U of T announces a new $6-million gift to create the John and Myrna Daniels Foundation Opportunity Awards to help talented graduate and undergraduate students at the Daniels Faculty shape the future of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design.

John and Myrna Daniels’ philanthropy has been a game-changer for architecture education in Canada. With this additional gift—which benefits students who might not otherwise have the chance to pursue studies at the University of Toronto—their support is growing stronger.

Announced Monday November 12, an additional six-million-dollar gift—from the John and Myrna Daniels Foundation—adds to an already impressive legacy of support for the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design and for its students, who are being prepared to design and build the environments around us. This latest gift brings Mr. and Mrs. Daniels’ support to a remarkable $30 million.

“Like John Daniels, creative people across the Daniels Faculty are thinking of ways to design better communities that reflect a commitment to social uplift,” says President Meric Gertler. “Today the Daniels Faculty is a globally recognized school and at the forefront of city-building. This is due primarily to the transformative philanthropy of John and Myrna Daniels, whose most recent support will ensure that qualified students will have the means to pursue an excellent education.”

Long-term, visionary support

The new gift adds to the Faculty’s endowment and will benefit students far into the future. It will also help ensure that the Daniels Faculty can both attract and remain accessible to high-ranking, deserving candidates. Recognizing the importance of this gift, the University of Toronto will match the annual payout on the endowment for students, thus doubling the impact of the gift. The John and Myrna Daniels Foundation Opportunity Award will support students who demonstrate both financial need and academic merit.

John H. Daniels (BArch 1950, Hon LLD 2011) is an architect and veteran developer with a keen passion and track record for building socially sustainable and livable urban environments. He is the former Chairman and CEO of Cadillac Fairview Development Corporation, and founder of The Daniels Corporation, one of Canada’s largest and pre-eminent builders and developers. Some of the corporation’s most renowned projects in Toronto include the redevelopment of Regent Park and the TIFF Bell Lightbox and Festival Tower.

“This is the most recent in a number of catalytic gifts from John and Myrna to the Daniels Faculty,” says Dean Richard Sommer. “Thanks to their incredible commitment and support, our students are tackling the very real challenge of transforming Canada’s urbanizing cities and landscapes. We are extremely grateful to them; their generosity will enable us to compete for talent globally and help ensure that our school plays a leading role well into the future.”

An outstanding legacy of giving

Both Mr. and Mrs. Daniels serve among the Honorary Chairs of the University of Toronto’s historic Boundless campaign. Their first gift of $14 million, in 2008, helped create the John and Myrna Daniels Scholars Award and provided capital support for the school’s expansion. To date there have been 81 John and Myrna Daniels Scholars, all professional master’s students with financial need, and some are notably the first in their families to go to university. Through their studies, the Scholars—and, indeed, students across the faculty—have been exploring the various ways that design addresses 21st-century challenges, such as the relationship between growing inequality and cities, architecture and human health, digital technology and craft/construction, and data analysis and sustainable development.

A second major gift of $10 million from John and Myrna Daniels, in 2013, made it possible for the Daniels Faculty to undertake an ambitious transformation of One Spadina Crescent, where the school is located today. Toronto architects, alumni and the business community continue to make donations to One Spadina’s ongoing capital campaign, supporting a project that has been acknowledged by Toronto architecture critic Alex Bozikovic as “one of the best buildings in Canada of the past decade.”

“This latest commitment from John and Myrna through their charitable foundation brings their visionary and generous commitment to $30 million,” says David Palmer, Vice President Advancement. “Their support has helped the Daniels Faculty attain a new level of global leadership. It now attracts the finest young minds and faculty from Canada and internationally, who are dedicated to creating more livable communities for people around the world.”

Photos, top: 1) Sarah Martos (MArch 2016) 2) Isabel Amos (MArch 3), Avery Clarke (MLA 2), Zoona Aamir (HBA 3). Model by Raymond Garrioch (MArch 2).

A model by the Office of Adrian Phiffer — the firm of Daniels Faculty Lecturer Adrian Phiffer — will be featured in the group exhibition, MIRABILIA, December 1-15. Master of Architecture students Angela Cho, Matthew Leander Kalil, and Avi Odenheimer were also part of the project team.

Exhibition curators challenged architects and artists to create a model that represents one of the invisible cities from Italo Calvino’s book of the same name. The exhibition showcased one model for every city narrated in Calvino’s text, each at 20x20 cm.

As described in the exhibition brief, “The aim of the project is the creation of a space in which to discuss, undermine and investigate the idea of landscape. Artists, architects and photographers will participate with multiple interpretations on the subject.”

Phiffer and his team worked on the model for the city of Melania from the chapter titled “the City and the Dead.” Their model explores the relationship between and the unification of an immortal city and its mortal citizens.

Visit the Office of Adrian Phiffer’s website to learn more.

Last week, graduate students in the Architecture and Urban Design programs at the Daniels Faculty got a chance to connect with principals and professionals from the architecture and design community, who generously volunteered to share their insight and advice.

With 32 professionals and alumni attending the event, students had an opportunity to share their concerns, ask questions, and receive valuable tips on how to advance their studies and skills to land on their desired career path.
 
“I was really worried about the future and what to expect after graduation,” said Master of Architecture Student Zoha Nekouian. “I asked what firms expect from students and the answers were really relieving.”
 
Students who attended the event agreed that it was a positive and helpful experience.
 
In his conversation with Alex Josephson, Master of Urban Design student Saif Malhas learned that there is no perfect candidate and that your skills will always have room to grow.
 
Master of Architecture student, Weixin Zhao, who is completing her thesis this year, learned to not be afraid of approaching the designers themselves and applying to them directly when looking for jobs. 
 
The one-on-one conversations provided the students with a more in-depth and direct exchange of knowledge and guidance.
 
 "It was nice to have people show interest in what you wanted to do and keep the conversation going," said Master of Architecture student Sky Ece Ulosoy.
 
The Daniels Faculty would like to extend its gratitude to all the professionals, most of whom are alumni, who participated in this event with our students.

Our idea looks at desks that are interchangeable and moveable. Everything is controlled by artificial intelligence that records people’s stages of work and when certain people need to be clustered together. A series of curtains make the spaces but are moveable themselves. The AI will also record people’s daily patterns and attempts to gradually transition layouts in-between stages of a project to be minimally intrusive overtime. This constant flux in arrangements will help keep the workers more engaged.
 

There were 38 finalists in the competition, which was open to all. Of those, 9 received honourable mentions, and 3 winners were selected. Nguyen, Bajaman, and Baik's project will be featured in the Non Architecture Competitions book and website.

To learn more about the Daniels students' project, visit the Non Architecture Competitions website.

Second year Master of Architecture students Pedram Karimi and Ehsan Naimpour joined forces with four Schulich Master of Real Estate and Infrastructure (MREI) students to compete in the 7th annual NAIOP Development Challenge. On October 4, following live presentations made by three finalists, the Daniels Faculty / Schulich team — named “Four Corner Investments” — was awarded first prize. It was the only student team among the three finalists. 

Each competing team produced a development proposal for a prominent site in Toronto and were required to consider real-life scenarios including cost analysis and architectural design. The Four Corner Investments team's proposal included a high rise rental apartment that complements two existing office towers.

Writes Four Corners Investments:

In order to unify the entire development scheme, the team envisioned a set of bridges, a life science incubator space, and retail to unify all the buildings at the podium level. By providing multi-floor connections, the bridges aim to give emphasis to the circulation and enhance interaction.

The residential tower accommodates a vertical, yet community-oriented form of living. In its entirety, the building form consists of three jagged and dynamic blocks that offer live and leisure space within each individual block. The jagged form allows for more considerate setbacks and provides a unique presence in the fabric and skyline of the city.
 

Congratulations to the winning team members:

From the Daniels Faculty: Pedram Karimi and Ehsan Naimpour 
From Schulich: Jordan Trinder, Umehani Kanga, Alannah Bird, Bao Nguyen

Lead image, top, by Norm Li.

Students in Matthew Brown’s LAN3016 Option Studio “On The Edge” recently returned from a research trip to Newfoundland where they experienced first-hand rural coastal communities' way of life  and the complexities that have resulted from outmigration. 

The communities of Newtown and Freshwater warmly hosted the students for 3 days and shared with them the unique culture found in rural outports. Students had the opportunity to explore and document resettled communities, local fish plants, tourist attractions, heritage structures, vernacular architecture, and significant cultural landscapes, as well as run engagement workshops with officials and community members to learn from the profound knowledge of the local people. 

The two communities will be the subject of student design interventions, the goal of which is to aid in the revival of rural place-based economies. The work from the semester will be compiled into a document that will be given back to the communities as a resource to enable them to undertake their own visioning work while providing fresh perspective.

While in Newfoundland, the students also had the opportunity to tour the Fogo Island Inn and recent work of the Shorefast Organization to better understand the impact of a contemporary vernacular architecture and design on the Island. 

The students’ visit ignited an incredible amount of excitement within the rural communities and on the island — their activities were featured on both Newfoundland television and CBC Radio. 

Click here to listen to CBC Radio's full interview with Sessional Lecturer Matthew Brown.

StudentDwellTO — a cross disciplinary research project on affordable student housing being conducted by the University of Toronto, Ryerson, OCAD, and York University — wants to know more about students' experiences finding affordable homes in Toronto.

The project's researchers, which include Daniels Faculty Assistant Professor Mauricio Quirós Pacheco and recent graduate Kearon Roy Taylor (MArch 2018), are now recruiting students for a paid, two-hour focus group to help them gain more insight into barriers and strategies that students face in accessing housing and how housing could be better designed to address students' needs.

From the StudentDwellTO website:

Toronto’s housing crunch has made headlines over the last several years. The city is currently experiencing a severe lack of affordable rental units, and the vacancy rate in 2017 dropped to 1%, the lowest number in over 16 years (Myles 2017). This housing crisis, while impacting everyone living in Toronto, has specific impacts on students that need to be understood through further research.
 

To be eligible for the focus group, participants must be undergraduate, or graduate students registered full-time at OCAD, York, Ryerson or U of T.

For more information or to sign up to participate in a focus group, visit the StudentDwellTO website.

Image, top from Matthew McKenna's thesis, "Typologies for Neighbourhood Densification"

Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni was rencently featured in a Designboom interview about her work to rehabilitate the Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex, a historic site of modern architecture in Morocco originally designed by Jean-François Zevaco in 1960.

With this revitalization project, Chaouni hopes “to not only raise awareness of this forgotten and dismissed heritage, but also to use it as a pilot project that could spread knowledge of concrete rehabilitation techniques and adaptive reuse approaches of brutalist buildings in Morocco.”

Her personal connection and appreciation of the existing site informs the project in a unique way. As part of the process, she has helped organize workshops for locals to raise awareness about this heritage site and its potential to be an active part of Morocco’s urban fabric once again.

To read the full interview, visit Designboom's website.