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.

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is pleased to announce its 2018/2019 public lecture series: Home and Away.

The Faculty’s stunning 400-seat multichromatic Main Hall in the heart of the Daniels Building is now open. To inaugurate our first full year of public programming in this space, we are bringing together talent and ideas from near and far for a series of discussions and debates on design issues of global importance.

Engaging broad, timely topics — including the Anthropocene, smart cities, the political functions of art and architecture, and new equations of technology and craft — this year’s speaker series connects the wealth of expertise within the Daniels Faculty community with an international, multidisciplinary network of designers, scholars, artists, and curators. As depicted in the Faculty’s lecture series poster, each set of Home and Away speakers are represented by different “game flags,” highlighting the Faculty’s role as an arena for debate and the exchange of ideas on how architecture, landscape, art, and urbanism can effect meaningful change in society today.

Featured speakers include Toronto filmmaker and MacArthur fellow, Jennifer Baichwal and landscape architect Kate Orff (who will be presenting the Jeffrey Cook Memorial Lecture); Daniels Faculty Professor Brigitte Shim and London-based architect Alison Brooks; artists Rafael Lozano-Hemmer and Krzysztof Wodiczko; and Mauricio Pezo and Sofía von Ellrichshausen of the Chile-based art and architecture studio Pezo Von Ellrichshausen.

New faculty member, Associate Professor Jesse LeCavalier will join Dean Richard Sommer, Director of the Public Realm for Sidewalk Labs Jesse Shapins, renowned critic Michael Sorkin, and others in a debate about meaning, implications, and rhetoric surrounding the “smart city” movement — a keynote panel that’s part of the two-day symposium: URBAN IQ TEST.

The Daniels Faculty continues its collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) with a joint presentation of University of Toronto philosophy Professor Mark Kingwell and Princeton University history and theory of architecture Professor Sylvia Lavin, exploring themes raised by the CCA Exhibition: Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths. We will also be co-presenting a public film screening of the Islands and Villages documentary series, which explores the transformation of architecture in rural Japan. Introduced by CCA c/o Tokyo Curator Kayoko Ota, the documentaries feature Atelier Bow-Wow, Kazuyo Sejima, Toyo Ito, dot architects, and Hajime Ishikawa.

This year’s George Baird Lecture features Chief Planning and Development Officer at Metrolinx Leslie Woo. Associate Professor Georges Farhat and author of Earthworks and Beyond John Beardsley will present the Michael Hough / Ontario Association of Landscape Architects Visiting Critic lecture.

The Daniels Faculty’s Home and Away lecture series is free and open to all students, faculty, alumni, and members of the public. Online registration for each event is required.

Details for all public lectures can also be found on the Daniels Faculty’s website.

If you are an alumni of the Daniels Faculty and would like to receive a copy of the 2018/2019 events poster, please contact John Cowling at john.cowling@daniels.utoronto.ca.

HOME AND AWAY
2018/19 Daniels Faculty Events
1 Spadina Crescent
daniels.utoronto.ca

Oct. 25-26, 2018
WOOD AT WORK 2018
Symposium
Keynotes
Oct. 25: Michael Green, Vancouver
Oct. 26: John Patkau, Vancouver

Nov. 7, 2018
Mark Kingwell, Toronto
Sylvia Lavin, Princeton
A joint initiative with the CCA

Nov. 9, 2018
Film screening: Islands and Villages
With CCA c/o Tokyo Curator Kayoko Ota
A joint initiative with the CCA

Nov. 14, 2018
Leslie Woo, Toronto
George Baird Lecture

Nov. 21, 2018
Brigitte Shim, Toronto
Alison Brooks, London

Nov. 22, 2018
Shane Williamson, Toronto
Marc Simmons, New York

Jan. 15, 2019
Charles Stankievech, Toronto
Ville Kokkonen, Helsinki

Jan. 18-19, 2019
URBAN IQ TEST
Symposium
Keynote: Jan. 18, 2019
Jesse LeCavalier, Toronto / New York
Richard Sommer, Toronto
Jesse Shapins, Toronto
Michael Sorkin, New York

Jan. 22, 2019
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Montreal/Mexico City
Krzysztof Wodiczko, New York

Feb. 5, 2019
Jennifer Baichwal, Toronto
Kate Orff, New York
Jeffrey Cook Memorial Lecture

Feb. 26, 2019
Matthew Davis, Toronto
Barbara Bestor, Los Angeles

Mar. 19, 2019
Georges Farhat, Toronto
John Beardsley, Washington
Michael Hough / Ontario Association of Landscape Architects Visiting Critic

Apr. 16, 2019
Robert Levit, Toronto
Mauricio Pezo and Sofía von Ellrichshausen, Concepción

Apr. 26-27, 2019
NEW CIRCADIA
Symposium

For the past three years, Daniels Faculty alumnus Andrew Choptiany (March 2014) has been working in the studio of the London-based firm Carmody Groarke, where he has had the opportunity to contribute to projects such as the Dorset County Museum, Paddington Hotel, the Temporary Museum for Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Hill House, House and Studio Lambeth, and the Victoria & Albert Members’ room. This past summer the practice, founded in 2006 by Kevin Carmody and Andy Groarke, was the subject of the Spanish monograph publication El Croquis. We caught up with Choptiany to ask about life after graduation and how his time at the Daniels Faculty helped prepare him for this role.

What is it like to work in London, England?
London is a very fast paced city, and to paraphrase David Chipperfield from the conversation between him, Kevin and Andy in the El Croquis, the architecture here is mercantile in the way that it requires a keen sense of tightly honed design as well as a kind of nimble positioning within a competitive environment. The part I like the most about working in London is that there is a common culture of design. There are lectures and events to attend every night but more than that, good design permeates all levels of culture and can be found anywhere you look. Working at Carmody Groarke in particular has opened up the horizons and possibilities of design. The community that has been fostered there is one in which every team member is striving for the highest quality in architecture and often results in passionate debates arguing the comparative value of material decisions. The atmosphere is a mixture of university atelier mixed with the attention to detail and professional business acumen required to realising buildings.

How did your education at the Daniels Faculty prepare you for your current role?
The U of T program has a high-level strategic focus that has been crucial to understanding the way a complex city like London operates. Additionally, the history and theory streams gave a foundation from which it was possible to develop an understanding of the architectural environment that underlies practicing architecture today.
 
What advice do you have for new students starting the Master of Architecture program in the Fall?  
The most important advice I can give is to be aware of the design discussion that is going on at a global level at the same time as absorbing as much as possible of that which makes the Canadian milieu unique and vibrant.

Images top, courtesy of Carmondy Groarke

For the second year in a row, a graduate studio from the Daniels Faculty has received ARCHITECT magazine's Studio Prize.

The Studio Prize "recognizes thoughtful, innovative, and ethical studio courses at accredited architecture schools" across Canada and the United States. The Daniels Faculty's Option Studio "Coding Flux: In Pursuit of Resilient Urbanism in South Florida" (LAN 3016) taught by Assistant Professors Fadi Masoud, who coordinated the course, and Elise Shelley is among this year's six winners.

Rayna Syed (standing at right) and Alexandra Lazervski (third from left) present their plans for a southern Florida county that faces flooding challenges, increasing water levels and salt water damage (photo by Harry Choi)

The award-winning studio challenged students to develop design solutions to address increased flooding from rising sea levels and intense storms, such as hurricanes, in South Florida — events that are becoming increasingly common to due climate change.

Writes ARCHITECT:

The responses, which the students presented to Broward County representatives who visited Toronto, ranged from a “freshwater credit” system that incentivizes residents to capture excess rainwater in cisterns on their property to a “flux” zoning code that changes as rising sea levels impact land-use patterns around the county. Yet another proposal considers the county’s western border, which abuts the Everglades wetlands, more as an inland “coast,” with recreational and tourism possibilities, and less as a site solely for real estate development, which might leave the area more vulnerable to sea level rise. Juror Jennifer Yoos, FAIA, lauded the students’ approach to “rethinking how these design processes should be done.”

This was the fourth time Masoud has led a hands-on, pragmatic studio focused on South Florida, and Broward County officials say it was the first time their office had worked with such a studio on planning ideas. They say they welcomed the outside insight, and have begun to incorporate some of the students’ ideas, like flux zoning, into their long-range planning.
 

U of T News covered the student's work in the studio last year, from the start of the term in September to final reviews.

Students who participated in the award-winning studio include: Chaoyi Cui, Marianne Lafontaine-Chicha, Meikang Li, Niloufar Makaremi, Leslie Norris, Natalie Schiabel, Qiwei Song, Zainab Al Rawi, Meng Bao, Chukun Chen, Mengqi Dai, Jessica Guinto, Tania Hlavenka, Joshua Kirk, Alexandra Lazaervski, Ning Lin, Aidan Loweth, Carlos Portillo, and Rayna Syed.

For more information, visit ARCHITECT's website.th Florida" recently received the Sloan Award, a Studio Prize from Architect magazine.

Image, top, by: Qiwei Song, Meikang Li, and Chaoyi Cui

The Daniels Faculty is pleased to be co-hosting the 2018 TimberFever student design-build competition September 20-23 in conjunction with Ryerson University. TimberFever is presented by Moses Structural Engineers.
 
TimberFever brings architecture and civil engineering students from universities across Canada together to build a life-size structure out of wood. A total of 96 architecture and engineering students from ten universities across Canada have registered for this year's event, making it the farthest-reaching TimberFever competition yet.
 
The intense four-day competition is a valuable experiential learning opportunity for students, which includes a design charrette, to be held at Ryerson University, and two days of construction, which will be held at the Daniels Building at One Spadina. Each year the design brief is top secret and centered around a current issue. Each team is given the same amount of wood and a base for their structure. They have access to power tools, a workshop, and are given help from workshop staff and representatives from the Carpenters’ District Council of Ontario.
 
An awards ceremony will take place at the Daniels Faculty's Main Hall on September 23 at 4:30pm. The ceremony is open to the public.
 
After the competition, structures remain on display and the public is encouraged to vote for their favorite design on TimberFever website starting Monday September 24, 2018. The People’s Choice will be announced on TimberFever's social media accounts after the structures are taken off display and online voting has ended.

For more information, visit the TimberFever website.

Follow TimberFever on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Photo, top: Daniels undergraduate students design and build an installation at Hart House Farm, Summer 2017 | Photo by Harry Choi

This summer, Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni led a research field trip with five Daniels Faculty graduate students to the Australian outback.
 
In conjunction with the Designing Ecological Tourism (DET) research platform, Chaouni and the students have been working with the South Australian Government and the University of Melbourne to develop rehabilitation scenarios for a decommissioned coal mine in the village of Leigh Creek, South Australia. The research builds on work the students completed as part of Chaouni's winter 2018 Option Studio (ARC 3016) entitled Rethinking the Australian Outback: Imagining Leigh Creek.
 
"I chose this studio because it deals with a real social, economic, and environmental context and because of the ability it presents for our ideas to have an impact," said Master of Architecture graduate student Nicholas Callies. "The opportunity to visit and study a site and to meet with and discuss our ideas with locals has been very influential. It's encouraging to know that our projects have a real potential to make a difference to a place."
 
Australian media took note of the students' work. As The Transcontinental Port Augusta reported, "Local businessman Darryl Bowshire helped sponsor the students' visit and said it gave local people a really positive feeling to have these young people from the other side of the world be so enthusiastic about the town's future."

 
Participating students included: Xiaoting Stephanie Yuan, Yueyi Li, Nicholas Callies, Luis Quezada, and Chenxuan Meng. Alumna Samar Zarifa (MLA 2012) and Professor Gini Lee from Melbourne University joined them on the trip. After attending a seminar at the University of Adelaide, visiting the Leigh Creek mine, and installing a permanent exhibition of their work onsite, the team spent 4 days at Professor Lee’s Oratunga Estate where they synthesized their research findings and completed two outdoors installations composed of found objects.
 
"Ecotourism was one of the main tools we investigated in order to reveal the complex history of the site, while instigating economic growth," says Chaouni. "We developed a unique multidisciplinary approach that integrates ecology, engineering, sociology, landscape architecture, architecture and urban design."
 
Visit The Transcontinental Port Augusta's website to read the full article. 

Architectural historian, critic, author, and lecturer at the Daniels Faculty, Hans Ibelings, will be speaking at the New York Conference, “Acts of Design: New Housing Paradigms in North America”, about his book Rise and Sprawl: The Condominiumization of Toronto, written with Alex Josephson, the principal of PARTISANS. 

The conference is a day-long event with a number of speakers, including Daniels Faculty Professor Brigitte Shim. Through case-studies and panel discussions, participants will explore North America’s current state of housing, specifically workers housing typologies in Mexico City and designing across scales in Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. The event is open to the public and will be held on Friday, November 16, 2018, 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM EST at Columbia GSAPP.

Visit the conference website to register for your free ticket.

Hans Ibelings has been the editor and publisher of The Architecture Observer. Prior to this, he was the editor of A10 new European architecture, a magazine he founded in 2004 together with graphic designer Arjan Groot. Ibelings is also the author of a number of books, including European Architecture Since 1890 (2011), published in English, Dutch, German, and Russian, and Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalization (1998 and 2003), published in English, Dutch, Spanish, French, and Italian.