Alumnus Kelly Doran (MArch 2008), Senior Director - East Africa Programs at the firm MASS, was recently profiled in The Globe and Mail.

"Mr. Doran joined MASS in 2014, in his mid-thirties, after a rise through the profession," writes The Globe's architecture critic Alex Bozikovic. That rise included  receiving the Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2009, and working for Toronto firms Williamson Williamson Inc. and regionalArchitects.

He is now working from Kigali in Rwanda, "designing an entire campus for an agricultural university, as well as a pair of hospitals in Rwanda and a library for another university in Uganda – among other things."

Yet, as Bozikovic writes:

The past few years have posed questions: How do you design a building in a place where you can't afford to import building materials? How do you build a cancer hospital in a country with no cancer hospitals? And, most important, how do you design a place that will make society better? "That's broadly our mission," Mr. Doran says. "To take the enormous amount of money that is involved in building and make it more equitable."

Visit The Globe and Mail to read the full article.

The Art Museum at the University of Toronto took the top award at the Ontario Association of Art Galleries’ (OAAG’s) 40th Anniversary Gala. Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, a project by Toronto-based artist of Cree descent Kent Monkman, which ran January 26 to March 5, received Exhibition of the Year. Barbara Fischer, associate professor in the Daniels Faculty’s Master of Visual Studies program in Curatorial Studies, was the exhibition’s Commissioning Curator.

“Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience is an epic and timely project that addresses and counters Canada’s 150 years of colonialism,” said the jury. “With the help of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, his time-travelling alter ego, Monkman reconfigures this history by disrupting the great Canadian narrative with painterly devices that reveal the damaging consequences of colonial occupation on indigenous people, culture and land.”

A number of other Daniels faculty and alumni were recognized by OAAG as well. Visiting Professor Luis Jacob won the award for Curatorial Art Writing: Short Text under 2,000 words, written for his exhibition Form Follows Fiction: Art and Artists in Toronto, also presented at U of T’s Art Museum.

“Form Follows Fiction: Art and Artists in Toronto, reflects the forging of Jacob’s relationship to the subject of art making in Toronto, in a manner that enables the viewer to visualize their own connection to the city,” commented the Jury. “It presents a (fifty-year) panorama of the blueprints that artists have drafted over many decades to give form to life in one of North America’s largest cities."

Daniels Faculty Assistant Professor Mitchell Akiyama was part of a team that received the Education Award for the event Why Look at Cages? An inter-disciplinary forum on human and animal captivity and questions of social control presented by U of T Mississauga’s Blackwood Gallery & Animals in the Law and Humanities Working Group. The Jury praised the innovative program for offering “opportunities for knowledge and cross-disciplinary education and interspecies engagement.”

The University of Toronto Scarborough’s Doris McCarthy Gallery’s exhibition: Heather Hart: Northern Oracle, curated by Associate professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Ann MacDonald received the Monographic exhibition of the year (Budget over $20,000).

And Recent Master of Visual Studies graduates Emelie Chhangur and cheyanne turions both received awards for Curatorial Art Writing. Chhangur for Major Text over 5,000 words; turions for text 2,000 – 5,000 words.

For more information on all 2017 OAAG award winners, visit the OAAG website.

On November 17, the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design celebrated the official opening of its new home — the Daniels Building — at historic One Spadina Crescent.

Located on the western edge of the University of Toronto’s St. George campus just north of College Street, the iconic neo-gothic building and stunning contemporary addition, currently nearing completion, is now poised to become an international focal point for education, research, and outreach on architecture, art, and the future of cities.

University of Toronto President, Professor Meric Gertler; Dean of the Daniels Faculty, Professor Richard Sommer; and Chair of the Governing Council at the University of Toronto, Claire Kennedy welcomed donors, alumni, faculty, students, and other esteemed guests to commemorate the Daniels Faculty’s new home — which the Globe and Mail’s architecture critic has called “one of the best buildings in Canada of the past decade” — with an official ribbon cutting ceremony and reception.

Above is a slideshow of images from the opening ceremony.

Click here to read the full press release.

Janet Rosenberg & Studio — in partnership with Patkau Architects, Blackwell Structural Engineers, and ERA Architects Inc. — has been announced the winner of the Nepean Point Design Competition.

Launched by the National Capital Commission (NCC) in the spring of 2017, this international competition called for participants to reimagine and redesign Nepean Point, a hill in Ottawa that overlooks the river, the parliament buildings, the Canadian Museum of History and other features of Canada’s capital.

A number of Daniels Alumni and students were part of the winning team led by Janet Rosenberg & Studio, including: Todd Douglas (MLA 2013), Jordan Duke (MLA 2016), Nicholas Gosselin (MLA 2016), Kerrie Harvey (MLA 2008), Glenn Herman (BLA 1990), Andrew Hooke (MLA 2017), Rob McIntosh (MLA 2015), Dayne Roy-Caldwell (MLA 2016), Jessie Seed (MLA 2003), and Wayne Swanton (BLA 1989).

Daniels Faculty Lecturer Adrian Phiffer also supported the winning team; his office, The Flat Side of Design, including Dimitrios Karopulos (MArch 16) and second year student Diana Franco Camacho, produced the majority of the images and renderings for the proposal.

The competition design brief called for “a 21^st century green space that is an inspiring source of pride for all Canadians.” It was hoped that the design would transform Nepean Point into a cultural focal point that can host artistic events, improve access to the site, and encourage discovery.

The winning proposal, entitled Big River Landscape, would offer visitors to the point a range of experiences via quiet meandering meadow paths, promenades with spectacular views high above the river, nooks where one can sit and observe the landscape, a stage and amphitheatre, and re-envisioned entrance points that welcome and invite visitors to the site.

Congratulations to all involved!

The transformation of the West Don Lands in Toronto into a sustainable, mixed-use community has been recognized with a 2017-2018 Global Award for Excellence from the Urban Land Institute (ULI). The award-winning pedestrian-friendly community — a 79-acre site nestled between the Don Valley and Gardiner Expressway, near the Distillery District — was designed with the help of a number of faculty and alumni from the Daniels — including the Director of the Faculty’s Master of Urban Design program Mark Sterling.

Sterling was the Urban Design Lead for the Public Realm Master Plan led by David Leinster (BLA 1985) of The Planning Partnership.

Writes Batel Yona for the ULI’s website:

Innovative and high-quality parks and public realm are among the area’s hallmarks, each incorporating robust biodiversity and natural landscapes. Corktown Common is positioned atop a flood-protection land form that protects 519 acres (210 ha) of downtown Toronto and unlocks the area’s development potential. Underpass Park transformed an unused area into a family-friendly recreational community space. The Front Street Promenade, a linear park that constitutes the spine of the new neighborhood, is programmed with curated public art installations and linked to the district’s secondary network of mews, courtyards, and pathways to create a healthy, walkable, integrated new community. Toronto’s first woonerf streets are also found here.

The team for the West Don Lands project includes:

Master developer: Waterfront Toronto; precinct plan: Urban Design Associates
Developers: Urban Capital (River City), DREAM Unlimited, Kilmer Group (Canary District), Toronto Community Housing
Public realm and urban designers: the Planning Partnership with PFS Studio plus &Co., Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc.
Landscape designers: Claude Cormier & Associates, NAK Design Strategies Architectural design: (River City) Saucier & Perrotte, ZAS Architects; (Canary District) architects Alliance, KPMB Architects, Page + Steele/IBI Group Architects, Daoust Lestage, MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects, (Shade Pavillion) Maryann Thompson Architects
Design/builder: (Canary District) EllisDon Inc., Ledcor Group
Retail designer: Live Work Learn Play

For more information, visit the ULI website.

On Wednesday, November 22 at 5:00pm, the University of Toronto is gathering together some of the brightest minds in the U of T community to spark conversation and connection through a TEDxUofT event. Daniels Faculty alumna Samar Sabie (MArch 2015) is among the evening’s featured speakers. The Master of Architecture graduate, who is now completing her PhD at Cornell, will discuss how to promote maker culture among immigrant youth and explore ways in which design and technology can be used to support the development and well-being of populations in the diaspora.

Sabie’s Master of Architecture thesis, which she completed with her sister Dina, proposed a framework and pilot design “to equip the UN and other relief organizations with better planning approaches, construction options, and design strategies” for new refugee settlements in the Middle East.

Her talk on November 22 will examine non-intrusive ways to use technology to improve the lives of others.

For more information, visit the TEDxUofT website.

Last month, the Canada Council for the Arts announced that the Indigenous design project UNCEDED was selected to represent Canada at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Members of the 2018 peer-assessment committee that selected the winning team included, among others, Daniels Faculty Associate Professor John Shnier, founding partner of Kohn Shnier Architects; and Lola Sheppard, founding partner of Lateral Office, the firm that represented Canada at the Biennale in 2014. Associate Professor Mason White is also a founding partner of Lateral Office.

The shortlist for the 2018 Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale included Daniels faculty and alumni. The shortlisted teams included:

• Scapegoat Journal, co-founded by Instructor Marcin Kedzior. Daniels Faculty Instructor Manar Moursi is one of the editors of the journal.
• Ja Architecture Studio, the office of Daniels Faculty alumni Nima Javidi (MUD 2005), Behnaz Assadi (MLA 2008), and Hanieh Rezaei (MUD 2004)
• Patkau Architects, from Vancouver

UNCEDED is led by architect Douglas Cardinal along with Anishnawbe Elders and Indigenous Co-curators Gerald McMaster and David Fortin. They are supported by a decorated group of Indigenous architects from across North America. The winning team plans to emphasize and celebrate the work of Indigenous architects and designers throughout Turtle Island. The exhibition will be on view at the Arsenale in Venice from May 26th to November 25th, 2018.

Titled Arctic Adaptations, Lateral Office's exhibition at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale presented proposals by five design teams for Nunavut, Canada's largest territory. Each team was made up of representatives from a Canadian school of architecture, a Canadian architecture office with extensive northern experience, and a Nunavut-based organization. Each team’s proposal examined one theme — housing, health, education, arts, or recreation — and was rooted in Nunavut’s distinct land, climate, and culture.

The exhibit was honoured with a Special Mention at the Biennale’s awards ceremony for “its in-depth study of how modernity adapts to a unique climatic condition and a local minority culture.”

Photo, top: Arctic Adaptations exhibition by Lateral Office at the Venice Biennale, 2014.

Daily VICE published an interview with alumna Shellie Zhang (HBA, Visual Studies 2013) on her artwork series Accent, which explores the complicated history of MSG, and how fear of the product has racialized undertones.

‘My partner and I were buying groceries in Parkdale, and we saw this beautiful bottle that was loudly labeled as MSG, which sparked my curiosity,' Zhang told Daily VICE. ‘MSG is usually marketed under a different name now, so I started collecting similar products and exploring the history.’

From Zhang’s website:

“In 1968, the New England Journal of Medicine published a letter to the editor from one reader describing radiating pain in his arms, weakness and heart palpitations after eating at Chinese restaurants. He mused that a combination of cooking wine, MSG or excessive salt might have spurred these reactions. Reader responses poured in with similar complaints, and scientists jumped to research the phenomenon, centring on the glutamic salt, MSG. Not long after, the ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’ was born.”
 

Since graduating, Zhang has exhibited at WORKJAM (Beijing), Scope Art Fair (Switzerland) and Public House of Art (Netherlands). Earlier this year, the Accent series was on display at Whippersnapper Gallery and Y+ Contemporary Gallery.

“Many assignments and works produced [at U of T] were useful exercises that equipped me with the necessary knowledge to make work,” said Zhang in an interview with Public Parking. “Once I was thrown back out into the world, I had to confront all of these considerations and re-examine where I want to situate myself as an artist.”

Later this month, Zhang will exhibit artwork in the upcoming exhibition In Pursuit of the Perfect Pose hosted by Gallery 44. In Pursuit of the Perfect Pose explores internalized performative manifestations of femininity and cultural alterity imposed through social structures and societal expectations of marginalized women. Curated by Leila Fatemi, the exhibition includes artworks by Dalia Amara, Rah, Rajni Perera, and Tau Lewis. For more information, visit the Gallery 44 website.

Photo, top: Installation of Accent by Sessional Lecturer Morris Lum (HBA,Visual Studies 2006).

In September, the University of Toronto held a reception to celebrate alumni and friends receiving Arbor Awards, including Joël León (BArch 2011, MArch 2015), Robert Glover (BArch 1975), Jerome Markson (BArch 1953), and Selma Edelstone.

The Arbor Awards were created in 1989 to recognize volunteers for their outstanding personal service to the University of Toronto. Since then, the University has annually acknowledged those whose loyalty, dedication and generosity have added immeasurably to the quality of the experience for students, faculty, staff and alumni.

Joël León (BArch 2011, MArch 2015)

Joël León is a young alumni volunteer and recent graduate who has remained active in the life of the school as a committed advocate, serving as the Faculty's alumni representative on the College of Electors. He has been especially proactive in developing relationships between the Faculty's academic leadership and the Ontario Association of Architects. On the occasion of the Faculty's 125th anniversary, he worked closely with Assistant Dean, Academic Programs and Outreach, Jeannie Kim and Daniels Faculty staff to mount a highly successful exhibition on the history of the Daniels Faculty.

Jerome Markson (BArch 1953)

Jerome Markson is renowned for his exceptional contributions to the profession of architecture and the cultural life of Toronto. His projects have included the Market Square condominiums, Alexandra Park, and the Civic Centre at Edwards Gardens. Jerome participated in the Faculty's 125th anniversary dialogues, provided information and artifacts for the exhibition, reached out to his peers to engage them in the day's events. Markson has been generous in sharing his personal and professional archives, with an exhibition of his work to be presented at the Daniels Faculty's new home at One Spadina later this academic year. 

Robert Glover (BArch 1975)

Robert Glover has a Bachelor of Architecture and an MBA from the University of Toronto. He is a partner in the Toronto planning and urban design firm of Bousfields Inc. Earlier in his career he was appointed the first Urban Design Director for the newly amalgamated City of Toronto. He has been especially effective in bridging the interests between the development community and the design profession. Glover has been an advocate for the Faculty during its campaign for One Spadina, making introductions to prospective supporters and securing funds for students in the global travel program to visit Bogota.

Selma Edelstone, friend of the Faculty

Selma Edelstone has been a great advocate for the Daniels Faculty during its capital transformation, from the launch of the design at 1 Spadina Crescent to its upcoming official opening. Edelstone led a highly successful fundraising appeal, eliciting donations to support students receiving The John and Myrna Daniels Scholars Award. She has also spearheaded a speaking engagement by Dean Sommer with the 1 Bedford resident Discussion Group. In her advocacy and writing, she has decribed Toronto as one of the greatest cities in North America, citing its financial success, its tolerant multicultural environment, and its high standards of education. 

To view the full list of this year's recipients, visit the Arbor Awards webpage.

Photo, top: Mayta and Jerome Markson at the 2017 Arbor Awards.

In early September, visual artist and design curator Elizabeth Czartoryski (MArch 2013) exhibited THE PERCH at the Mulherin Toronto gallery. The solo exhibition included time-based performances, a sculptural wall, and photo-works that aim to "enlarge the aperture of gender difference." The second installment of THE PERCH is part of a larger body of work orbiting around the idea of a "gender truce."

“Gender equity continues to be mistreated and misguided," said Czartoryski in her artist statement. "In order to broaden the spectrum of our gender roles, and, invent new ones, we must first surrender to existing prescriptions of social convention. These prescriptive ingredients disrupt our bodies from fully engaging in the creation of a gender-neutral social equilibrium.”

"Within the rituals of our everyday life, we are left with residual anxiety that consumes our desire to embrace each other as equals and re-imagine ourselves. We must strip to our flesh, express our vulnerability, and remind each other that we are all the same."

Although the show is now over, Czartoryski continues to explore new methodologies and formations of body politics, incorporated into a hybrid of mixed media and performance projects. She is currently developing another iteration of THE PERCH, details of which will be available on her website: www.elizabethczar.com. You can also find her on instagram at @elizabethczar.