richard Sommer is the Dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, and an architect and urbanist with over twenty years experience as a practitioner, educator, and theorist. Sommer’s design practice, research, and writing take the complex physical geography, culture, technology, politics, and historiography of the contemporary city as a starting point for creating a synthetic, cosmopolitan architecture. In addition to his focus on design in the context of broad trends in urbanization, Sommer has been engaged in a long-term, multi-faceted research project examining the transformation of monument making in societies aspiring towards democracy. His diverse professional and academic activity includes serving from 2005 to 2010 as the O’Hare Chair of Design and Development and as a Visiting American Scholar at the University of Ulster, Belfast. Before being appointed Dean at the University of Toronto in 2009, Sommer was the Director of Urban Design Programs and a member of the Design Faculty at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for a decade. He has held many other distinguished appointments, including serving as Scholar-in-Residence at the California College of the Arts from 1995-98 and as a Visiting Professor at Washington University in St. Louis from 1993-95.

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Paul Hess is an Associate Professor of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto. His teaching and research focus is on pedestrian environments and design, planning for activity transportation modes, and streets as public space. Dr. Hess has done research on how built environments influence pedestrian activity for more than 15 years with his early work pioneering measures of pedestrian network connectivity and route-directness now in common use. A recent study with Professor Beth Moore Milroy examined institutional barriers to improving street design for pedestrians. Current projects include a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded project exploring “walkability” in the inner suburbs and how residents without access to cars negotiate their neighbourhoods by walking, cycling, and taking transit. In partnership with the Centre for City Ecology the study has been extended by the Toronto Community Foundation to include pilot sites for the Mayors Tower Renewal program. Dr. Hess is also part of a University of Toronto research team examining the politics of transportation in Canada including the entrenched institutional processes sustaining a culture of “automobility” and auto-dependence.

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Harold Madi is the Director of Urban Design for the City of Toronto, where his extensive urban planning and urban design background lends to the multi-disciplinary practice of this section of the City Planning Division. Harold joined the City in 2014 after over 18 years in the private sector. He is now charged with leading nearly 80 staff in Civic Design, Heritage, Graphics and Visualization and the four district Urban Design Development Review units that comprise the City of Toronto’s Urban Design Section.

Prior to being appointed Director, Harold held a number of key positions in prominent Toronto-based firms, including Senior Associate at Brook McIlroy-PACE Architects, a founding Partner at Office for Urbanism, and Partner at The Planning Partnership. Harold is also a faculty member at the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson University, and he sits on the Design Review Panels for the City of Vaughan, City of Toronto, Waterfront Toronto and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation.

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Pierre Alain Trévelo studied architecture and urbanism in Paris and Harvard and pursues a research that aims to capture the complexity and paradoxical nature of the contemporary city. This research crosses therefore essential topics, which are sometimes neglected in the contemporary city; such as the potential of architecture in locations determined by other factors, the role of large modern infrastructures, the status of monumentality, or the environmental condition in the metropolitan context. This research also constructed by the confrontation and the proliferation of topics, programs and scales: the practice therefore addresses both public and private projects, local and metropolitan. Housing, as raw material for the city, occupies a special place in the process of the practice.

Pierre Alain Trévelo, with Antoine Viger-Kohler, founded TVK Architectes Urbanistes / Trévelo & Viger-Kohler in Paris in 2003. TVK focuses primarily on the question of building the city and the metropolis and has attracted critical recognition and awards (New Album of French Young Architects Awards in 2006 and Young Urban Planner Award in 2005) with its ability to offer a fresh look on topics strongly influenced by the complex realities.

TVK brings together the two founding members of the association TOMATO that produced the book,Paris, La Ville du Peripherique (Paris: The ring road city). The practice continues its editorial activity, especially with the recent release of the book No Limit. Etude prospective de l’insertion urbaine du peripherique de Paris (No Limit. Prospective Study of Urban Integration of the Paris Ring Road).

TVK also aims to develop specific creative tools for project. With its experience in working as a team, the agency seeks to develop a specific methodology based on an iterative and crossed reflection mode. This open approach includes a strong willingness to collaborate with all stakeholders involved in the construction of an innovative metropolis.
 

ABOUT THE MIDDLE CITY PASSAGES TORONTO COMPETITION

The challenge of the Middle City Passages Toronto is to design the interaction between the Sheppard East LRT stops and local pedestrian routes, incorporating passages to improve urban life in the suburbs. The competition will focus on developing strategic design proposals for two test sites - Palmdale Drive and Agincourt Drive - that exemplify typical conditions.

Middle City Passages Toronto is a dual phased international competition, organized by IVM - City On The Move Institute, Metrolinx, and the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, open to young professionals and emerging practices in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, urban planning, and related disciplines.

March 6, 2015:  Launch event, registration opens
April 30, 2015:  Deadline for applications
May 2015:  Selection of 6 teams to participate in the Design Workshop in Toronto
2-9 July 2015:  Design Workshop in Toronto with selected teams and announcement of the winning team

Join us for LINES AND NODES: Media, Infrastructure, and Aesthetics, a one-day event gathering scholars and artists who study the politics and effects of human-made infrastructures.

This symposium and screening event brings together artists and scholars to examine the political, aesthetic and affective dimensions of extraction, infrastructure and logistics. We will interrogate the relationships between the representations of such dynamics and the larger forces that they condense: globalization, digitization, territorialisation, labour migration, displacement, sustainability, security, accumulation and colonialism.

Schedule:
 
Midday Session, 12:00 PM
Brenda Longfellow, York University, “OFFSHORE Interactive Web Documentary”
Michelle Murphy, University of Toronto, “Chemical Infrastructures”
Followed by a discussion moderated by Shiri Pasternak
 
Film and Video Screening, 1:45 PM
Len Lye, Trade Tattoo
CAMP, CCTV Social: Capital Circus
Larilyn Sanchez, Balikbayan
Ralph Keene, Persian Story
Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, An Italian Film (Africa Addio)
Followed by a discussion moderated by cheyanne turions
 
Afternoon Session, 3:30 PM
Deborah Cowen, University of Toronto “The Logistics of Life and Death”
Followed by a discussion moderated by Weiqiang Lin
 
Evening Session, 5:30 PM
Ursula Biemann, Filmmaker and Researcher
“On the Ecologies of Oil and Water”
 
Video Screening, 6:30 PM
Ursula Biemann, “Black Sea Files”
Ursula Biemann and Paulo Tavares, “Forest Law/Selva jurídica”
Followed by a discussion moderated by Charles Stankievech

This is a fully accessible venue; please enter from Huron Street. Attendance is free, with donations being collected for The Groundswell Community Justice Trust Fund. For more on this social justice initiative, please visit www.groundswellfund.ca

For up-to-date event information, please visit our website or find us on Facebook.

This event is sponsored by: Intersections Speaker Series: Department of Geography and Planning at University of Toronto, Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto, Department of Film at York University, Pleasure Dome, and John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design.

A new empirical urbanism has emerged over the past two generations, drawing habits of mind and methods of observation from the natural and social sciences, and making use of emerging forms of statistical and visual analysis. Such practices take observation, systematic documentation, and artful analysis of the city, as given, as a precondition to any designed intervention. For our purposes Empirical Urbanism is a framework for revealing the sometimes hidden philosophical assumptions, and design alibis among a diverse group of urban theories and practices that, while often thought to represent opposing ideologies, share an empirical approach.

This symposium will interrogate this trend, asking how urbanism as an art and a set of practices may gain from more explicitly deciphering the relationship between the ways we characterize the past and present city, and how we go about projecting alternate futures for it. Our title notwithstanding, we do not imagine an end to empirical urban research. Rather, the discussion and debates we hope to sponsor have the aim of repositioning observation-based practice, and airing new approaches to seeing and designing the city.

Visit the After Empirical Urbanism symposium website.

Schedule

Friday, February 27

2:00 PM: Carto Graphics
Jill Desimini, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Jesse LeCavalier, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Sarah Williams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Moderator: Mason White, Daniels Faculty

Ian McHarg’s Design With Nature broadened the scope of the design disciplines to address the regional scale and exerted great influence in the development and application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). McHarg developed a mapping technique that represented different, and competing urban and environmental forces with a series of separate drawings, and then layered these readings to create a synthetic view. The composite overlay, it was argued, provided an objective reading of a combined built and natural environment and the necessary evidence to support unbiased decision-making processes, including design.

Most maps are a register of data, and as such, give the appearance of representing fact. However, mapping is in part a process of filtering and selection that can shape information. As Mark Monmonier notes, maps can become ideological symbols and powerful tools for effecting public opinion. Seemingly banal decisions about how to crop, orient or color a map can conceal intentions and effect how information is perceived. In this way maps perform as rhetorical devices where aesthetic license can matter as much as the data and facts used to make them.

These seemingly conflicting qualities of maps – performing as both objective and subjective representations – have led historians to study their power as political tools for affecting debate. Following this trend, scholars explore the ‘fictional status’ of maps and their potential to construct new realities. Practitioners are increasingly using mapping techniques not only to portray existing conditions but also to project - and convince a public - of possible outcomes. This panel will explore the selective methods and persuasive techniques of visualizing urban information, and question the value and shortcoming of an artful medium that carries the force of numeric fact.

3:45 - 4:00 PM: Break

4:00 PM: The Bias of Data
Mona El Khafif, University of Waterloo
Dietmar Offenhuber, Northeastern University
Mark Shepard, University at Buffalo
Moderator: Ultan Byrne, Daniels Faculty

With The Social Logic of Space (1984), Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson began developing "space syntax" as one means of mathematically describing urban conditions. Carlo Ratti and others have recently drawn attention to the limitations and biases of this method – focusing specifically on the reductive character of the model relative to the actual complexity of the built form and social geography of cities. This has led some practitioners to develop alternative, more comprehensive models which are driven by combinations of static and real-time "big data" sources. Others have sought to supplement such empirical data with interfaces for participation, establishing new models of civic engagement in urban design processes.

Meanwhile, historians have contributed broader critiques to this whole field of study, by positioning concepts such as “data” and “interface” within a much longer historical arc of intellectual and technological developments. Theorists, for their part, have begun to question the political and legal implications of these data sets, interfaces, and algorithms. Such critiques have raised questions about the subjectivity involved in curating data, the implications of algorithmically-based modes of parsing and interpreting information, and the effect that chosen representational techniques have on the translation of data. This panel brings together practitioners (programmers, urbanists, media artists) with theorists and historians to debate the status of data – in its various forms and sources – in urban analysis and design.​

Saturday, February 28

10:30 AM: Leveraging the Marketplace
Robert Bruegmann, University of Illinois at Chicago
McLain Clutter, University of Michigan
Tim Love, Northeastern University
Roger Sherman, University of California
Moderator: Robert Levit, Daniels Faculty

Robert Moses' projects in New York City - an expansive network of roads and "urban renewal" - were an exercise in highly controlled centralized planning. In this context, Jane Jacobs' role in defeating the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway, and thwarting Moses, was as much an indication of the rise of libertarian politics as it was an expression of community activism. In Death and Life of the Great American City, Jacobs elevates the seemingly unplanned, accretive, transactional spaces of the 19th century mercantile city as an ideal.

Jacobs' writing and activism popularized the idea of self-organization within the discipline. Urbanists, in turn, have studied unplanned settlements in places such as Africa or South America, and the dispersed spaces of apparently unregulated, market-based North American cities like Atlanta and Houston. From these studies, practitioners have sought to extract lessons or mimic conditions. Rem Koolhaas, for example, draws his theory of bigness from the airports and malls he observes proliferating in the liberalized global economy. Critics have described projects akin to OMA’s “extra" large buildings as an effort to engage the unregulated context of market driven urbanization, but seem to be uncertain, or unwilling to speculate on the broader implications of such an approach to architecture and city-building.

Over the past decade a group of scholars have advocated for an architectural practice that engages market forces without "giving in" to them. Some practitioners have taken this argument as a call to openly embrace development in order to actively participate in the production of cities. Others see the potential for leveraging such engagement as a means to achieve some form of public good. With this panel we hope to gather critiques and stories about working with or within the marketplace, and to debate the role design plays in imagining, and changing the course of market-driven urbanization.

12:30 - 1:30 PM: Break

1:30 PM: Fictions of the Ordinary
Tobias Armborst, Vassar College
Marshall Brown, Illinois Institute of Technology
Alex Lehnerer, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule
Moderator: Michael Piper, Daniels Faculty

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown presented their studies of Las Vegas and Levittown as an effort to “withhold judgement” of the commercially produced American city to identify new potential in a very particular, ordinary, everyday urbanism. Through both their analysis and design proposals, they sought to demonstrate how the architecture of the strip and subdivision could perform as a system of communication: engaging popular sentiment and the new subjectivities produced by the widespread use of the automobile. Proponents of ‘Everyday Urbanism’ have continued to “look at the city”, finding – for example – expressions of public life within the quotidian commercial space of garage sales and street vending in Los Angeles. Incorporating technics from ethnography and other fields of research, these urbanists have opened up a broad spectrum of the built environment to study. Yet, the very choice of which particular as-found conditions to focus on – and their curation for analysis – constitutes a mode of judgment, or a critical lens.

Recently scholars have developed analytical techniques that more explicitly reframe the ordinary through the subjectivity of such lenses. Some urbanists create fictional narratives of existing everyday space, while others locate alternative urban visions within popular media. Amongst practitioners, some have developed design methods that exaggerate the ordinary as a method of invention. For this Panel, we are seeking to present work in this field and to turn a critical eye toward the problems and potentials of accepting fiction as an operative aspect of analysis and story telling as a mode of design.

3:30 - 3:45 PM: Break

3:45 PM: The Use and Misuse of History
George Baird, Daniels Faculty
Eve Blau, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Margaret Crawford, University of California
Kazys Varnelis, Columbia University
Moderator: Richard Sommer, Daniels Faculty

In the latter half of the twentieth century, a number of influential urbanists and architects used historical models, and the idea of precedent, to challenge the utilitarian basis of functionalist planning. Influenced by a European debate in the 1960’s between advocates of structuralism and phenomenology, Aldo Rossi introduced the idea of the “urban artifact”, recasting the city as a cultural product. In North America, theorists and practitioners investigated historical precedents of various urban fabrics, posing them as an alternative to the putatively a-contextual, object qualities of Modern Architecture. J.L. Sert’s humanism and Colin Rowe’s contextual formalism, both appropriated the spatial and civic qualities of the preindustrial city as a basis for the emergent practice of urban design.

Amidst political and economic transitions in the 1970s, urbanists would also freight history with an ideological purpose. Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter’s Collage City (1978) and Rob Krier’s Urban Space (1977) legitimized the use of older models of compact urban form as the counter to a “sprawling” condition they attributed to capitalist urbanization. With a less explicitly political motivation, New Urbanists adopted the gridiron American city of early industrialization, as empirical evidence of good city form that could be transformed and re-applied to reform a dispersed suburbia.

After a lag among the most recent generation, a perhaps new use of history seems to have emerged. The work of architect-educators such as Pier Vittorio Aureli at the AA in London, and Christ and Gantembein at the ETH in Zurich, have reasserted history as field to establish an urban architecture in between political engagement and disciplinary autonomy. In the light of these more recent experiences, this panel will explore history and precedent as source of inspiration and legitimacy to engage, or escape from, the complexity of the contemporary city.

5:45 PM: Closing Remarks

6:30 PM: Reception in front lobby

Sunday, March 1

10:30 AM: Graeme Stewart, ERA Architects, Toronto

Tower Blocks, Mid-Century Regional Form and Toronto's 21st Century Potential
Graeme Stewart M.Arch OAA MRAIC CAHP is an Associate with ERA Architects. Graeme has been involved in numerous urban design, cultural planning, conservation and architecture projects with particular focus on neighbourhood design and regional sustainability. Graeme was a key initiator of the Tower Renewal Project. This initiative in modern heritage and community reinvestment examines the future of Toronto’s remarkable stock of modern tower neighbourhoods in collaboration with the United Way, City of Toronto, Province of Ontario, University of Toronto, and other partners.

Graeme is also the co-editor of Concrete Toronto: A Guidebook to Concrete Architecture from the Fifties to the Seventies. Graeme is a founding director of the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal (CUG+R), an urban research organization formed in 2009. In 2010, he was recipient of an RAIC National Urban Design Award for his ongoing research and design work related to Tower Renewal, and in 2014 received the Jane Jacobs Prize.

11:00 AM: Student presentations

Session 1
Elizabeth Krasner, Sheraz Khan, Residual City: Picturing Etobicoke
Vanessa Abram, Public Residuals
Rachel Heighway, The Peachoid and the Palm Tree: an Investigaion  of Disguised Infrastructure

Session 2
Suzy Harris-Brandts, Urbanism and Internal Displacement in the Republic of Georgia
Jason DeLine, Arrival Community Infrastructure
Emma Dunn, Utopia Deferred Unrevealing a Myth of the Everyday

11:45 AM: Round table discussion

12:30 PM: Break

1:30 PM: Alexander Eisenschmidt, University of Illinois at Chicago

Chicagoisms: a City to Speculate?
Alexander Eisenschmidt is a designer, theorist, and Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Architecture, where he teaches graduate studios and courses in history and theory. Before joining UIC, Eisenschmidt taught at Syracuse University and Pratt Institute in New York, and held a visiting position at the University of Pennsylvania. His work investigates the productive tension between the modern city and architectural form. He is author and editor of City Catalyst (Architectural Design, 2012), contributing lead-editor of Chicagoisms (Scheidegger & Spiess / Park Books, 2013). In addition, Eisenschmidt is the designer and curator of City Works, a collaborative exhibition at the 13th International Architecture Biennale in Venice (2012) to which he also contributed a 100 ft. long drawing and the co-curator and designer of the exhibition Chicagoisms at the Art Institute of Chicago (2014). As founding partner in the design practice Studio Offshore, Eisenschmidt understands the challenges of the contemporary environment as opportunities, the contemporary city as a resource, and architectural design as a strategic device.

2:00 PM: Student Presentations

Session 3
Zoé Renaud-Drouin, Walking through Machines and Monuments: Exploring the Actual Urban Performance of Moscow's Ideological Planning
Kiarash Kiai Soodkolai, Transparency and Appearance: Questioning the Publicness in Commercial Space
Kevin Murray, The Everyday Experience of Mass Transit: an Analysis and Design for two Monuments

2:45 PM: Round Table Discussion

3:30 PM: Closing Remarks

This symposium is being organized in conjuction with the Hands-On Urbanism exhibit presented by the Centre for City Ecology at the Urbanspace Gallery (401 Richmond Street West)

Exhibition
January 9 to March 7

“The right to the city is like a shout and a demand“, wrote French intellectual Henri Lefebvre in the 1960s.

The exhibition “Hands-On Urbanism. How to Make A Difference” is devoted to a history of ideas of appropriating land in urban space and reveals potential for initiatives by citizens willing to take action in crisis situations. The presentation is based on a critical history of ideas about the politics of space. Urban development from below leads to an informal and self-organized production of city, which never operates outside the system. Self-organization has always been both a reaction to and an incentive for urban planning.

Symposium
February 28 to March 1

The symposium "Hands-On Urbanism. How to Make a Difference" brings together activists, architects, artists and landscape planners. In times of crises, austerity measures, and increasing spatial and social injustice, new alignments have to be forged. This different history of urban transformation and the city raises pressing questions about the responsibility of architects and planners and about how we use resources.

The symposium is conceived of as both an exchange of ideas and case studies and a collaboration. A keynote lecture by Elke Krasny on Friday, February 28th, from 6:00 - 8:00pm at the Urbanspace Gallery, will give a historiographic overview on Hands-On Urbanism since the mid-19th century. Practitioners, architects, curators and community organizers, will share their work from a practical standpoint and talk about challenges they are currently facing which require them to think outside the box and to enter into new, and at times unexpected, alignments and collaborations.

A day-long symposium will take place at the Daniels Faculty on Saturday, March 1 which will be free and open to the public, however tickets are required. Participants include Adrian Blackwell [Waterloo], Anan Lololi [Afri-can FoodBasket, Toronto], Lucia Babina [Milan and Ibiza] and the community of Brant, Brigitte Shim [Toronto], Arturo Ortiz Struck [Mexico City], Elke Krasny [Vienna], Mark Poddubiuk [Montreal], and Aziza Chaouni [Toronto].

Schedule for day-long symposium on Saturday, March 1
Daniels Faculty, 230 College Street, Room 103
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM   Doors open (registration)

Changing Conditions. Toward an Architecture of Engagement
10:00 AM - 10:10 AM   Introduction - Elke Krasny
10:10 AM - 10:40 AM   Arturo Ortiz Struck
10:40 AM - 11:10 AM   Brigitte Shim
11:10 AM - 11:40 AM    Adrian Blackwell
11:40 AM - 1:00 PM   Table Discussion with Q & A; Student hosts Venessa Heddle & Ipshita Ramaswamy                                                         

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM   Break

The Right to Green. Toward Self-Organisation and Communal Landscapes
2:00 PM - 2:10 PM   Introduction - Annabel Vaughan
2:10 PM - 2:40 PM   Lucia Babina and Linda Beale (Community of Brant)
2:40 PM - 3:10 PM   Anan Lololi
3:10 PM - 3:40 PM   Aziza Chaouni
3:40 PM - 4:10 PM   Mark Poddubiuk
4:10 PM - 5:20 PM   Table Discussion with Q & A; Student hosts Doug Robb & Joel Leon
5:20 PM - 5:30 PM   Thanks - Annabel Vaughan

For more information, and to get your free tickets to the day-long symposium, visit: http://www.urbanspacegallery.ca/exhibits/hands-urbanism-how-make-difference

The symposium website, with complete information, is located at: www.neurologics.info

The decade of the brain is now decades past, and its effects have rippled through all disciplines. The time has come to consolidate its gains. What relevance do the discoveries of neuroscience have for architecture, a culture and a discipline with its own matters of concern? Skepticism of “scientism,” born of a half-century of critical acuity, has held back efforts at theorization, no matter how reasonable and even necessary they may be. This symposium takes as its premise that “the brain” – as a discursive object, material reality, and perceptual apparatus – belongs to architecture as much as any other field. The lessons of the decade of the brain can help us rethink central aspects of architectural expertise and reformulate elements of its conceptual foundation.

Can “universal” commonalities coexist with culturally-constructed differences? What means do we have of combining the conceptual with the affective? What agency do we have in the way we are molded by our environment? How can the mechanisms of “experience” be used as a basis for design?

The symposium is structured around panel presentations and discussions with architecture theorists, historians, philosophers, and artists. It is free and open to the public, and will be held at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at 230 College Street, Toronto.

Schedule:

Friday, March 7:

Opening Remarks

1:15 PM

Matthew Allen



Cognitive Commons

1:30 PM - 3:30 PM

Sarah Williams Goldhagen, Architecture Critic, The New Republic

Jonathan Hale, University of Nottingham

Lian Chikako Chang

, Director of Research and Information, ACSA



Concept and Affect

4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Harry Francis Mallgrave, Illinois Institute of Technology

Winifred E. Newman, Florida International University

Gabrielle Jackson, Institute for Advanced Study

Keynote Lecture

6:30 PM - 8:00 PM

Sanford Kwinter, Harvard University

Saturday, March 8:

Cognitive Capitalism

9:15 AM - 11:00 AM

Warren Neidich, Berlin/LA based artist and writer

Sanford Kwinter, Harvard University

Grey Matter

11:30 AM - 1:30 PM

Catherine Ingraham, Pratt Institute

Graham Harman, American University in Cairo

Marie-Pier Boucher, Duke University

Artwork (above) by Shannon Rankin

Aggregate is a collaborative of thirteen historians interpreting architecture from multidisciplinary perspectives. Aggregate members work together to advance architectural research and education by generating scholarship, conducting public events, and publishing material on the history and theory of architecture.

Aggregate is meeting with collaborators at the University of Toronto in September 2013 to launch a web-based platform for the production, peer review, and multimedia publication of innovative scholarship. This online platform will advance the collaborative peer interaction on which the group was founded and will open this process to broader participation by scholars and students, creating a public forum for research in architectural history and theory. A symposium on Friday, September 20 will be followed by workshops on Saturday, September 21. Made possible by a Connection Grant from SSHRC, the event is free and open to the public.

Date: Friday, September 20, 2013

Location: Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto, 230 College Street, Toronto, Room 103

PROGRAM

9:30    Welcome

9:40    About Aggregate: Meredith TenHoor (Pratt Institute)

Discipline

10:10    About Discipline: Timothy Hyde (Harvard University)

10:15    Neo-Naturalism: Zeynep Çelik Alexander (University of Toronto)  & John J. May (University of Toronto)

10:45    Response: Cary Wolfe (Rice University)

11:00    Discussion moderated by Robert Levit (University of Toronto)

11:20—Coffee Break

Systems

11:30    About Systems: Lucia Allais (Princeton University)

11:35    Systems and the South: Arindam Dutta (MIT)  & Ijlal Muzaffar (RISD)

12:05    Response:  Daniel B. Monk (Colgate University)

12:20    Discussion moderated by Richard Sommer (University of Toronto)

12:40-14:00—Lunch

Plots

14:00    About Plots: John Harwood (Oberlin College)

14:05    Risk Design: Jonathan Massey (Syracuse University)

14:25    Contradictions of Sustainability: Daniel Abramson (Tufts University)

14:45    Response: Michelle Murphy (University of Toronto)

15:00    Discussion moderated by John J. May (University of Toronto)

15:20—Coffee Break

Matter

15:30    About Matter: Michael Osman (UCLA)

15:35   Design Dictates or Social Orders: Pamela Karimi (University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth)

15:55   Lithographies: Edward Eigen (Harvard University)

16:15   Response: Matthew C. Hunter (McGill University)

16:30   Discussion moderated by Mary Lou Lobsinger (University of Toronto)

17:00—18:00—Open Discussion moderated by Zeynep Çelik Alexander

18:00—Reception

For further details, please contact the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative

Email: info@we-aggregate.org

Web:   www.we-aggregate.org

Twitter: @AggArchCollab

On Saturday, June 1, the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design and cityLAB, an urban think tank at UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design, will present the symposium OP CITY: Figuring the Urban Future and its Audiences.

Date: Saturday, June 1
Time: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Location: 230 College Street, Room 066

Click here to view the schedule!

As the world’s population increasingly shifts into metropolitan regions, so too does the need to better conceptualize, represent, and communicate our ideas about urban life. This coincides with a growing number of increasingly sophisticated technologies and media that can help us better achieve these goals.

Through the presentation and discussion of four collaborative proposals by teams of architects and media artists, OP CITY will explore how our urban future may be extrapolated or “produced” by observing the city in new ways afforded by these technologies — from mapping and diagrams to graphic narrative, gaming/motion graphics and digitally-manipulated photography. The aim is to break down disciplinary divides and develop new methodologies and alliances with often-overlooked audiences.

OP CITY will bring together groups of architects, designers, and media artists to present case-study experiments that employ new, popularly accessible analytical and visualization techniques in ways that enable designers, and others, to see the city in different ways. Both the featured projects and resulting discussion will initiate the creation of a cityLAB-curated website/web blog that will serve as an archive intended to call attention to and stimulate other current, ongoing such experiments.

Participants include: Eve Blau, Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Richard Sommer, Dean of the Daniels Faculty at Univ. Toronto; Roger Sherman, Architect/Urban Designer and Co-Director, cityLAB/UCLA; and Dana Cuff, Professor of Architecture at UCLA and Director of cityLAB. The international group of design teams are: McLain Clutter/Matt Kenyon; Jonathan Crisman/Steven Beckly; Michael Piper/Matthew Allen/Ultan Byrne (with Azadeh Zaferani, Sasha Bears and Mahan Javadi); and Christopher Marcinkoski/Andrew Moddrell/ Nicholas Pevzner.

This day-long symposium is free and open to the public.

The Daniels Faculty and cityLAB would like to thank the Graham Foundation for its support of OP CITY: Figuring the Urban Future and its Audiences.

3:00 PM, Tuesday, May 21

230 College Street, Room 103

Achieving urban sustainability necessitates an integrated sociotechnical approach addressing the middle scale, such as the district and the campus. In this sense, seemingly contradictory trends toward engaging with ever increasing scales from within an eroded and compartmentalized purview, simultaneously present openings and obstacles for the practice of architecture. The seminar will feature theoretical and design speculations toward constructing a renewed and expanded understanding of the concept of urban equipment as a means to address this extended scale. It will also delve into the implications of such an approach in terms of architectural research, pedagogy and practice.

Erkin Özay is a registered architect and principal of the independent design practice, the Özay Office. He is currently a lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Aga Khan Visiting Fellow with a research focus on Istanbul's recent urban transformation. As a research associate at the New Educational Environments, he coordinates education research at the GSD's Design Labs. Prior to the GSD, he taught building technology courses and design studios at Northeastern University. Most recently, he was a visiting critic and lecturer at University of Toronto, Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, where he taught a graduate urban design studio as well as the seminar, Forms of the Collective: Architectural Provocations of the Golden Age.

GEORGE BAIRD: A QUESTION OF INFLUENCE

Date: March 9 & 10

Registration for the Friday sessions is now full. 

PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE WILL BE A RUSH LINE AT THE TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX FOR THOSE WHO WERE NOT ABLE TO OBTAIN A TICKET.

If you do have a ticket, please arrive early to secure your seat. If you have not arrived by 6:20 PM, your reservation may be filled by guests waiting in the rush line.

To register for the Saturday sessions at 230 College Street, please visit: http://georgebaird-daniels.eventbrite.com

Prof. Emeritus George Baird retired in 2010 from the University of Toronto, following a term as Dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design and crowning a remarkable career as an educator that began in London in 1965. In 1993 he was named the George Travelstead Professor at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University where he taught until 2003.  

George’s continuing contribution to the field has inspired us to organize a two-day symposium to celebrate his ideas and projects over the past five decades, including the questions they raise in three arenas: theory, the city, and design practice.The keynote event “Questions of Influence” will feature a discussion between George Baird and Kenneth Frampton, moderated by K. Michael Hays, concentrating on George Baird’s career, contribution, and influence. The discussion will focus on what lies ahead, as well as reflect on the first fifty years of his career.

The conference is convened by Dean Richard Sommer, Professor of Architecture and Urbanism, at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design; Francesco Garofalo, professor and curator in Rome; and Bruce Kuwabara founding partner of KPMB Architects. 

A parallel exhibition “George Baird: Meanings in Architecture, 1957-1993” will be held at the Eric Arthur Gallery at the Daniels Faculty, and is curated by Michael Prokopow, Professor at Ontario College of Art and Design University.

Presented with the generous support of:

architectsAlliance, Baird Sampson Neuert Architects Inc., Brookfield Properties Ltd., DIALOG, Diamond Schmitt Architects, Tye and Eileen Farrow / Farrow Partnership, Great Gulf Homes, Hariri Pontarini Architects, John van Nostrand Architect / regionalArchitects, Kohn Shnier Architects, KPMB Architects, Montgomery Sisam Architects, Jeremy Sturgess, and the Canada Council for the Arts

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Schedule

To download a PDF of the program, please click here.

FRIDAY MARCH 9th

TIFF Bell Lightbox 350 King Street West

To register for the Friday sessions, please visit: http://georgebaird.eventbrite.com

Introduction by Dean Richard Sommer

Session 1: 2:00-4:00 p.m.

“Debates  over  Modern  Architecture and  Instrumentality”

Moderator - Rodolphe El-Khoury, Daniels Faculty

Amy Kulper, University of Michigan

Louis Martin, Université du Québec à Montréal 

Pier Vittorio Aureli, Berlage Institute

Respondent - Joan Ockman, Columbia University 

Keynote event: 5:30-7:00 p.m.

“Question  of  Influence”A dialogue between George Baird and Kenneth Frampton, introduced and moderated by K. Michael Hays

SATURDAY MARCH 10th

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design

230 College Street, Room 103

To register for the Saturday sessions, please visit: http://georgebaird-daniels.eventbrite.com

Seating is limited for this portion of the symposium and will be available on a first come first served basis. Please arrive early to secure a seat. A simulcast will be set up in room 106 to accommodate all attendees.

Session 2: 10:00 a.m.-12:00 Noon

“Agent in the  City:  Toronto in Theory  and  Practice”

Moderator - Brigitte Shim, Daniels Faculty

Ken Greenberg, Greenberg Consultants

Barry Sampson, Daniels Faculty

John van Nostrand, regionalArchitects / planningAlliance

Respondent - Robert Levit, Daniels Faculty

Session 3: 1:30-3:30 p.m.

“The  Challenge  of  Research  in  the Realm  of  Practice” 

Moderator - Mason White, Daniels Faculty

Jamie Fobert, Jamie Fobert Architects

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Atelier Bow-Wow

Preston Scott Cohen, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Respondent - Mirko Zardini, Canadian Centre for Architecture 

Session 4: 4:00-5:30 p.m.

George Baird Roundtable

Moderator - Richard Sommer, Daniels Faculty

Kenneth Frampton, Columbia University

Francesco Garofalo, Pescara Faculty of Architecture

Bruce Kuwabara, KPMB Architects

K. Michael Hays, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Phyllis Lambert, Canadian Centre for Architecture