A new design competition is asking students across Canada to propose alternative futures for Ontario Place, a former recreational complex located on Toronto's western waterfront whose future has been cast into doubt by a recent redevelopment push.

The student competition, titled "Ontario Place: A Call for Counterproposals" is an initiative of The Future of Ontario Place, a collective of architects and designers, brought together by a partnership between the World Monuments Fund, the Daniels Faculty, and Architectural Conservancy Ontario. The group's goal is to prevent Ontario Place's unique modernist structures and landscapes, designed in the late 1960s by Eberhard Zeidler and Michael Hough, from being altered or demolished in the name of redevelopment. And that isn't a far-fetched scenario: the Ontario government is actively considering a number of redevelopment proposals from private companies. One of the leading contenders is said to be an Austrian company known for building large indoor thermal spas.

Students who participate in Ontario Place: A Call for Counterproposals will be required to submit alternative designs for Ontario Place that work to preserve and supplement — rather than erase or replace — the site's existing architectural heritage.

Ontario Place first opened to the public in 1971. The complex, owned and developed by the government of Ontario, was originally an exhibition ground, intended to act a summer retreat for Ontario families who didn't own cottages. Among the park's Zeidler-designed structures is the now-iconic Cinesphere, a dome-like enclosure built to house the world's first permament IMAX theatre. Near the Cinesphere is another daring piece of architecture: five large "pods" that are anchored, with columns, directly into Lake Ontario. (The pods were originally used to house public exhibitions, but were later retrofitted into private event facilities.)

Top: Ontario Place's pods. Bottom: A view of the Cinesphere.

Ontario Place's family-fun days came to abrupt end in 2012, when the Ontario government shuttered the site, citing declining revenues. Ever since, the park has remained in planning limbo, with successive provincial governments promising revitalization but failing to deliver detailed plans. The current provincial government, led by premier Doug Ford, accelerated the redevelopment process in 2019 with a new request for proposals. Amid the push to determine a future for the area, the fate of Zeidler and Hough's designs remains uncertain.

The competition's design brief divides Ontario Place into three distinct zones. Zone one — the "core heritage zone," where most of Ontario's Place's existing structures are located — is to be preserved as-is. Zone two is a "buffer zone," where only small-scale additions are permitted. Zone three, an area that includes an 1990s-era performance venue and a few parking lots, is set aside for larger-scale interventions.

The competition brief asks student entrants not only to preserve Ontario Place in their designs, but also to do some thinking about the site's future as a public attraction. Entrants are forbidden from including private uses, like condominiums or big-box stores, in their designs. Instead, the brief calls on students to consider the needs of diverse public stakeholders. Entrants can also score points for developing program strategies that integrate Ontario Place with surrounding communities, for finding ways to preserve nearby ecological systems, and for developing public outreach strategies to raise awareness of the site's heritage value.

The competition is open to undergraduate and graduate students at Canadian schools who are studying architecture, urban planning, urban design, business, or related disciplines. Students who graduated after January 1, 2017 are also eligible to enter.

All entires will be judged by a jury of a respected architects, designers, and urbanists, including urban designer Ken Greenberg, OMA partner Jason Long, and Shim-Sutcliffe Architects principal Brigitte Shim.

Students interested in entering the competition must register by October 12. For more details, key dates, or to download the detailed design brief, visit the Future of Ontario Place website.

Take me to the Future of Ontario Place website

The Daniels Faculty will be one 12 Canadian schools of architecture participating in the Canadian Council of University Schools of Architecture's first-ever pan-Canada lecture series.

The series, titled "Global Perspectives," will consist of 12 lectures at schools of architecture across Canada. All of the lectures will be open to the public and accessible online, via videoconferencing software. And they will tackle a common theme: diversity, as it relates to the architecture profession.

The lecture series will be split into to two parts: a fall 2020 edition and a winter 2021 edition. The Daniels Faculty's lecture will take place during the winter edition. (The Daniels Faculty has not yet set a date or topic for its pan-Canada lecture. Those details will be published on the Faculty's website as soon as they're available.)

“With the forced move online, CCUSA saw an opportunity to connect across the country and beyond," says Anne Bordeleau, CCUSA's chairperson. "I have high hopes that this first pan-Canada lecture series will set up a new trajectory for how the 12 schools of architecture across Canada can come together to engage in thought-provoking discussions.”

The lectures scheduled for the fall edition of Global Perspectives are:

September 14: Mariam Kamara (University of British Columbia, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture)

September 23: Panel discussion with Albrerto de Salvatierra, Martina Jileckova, Vivian Ton, Wandile Mthiyane, and Craig Wilkins (University of Calgary; School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape)

October 26: Joar Nango (Laurentian University, McEwen School of Architecture)

November 10: Syrus Marcus Ware, Tiffany Lethabo King, Sara Zewde (Waterloo University, School of Architecture)

November 19: Anupama Kundoo (Ryerson University, Department of Architectural Science)

For information about how to join these lectures online, visit the CCUSA website.

A pair of Daniels Faculty students have won an international award for a pavilion they designed, which uses coloured panes of glass to raise awareness of global air pollution.

Rick Schutte and Mina Onay, both architecture undergraduates, were named regional winners in the "daylight investigations" category of the 2020 International Velux Awards — a biannual competition run by Velux, a manufacturer of windows, skylights, and blinds. In addition to a cash prize, Rick and Mina have won the right to present their design at this year's World Architecture Festival, where they will compete with four other regional winners for the grand prize in their category.

"It's so amazing, and so we're so grateful," Rick says. "We've been on cloud nine for weeks."

Rick Schutte and Mina Onay.

Participants in the daylight investigations category of the 2020 International Velux Award competition were required to submit designs that investigated the physical properties of light, using new materials and technologies.

Rick and Mina realized that they would need to take an unconventional approach in order to make their project stand out from hundreds of other entries. Both of them are minoring in visual studies, and it occurred to them that a visual arts perspective could be precisely the thing to give them an edge. The competition's rules required them to pick a faculty advisor, so they chose J.P. King, a sessional lecturer in the Daniels Faculty's visual studies program. J.P. is a working artist who specializes in printmaking.

"When Rick and Mina came to me, they didn't necessarily want architectural thinking to guide their project," J.P. says. "They were looking for someone who was more process oriented, who could guide them through the stages of thinking through a piece of public artwork."

The design process was complicated by the fact that the project team's members were located on different continents. Rick and J.P. were both in Toronto, but Mina had left the city for her home in Turkey in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and was unable to return. She and Rick ended up doing most of their collaborative design work on Miro, an online whiteboarding platform that has become popular with designers over the past few months.

Despite the distance, the pair were able to develop a sophisticated design that they titled "AQIP," or "Air Quality Index Pavilion." They developed the concept using parametric design methods.

The pavilion, which they envisioned being installed on a site on the Toronto Islands (this project, like most student competition entries, will not actually be built), is made almost entirely of four-inch-thick panes of glass that are precisely curved to create a maze-like environment that looks, from above, like the bloom of a flower. The striking structure straddles the line between architecture and public art, in the vein of large-scale sculptors like Richard Serra.

A chart, created by Rick and Mina, that shows the air quality indices of various cities around the world.

Under J.P.'s guidance, Rick and Mina researched the air quality index, a standard measurement of air pollution used in population centres around the world. They surveyed the air quality of several of the world's largest countries and took note of the cities within those countries that had recorded the worst pollution.

Once they had compiled a table of air quality index scores from around the world, they set about finding a way to represent the data within the built form of their pavilion. They researched the visual effect of particulate matter in the atmosphere and realized that excessive pollution typically causes the sky to take on an orange tint — a fact now familiar to anyone who has been following news of the California wildfires.

Rick and Mina decided that each glass panel in their pavilion would represent a different global city. Each of the panels would be tinted orange in proportion with the air quality of its corresponding city: the worse the air quality, the deeper the orange hue.

Top: A rendering of the view from inside the pavilion. Bottom: A view of the skylight at the pavilion's centre.

A visitor to the Air Quality Index Pavilion enters from the outer edge of the "flower," where the lightest-orange glass (representing the least polluted cities) is located. As the visitor progresses towards the centre of the pavilion, he or she encounters glass panes that are deeper orange, representing cities with poorer air quality. At the centre of the pavilion, in the middle of the whorl of glass, the orange is so intense that it's almost opaque. Bathed in orange light, the visitor has a visceral experience of the effect of air pollution on the earth's atmosphere.

At the very centre of the pavilion, the glass petals part, leaving a round, open portal through which a visitor can look up and see blue sky. "This element of the design was inspired by James Turrell's skylights," Rick says. "Visitors have the ability to look up and see the bright blue sky when they're covered with this orange light filtering through the glass. It's a hopeful moment at the centre of our installation."

The World Architecture Festival, where Rick and Mina will present their design and vie for the grand prize in their category, will take place in June 2021.

As the world's political scene grows more and more volatile, architects are increasingly considering ways of using their work to lend support to activist movements. Bracket [Takes Action], a new book co-edited by Mason White, a Daniels Faculty professor, and Neeraj Bhatia, an associate professor of architecture at the California College of the Arts, aims to introduce readers to new ways of making change in the world through design.

"The interest was in understanding architecture and design's activist agency today," White says. "We wanted to compile writing on how architects and the impacts of design in the public realm foster or interact with modes of activism. This could be through the act of design, the design process, or through thematic investigations."

[Takes Action] — the fourth in a series of publications in the Bracket series, which White co-founded in 2008 — consists of 43 different essays and design projects. The contents are split into six different thematic groups: ReAction, CounterAction, InterAction, FAction, InAction, and RetroAction. Each theme highlights a different way designers are responding to the socio-political moment.

The book's segmented structure enables it to include submissions on a variety of topics, from many different sources. Its contributors include Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, from Atelier Bow-Wow; Mariam Kamara, of the Niger-based firm Atelier Masōmī; and Matthew Mazzotta, an American artist who frequently incorporates activism into his work. Another contributor is Azadeh Zaferani, a graduate of the Daniels Faculty's Master of Urban Design program, who wrote about the transformation of public space in Tehran.

"The contributors are looking at anything from housing rights, to social media's impact on public space, to squatting," White says. "And some contributors are looking at refugee camps, or contested access to energy. And sometimes they're just asking what role technology plays, looking at how the internet gets used in public space to advocate for overlooked voices or oppressed peoples."

Bracket [Takes Action] is now available for purchase on Amazon, or from the publisher at a 30 per cent discount — but buying the book isn't the only way to engage with its contributors' ideas. Throughout the fall, the Daniels Faculty and the California College of the Arts will be co-hosting a series of online talks with Bracket's writers and editors. The first one, on ReAction and CounterAction, took place on September 16. Two more are planned: InterAction and FAction, on October 7, and InAction and RetroAction, on November 11. These events will be free of charge and open to the public.

Janis Kravis, who graduated from the Daniels Faculty — then known as the University of Toronto School of Architecture — in 1959 and soon afterward founded Karelia, an influential textile, furniture, and housewares store that helped popularize Scandinavian design in Toronto, died on July 16, at the age of 84.

Kravis was born in Latvia in 1935. In 1944, during the last months of World War II, he fled with his family to Sweden ahead of the advance of the Russian army. Six years later, the Kravis family boarded a ship bound for Canada, where they would live the rest of their lives.

In 1960, when Kravis opened Karelia in the vestibule of a friend's beauty parlour at 729 Bayview Avenue, Toronto was a much different place. Downtown was an expanse of low- and mid-rise buildings, churches, and parking lots. High-end dining was steak, steak, and more steak. Shopping and many forms of public entertainment were banned on Sundays.

Karelia was like a splash of bright-orange paint on the city's beige public façade. Kravis had learned about Finnish architecture and design during his studies at U of T. After he graduated, he began writing to Finnish manufacturers, requesting catalogues and samples. The products — brightly coloured textiles and elegant, minimalist housewares — were like nothing else available in Canada at the time. He and his business partners (his sister, Gundega, and their friend Solveig Westman, both of whom were later bought out by a third partner, Björn Edmark) began importing items to stock Karelia's shelves.

Karelia, in its Gerrard Street West Village location.

Before long, Karelia moved out of the beauty parlour and into its own shop on Elm Street, in the middle of what used to be known as Gerrard Street West Village. The neighbourhood, now largely demolished and redeveloped, was at the time a bohemian hangout, favoured by artists, writers, and other creative types. It turned out to be an ideal place for Kravis's Scandinavian design sensibility to take hold and gain acceptance.

Karelia also received an unexpected boost from another part of the city. In 1961, construction began on Finnish architect Viljo Revell's bold, curvilinear design for Toronto's new city hall. The new civic structure was a monumental advertisement for Scandinavian design — and, more significant for Kravis and Karelia, it brought Revell to Toronto.

"I got to know Viljo Revell and his team of architects when they were working on the Toronto City Hall," Kravis would later write. "They literally opened up their kitchen cabinets and showed me dishes by Kaj Franck for Arabia, glassware from Iittala, as well as fabric and cushions from Marimekko. They told me about Armi Ratia and Timo Sarpaneva, Tapio Wirkkala, Artek, Antti and Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi, Metsovaara, Fiskars, Haimi, Muurame and many others. I had just sold my secondhand car and was planning my first trip to Finland."

Karelia rapidly expanded its product lines. The shop became particularly well known for its selection of designs by Marimekko, the legendary Finnish textile house whose bright patterns played a role in defining the vibrant, optimistic style of the early 1960s. Kravis met Marimekko co-founder Armi Ratia on a buying trip to Finland, and the two remained friends until her death in 1979.

Top: Karelia's Front Street location. Bottom: The fabrics department in Karelia's Manulife Centre location.

Kravis closed the Gerrard Village shop and moved Karelia into a new and more prominent storefront in Lothian Mews, a stylish shopping centre located near the then-burgeoning neighbourhood of Yorkville. Soon afterward, he opened a second Karelia location on Front Street, near St. Lawrence Market. The shops were becoming popular with the city's design cognoscenti.

Bruce Kuwabara, now a partner at KPMB, was, at the time, an architecture undergraduate at U of T. Like many of his contemporaries, he found himself drawn into Karelia's orbit. "The girlfriend of one of my best friends worked at Karelia," Kuwabara recalled recently. "So I went down there, and everyone was hip and swinging, and wearing miniskirts, bright colours, white go-go boots. It was flamboyant. It was really everything Toronto was not. It was beyond fashion-forward. Nobody had ever seen anything like it."

Parties at Karelia.

Kravis's sensibility began to rub off on Toronto designers in subtle ways. "He swung the pendulum in the direction of modern, Nordic architecture," says Leslie Rebanks, an architect who befriended Kravis in the 1960s and remained his frequent dining companion until weeks before his death. "He influenced a lot of influential architects. We all went to Karelia. We owe a lot to him for introducing the public to the idea that modern architecture was a philosophy worth following — a philosophy of economy, of materials, of line and expression."

Another influential personality who became a Karelia customer was George Minden, owner of the Windsor Arms Hotel. It was through Minden that Kravis was offered an opportunity to make another memorable contribution to Toronto's emerging cosmopolitan culture: he became the architect for Three Small Rooms, a restaurant located on the lower level of the Windsor Arms.

Kravis designed or hand-selected every aspect of the restaurant's interior, including the uniforms worn by staff members. The space was, as implied by the name, divided into three distinct dining spaces, each with its own look. The main dining area was lined with mahogany, its rosewood tables polished to a high gloss. The chairs, also made of mahogany, were designed by Kravis himself. A "grill" area was decked out with leather and dark wool, with Marimekko fabrics on the walls. The restaurant's intimate wine cellar was swathed in brown brick and sleek white oak, and topped with a modernist chandelier.

Top: The main dining room in Three Small Rooms, with chairs designed by Kravis. Bottom: The entrance to the wine cellar at Three Small Rooms.

Three Small Rooms, which opened in 1966, provided a type of sophisticated, design-forward dining atmosphere that was rare in Toronto at the time. An early review by Robert Taylor in the Toronto Star complained about the high prices but praised the "handsome wining and dining complex."

"It will be, for the reasons cited above, Toronto's most discussed dining-out place in the weeks ahead," Taylor concluded.

Joanne Kates, the Globe and Mail's longtime food critic, worked briefly as a cook at Three Small Rooms, and later wrote of the restaurant: "[It] was the place responsible for the discreet civilizing of the bourgeoisie." (The restaurant closed in 1991 after a series of changes in the ownership of the hotel, and its passing was mourned by gourmands and architecture lovers alike.)

Over the following decade, Karelia moved again, from Lothian Mews to the newly completed Manulife Centre at Bay and Bloor streets. Kravis opened two satellite stores, one in Vancouver and one in Edmonton, before shuttering the entire Karelia chain in 1980 amid financial troubles.

After the collapse of his retail empire, Kravis continued to practice architecture as a consultant for public and private clients. He became interested in sustainability and environmentalism — topics he wrote about frequently on his website. In 2012, he revived the Karelia name and logo on a new Toronto restaurant, Karelia Kitchen, operated by his son Leif and Leif's wife, Donna Ashley. The restaurant, known for its colourful platters of Scandinavian pickles and smoked fish, earned positive reviews before closing permanently in 2018.

Kravis was predeceased by his wife, Helga. He is survived by his three sons, Leif, Nils, and Guntar, and his sister, Gundega.

Top image: Janis Kravis, photographed in Stockholm in 2017. All photos courtesy of Guntar Kravis.

The Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto is excited to announce our Fall 2020 Talks & Lectures schedule featuring speakers and themes that simultaneously address the urgency of our contemporary challenges, and the opportunities of our diverse programs — architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, visual studies, and forestry.

The Fall 2020 Talks, a series of thematic discussions titled Resolutions and Agencies, explore design’s capacity to respond to activism, resilience, decolonization, density, narrative, and justice, among other topics.

Lectures provide an in-depth view on a topic by one speaker, while talks allow for thematic discussion with a diverse group of featured speakers. All programs are free, online, and open to the public. 

Find more details and register in advance at daniels.utoronto.ca/events.

Fall 2020 Talks: Resolutions and Agencies 

September 16, 4pm
Takes Action - Session I
Chris Roach (California College of the Arts)
Azadeh Zaferani (The Bartlett)
Lindsay Harkema (City College of New York)
Kees Lokman (University of British Columbia)
Moderated by Neeraj Bhatia (California College of the Arts) and Mason White (Daniels Faculty)
Hosted by California College of the Arts and the Daniels Faculty

September 24, 6:30pm   
Strange Primitivism and Other Things
Tei Carpenter (Daniels Faculty)  
Adrian Phiffer (Daniels Faculty)  
Moderated by Hans Ibelings (Daniels Faculty)  
  
October 1, 6:30pm   
The Great Indoors: Environmental Quality, Health and Wellbeing in a Quarantining Society
Kellie Chin (Workshop Architecture)  
Simon Coulombe (Wilfrid Laurier University)  
Steven Lockley (Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Harvard Medical School)  
Alejandra Menchaca (Thornton Tomasetti)  
Lidia Morawska (Queensland University of Technology)   
Manuel Riemer (Wilfrid Laurier University)  
Moderated by Bomani Khemet (Daniels Faculty) and Alstan Jakubiec (Daniels Faculty)  
 
October 7, 4:00pm  
Takes Action - Session II  
Lori Brown (Syracuse University)  
Samaa Elimam (Harvard University)  
Cesar Lopez (University of New Mexico)  
Albert Pope (Rice University)  
Moderated by Neeraj Bhatia (California College of the Arts) and Mason White (Daniels Faculty)  
Hosted by California College of the Arts and Daniels Faculty  

October 15, 6:30 pm   
Distancing Density  
Daniel D’Oca (Harvard University)  
Jay Pitter (Author & Placemaker)  
Moderated by Fadi Masoud (Daniels Faculty) and Michael Piper (Daniels Faculty)  
 
October 22, 5:00pm 
Future Forests: Renaturalizing Urban and Peri Urban Landscapes for People, Biodiversity and Resilience  
Simone Borelli (Forestry Division, United Nations)  
Liz O’Brien (Forest Research, UK Government)  
Fabiano Lemes de Oliveira (Politecnico di Milano)  
Jana VanderGoot (University of Maryland)  
Moderated by Danijela Puric-Mladenovic (Daniels Faculty)  

November 5, 6:30pm 
The Architect and the Public: On George Baird's Contribution to Architecture 
Andrew Choptiany (Carmody Groarke)
Roberto Damiani (Daniels Faculty)
Hans Ibelings (Daniels Faculty)
Michael Piper (Daniels Faculty)
Brigitte Shim (Daniels Faculty)
Richard Sommer (Daniels Faculty)

November 11, 4:00pm 
Takes Action - Session III  
Jill Desimini (Harvard University)  
Ersela Kripa & Stephen Mueller (Texas Tech University)  
David Moon (Columbia University)  
Lucía Jalón Oyarzun (Escuela SUR)  
Moderated by Neeraj Bhatia (California College of the Arts) and Mason White (Daniels Faculty)  
Hosted by California College of the Arts and Daniels Faculty 

November 12, 5:30 pm 
For Her Record: Notes on the Work of Blanche Lemco van Ginkel  
Phyllis Lambert (Canadian Centre for Architecture)  
Mary McLeod (Columbia University)   
Ipek Mehmetoglu (McGill University)  
Moderated by Brigitte Shim (Daniels Faculty)  

November 19, 12:30pm 
Architecture in Dialogue: 14th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture  
Aziza Chaouni (Daniels Faculty)  
Farrokh Derakhshani (Aga Khan Award for Architecture)  
Andres Lepik (Architekturmuseum München)  
Nondita Correa Mehrotra (RMA Architects)  
Moderated by Brigitte Shim (Daniels Faculty) 

Fall 2020 Lectures

September 22, 5:30pm 
Chris Lee (Pratt Institute)
MVS Proseminar  

October 5, 12:00pm 
Sheila Boudreau (Spruce Lab)

October 16, 1:00pm  
Elisa Silva (Enlace Arquitectura)  

October 19, 12:00pm 
Aisling O'Carroll (The Bartlett)  

October 27, 12:00pm
Arthur Adeya  (Kounkuey Design Initiative)

October 30, 1:00pm 
Kelly Doran (MASS Design Group)  
Jeffrey Cook Memorial Lecture   

November 6, 1:00pm 
Jason Nguyen (Daniels Faculty)  
 
November 9, 1:00pm 
Luis Callejas (LCLA Office)  

November 20, 1:00pm  
Gilles Saucier (Saucier + Perrotte)   
 
November 23, 12:00pm  
Teresa Galí-Izard (ETH)   
Michael Hough/Ontario Association of Landscape Architects Visiting Critic  

November 25, 1:00pm
Jia Gu (Spinagu / M&A)

November 27, 1:00pm  
Elise Hunchuck (Royal College of Art & The Bartlett)  

November 30, 1:00pm  
Sergio Lopez-Pineiro (Harvard University) 

We are pleased to announce Douglas Cardinal OC, FRAIC, as the 2020-21 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design (details forthcoming). 

The COVID-19 pandemic is, in a certain sense, a design problem. The virus thrives indoors, in the built environment — meaning architects have an important role to play in prevention.

Associate professor Jeannie Kim and assistant professor Mauricio Quirós Pacheco put a handful of Daniels architecture students on the work-study payroll this summer and had them apply their design skills to the problem of studying and mitigating the spread of the virus. Here's a look at what those students produced.

Declan Roberts

Declan, in collaboration with Master of Architecture student Lina Kostoff, studied the way the COVID-19 pandemic was affecting Toronto's homeless population. "I quickly became aware that it was a pretty severe problem," Declan says. "Most homeless shelters are not set up to deal with any form of social distancing. Most of the ones in Toronto had to cut their capacity in half, at least."

When he surveyed the way other cities were handling similar problems, he came upon San Francisco's Safe Sleeping Village, a government-sanctioned homeless encampment located right beside city hall. He decided to investigate what it would take to implement a similar encampment in Toronto.

Here's a drawing showing the amount of space that would be required to create an encampment for the total estimated number of people who are now being denied spots in Toronto's permanent shelters as a result of the pandemic:

(Click here to view a larger version.)

And here's a drawing of what Toronto's city hall might look like if an encampment, with proper distancing and support services, were created in Nathan Phillips Square:

(Click here to view a larger version.)

Jay Potts

Jay conducted a study of the floor plans of Toronto-area long-term care homes, in an attempt to discover whether or not there was anything about the design of the buildings that was contributing to the astonishingly high COVID death rates being reported in eldercare facilities at the time. "When we started looking at this problem, it was reported that 82 per cent of COVID-19 deaths in Ontario were occurring in long-term care homes," Jay says. "This has mainly been attributed to Ontario's systemic disinvestment in this sector."

He obtained plans for two local long-term care homes: the Briton House, a high-rise complex in midtown, and One Kenton Place, a four-storey facility in North York. In collaboration with Master of Architecture student Lina Kostoff, he created drawings that superimpose two-metre social distancing bubbles on each set of plans. The visualization highlighted a disturbing fact. "I found that Ontario's construction standards for long-term care homes didn't account for social distancing," Jay says. Narrow hallways and crowded, multi-occupant residential rooms made isolation all but impossible.

A Briton House floor plan. (Click here to view a larger version.)

As a final step, Jay applied a similar treatment to floor plans from the Arkansas State Veterans Home, in North Little Rock — a facility designed according to the "small house" model of long-term care, which aims to improve quality of life for residents by, among other things, giving them private bedrooms and minimizing walking distances to shared amenities. The Arkansas approach, Jay found, was more amenable to social distancing and quarantine.

An Arkansas State Veterans Home floor plan. (Click here to view a larger version.)

Joshua Sam-Cato

Joshua began by examining data on the geographical distribution of COVID-19 cases in Toronto. He noticed that infections were not evenly spread across they city: residents of certain neighbourhoods were more likely to contract the virus. When he compared those infection-prone neighbourhoods, he realized that many of them had something in common: they had higher-than-average amounts of land zoned for industrial uses.

Here's a map he created showing the correlation between industrial areas and COVID infections. The blackened areas are industrial buildings, and the height of the vertical lines corresponds to the prevalence of the virus:

(Click here to view a larger version.)

Joshua theorized that the relationship between industrial areas and COVID might have to do with the fact that many industrial jobs aren't compatible with social distancing, because they can't be done remotely and they often require workers to be in close quarters with one another. To gain a sense of the employment mix in these areas, he took a single neighbourhood, York University Heights, and created a colour-coded map that shows the variety of different industries represented in the industrial zones:

(Click here to view a larger version.)

Aisling Beers

Aisling took an ethnographic approach to studying the effects of COVID-19. She produced a series of storyboards showing the daily routines of three Daniels Faculty community members — herself, a professor, and a member of the Faculty's administrative staff — before and during the pandemic.

The exercise made her notice something about the pandemic's effect on people. "All of the post-pandemic stories were very similar," Aisling says. "People are united in a shared experience of living and working from home. Which I think is interesting compared to the 'before' stories, where everyone was living very different lives."

Here's the before-and-after of Aisling's own routine:

(Click here to view a larger version.)

(Click here to view a larger version.)

And here's the staff member:

(Click here to view a larger version.)

(Click here to view a larger version.)

Gemma Robinson

For her project, Gemma kept things close to home. She scrutinized the Daniels Building's floor plans for "pinch points" — places where it might be difficult for people to maintain the required two metres of distance.

She homed in on a few particularly problematic spots: a corridor next to an elevator, a waiting area outside some bathrooms, and the "commons" area inside the building's main entrance, where a student-run café tends to attract crowds.

For each of her pinch points, she created an animated vignette that shows how people would move through the space. The red spots indicate violations of social distancing protocol. Here's the elevator corridor:

And the commons:

Sheetza McGarry

Sheetza focused on creating visualizations of viral spread at human scale. She drew axonometric images of the virus travelling through air, and then created similar drawings in plan.

Viral spread in axonometric view. (Click here to view a larger version.)

Viral spread in plan. (Click here to view a larger version.)

Drawing and thinking about the way the virus emanates from individual humans allowed Sheetza to see virus-prevention efforts from a new perspective. "Putting these things into real space made me realize just how much of stopping the virus is about personal prevention and conscientiousness," she says. "The most important thing is that everyone understands their responsibility to the community."

With social distancing still in effect and the start of school still almost a month away, some of us are running out of ways to keep our creativity alive. That's why the Daniels Faculty, with funding from the School of Cities, is holding the Daniels Design Challenge, a design competition in which all the work can be done using household materials.

Daniels students, as well the friends and families of Daniels students, are eligible to participate. The creators of the best entries will win prizes, like Daniels swag or gift cards.

There are five different challenges to take part in. Some can be done from home, and others require light city exploration.

Details of each challenge are available on the Daniels Faculty website, and submissions are due by September 30.

Find out more about the Daniels Design Challenge

The Architectural Conservancy of Ontario is an organization that works to document and preserve architecture throughout the province, but they can't do it all by themselves. For the next few weeks, every Daniels Faculty student who makes a contribution to TO Built, the ACO's online database of Toronto architecture, will receive a free one-year ACO membership (a $35 value) and an entry into a raffle for other architecture-related prizes.

What do I have to do to get my free ACO membership?

All you have to do is send the ACO a photo of a building for them to add to their TO Built database of Toronto architecture. The ACO is looking for two types of buildings: postwar homes and religious buildings. Submissions are due by October 31.

Step one: Find a postwar home or religious building somewhere in Toronto and take a photo of it. Any building that falls into one of those categories will do.

Step two: Search the TOBuilt database and make sure the ACO doesn't already have a photo of the building.

Step three: Post the photo to Instagram with the hashtag #tobuiltdaniels. Or email it to info@acotoronto.ca. Be sure to include the building's exact location and any other relevant information.

Step four: Watch for a DM or email reply with details on how to claim your ACO membership.

What's the point of the TO Built database?

TO Built is an online repository of photos and information about buildings in Toronto, collectively maintained by ACO members throughout the city. The database is a resource for anyone who conducts research on Toronto architecture, including historians, conservationists, designers, and architects. But it's as only as good as the submissions it receives.

What are the benefits of ACO membership?

ACO members get the following benefits:

• A free subscription to Acorn magazine, a biannual publication about Ontario heritage and related issues.
• Discounts on ACO-sponsored networking events, talks, and design charrettes.
• A TOBuilt login, with full posting and editing privileges.

What other prizes might I win?

All students who make contributions to TOBuilt before October 31 will be entered into a raffle for a chance to win a copy of Toronto Architecture: A City Guide, a book by Patricia McHugh and Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic. Winners will be notified by November 6.

Top image: The TARIC Islamic Centre, in North York.

The Daniels Faculty is bringing a little bit of the natural world to one of downtown Toronto's most prominent locations.

Pebbs and Hex, an educational pop-up park co-created by assistant professor Victor Perez-Amado and forestry PhD candidate Eric Davies in collaboration with a team of Daniels Faculty students, is now available to visitors at the base of the CN Tower, Canada's most recognizable urban landmark.

The park opened to the public on Saturday, July 25th, in the plaza located immediately to the south of the tower. It will remain on display until early December.

Detail of one of Pebbs and Hex's solar-powered lighting elements.

Pebbs and Hex consists of a series of CNC-milled wooden "pebbles" — rounded seating structures, accentuated with kinetic, solar-powered lighting elements that move with the wind. The "hexes" are modular hexagonal planters that hold a gallery of native trees, including burr oak, black ash, sugar maple, and poplar. A series of explanatory plaques will educate visitors about the different tree species and the important roles they play in Ontario's ecology. The park’s elements were fabricated in the Daniels Faculty’s digital fabrication laboratory.

The installation is part of the CN Tower's ongoing effort to bring life and variety to the downtown core.

“We are excited to partner with University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design to bring the Pebbs and Hex pop-up park to life at the base of the CN Tower,” says Peter George, the tower’s chief operating officer. “With its beautiful array of trees that are part of the city’s natural canopy, the installation is one of many ways the CN Tower is helping Torontonians fall in love with their city all over again, and we’re so pleased to provide our community with a refreshingly green urban space to enjoy.”

For Robert Wright, interim dean of the Daniels Faculty, an installation in the CN Tower's plaza represents an opportunity to bring design excellence to a wide audience. "I'm proud of the Daniels Faculty’s support of this activity," Wright says. "Pebbs and Hex is both beautiful and educational. And it's an incredible showcase for the Daniels Faculty's design expertise and fabrication technologies."

Pebbs and Hex was completed with support from Sidewalk Labs.

Here are a few more photos of the park:

The Daniels Faculty design team consisted of:

Concept design and research:

• Victor Perez-Amado – Assistant professor of architecture and urban design
• Anton Skorishchenko – Master of Architecture student
• Christian Huizenga – Master of Architecture student
• Niko McGlashan – Master of Architecture student

Concept design and research of native tree gallery:

• Eric Davies - PhD candidate in forestry, MSc, BSc

Concept design and research of educational component:

• Eric Davies - PhD candidate in forestry, MSc, BSc

Pebbles and lights fabrication:

• Anton Skorishchenko – Master of Architecture student
• Christian Huizenga – Master of Architecture student
• Miranda Fay – Master of Architecture student
• Niko McGlashan – Master of Architecture student
• Peter Dowhaniuk - Bachelor in Architectural Studies student

Hexagons fabrication:

• Victor Perez-Amado – Assistant professor of architecture and urban design
• Anton Skorishchenko – Master of Architecture student

Project management and project installation:

• Victor Perez-Amado – Assistant professor of architecture and urban design
• Anton Skorishchenko – Master of Architecture student

Photgraphs by Rémi Carreiro