Daniels Faculty alumni swept Canada's Prix de Rome in Architecture awards this year.

Recent graduate David Verbeek (MArch 2017) received the Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners, while Monica Adair and Stephen Kopp (both MArch 2005) of the New Brunswick-based firm Acre Architects were awarded the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture.

Presented annually by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Prix de Rome is one of the field's most prestigious national awards.

Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners - David Verbeek

“Congratulations to David Verbeek: he is one of our most talented recent graduates, and we are thrilled that the Canada Council for the Arts jury has chosen him for this year’s Prix de Rome,” says Dean Richard Sommer. “Field-based architectural research can illuminate the complexity of some of our most rapidly transforming urban geographies. Building on his award-winning thesis and experience at Daniels, Verbeek’s proposed study will bring techniques of careful documentation, visual analysis, and design speculation to bear on a set of liminal spaces where difficult intersections between emerging architecture, globally-networked waterfronts, and climate change come into play.”

Upon graduating from the faculty in 2017, Verbeek (pictured above) received the RAIC Gold Medal, the AIA Henry Adams Medal, and the OAA Architectural Guild Medal. The designer, researcher, and urbanist is now working in Rotterdam with OMA (office for Metropolitan Architecture).

"David's work has been observed to be representative of a true artistic act of architecture, and indeed his illustrations, are evidence of the alternative tendencies that young architects are taking in imagining their work through drawing," says Associate Professor John Shnier, who was Verbeek's thesis advisor in 2017, and Canada Council’s inaugural Prix de Rome winner in 1987. "His published drawings have been described as 'game-changers;' part of a generation of architects that are exploring 'Post Digital' techniques in illustration."
 
Verbeek's prize includes $34,000, which he will use to broaden his knowledge of contemporary architecture through travel and participate in an internship at an internationally acclaimed firm of architecture. The award will provide him with the opportunity to investigate "constructed coastlines in transition," and observe first-hand, the frontlines of urbanization and coastal threats, building on work he completed as part of his Master of Architecture thesis, which explored the idea of "an eventual archipelago in Toronto's constructed port lands as grounds for invention in the future megacity."
 
Verbeek follows in the footsteps of Daniels graduates Drew Sinclair (M Arch 2007) and Kelly Doran (M Arch 2008) who won the Prix de Rome for Emerging Practitioners in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture - Monica Adair and Stephen Kopp, Arce Architects

Adair and Kopp have been receiving a steady stream of awards and media recognition for their work at Acre Architects, where they work to create "original, provocative, contextually driven design." (Read our Q&A with Monica Adair from 2017.)
 
In 2017, they received a Lieutenant-Governor’s Award of Excellence in Architecture. In 2016, Wallpaper listed the firm among 20 “breakthrough practices from around the globe.” And in 2015, Adair was a recipient of RAIC's Young Architect Award.

Last year the duo returned to the Daniels Faculty to teach an option studio that took students from Toronto to the Saint John Harbour to study and develop design ideas for Partridge Island, a former quarantine station and National Historic Site.

Adair and Kopp plan to use the $50,000 awarded by the prize to "experience firsthand world renown projects, places and key people that have succeeded in creating a sustainable tourism that enhances a sense of place, including its environment, its heritage, its aesthetics, its culture, and the well-being of the people who live there."

"There is an appetite in the Maritimes to go beyond the sentimental pseudo-traditional recreated environments, complete with landlocked imitation lighthouses, and to explore new ways to guide the perception of a region toward more meaningful development," write the architects in a post about the award on their website. "We want to be part of shaping an architectural history that bears witness to our era and its richly diverse ambitions, and this requires specialization and currency in learning from successful tourism precedents that serve to forge new ways forward."
 
Adair and Kopp join other Daniels Faculty and alumni who have received the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture. Associate Professor John Shnier received the inaugural Prix de Rome from the Canada Council for the Arts in 1987.  Associate Professor Shane Williamson (2012), Associate Professor Mason White (2010), and alumni Omar Gandhi (2014) and Pierre Bélanger (2008) have also been recognized.

Working with Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion (CDG), and the Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion Foundation, Aziza Chaouni Projects — led by Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni — is working to rehabilitate the Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex, a historic site of modern architecture in Morocco.

This summer, from July 2 - 6,  Chaouni, together with the broader revitalization team, organized and participated in workshops with international artists and members of the local community to raise awareness about the area's architectural heritage, share memories about the complex, and consider its future.

The week began with architecture training led by Laure Augereau to teach youth about the architecture of Jean-François Zevaco. Zevaco designed Sidi Harazem in 1960 and was part of the brutalist architectural movement. This was followed by tours and conferences, while guest artists collaborated on work within the space. Later in the week, Chaouni and her partners held round table discussions and a collaborative design workshop with hawkers and shopkeepers of Sidi Harazem to reimagine a future program for the site.

The revitalization of the Sidi Harazem Completx is being completed thanks to the Getty Foundation's Keeping it Modern grant, which was established to support important works of modern architecture around the world.

Photo, top, by Andreea Muscurel

Lecturer Adrian Phiffer received the Incentive Award in the Riga Circus Competition. A team of third year Master of Architecture students — including Angela Cho, Matthew Leander, Mariano Martellacci, and Avi Odenheinmer — also contributed to the winning submission. Competition participants developed sketches for the renovation of the historic  Riga Circus building in Latvia and a vision for the territory.

Writes Phiffer:

It is rare and fascinating to find a nomadic institution, such as a circus, permanently embedded in the center of a city. Usually, the circus is a temporary structure built at the edge of the urbia. It is kept on the outskirts out of fear. The circus brings with itself a new reality that can only be allowed for short periods of time. It is as if it is dangerous to allow its presence for too long because it might contaminate the empirical and monotone reality of the permanent urban form. This prompts a question of type: what kind of city is that one that accepts a circus in the middle of its fabric? It could only be a city that is always ready to expand its collection of realities, a city that has convictions, a city open to the new. Riga is such a city.
 

Congratulations to all involved!

A group of undergraduate students and recent graduates from the Daniels Faculty working under the name MaW Studio (@StudioMaW) have designed their first built project: The Coffee Lab.

Situated inside a two-square-meter former window display forming part of 141 Spadina Avenue in Toronto, the tiny café serves customers through a window that opens up to the sidewalk. Vestiges of a former Mama's Pizza sign provide a lit arrow pointing to the Lab.

The coffee shop could be the smallest in the world — its owner, Joshua Campos, is currently seeking certification from Guinness. According to Christopher Hume in the Toronto Star, the new café is "an excellent example of how even the tiniest spaces can be used creatively in a city like Toronto." The project has also been profiled in NOW.

The Coffee Lab project is MaW Studio's first commission. "The project exploits and augments the dissociation between container (window display), sign (Mamma's Pizza sign), and program (coffee shop), by producing a design that breaks the café itself down into smaller and more complex dislocations," writes the collective.

On the north wall, a classicized ornamentation begins at counter height and folds onto the ceiling. At times it resembles a standardized molding, while at others it morphs into a forced perspective. On the exterior wall, the logo of the coffee shop — a golden baroque frame — transcends its print format to become a three-dimensional object.
 

Originated in response to The Coffee Lab project, its first commission, MaW Studio's collaborative practice is interested in methods of dislocation. Differing from the stylistic trend of architectural Postmodernism that emerged in the last century — while still inescapably rooted in a Postmodern condition — the Studio's aim is to activate the often dormant political capabilities of surfaces and spaces through a constructed out-of-placeness. MaW Studio's conceptual  toolbox borrows from gestalt psychology, phenomenology, film theory, and Mannerism.

PROJECT: The Coffee Lab
LOCATION: 141 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Canada
YEAR: 2018
CONCEPT/DESIGN: Sebastian Lopez Cardozo
VISUALIZATION: Neil Xavier Vas
PROJECT MANAGER: Daniel Lewycky
DESIGN/FABRICATION/INSTALLATION:
Adriana Sadun
Kian Hosseinnia
Neil Xavier Vas
Sebastian Lopez Cardozo
CLIENT: Joshua Campos, o/a "The Coffee Lab"

About MaW Studio:

Adriana Sadun completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto with a double major in architecture design and visual studies. Currently, she is a Master of Landscape Architecture candidate at the Daniels Faculty. Adriana worked as a Digital Manager for SHIFT Magazine, the undergraduate publication at U of T architecture and online blog for the Daniels Faculty. She has also participated in different design projects and competitions, including Deconstruct, the winning proposal for the TEDxUofT Installation Design Competition for the 2018 conference that took place at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto. Adriana's interest focuses on reconfiguring our understanding of art and architecture through the exchange of a broad spectrum of disciplines, from visual arts and photography to digital fabrication and urban studies.

Daniel Lewycky is a Toronto-based designer whose interests lie in the intersections between architectural processes and at points of dimensional translation. When not designing, building or running clientside relations for MaW, he can be found playing venues as the frontman for the local baqnd Dorval, editing ARTIFIZI, producing ARTIFIZI Video, and making a mean stovetop Latté.

Kian Hosseinnia is a fourth year undergraduate student studying architecture and philosophy at the University of Toronto. Along with his studies, Kian has collaborated with a number of students and professionals on a number of built and research projects. The built projects include Float, an outdoor interactive project built in the summer of 2015 with Situate | Design | Build at 401 Richmond, Toronto; and Aperture, the winning proposal for the building of a temporary parklet for Café Mosaic in Edmonton, Alberta in the summer of 2017. Kian has also participated in the research for Professor Stephen Verderber's book Innovations in Behavioral Health Architecture. Kian's own research intersts lie at the intersection fo philosophical argumentation and architecture theory, where he is currently researching and writing about contemporary philosophy and architecture with Professor Matthew Allen.

Neil Xavier Vas is a young designer and visualization artists from Toronto, earning a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of Toronto in 2017. Neil has taken the helm of architectural knowledge and pursued it throughout various educational and professional outlets. One of his many achievements was to co-author a competition entry, "House for Bowie," which received an honourable metion from and was displayed at the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest, Romania. Neil now practices as an architectural designer through various outlets, honing a passional specialty in architectural visualization. He is set to continue his education in architecture at the University of Toronto in the fall of 2018 and seeks to be an architect, in time.

Sebastián López Cardozo is the founder and editor-in-chief of ARTIFIZI (@artifizi),  editor at Dialogos Journal for Social Justice, and a research assistant for Mary Louise Lobsinger. His editorial work has taken him to the offices of Greg Lynn, Andrew Kovacs, and Bureau Spectacular, in Los Angeles, where he conducted his first interviews for the publication. He is currently working on the re-launch of his digital publication, and is collaboratind with Johannesburg scholar Sumayya Vally for the release of ARTIFIZI's very first print issue, to be release on January 5th. Most recently, he worked for Partisans Architecture, where he became involved in an exhibition in collaboration with Storefront for Art and Architecture and EDIT.

A team of students from the Daniels Faculty — John Nguyen, Stephen Baik, and Abubaker Bajaman — has received a 2018 International VELUX Award for students of architecture.

Held every other year, this prestigious competition challenges students "to explore the role of daylight in architecture and inspire new thinking" around how to use daylight as a main source of energy and light and how to ensure the "health and well-being of the people who live and work in buildings."

Assistant Professor Mauricio Quirós Pacheco supported the master of architecture students in their submission, which received first place in Daylight Investigations category within "The Americas" region. The team's project, titled "Daylight to Water" will represent North America at the World International Festival in Amsterdam November 28-30, where the top global prize will be selected.

Submissions to the competition were reviewed by an international jury comprised of renowned architects selected in collaboration with the International Union of Architects.

This is the first time that a team of students from a Canadian University has won a top award in the VELUX competition. Nguyen, Baik, and Bajaman beat out teams from Harvard, Cornell, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and elsewhere.

The Daniels students' project proposes a system that uses "natural daylight heat to capture moisture within the air in humid environments and transform it into usable water."

"Environments such as Deserts benefit greatly from this implementation as light rains often evaporate in the air before touching the ground," write the team in their submission. "Our proposal would allow dry climate regions to gather ambient moisture and transform it into usable water until there is enough to use."

For more information on "Daylight to Water" and the International VELUX Awards, visit the competition's website.

What was the most memorable part of your degree?
The best memories at Daniels come from the various trips I made with other classmates and professors for studio classes. In particular, during third-year Option Studio, I went to Yellowknife, NWT with Professor Mason White and the rest of my classmates. There, we had the opportunity to engage with different indigenous communities and elders — learning first hand their way of living and real needs. This experience drastically changed my perception of what my studio project really needed to become. The objective of the studio was to design an aboriginal wellness centre in Yellowknife.

What inspired your thesis topic?
This project started by analysing the real and non-real of the precepts that shape our environments, behaviours and limitations. In particular, I was interested in how borders, as arbitrated divisions of territories, have been a source of segregation between traditions, legacies, beliefs, and cultures. Yet, these divisions are merely a series of dotted lines illustrated on maps that are established, enforced, and inherited based on complex past events.  For the Raizals  —  a Creole-speaking people of Afro-Caribbean and British descent, who inhabit the Archipelago of San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina —  the fight between Nicaragua and Colombia over their territory has created a series of inconvenient divisions in the place that they have always known, related to, and understood. These debates between nations have ignored the fact that the archipelago is a network of islands, banks, cays, and other atolls that act as one connected system. Such divisions limit the movement of the archipelago’s inhabitants — even though the borders are nowhere to be seen, as they run through water. When a border only exists on paper without a tangible physical presence, its perception, existence, and reality become uncertain. 

Using the rationale of micronations, the establishment of the Archipelago of San Andres unfolds in a defined, self-proclaimed place whose boundaries, independence and recognition exist as both fact and fiction. Through iterative graphic explorations, this project aims to question how architectural forms act as a medium through which the physical manifestation of self-determination can be explored for the Raizals. In conjunction with the non-architectural symbolic elements — such as a flag, coat of arms and currency — built structures can be seen, used, and associated with a sense of autonomy and belonging.

What advice you would give to a new student?
Don't miss any chance to travel as much as possible before and during school. It is okay to miss a semester or a year before you finish your degree if you get to work and/or travel through Europe, Latin America, Africa, Australia or Asia.

What are your plans after graduation?
Apart from working hard to become an Architect, I want to keep travelling and learning as much as possible from other cultures. Although university education is invaluable, I find that meeting people from other places always bring the biggest learning rewards.

Herman Borrego's thesis won the Kuwabara-Jackman Architecture Thesis Gold Medal.

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Convocation for #UofTDaniels students was on June 14. This month we are featuring our graduates, including their work, their memories, and their advice for new students. Follow #DanielsGrad18 for more!

What was the most memorable part of your degree?
Becoming acquainted with many professors of various specializations from media and critical theory, to post-colonialism, and cross-overs with a variety of disciplines, while developing an awareness of the socio-economic realities of a global city such as Toronto. As well as gaining memorable experiences as a teaching assistant while trying to share my interest and knowledge of what we can consider ‘architecture’. All of these aspects formed an indivisible whole that made my experience of U of T a very enjoyable one.

What inspired your thesis topic?
Before coming in Toronto, I had no idea that, after New York, Toronto was the North American city with the most high-rise buildings, many of them postwar concrete apartment buildings found in the suburbs. A consequence of their mismatched zoning and contemporary demographics, these living spaces are now in dire need of revitalization and targeted actions. As such, this was for me a very interesting topic as it was both specific to the Toronto area, and to a broader range of disciplinary issues. Building upon the inspiring work of Tower Renewal initiative and other international case studies, I was interested in expanding an existing body of knowledge by focusing on a grey zone, such as the space at the base of the towers, a common ground often left-over in these projects which could be a catalyst for a distinct approach to the problem.

What advice would you give to a new student?
University of Toronto is a big fruit; don’t be scared to take a bite! It is a great institution with many means and capacities to support good ideas and projects, do not be shy to apply to grants, awards, working positions, and ask for funding. While being an university student, you are in the best spot to initiate projects and gain meaningful experience that will propel you to where you want to be in the future.

What are your plans after graduation?
I'm ultimately interested in both architectural practice and research/teaching, I am right now taking a break from academia by gaining more practical experience here in Toronto. Who knows what will be my next step?

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Convocation for #UofTDaniels students was on June 14. This month we are featuring our graduates, including their work, their memories, and their advice for new students. Follow #DanielsGrad18 for more!

New infrastructure has the power to transform the nation. That's the inspiration behind the CanInfra Ideas Contest, which challenges university students, academics, professionals, think tanks, and others to develop new infrastructure ideas for the 21st century.

The winners of this year's competition were announced on May 30th, and a team that included recent Daniels Faculty HBA, Architectural Studies graduates Ji Song Sun and Hasnain Raza Akbar took third place, with an award of $10,000.

The team's submission, "Taking the High Road," proposes highway lanes that can wirelessly charge the batteries of electric vehicles while they are driving. This new infrastructure would help encourage the uptake of zero-emission vehicles on Canadian roads — one of the Government of Canada's goals. The team's design also includes rotating solar panels and wind turbines that would generate electricity from the sun and from wind turbulence created by the traffic.

"As an architectural designer, it was my great pleasure and honor to serve the team for the past several months by helping them visualize the ideas through 3D rhino models, renderings, diagrams, and physical models," said Sun, who participated in a number of architectural competitions throughout his undergraduate career will be joining the University of Calgary's Master of Architecture (Environmental Design) program this fall.

Akbar helped the team create cohesive visuals and focused on design elements of the highways as well as the over all infrastructure.

Other team members include, from U of T: Project Manager Jing Guo, who is currently pursuing a masters degree in applied science; Economic Consultant Benjamin Couillard, who holds a BA and MA in economics from the U of T; industrial engineering masters student Pavel Shmatnik, who led the group's research team, and life sciences graduate Thenvin Giridhar, who created animations. Aliyah Mohamed, a graduate of McMaster University, was the finance and feasibility lead; and Tashi Nanglo, who graduated from the University of Guelph, was the video director for the project.

Above: Team members for the project "Taking the High Road" pictured with Canada's Minister of Finance Bill Morneau

The CanInfra Ideas Contest was presented by The Boston Consulting Group in Canada and sponsored by Brookfield Asset Management, RBC, CIBC, Deloitte, Torys LLP, and media partner The Globe and Mail.

The winning team, "IceGrid: A Renewable Energy Microgrid for Nunavut," from Memorial University in St John's, proposed building "solar- and wind-powered micro power grids to replace dirty fuel-burning systems in rural communities. The IceGrid plan starts with a site in Iqaluit, Nunavut, and would scale to other rural communities across Canada's north."

For more information on the winning teams, visit the CanInfra Ideas Contest website.

What was the most enjoyable part of your degree?
Travelling to Sarasota to study the mid-century architecture of Paul Rudolph was definitely a highlight. I will also say working through the night at 230 college just deleting extraneous lines from a 'Make 2D' in Rhino was somehow very fun and rewarding.

What inspired your thesis topic?
For my thesis I was interested in creating a narrative – inspired by architecture that is represented rather than built, in mediums such as comic books; like Jim Lai's Citizens of No Place. I liked how you could make architecture that did not respond to physical constraints necessarily, allowing the focus to lie in social concerns and thought experiments. I really wanted to explore absurdity and science fiction.

Tell us more about your thesis!
The aim of this thesis is to use the genre of science fiction as a thought experiment for imagining the future of beachfront properties in Sarasota Florida. What would become of Florida’s vulnerable coast if storms were to increase in severity and frequency? If sea levels impede current living conditions? The affects of climate and natural disasters have always been very real for the less economically prosperous – but what would it take for increasing storm severity, and increasing sea levels to feel real to everyone?

What is one piece of advice you would give to a new student?
Do work you are proud of.

What are your plans after graduation?
After I graduate I plan on working to become an architect. Right now I am working at Studio JCI, a Toronto based architecture firm.

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Convocation for #UofTDaniels students was on June 14. This month we are featuring our graduates, including their work, their memories, and their advice for new students. Follow #DanielsGrad18 for more!

Cross-posted from U of T News

By Romi Levine

Toronto continues to grow, with sky-high condo developments, and pricey boutiques and restaurants sprouting up in neighbourhoods across the city. But amidst the revitalization and gentrification are groups of people – low income residents and new immigrants, for example – driven out of their neighbourhoods by rent hikes and expensive shops.

Though understanding and supporting the city’s most vulnerable residents is traditionally in the realm of disciplines like social work and anthropology, Shalice Coutu is bringing social justice to architecture.

Coutu, who is part Métis, graduates Thursday from architectural studies at University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. She is hoping to improve the lives of Canadians through built environments.

“I’m not in it necessarily for the building and the art form of architecture, but more in it to make people's lives better,” says Coutu, who will be continuing her studies at U of T, pursuing a master’s in architecture.

Coutu grew up in Prince Albert, Sask., a city of about 35,000 people. There, she cultivated an understanding of what inequality looks like.

“Coming from a small town in Saskatchewan that definitely has its share of poverty – I'm not oblivious to poverty around me, and I make a point to help those people,” says Coutu, who spent many summers helping her brother run a volleyball camp in rural areas and First Nations reserves in Saskatchewan.

Though she was always interested in architecture, Coutu began her university career in Saskatoon where she studied psychology.

“Our opportunities in Saskatchewan are a little less available,” she says.

But once she found out about the Daniels architecture program, she put the wheels in motion to transfer to U of T.

To continue reading, and for the full article, visit U of T News.