The team behind the recent restoration and expansion of the Daniels Building at One Spadina Crescent recently received the Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation. The project’s heritage consultants, ERA Architects; design architects, NADAAA; and the University of Toronto were the joint recipients for this prestigious provincial honour, which was announced this past January by Ontario Heritage Trust.

Presented annually at Queen’s Park, these awards were established “recognize exceptional contributions to heritage conservation, environmental sustainability and biodiversity, and cultural and natural heritage.” Ontario Heritage was established by a provincial act in 1990 to preserve Ontario’s significant cultural heritage and educate the public on its history.

ERA Architects highlighted some of the aspects of the project they felt made this project so impactful within Toronto’s urban landscape:

The recent renewal of the south-facing 19th-century Gothic revival building and contemporary addition – home to the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design – is a showcase for the city and an international focal point for education and research on architecture, art and the future of cities. The rehabilitation and new addition at One Spadina Crescent provides a significant expansion to the heritage building for use by the faculty and its students as design studios, fabrication shops, a multi-functional principal hall, library programs, social spaces and offices. The addition was conceived to fill in the “U”-shaped space vacated by demolition of previous additions to the original 1874 Knox College on its north side, thereby preserving the original heritage structure and integrating existing and new program space for optimal use of the finite site.

Read More about One Spadina Crescent, and view the full list of awards the Daniels Building has received to date.

A new temporary public art installation by Assistant Professor Victor Perez-Amado and third year Master of Architecture students John Nguyen, Anton Skorishchenko, Abubaker Bajaman, and Stephen Baik is drawing large crowds to Toronto’s Woodbine Beach.

Part of the Winter Stations exhibition, now in its 5^th year, the project is one of six installations enticing visitors to explore the city’s waterfront in the winter.

Four of the installations were selected via an international design competition and two were created by invited post-secondary institutions. The group from the Daniels Faculty was among the international competition winners, which included teams from the United States, Mexico, and Poland.

The theme of this year’s exhibition was migration. Cavalcade — the Daniels Faculty team's winning design — depicts brightly coloured silhouettes of migrants on a journey to a better life. Visitors may walk around them, their footprints converging in the sand and snow. At the centre of the installation is a mirror where one may view their reflection and see themselves as part of the collective.

Video and photos above courtesy of the Cavalcade team

"Cavalcade is an installation that reflects the collective spirit of human movement and transversal," wrote the Daniels Faculty team about their installation. "Not just in the contemporary political sense of global migration, but in the consensus that the human quest for a better life is one that is timeless and universal.”

Mayor John Tory visited the installations on the opening day, February 18, and was on hand to view presentations by each team February 13 at Rorschach Brewery.

Woggle Jungle photo by Yasmin Al-Samarrai; Obscura photo courtesy of Ontario Place

In their presentation, Perez-Amado and Skorishchenko, representing the Daniels Faculty team, shared other public art installations they created in Toronto that helped inform their approach, including Woggle Jungle, Obscura (pictured, respectively, above), and most recently a modular 3D printed design now on display at Autodesk’s Toronto headquarters.

Open to the public, the Winter Stations exhibition runs until April 1.

Read media coverage of the Winter Stations exhibition, via CBC News, and Now magazine.

Keeping It Modern is a grant initiative of the Getty Foundation that advances the conservation of modern architecture around the world. To further the initiative's goals, architect and Daniels Faculty Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni, together with architect and Professor at Escola da Cidade in São Paul Silvio Oksman will lead a workshop at the Sidi Harazem complex in Morocco.

The workshop will showcase presentations of the Conservation Management Plans of Keeping It Modern grantees from the Global South. International leading experts in modern heritage conservation will provide reflections. Participants include keynote speaker Sheridan Burke, Shaika Jain from Shandigarh, India, and Joe Addo, from the Accra Children's Library in Ghana.

Members from the Order of Architects of Morocco, as well as leaders, activists, conservation groups, and architects working on the conservation of modern heritage from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia, and Turkey will attend.

As the principal investigator, Chaouni received a grant of $100,000 USD from  the Getty Foundation to support the workshop and its proceedings.

For more information on the Modern Heritage Under Pressure workshop, visit: www.kimmhup.com

New to Toronto’s historic Gladstone Hotel is the launch of the installation Connect by Daniels alumna Safoura Zahedi (MArch 2016). The immersive installation was part of Gladstone’s yearly group exhibition, Come Up to My Room, and will be exhibited for a full year as an artist-designed meeting room.

Connect, is part of Zahedi's independent experimental design series "Beyond the Surface," and explores geometry and its potential as a contemporary, universal design language. Using two-dimensional geometry to create three-dimensional spatial experiences through the principles of fractal geometry, Connect exhibits the subtle and meaningful order of our universe by reflecting the unseen, transporting the viewer from immersion in the mundane to serene contemplation.

Zahedi currently works at an award-winning architecture studio based in Toronto. Her independent work explores geometry through a process of merging traditional analogue design methods with contemporary digital technology.

"Toronto’s Safoura Zahedi is one of DesignTO’s breakaway voices," writes Azure in its online article "10 Canadian Talents We Loved at IDS Toronto and DesignTO."

Connect was made possible by the generous support of Daniels alumni as well as  Assistant Professor Brady Peters

Images, top, courtesy of Safoura Zahedi

Common Accounts — the office of Igor Bragado and Daniels Faculty Sessional Lecturer Miles Gertler — has been shortlisted to represent Canada at the 2020 Venice Biennale in Architecture.

Their proposal, "After Life," interrogates the intensifying attention on the body:

With the prospect of humanity's demise at the planetary scale, the body is more present than ever — in architectural discourse, in social media, and in the popular imaginary — and so too is the spectre of a post-human future as the motivating force of its ubiquity. Paradoxically, there is arguably no other time in history when the average human being has been as drawn to beautifying, hardening, and enhancing itself than now, confronted with the crisis of the body's ultimate disappearance. After Life proposes to see the body anew, as a product of this context.

Common Accounts is recognized for their work in the design of death and the virtual afterlife, including the project Three Ordinary Funerals, a prototypical funeral home produced for the Seoul Biennial on Architecture and Urbanism, now in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea. The office's work in architecture and self-design has expanded to an ongoing collaboration with Sephora for experimental new spaces and broadcast platforms in their Shanghai flagship.

Gertler and Bragado are the recipients of the 2016 Suzanne K. Underwood Prize from Princeton University and have recently lectured at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea (Seoul), the Harvard GSD (Cambridge), Alserkal Avenue (Dubai), Cornell University AAP (Ithaca), and Soho House (Istanbul).

Image, top: Three Ordinary Funerals, Common Accounts, 2017. Collection of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea (Seoul).

The Daniels Faculty would like to congratulate first year Master of Architecture student James Bird on winning the President's Award for Outstanding Indigenous Student of the Year. Lisa Boivin, an undergraduate student from the Faculty of Medicine, also received this honour. Two students, one graduate and one undergraduate, receive the award each year.

"I felt honored to be selected from a very large cohort of extremely talented people. It is a humbling experience, and I am filled with deep gratitude," said Bird. "The President's Award means a recognition for perseverance and persistence in educations goals I had always hoped for."

Bird recently completed his Bachelor of Arts in Indigenous Studies and Renaissance Studies at U of T. He began his master’s degree in architecture this fall after nearly 30 years as a carpenter, journeyman, and cabinet maker. A knowledge keeper from the Nehiyawak nation and Dene Nation, he says his future goals include the possibly pursuing a PhD and continuing his SSHRC research in "linguistincs and the interaction between space making and Indigenous languages."

A ceremony and reception for the President's Award was held on December 6th at First Nations House at U of T.

Ja Architecture Studio — the firm of Daniels Faculty lecturers Nima Javidi (MUD 2005) and  Behnaz Assadi (MLA 2008) — has been shortlisted to represent Canada at the 2020 Venice Biennale in Architecture.

More than 350,000 visitors from around the world attend the biannual international event, which works to promote "critical conversations about contemporary architecture." The Canada Council for the Arts provides financial support for Canada's exhibition and acts as Commissioner.

Ja Architecture Studio's proposal, entitled Lightness, notes Canada's "paradoxical relationship to light wood framing:"
 

With its simplicity, flexibility, and affordability, architects are able to conceive of spaces of considerable formal imagination, yet these same characteristics have placed light wood framing primarily outside the disciplinary boundaries of architecture and instead within the realm of building.

By examining Canada through the lens of this specific construction method, Lightness—Ja Architecture Studio’s collaborative submission for the Canadian Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Biennale—asks how we can explore the boundaries of the architectural imagination while connecting it to broader national issues such as ecology, regionalism, colonization, and settlement.
 

This is the second time that the Toronto-based firm has been shortlisted for this prestigious exhibition: Ja Architecture Studio was also in the running to represent Canada at the 2018 festival.

The shortlist news falls on the heels of other recent accolades for the firm: Ja Architecture Studio's project The Octagon recently received an Award of Excellence from Canadian Architect.

Photos of Ja Architecture Studio projects, top: 1) The Arch of Light, a finalist in the Lord Stanley’s Gift Monument Competition, 2) The Octagon—awarded a 2018 Award of Excellence by Canadian Architect, 3) Semi-Split.
Photos 2 & 3 by Sam Javanrouh

Looking for ways to enjoy the outdoors in Toronto during the winter holidays? The Winter Light Exhibition at Ontario Place opens up the former theme park grounds to a series of installations designed to engage visitors and bring light to the city during dark winter months.

Eighteen pieces throughout the landscape include Obscura, a colourful interactive installation designed and built by third year Master of Architecture students John Nguyen, Anton Skorishchenko, Stephen Baik, and Robert Lee. Built and fabricated in the Daniels Faculty's workshop, the piece was among those selected for display by a jury guided by the curatorial theme "Disruptive Engagement."

From the Winter Light Exhibition Website:
 

Obscura is an interactive installation that explores the contrast between light vs. darkness using two/three-dimensional geometry. The Human eye is unable to distinguish two/three-dimensional space in darkness. Obscura plays on this shortcoming by introducing an installation that makes use of the darkness at night to reveal a three-dimensional creation of space, while in the daytime, two-dimensional space is created. As visitors look through the front triangle of the first iteration, a series of twirling forms will create the illusion of seamlessly flowing from one frame to another. Visitors can proceed to travel in-between each of the frames to discover how simple geometry in combination with darkness and light can define and create a new dichotomy to experience and understand space.

Winter Light Exhibition and the student's installation has been featured in Azure, BlogTO, and CBC Toronto. The exhibition runs until March 17, 2019.

Obscura is not the only work by the students that will be brightening Toronto's landscape this winter. Nguyen, Baik, Skorishchenko and fellow student Abubakr Bajaman, together with Assistant Professor Victor Perez-Amado recently learned that they won a spot in the fifth annual 2019 Winter Stations exhibition along Toronto's Woodbine Beach. Their proposal, Calvalcade, is one of 5 installations that will appear on Toronto's waterfront in February.

Follow the students on instagram: @john.design, @stephen.baik, @anton_skor, @rjl1417

The Daniels Building at One Spadina was recently honoured as a finalist for Building of the Year as part of the 2018 AN Best Design Awards.  These awards, now in their sixth year, are a unique project-based awards program that showcases great buildings, building elements, interiors, and installations. Additionally, The Architects Newspaper (AN) panel awarded the Daniels Faculty the top honours in the education category, alongside notable buildings from UCSB and Carnegie Mellon University.

In their announcement of the winners, AN’s William Menking and Matt Shawn said that the final decision was a close one:
 

For our Building of the Year award, our esteemed jury was fiercely divided between two exemplary but very different projects. The final debate came down to SCHAUM/SHIEH’s Transart Foundation—a private gallery across from the Menil campus in Houston—and NADAAA’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. SCHAUM/SHIEH’s relatively small but mighty building employs punched-through balconies and a blurred program to utilize the space to maximum effect. Meanwhile, NADAAA’s extension and renovation of a 19th-century neo-Gothic building includes dramatic, complex lunettes that let in Aalto-esque light. In the end, the jury chose the scrappy Houston project, but the decision really could have gone either way.
 

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design celebrated the official opening of One Spadina on November 17, 2017. Designed by Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner, principals of the internationally acclaimed firm NADAAA — in collaboration with Architect-of-record Adamson & Associates, landscape architects Public Work, and heritage architects ERA — the revitalized One Spadina is an urban design exemplar and catalyst for the transformation of U of T’s western edge on the Spadina corridor. The Daniels Building at One Spadina is a showcase for the city and the University, and a world-leading venue for studying, conducting research, and advocating for architecture, landscape, and sustainable urbanization.

Learn more about the One Spadina project

A group of four talented students from Daniels Faculty recently nabbed the silver spot at the Marvin Architects Student Challenge, placing alongside other top architectural schools from across Canada.

Marvin Windows and Doors invited senior architecture students from across Canada to submit their best and most creative designs featuring Marvin products. Daniels Faculty students Feng Le, Vitusan Vimal, Jonathan Graham, and Raymond Kuang competed along with participants from schools such as University of Manitoba and Laval, and were awarded second place for their submission. In their announcement, the judges described their design as:
 

A geometric delight. The layout is thoughtfully designed to promote well-being and access to natural spaces through the creative use of interior courtyards. Dubbed “a true sensory experience”, this project shows how you can go “outside” without leaving the perimeter of your home.
 

“We entered the competition after attending a workshop which consisted of architects around the world,” explains Feng Le. “The passion in the room was inspiring. We started looking into possible competitions to start learning and found Marvin Windows. The design brief appealed to our individual expertise, and we knew that this was a competition that we would thoroughly enjoy.”

“This win means a lot to us as individual designers, and as a team,” he continues. “This achievement confirms our dreams to be reality. With this win, we are hoping that our individual skills, and determination to succeed become clear to the architecture world, as we continue exploring our young careers.”