A team of undergraduate students from the Daniels Faculty — including Kian Hosseinnia, Pearl Cao, Tina Siassi, Dimah Ghazal, and Ous Abou Ras — won the URB PRK Emerging Young Architecture + Planning Program (EYAPP) design-build competition. The competition “was inititiated to provide an outlet for students and interns in Architecture and Planning to showcase their creative talents and show to the community the importance of design and how it can be both clever and environmentally sustainable."

Each year, students are challenged to create a summer refuge or “parklet” within a city using innovative strategies and sustainable materials. This year the site was two parking stalls on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton Alberta.

Hosseinnia and Cao were guests on CBC’s Edmonton AM to discuss their design on June 8.

The students are now raising money to realize their winning plan. The extra funds will assist them securing the necessary materials.

“This is a very important project for us as it gives us the opportunity as emerging designers to provide for the public and enhance their social experience of Whyte Avenue,” write the students on their Go Fund Me page. “We greatly appreciate your support in helping us with this exciting project and for taking the time to read about our cause.”

Lecturer Matthew Allen recently reviewed the exhibition Archaeology of the Digital: Complexity and Convention (pictured above) for the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Curated by Greg Lynn at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), the exhibition presented 25 projects "for which digital materials are integral to an understanding of the design process.”

“My guess is that exhibitions like Archaeology of the Digital will help incorporate new aesthetic categories surrounding digital production into the larger scheme of architectural values,” writes Allen. "Archaeology of the Digital represented a type of show that will undoubtedly become more common."

Allen also contributed to the recently launched exhibition architecture, architectural & Architecture at the Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles (pictured above). At the centre of Allen's contribution is an example of cutting-edge computational aesthetics in the form of a screencapture of a digital model of Preston Scott Cohen's Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Curated by Anthony Morey and Ryan Tyler Martinez, the exhibition is a collection of “100 Architects, 100 Objects, 100 Texts, 100 Images,” and will be on display until July 2, 2017.

Daniels Faculty undergraduate student Victoria Cardoso was part of the winning team in the “Towers on the Ravine, 1967-2067: Transitioning to Net-Positive Biophilic Urbanism” competition, which took place in May. Her team members included York University graduate students Alex Gatien, Assaya Moustaqim-Barrette, Kiana Javaheri, Nick Brownlee, and Steven Glass.

The competition, launched at the 2017 Ontario Climate Symposium May 11 & 12, asked students to envision the transformation of the tower neighbourhood north of Finch on Kipling Avenue into a resilient and environmentally and socially sustainable community.

The winning proposal included a focus on honouring indigenous history; strategies for addressing the projected population increase; the formation of a local community land trust to develop, fund, and manage public spaces; recognition of emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles; and the reintegration of a ‘lost’ stream  with the neighbourhood’s commercial and public spaces.

A number of other Daniels Faculty students participated in the competition. They included: Master of Landscape Architecture students Catherine Howell and Stacey Zonneveld; Master of Architecture students Zoal Razaq, Shou Li, and Xiaolong Li; and undergraduate students Adaeze Chukwuma, Feng Le, Tian Wei Li, and Yujie Wang. Images from Howell, Li, Razaq, and Zonneveld’s proposal (Alisa Nguyen was also part of this team) are pictured above.

First year Masters of Architecture student Josh Silver recently published the second issue of his zine titled Cntrl+Z[ine]. The publication imagines a series of narratives using fellow student work as a starting point.

Writes Silver:

"Architectural images contain accidental moments of narrative: a scale figure, a shadow designed, a moment, a view. The latent narratives can begin to reveal themselves as stories of poems or songs or essays or memories remembered in passing. This publication explores those accidents of representation; the stories of images, the places imagined but remembered nevertheless as real déjà vu."

CNTRL+Z[ine] #2 includes work from Masters of Architecture students Yasmin Al Sammarai, Bobbi Bortolussi, Diana Franco, Avi Odenheimer, Siri Hermanski, Martin Drozdowski, and Jess Misak. The full issue can be viewed on Issuu.

Image, top: Self-portrait by Josh Silver

A grand total of 8,213 people visited One Spadina May 27 & 28 during Doors Open Toronto. The event offered the public an early look at the Daniels Faculty’s new home as it nears completion.

The site “was one of this year's popular destinations,” reported Urban Toronto. “Photographers and urban enthusiasts were drawn to the NADAAA- and Adamson Associates-designed facility for views of its juxtaposition of restored heritage and modern design.” Heritage architects ERA were responsible for the renewal of the original building, while the firm Public Work are the project’s landscape architects.

Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic reviewed the nearly complete Daniels Building earlier in the month, calling it "one of the best Canadian buildings of the past decade." It is "spectacular," he says, "rich with arguments about how contemporary architecture, landscape, and urbanism can work with history and build the city of the future."

The CBC was among the visitors on May 28th, interviewing Dean Richard Sommer in the third floor Graduate Design Studio for the evening news. 

Many people who participated in the weekend event were interested in the history of the building. The original cloister, designed by the firm of Smith & Gemmel for Knox College, was constructed in 1875. During World War One, it was a military hospital where Amelia Earhart volunteered at the time.

In the 1940s, One Spadina was home to Connaught Laboratories, where insulin was produced. Sandy MacPherson (pictured above, with Linda Tu) found the office where his father worked in those days. He remembered visiting him there as a child. The space is now part of the Office of the Registrar and Student Services.

Many Daniels Faculty alumni also came by for a first look of the new building, and were welcomed in an alumni lounge set up for the event. Nazila Atarodi (MUD 2008) generously volunteered her time to meet and greet graduates of the Faculty over the weekend. 

An exhibition of graduate student work was also on display throughout the building. Produced by an exhibition team that included students Brandon Bergem, Katerina Gloushenkova, and Serafima Korovina, with Faculty Advisor Assistant Professor Jeannie Kim, the exhibition showed the breadth of creative questions and research topics our students tackle to address the many design challenges we face in our shared quest to make a better world. 

Classes at One Spadina are set to start in September. The building will officially open in the fall.

Post Doctoral Fellow Roberto Damiani has received a 2017 grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for a proposed book on the work of Professor Emeritus George Baird, former Dean of the Daniels Faculty (2004-2009). Titled The Architect and the Public: The Contribution of George Baird to Architecture, the book will include contributions by Daniels Faculty members Lecturer Hans Ibelings, Director of Master of Architecture Program Robert Levit, Assistant Professor Michael Piper, Professor Brigitte Shim, and Dean Richard Sommer. Other contributors include Pier Vittorio Aureli, Joseph Bedford, Louis Martin, Joan Ockman, Jorge Silvetti, Hans Teerds, and Roemer van Toorn.

From the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts' website:

The Architect and the Public is a collection of essays and interviews on the work of George Baird, and serves as evidence of the architect's public engagement with contemporary society. With the rise of mass media, traditional modes of producing and communicating architecture have been transformed, as many practitioners choose to express the cultural and societal relevance of buildings, and to ground architectural design beyond personal agendas. George Baird's work and research reflects this practice, and Baird—along with Colin Rowe, Kenneth Frampton, and Peter Eisenman—has served as a model for North American architectural debate. From his early theoretical writings as a doctoral student, to his involvement with Toronto city planning, to his commitment to teaching at the University of Toronto and Harvard, Baird played a key role in shaping the relationship between architecture and its multiple publics, many of which emerged in the second half of the twentieth century.

In 2017, the Graham Foundation awarded $568,500 to 72 projects by individuals. The Architect and the Public is one of 34 publications included in the 2017 Grantees list. It is scheduled to be published in 2018.

Damiani is the organizer and curator of Italy under Construction, a program of exhibitions and lectures on contemporary Italian architecture, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto. Earlier this year, he curated an exhibition titled Palimpsests and Interfaces that presented four civic buildings by the Venice based architect Renato Rizzi, and seven buildings — four residential and three office buildings — by Cino Zucchi Architetti based in Milan. Information about the exhibition can be found on the Italian Cultural Institute website.

Photo, top: George Baird (front), Ted Teshima (behind). Courtesy of Canadian Architectural Archives, University of Calgary. Toronto, May 1959.

Presented by the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, and curated by Yan Wu (MVS-Curatorial 2016), MAKING MODELS is an exciting new project that brings together architecture and art, staged to advance innovative and critical ideas in experimental architecture in Toronto.
 
Nine Toronto architecture studios and artist groups — which include a number of Daniels Faculty members and alumni — have been invited to propose ideas and prototypes in model form that foster analytical, conceptual, physical and tectonic frameworks for inhabiting and constructing urban space and the public sphere. Produced in various scales that involve speculative, functional, representational and/or relational approaches, these architectural models, in response to the theme “meet me there”, take as their point of departure an exemplary public space – the Sir Daniel Wilson quad, an outdoor courtyard and urban oasis located on the downtown campus of the University of Toronto.
 
The nine proposal models will be on display as a group exhibition MAKING MODELS at the Art Museum from September 6 - October 7, 2017. A select jury composed of art and architectural professionals and university students will choose one model to be realized in 1:1 size on site at the Sir Daniel Wilson quad, in dialogue with the quad’s complex network of movement, vegetation, infrastructure, furniture, and architecture. The installation will be on display from September 21 - November 25, 2017.  The winning model will be announced in August 2017.
 
The nine Toronto architecture studios and artist groups participating in MAKING MODELS include CN Tower Liquidation, LAMAS (the firm of Assistant Professor Vivian Lee and Lecturer James Macgillivray, Lateral Office (the firm of Associate Professor Mason White), Nestor Kruger and Yam Lau, Assistant Professor's Mitchell Akiyama and Brady Peters, Public Studio, studio junction (the firm of alumni Peter Tan and Christine Ho Ping Kong, both BArch 1996) , Terrarea (an art collective that includes Emily Hogg, MLA 2003; Janis Demkiw, and Olia Mishchenko), and UUfie.
 
The five noted professional jurors are Alex Bozikovic (Architecture critic, The Globe and Mail), Tom Dean (artist), Bruce Kuwabara (Founding Partner, KPMB Architects), November Paynter (Director of Programs, Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada), and Irene Sunwoo (Curator, Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery; Director of Exhibitions, Columbia University GSAPP).
 
While the city continues to experience unprecedented urban growth, especially in the area of generic condominium towers, there is also a chronic absence of major exhibitions and public forums for serious, in-depth considerations of the role that architecture plays in the shaping of the urban environment. MAKING MODELS provides a rare and coveted opportunity for established and emerging architects and artists to develop experimental and speculative approaches toward the built environment for broader public consideration.

Model Proposals
September 6 – October 6, 2017
University of Toronto Art Centre
—
1:1 Model Installation
September 21 – November 25, 2017
Sir Daniel Wilson Quad, St George Campus (map)

Daniels Faculty alumna Huay Wee (BArch 1996) joined Rios Clementi Hale Studios (RCHS) in 2007, and recently contributed to the firm's first monograph titled Not Neutral, For Every Place, Its Story.

With more than 30 years in business, the Los Angeles-based firm's projects include Downtown Los Angeles' ROW DTLA,  Columbia Square, Grand Park, and the modernization of The Greek Theatre.

Wee has been a project manager for many of RCHS's residential commissions and advises the firm's teams in navigating the residential building permit process. She has also led the development of the firm's drafting and project organization standards. Her focus on marrying outdoor and indoor living spaces has played a important role in two key projects included in the monograph: The Panorama Residence and Venice House. Huay highlighted both projects in her essay "Three Lessons."

Three of Wee's projects (pictured above) are also featured in the book: the Modern Barn House, The Exchange on 16th, and the Mesa Residence project.

A California-licensed architect and a LEED-Accredited Professional, Wee was born in Singapore, and lived in Calgary and Toronto before moving to Los Angeles in 1998. Before joining RCHS, she worked with a prominent Santa Monica design-build firm. Writes RCHS on its website: "We constantly rely on her excellence in translating design ideas into exquisitely built forms."

 Modern Barn House (images 1&2) | photos by John Ellis

Daniels Faculty Lecturer James Macgillivray has published an essay titled "Tectonics and Space: Architectural Thought in the Films of Robert Beavers" in the first retrospective volume concerned with Beavers's work. The book was edited by Rebekah Rutkoff and published by the Austrian Film Museum. It is distributed by Columbia University Press in North America and available at the TIFF Bookshop.

From the publisher's website:

"In a career spanning five decades, Robert Beavers has distinguished himself as one of the most important American avant-garde filmmakers. From My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure, his cycle of 18 films made across Europe since 1967, to Pitcher of Colored Light (2007) and The Suppliant (2010), intimate portraits shot in the U.S., Beavers has produced a deeply original film language framed by his use of colored filters and mattes. His investigations of the handwork of anonymous artisans complement his dialogues with Ruskin, Leonardo and Borromini in Ruskin (1975/1997), From the Notebook of... (1971/1998) and The Hedge Theater (1986/2002). This volume contains critical investigations of Beavers' most important films and a collection of the filmmaker's own writings. Occupying a unique space between poetry and philosophy, his aphoristic meditations vivify his own work and generously illuminate the art of film. The essay contributors include Tom Chomont, Don Daniels, Luke Fowler, Haden Guest, Kristin M. Jones, James Macgillivray, Gregory J. Markopoulos, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Jonas Mekas, René Micha, Susan Oxtoby, Rebekah Rutkoff, P. Adams Sitney, and Erik Ulman."

Macgillivray is a founding partner, along with Vivian Lee, of LAMAS a design practice with projects in Italy, Canada and the United States. He is a filmmaker and has published on film, architecture and projection in Scapegoat, ACSA Journal, The Journal of Modern Craft, the Canadian Journal of Film Studies and Tarkovsky, a collection of writings on the work of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. In conjunction with his work at LAMAS he is currently writing a book that delineates the notion of space in the arts of architecture and film.

One Spadina recently received an Award of Excellence from the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (CISC) for its steel-framed roof — the building's signature architectural feature. Representatives from Entuitive, who worked with One Spadina designers NADAAA as the project’s structural engineer and building envelope consultants, were on hand to receive the award May 9.

The roof spans over 110 feet “across a column-less hall that will house the Faculty’s graduate design studios,” writes NADAAA on its blog. “A series of 3 cantilever trusses form the geometry for a modified ‘sawtooth,’ composed of clerestory windows that will admit high-quality northern light into the studios below.”

The architectural category of CISC’s awards honours buildings in which architectural considerations predominantly influenced the design of the structure. The bow-tie configuration of the steel trusses provide a total of eleven clerestory windows. The dramatic ceiling is its own landscape, determined by the structural, lighting and water drainage requirements. It creates a compelling civic interior and spectacular new platform from which to view the city and Spadina Avenue to the north.

Writes NADAAA on its blog:

The trusses themselves do not comprise a true span, in fact, they are 3 distinct structural components: two cantilevers and a link beam.  As such, the trusses function like a cantilever bridge such as the Forth Bridge in Scotland (see also illustration below), or the Confederation Bridge which connects New Brunswick with Prince Edward Island.  Cantilever bridges are characterized by greater structural depth aligned with the vertical supports, tapering to thin cantilevers at opposite ends between two adjacent spans.  These twin cantilevers establish an equilibrium about the vertical support, balancing equal and opposite overturning forces.

Above: “Living model illustrating the principle of the Forth Bridge,” Coutesy of NADAAA

For more details on the design and construction of steel trusses at One Spadina, visit NADAAA’s website.