Thursday, May 12, 2011 at 6:30 PM

Jackman Hall

Art Gallery of Ontario

317 Dundas Street West

Toronto, Ontario M5T 1G4

Atom Egoyan, Filmmaker

Amy Lavender Harris, Writer

John Shnier, Architect

Moderated by Dean Richard Sommer, Daniels Faculty

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto continues its series of moderated discussions focusing on the intersection of Architecture, Media, Science, Politics and Urbanism in various international arenas. Following upon the success of The Ends of Design and Breaking the Surface, the third in the FORA series will take place Thursday, May 12, 2011.

Toronto: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly will explore the ways in which Toronto and similar post-industrial cities have an 'aesthetic', signature or history that writers, filmmakers and architects may capture, cultivate, and build upon, and how creative work of this kind may serve as the catalyst for renewing our engagement with cities.

The panelists include Atom Egoyan, a critically acclaimed Toronto filmmaker; Amy Lavender Harris, author of Imagining Toronto; and John Shnier, an award winning Toronto architect and professor of architecture at the Daniels Faculty. The discussion will be moderated by Dean Richard Sommer.

Furniture generously provided by Herman Miller.

We have had an overwhelming response to this event, with all tickets currently being reserved. However, we strongly encourage you to register on the wait list as not all ticket holders will attend. At 6:25 PM, preference will be given to those on the wait list for any available seats.

Please go to http://danielsfora.eventbrite.com to add your name to the wait list.

Atom Egoyan's film, art and directorial projects have won international acclaim. These include fourteen feature films and related projects, which have garnered five prizes at the Cannes Film Festival (including the Grand Prix, International Critics' Awards and Ecumenical Jury Prizes), two Academy Award® nominations, eight Genie Awards, prizes from the National Board of Review and an award for Best International Adaptation at The Frankfurt Book Fair. In 2010, he had a full retrospective of his films at the Filmoteca Espagnol in Madrid, following similar events in previous years at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and The Museum of the Moving Image in New York. Egoyan won the 2010 Douglas Sirk Award from the Hamburg Film Festival, joining other career honours from festivals and events in Tokyo, Jerusalem, Reykjavik, Las Palmas, Hong Kong, Cairo and The Panorama of European Cinema in Athens.

Egoyan has been President of the Jury in Cannes (Cinéfondation and Shorts), Berlin (Main Competition) and Venice (First Feature), as well as a jury member at several other festivals, including Sundance, Montreal, Toronto, and this year's Tribeca Film Festival.

Egoyan's art projects have been presented around the world including The Venice Biennale and Artangel in London. His acclaimed production of Wagner's Die Walkurie won a Dora Award for Outstanding Opera Production, and his adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Eh Joe was presented by The Gate Theatre in Dublin, where it won The Irish Times/ESB Award for Best Direction before transferring to London's West End and The Lincoln Center Festival in New York. Atom Egoyan's installation, 8 ½ Screens, was commissioned by The Toronto International Film Festival for the opening of TIFF Bell Lightbox in September, 2010. Egoyan will direct the North American premiere of Martin Crimp's Cruel and Tender for the Canadian Stage theatre company in early 2012.

Amy Lavender Harris is a writer and teaches in the Department of Geography at York University, where her work focuses on urban culture and identity. Lavender Harris is a contributing editor with Spacing Magazine where she writes a regular column on Toronto literature. Her work has also appeared in Reading Toronto, Open Book Magazine, The State of the Arts: Living with Culture in Toronto (Coach House), GreenTOpia (Coach House), Canada: A Literary Tour, Hagar: Studies in Culture, Polity and Identities, Plan Canada and the Ontario Planning Journal. Lavender Harris speaks regularly to popular and scholarly audiences about the imaginative qualities of cities. Her book, Imagining Toronto, was published in 2010 by Mansfield Press and is now widely available.



John Shnier is an architect and partner in the internationally recognized office Kohn Shnier Architects. In 1987, he was awarded Canada's first Prix de Rome in Architecture and the work was later recognized, in 2007 by the Governor General to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Canada Council for the Arts. Shnier designed Umbra World Headquarters and The Umbra Concept Store both of which have been recognized with several significant awards. Kohn Shnier collaborated with Royal Homes in developing the Q-Prefabricated House Prototype. This led to the commission of a two-family home in Muskoka Ontario that in turn has received The Governor Generals Award, Canada's highest design honour. Spandrobe, a compact storage unit designed for Teknion's New Visions Programme was exhibited at The Worksphere's Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York where it now resides in MoMA's permanent collection. The Eric Arthur Gallery and Shore + Moffat Library at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design are amongst Shnier's other projects.

The work of Kohn Shnier Architects is widely exhibited and published nationally and internationally. Shnier is a periodic contributor to the architectural media and is a respected University lecturer and studio professor. In 2007, he was awarded The Gerald Sheff Visiting Chair in Architecture at McGill University in Montreal. In 2009 he was invited to lecture at the XII International Biennale of Architecture in Buenos Aires. His Lecture, "An Incomplete Manifesto Towards the Best Average" was awarded a Jury Prize of Excellence. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design where he has been teaching for more than a decade.

Richard M. Sommer is an Architect, Professor, and Dean of the John H. Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. His professional and academic experience is diverse and includes serving as a faculty member, and Director of the Urban Design Program at Harvard's Graduate School of Design for a decade before joining the Daniels Faculty. Sommer's research, writings and projects have been published in publications such as Perspecta, Metropolis, JAE, Harvard Design Magazine, and in the books Fast Forward Urbanism, Shaping the City and The Democratic Monument in America: A Twentieth Century Topography, and have been supported by the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, The Tozzier Fund, The Wheelwright Fellowship, University of Ulster's O'Hare Chair in Design and Development, and The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

For more information, please contact:

Nene Brode

nene.brode@daniels.utoronto.ca

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design

University of Toronto

230 College Street

Toronto, ON M5T 1R2

Tel: +1-416-978-3089