The 2024 edition of Lumière: The Art of Light has opened at Ontario Place and once again the Daniels Faculty is represented with a dynamic installation.

A free outdoor light-based art exhibition, Lumière welcomes visitors to Toronto’s Trillium Park to experience bold and imaginative public art created by Ontario artists from all artistic streams. Its theme this time around is CONNECTIONS, a catalyst for exploring “the various ways in which light can create connections between people, the environment and different aspects of our lives.”

Geosphere, the Daniels Faculty installation, is a large-scale timber reciprocal frame pavilion designed, fabricated and installed by a team of students and faculty led by John Nguyen, Nicholas Hoban, Rahul Sehijpaul and Paul Kozak.

One of 17 installations on display in the park, the pavilion is designed to create an immersive experience, allowing visitors to see and appreciate the structural capabilities of a reciprocal frame.

“Through computational geometry and robotic fabrication,” the Geosphere team explains, “individuals can explore this robust unique geometric system…rarely constructed at pavilion scale. A reciprocal frame is a grid of discrete linear timber elements where each timber element simultaneously supports and is supported by its neighbouring elements. The elements are structurally interdependent and in a hierarchy of equal importance.”

During the daytime, the length and width of the timber elements comprising Geosphere are on full display. At dusk, the UV light reveals the short side of the timber element, allowing the structure to seem weightless in space, and demonstrating how short-length timber can be used to span large distances in compression.

The fabrication and assembly team for Geopshere consisted of Cameron Manore, Liam Cassano, Ala Mohammadi, Sadi Wali, Kosame Li-Han, Selina Al Madanat, Zhenxiao Yang, Sophia de Uria, Mucteba Core, Shannon Dacanay, Nicole Quesnelle and Olivia Carson.

This is the second year in a row that a Daniels Faculty team has had a project featured at Lumière. Last year’s entry, Aeolian Soundscape, was created and installed under the leadership of Nguyen, Hoban, Sehijpaul and Brady Peters.

To view Geosphere this season, visitors have until Saturday, April 20, when the Lumière exhibition ends. All 17 light installations can be experienced seven nights a week from sunset to 11:00 p.m.

Every Friday and Saturday, bonfires will also be hosted at the Trillium Park firepit from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., weather permitting.

For more information on Lumière, click here.

Photography by 6ix Films

The Daniels Faculty’s Michael Piper, Assistant Professor of Urban Design and Architecture, is among the co-recipients of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s 2023 President’s Medal for Outstanding Housing Research.

Co-won with Janna Levitt, Principal of LGA Architectural Partners, and Samantha Eby, a sessional instructor at the Faculty, the prize was bestowed for ReHousing.ca, an online housing platform the trio co-created.

The award recognizes innovative and impactful research in Canadian housing, and includes a $25,000 prize to fund further knowledge mobilization and outreach.

The ReHousing initiative was developed by the joint academic and professional team to help make “missing middle” housing more attainable, showing “citizen developers” how to transform single-family homes into multiplexes.

Characterized by clear language and easy-to-read drawings that explain various types of multiplex housing as well as a step-by-step guide to how they can be achieved, the website offers options for a range of prospective users, including those looking to get into the housing market, mature homeowners who would like to remain in their homes while earning rental income for retirement, and those aiming to build additional housing for extended family, friends or rent-paying tenants.

“We’re excited that our housing catalogue has received national recognition, especially as all three levels of government are promoting design catalogues as a key approach to realizing small-scale infill housing,” Piper said on behalf of the winning team. “The CMHC grant will help us to expand awareness of the ReHousing project by creating more how-to videos and to share our research further through social media.”

Elements of the ReHousing plan were featured in Housing Multitudes: Reimagining the Landscapes of Suburbia, the 2022-23 Daniels Faculty exhibition that Piper co-curated with Professor Richard Sommer.

Last year, Piper, Levitt and Eby used their research to contribute design analysis to the City of Toronto’s potentially game-changing multiplex-zoning legislation, and they are currently working on a second Toronto commission to study alternative neighbourhood densities.

ReHousing has also been funded by a grant from the Neptis Foundation, an independent charitable foundation that conducts and disseminates nonpartisan research, analysis and mapping related to the design and function of Canadian urban regions.

For more details about ReHousing, click here.

A rendering from the award-winning website ReHousing.ca envisions the addition of secondary housing on the site of a postwar bungalow. Image courtesy ReHousing.ca

Taught by Professor Richard Sommer, Exploring Design Practices (ARC302) introduces students to the practice of architecture and its allied disciplines through a series of presentations by an array of leading practitioners and scholars. 

The conversations go beyond the case studies and examples of architecture and design typically presented in lecture-based courses to probe the ideas and influences that design and planning professionals have drawn on, whom they collaborate with, and the background frameworks to the work they do. 

The following lectures are open to all members of the Daniels community as well as the public. All lectures take place in Main Hall in the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent. Registration is not required.

Winter 2024

February 28, 12:30 p.m.
Dana Cuff
UCLA Architecture and Urban Design; cityLAB

March 6, 12:30 p.m.
Brandon Donnelly
Slate; Globizen Group

March 13, 12:30 p.m.
Peter Clewes
architectsAlliance 

March 20, 12:30 p.m.
Marshall Brown
Marshall Brown Projects

March 27, 12:30 p.m.
John Bass
UBC School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture

Earlier in the semester, students heard from Amy Whitesides, Võ Trọng Nghĩa, Germane Barnes and Georgeen Theodore.

From investigating and designing agrarian prototypes in Costa Rica to a design-build studio on Toronto Island, internships with top firms in the city and more, the Daniels Faculty is offering a diverse array of summer courses to undergraduate students this year.

Watch the Summer 2024 Info Sessions on YouTube and read the full Course Descriptions to learn more.

Interested students must submit the online application form by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, February 19.

Design Research Internship Program (DRIP)

The Design Research Internship Program (Instructor: Pina Petricone) places third- and fourth-year BAAS students with leading Toronto design practices for a period of six weeks during the May-June summer period.

Studio Abroad

Learn more about the Faculty’s three global studios this summer:

X-Athenas: Architecture & Public Space Stories in Contemporary Athens
Instructor: Petros Babasikas

Berlin, a City in Film
Instructor: Peter Sealy

Costa Rica: No Artificial Ingredients
Instructor: Mauricio Quirós Pacheco

Design Build

Design Build offers a hands-on approach to course material:

Robot Made
Instructors: Nicholas Steven Hoban
Aryan Rezaei Rad (U of T Engineering), AnnaLisa Meyboom (UBC SALA)

Lake, Ferry < Island > Flood, Design - Demarcating public space on Ward’s Island after flood protection
Instructor: Chloe Town

Circularity (of People and Place)
Instructor: TBD

Professor Mason White, Sessional Lecturer Kearon Roy Taylor and Assistant Professor Karen Kubey have been recognized by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) with 2024 Architectural Education Awards. The trio won for two separate projects in the category of Faculty Design. The Faculty Design Awards acknowledge work that advances the reflective nature of practice and teaching through creative design and design investigation and by promoting work that expands the boundaries of design. 

Colleagues at the Toronto-based practice Lateral Office, co-founder White (pictured above at right) and associate Taylor won for “Contested Circumpolar: Domestic Territories,” an installation that examines domestic life in eight Arctic nations by situating it within broader sociocultural, economic and geopolitical contexts. Their partners on the winning team include Lateral Office co-founder Lola Sheppard of the University of Waterloo and Matthew Jull and Leena Cho of the University of Virginia. 

Exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021, “Contested Circumpolar: Domestic Territories” presents eight narratives of inhabitation from each of the countries that lay claim to the Arctic—Canada, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the U.S.—to reveal deep and complex connections between domestic space and the larger territory.  

A series of rooms within eight houses juxtaposes the distinct artifacts and architectures of everyday life in the Arctic with territorial narratives that expose the interlinked far-flung contexts shaping the domestic scenes. 

In the process it addresses issues of transnational politics, Indigenous self-determination and radical socio-environmental adaptation in one of the 21st century’s most complex and contested regions.  

The installation “Contested Circumpolar: Domestic Territories” was exhibited as part of the Across Borders series at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale. Models were arranged as a roundtable assembly representing different regional challenges. Photos by Giorgio Lazzaro

An urbanist specializing in housing design and social justice, Kubey (pictured at left in the banner) won her ACSA Award, along with Neeraj Bhatia of the California College of the Arts and Ignacio González Galán of Barnard College, for “Aging Against the Machine,” a research project that looks at aging not as a problem to be solved but as a life stage facing a range of barriers—physical, social, financial and cultural—that make it difficult to grow older with dignity and in community. 

Part of a 2022 Center for Architecture exhibition entitled Reset: Towards a New Commons, the project builds on past and ongoing work in the California community of West Oakland, a culturally diverse and historically activist neighbourhood where older residents nonetheless face precarious living conditions, insufficient public amenities and limited caregiving options.  

It was developed by examining, connecting and expanding on existing initiatives there and by consulting with and amplifying the voices of its residents, who contributed through a series of roundtables and conversations. 

“Aging Against the Machine,” a commissioned research project overseen by the Daniels Faculty’s Karen Kubey and others, was part of a 2022 Center for Architecture exhibition entitled Reset: Towards a New Commons. Photos by Asya Gorovitz and Miguel de Guzman

Among the project results were proposals in a range of scales, from interior home renovations to collective land-ownership models and intergenerational housing projects. In particular, diverse spaces for commoning and networks of care at the scale of the building and the neighbourhood are integrated with public social programs and mutual aid initiatives, ultimately contributing to an intersectional, community-based approach to aging. 

According to ACSA, award winners are selected for their ability to inspire and challenge students, to expand the architectural profession’s knowledge base and to extend their work beyond academia into practice and the public sector. 

Winners of the Faculty Design Award are chosen in particular for how their work expands the boundaries of design through formal investigations, innovative design processes, addressing justice, working with communities, advancing sustainable practices, fostering resilience and/or centering the human experience. 

For a full list of 2024 ACSA Award winners, click here. 

Lukas Pauer, an Assistant Professor and inaugural Emerging Architect Fellow at the Daniels Faculty, has been awarded the 2024 AIAS/ACSA New Faculty Teaching Award.  

The annual award, sponsored jointly by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS), recognizes excellence and innovation in teaching during the formative years of an architectural teaching career. 

Pauer, who originally joined the Faculty as an Adjunct Professor in 2021, is also the founding director of the Vertical Geopolitics Lab (VGL), an investigative practice and think-tank at the intersections of architecture, geography, politology and media dedicated to exposing intangible systems and hidden agendas within the built environment. 

“All of my courses relate to aspects of space and power in the built environment but range in scale from the built object to the city or the polity,” says Pauer. “A key component of my academic practice is to serve the empowerment of marginalized, underrepresented, and vulnerable individuals and communities.” 

A scene from the Counterhegemonic Architecture thesis research studio course during a visit to the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal.

When it comes to his pedagogical approach, Pauer emphasizes removing hierarchical barriers between instructors and students. “I focus on the fact that they [students] will soon become my colleagues, often in just a few years’ time. Rather than a rigid hierarchy with instructors and critics being the sole possessors of knowledge, I want to open it up and make more horizontal dialogues possible.” 

This dialogue proves particularly useful in the context of studio-based learning. “Especially in design, there are often multiple approaches to solving problems, which is why I tend to actively encourage my students to challenge me,” he says, adding: “I often ask students to comment on each other’s projects individually. By inviting students to have just as much of a voice, the studio not only becomes an inclusive but also an authentic environment in which future practitioners can meet to inspire and learn from each other.” 

At Daniels, Pauer teaches at both the graduate and undergraduate level, including a year-long Master of Architecture (MARC) design research studio that investigates space and power in an effort to expose, challenge and reconstitute the pervasive and ongoing reality of imperial-colonial expansion.  

MARC students in the Counterhegemonic Architecture (ARC3020) studio have produced diverse theses (snapshots of which can be seen above) that range from a proposal for a pavilion at an international horticultural exposition that comments on the Turkish state’s colonial displays of progress to protest on behalf of the Kurds of Hasankeyf (“An Archive of Memories Washed Away” by Liane Werdina) to a temporary gallery exhibition on the cyclical push-pull nature of countries seeking to actively control the physical manifestation and collective memory of their national identity and history (“Forward Not Back, Reconsidering the Past in a Future Ukraine” by Bryson Wood) and a design for a mixed-use high-rise building and accompanying professional practice manual intended to empower residents of Toronto’s Chinatown (“Seeing through Transit-led Displacement in Toronto’s Chinatown” by Christopher “Chris” Hardy).  

In the Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies (BAAS) program, Pauer teaches Close Readings in Urban Design (ARC253), which has the overarching hypothesis that public space isn’t actually “public” for everyone—a theme that Pauer considers a throughline between research and teaching.  

“In many ways this award feels full circle,” says Pauer. “Given the integration of my practice, research, and teaching.” He adds: “A few years back I had planned my doctoral dissertation as a stepping stone toward achieving particular mid and long-term objectives; (a) to develop an original didactic-pedagogical approach to an emerging academic field at the intersections of architecture, geography, politology, and media as well as (b) to develop a business plan-like framework for a non-profit investigative practice and think-tank. So my think-tank’s upcoming research-based debut exhibition is another outcome informed by this integrated approach to academic practice.” 

On March 6, Pauer will open the exhibition “How to Steal a Country,” which will transform the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery into scenes from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Scale- and life-size dioramas, vignettes and tableaus will create an immersive experience, revealing the key role architecture plays in the ongoing sovereignty dispute. A corresponding public lecture, “Recognizing Facts on the Ground,” will take place on March 14. 

Integrated Urbanism Studio (ARC2013Y, LAN2013Y, URD1011Y) brings together architecture, landscape architecture and urban design students to work on the same assignments throughout the semester. 

The focus area for the Fall 2023 studio, coordinated by Mauricio Quirós Pacheco, Rob Wright and Roberto Damiani, was the decommissioned airfield lands at Downsview in Toronto—currently one of the most significant urban transformation opportunities in North America.     

From proposals that address ecological connectivity and food scarcity to residential typologies and aforestation techniques, following are a selection of group projects from the MARC, MLA and MUD programs. 

The Spot 

Students: Mo Bayati, Valerie Hope Haddad, Julia Dronsejko 
Program: Master of Architecture 
Instructor: Mauricio Quirós Pacheco 

“Our Downsview proposal represents a comprehensive approach to urbanism grounded in an understanding of the site’s historical evolution, current conditions and the needs of both the local community and Toronto at large. The project synthesizes four critical issues facing the city. Firstly, it addresses the imperative of retaining and expanding industrial space, acknowledging the escalating demand in Toronto.

The introduction of a central node for entertainment and events aims to create a vibrant and engaging atmosphere, enriching the cultural fabric of the area. To confront Toronto’s healthcare challenges, our proposal strategically proposes a new hospital at Downsview. Additionally, the initiative tackles food scarcity by implementing urban agriculture, utilizing advanced techniques such as hydroponics. The design encompasses industrial zones, event space, health and wellness districts, and agricultural areas.” 

Process Based Landscapes 

Students: Rebecca Martin, Zhuanghyi Peng, María Alonso Novo 
Program: Master of Landscape Architecture 
Instructors: Rob Wright, Megan Esopenko 

“Process Based Landscapes questions what public open spaces could look like if they were positioned as key nodes of social, economic and civic life. These close-up plans translate large-scale concepts into site-specific strategies through an agricultural field, an ecological corridor and a residential neighbourhood. Within each context, design strategies were aimed to create engaging landscapes that invite residents into the processes taking place on the site.” 

Social Urbanism 

Students: Shivangi Chauhan, Rajvi Modi
Program: Master of Urban Design 
Instructor: Roberto Damiani 

“Social Urbanism: A paradigm of public space justice is an urban design project situated within the environs of Downsview neighbourhood in the city of Toronto. The conceptual framework embodies a holistic ethos in urban development, prioritizing the welfare of communities through nuanced responsiveness and enhancement of the site, local context and public realm. The term ‘Social’ within this context manifests a dual significance in the realm of urban development. On one facet, it connotes notions of communal cohesion and active engagement, while on the other it conveys an engagement with fundamental societal requisites like, housing, immigration and awareness centres, etc.” 

Change of Plan: STADIA City 

Students: Nezar Alkujok, Negar Mashoof, Yegor Konechnyy
Program: Master of Architecture 
Instructor: Aziza Chaouni

“In the evolving landscape of Downsview, Change of Plan: STADIA City, inspired by the Smithsons’ 1957 Hauptstadt entry, involves a habitable bridge complex. Drawing from 1960s megastructures, the proposal unites major sectors—YorkU Village, Sheppard Avenue West, Northwood Park, Yorkdale Mall and Sobeys Stadium—via interconnected elements, including a main stadium and multi-use stadia, strategically positioned as nodes within the sky bridge. This approach reimagines the site, transforming local and national events into an ever-growing, evolutive series of spaces, both at and above ground.”

Events, Ecology, Ephemera 

Students: Matt Arnott, Anh Luu, Seth Ramesra 
Program: Master of Landscape Architecture 
Instructors: Rob Wright, Megan Esopenko 

“Through the process of exploring the site’s history, what stood out to us was the longstanding pattern of strange events and massive crowds. The site’s history of sporadic occupation has been absorbed into its identity, creating a program defined by flux. Simultaneously, ecological presence and diversity have dwindled over time as people have come to occupy the site, rendering natural cycles invisible in favour of roads and runways. This project seeks to bring inhabitants of the site closer to the natural happenings that often go overlooked, foregrounding an urbanism rooted in ecological events.” 

The Urban Rooms 

Students: Anurag Panda, Pallavi Patil, Sakshi Thorat, Wenqian Han 
Program: Master of Urban Design 
Instructor: Roberto Damiani 

“The proposed development plan aims to turn Downsview into a growth centre with public corridors and mixed-use development. The current land-use segregation only focuses on residential or employment, lacking an equitable distribution of mixed-use development. The plan includes the concept of ‘urban rooms,’ grouping houses around open spaces to create a square. The green spaces will be better connected via a green spine and a series of intimate ‘outdoor’ rooms. Mixed-use corridors of higher densities are allocated along the exterior edge, and more intimate institutional areas are kept near Downsview Park. A central amenity transforms into a sport-focused room in the proposed layout.” 

Patchwork City: Reimagining Downsview as Urban Tapestry 

Students: Lily Lu, Owen Miu, Yunjung Park, Ghazal Elmizadeh
Program: Master of Architecture  
Instructor: David Verbeek

“Patchwork City is an urban strategy that challenges conventional urban planning in Toronto. It presents an alternate approach by introducing a dynamic interplay of urban composition on the Downsview Airport site, through extracting and overlapping different urban fabrics. From bungalows to skyscrapers, these fabrics span across countries, cities and centuries, both generic and specific, built and unbuilt. Rather than playing a numbers game, Patchwork City focuses on the creation of distinct morphologies and new urban experiences that celebrate the vibrancy of Downsview and Toronto.” 

Leading with Landscape  

Students: Evlyn Sun, Georgia Sa, Tracy Ngan  
Program: Master of Landscape Architecture 
Instructors: Rob Wright, Megan Esopenko

“As the benefits of greenspaces are now increasingly evident, this project investigates what it means to design a new Downsview community by putting landscape first. The proposed plan prioritizes ecological connectivity by concentrating density around transit stations and providing pedestrian-oriented circulation throughout an extensive network of greenspaces. Rather than continuing a history of urban development fragmenting the landscape, this plan recognizes that resilient landscapes are integral to support community and urban infrastructure.” 

Aboretropolis: Re-Centering the Forest 

Students: Khadija Waheed, Richard Schutte, Lhanzi Gyaltsan 
Program: Master of Architecture 
Instructor: Christos Marcopolus 

“Before Downsview Airport—and before Toronto’s urban monoculture was constructed—there was a native maple-beech forest that thrived for thousands of years. This project proposes a hybrid Miyawake-poplar afforestation technique to partially return Downsview to its pre-settlement forest state. Responding to Toronto’s desperate needs of both housing and natural forest area, a new urban form is envisioned merging a diverse ecosystem of building typologies with non-invasive branching road networks that allow the forest to grow into urban spaces. Transit-rich building clusters maximize walkability and provide access to the amenities of the 15-minute city, compressed into a five-minute urban forest.” 

Dirty Downsview 

Students: Nicole Hekl, Linjuan Dai, Bracha Stettin 
Program: Master of Landscape Architecture 
Instructors: Rob Wright, Megan Esopenko 

“This project aims to create an urban development where the toxic legacy of Downsview’s industrial past serves as a starting point for imagining a sustainable and regenerative site for urban living and industry. The contamination of a post-industrial airfield became the impetus for creating a site-wide plan for soil remediation, green industry development and thriving urban conditions. Through careful phasing, thoughtful layering and connecting to existing ecological conditions, our plan creates waste treatment centres, housing and jobs for 60,000 people. Remediate the past, anticipate the future.” 

Reimaging the Green Spine 

Students: Yanyu Feng, Nan Liang; Diane (Doehyun) Kim, KIM, Sylph (Peizi) Yu
Program: Master of Urban Design 
Instructor: Roberto Damiani 

“The green spine is proposed to one side of the site and a secondary, pedestrian-only network within the built-form area. This allows for green connectivity through and outside of the site and [for] superblocks that are pedestrian-oriented and create flexible building opportunities for developers. The organic block pattern has allowed us to explore high-density buildings, while maintaining the green and picturesque appeal of suburban neighbourhoods.” 

Reconnecting Downsview: an argument for patchwork urbanism  

Students: Avondale Nixon, Declan Roberts, Nikki Basford 
Program: Master of Architecture 
Instructor: Jon Cummings 
 

“Reconnecting Downsview aims to integrate the neighbourhood into Toronto’s urban fabric by weaving together the once severed gridded street network. A matrix of street types was devised, placing users and circulation type on one axis, and street sizes and characteristics on the other. The resultant eight street types were distributed across the site, creating a highly connective and fine-grained urbanism. At the block scale, this interest in the human-scale spaces manifests in atypically small parcel size that encourages micro-development and a rich patchwork urbanism.” 

Auntie Urbanism 

Students: Daniel Lam, Michelle Choi, Jared Leslie 
Program: Master of Architecture 
Instructor: Karen Kubey 

“Auntie Urbanism proposes a vibrant, just future for Downsview Park in Toronto. Inspired by Vietnamese Aunties, and supporting local immigrant families, the framework centers the often-overlooked roles that women and diverse cultures play in Toronto communities. The proposal promotes economic, social, and relational exchanges that build on an existing informal network of Aunties who cook and sell international cuisines. The design explores how the site can be activated during the day and night, featuring lanterns and a night market, to stimulate the Auntie side hustle economy. By implementing variations on the Vietnamese “tube home” – a tall, narrow, intergenerational rowhouse typology with a retail ground floor – the design bridges the gap between work and personal life. We seek to cultivate not only placemaking, but place keeping.” 

Geographies of Production

Students: Gladys Lee, Aastha Saihgal, Cameron Hendey, Rubin de Jonge
Program: Master of Architecture
Instructor: Mariana Leguía Alegría

“Our proposal looks at reestablishing connections of people, agriculture, and nature within a new model of self-sustained and community living, in conjunction with revisiting accessibility and affordability on site through a lens of equity. By introducing “hub” neighborhoods that address different modes of living, our proposal presents various geographies of production at different scales, encouraging spaces to co-live, co-work, and co-exist with the site and the broader context of Toronto.” 

If you’ve walked through the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery in the past month, you’ve likely noticed the collection of unusual bits of wood, smelled the faint aroma of pine needles or even caught Zac Mollica at work in a full-scale replica of his workshop.  

Together, these elements make up the exhibition USING TREES AS THEY ARE, an eclectic compilation of Mollica’s research working hands-on with trees over the past 10 years.

We caught up with him to talk trees ahead of his public lecture on February 26. 

The exhibition is part of the research and teaching that you have undertaken as an Emerging Architect Fellow. Can you elaborate on how the exhibition is a reflection of this work? 

The Emerging Architect Fellowship has provided me an exceptional opportunity to both continue to develop new work and, critically, to reflect on and learn from an absurdly productive period of ambitious building projects that I had the privilege to be involved in, and eventually to lead, while teaching at the Architectural Association.

Before coming back to Toronto in 2021, I spent seven years living in Hooke Park, a 350-acre working forest operated by the AA as an unusual second home. There I was immersed in an alternative world of wood building, simultaneously increasing my skills in using traditional tools and processes while also becoming an expert at applying new computational tools in parallel. In 2015, we finished the Tree Fork Truss, a central work in my career. In collaboration with a hugely diverse team of experts, in the following years we would deliver full-scale buildings annually, with each demonstrating research into how we might better build with wood. Despite this productivity, time was constantly short to step back from the work and reflect.  

At Daniels, I have had the privilege to digest the incredible amount learned in those seven years lost in the woods, and to explore what it means to continue to develop this research in an urban context. Initially defined by my relationship to trees standing around me, my thinking in the last year has adapted to seeing material all around me—harvesting furniture, tree limbs and anything else we can find to use carefully in designs. 

The exhibition currently on view presents all of this together. It starts with a series of short observations from the last 10 years working hands-on with trees. In the second section, I have selected 350 photographs that prefer process to finished product—quick snaps that capture an important building moment, wondrous trees and many other things.

Further on, I have recreated at full scale the home workshop that I have progressively built in a back bedroom in our home in Toronto. In the final area, I have presented 16 very particular pieces of wood for visitors’ consideration and touch. We have come too often to see wood as a rectangular-ish thing that comes from the shop. Central to this entire work is to remind and reflect on the fact that wood comes from trees, and that it can be worked with in many forms! 

You're working on-site in the gallery during the exhibition's run. Tell us a bit more about your intentions to turn the space into a functional workshop. 

This bit of the exhibition has been such fun. As I schemed up a plan for the exhibition I would install to mark my fellowship role at Daniels, it became essential to depict processes and messiness over cleaned up finished results. When I realized the middle bay of the LWR gallery was the exact same size as my home workshop, my mind was made up.

My desire in working in the space has been to demonstrate rather than describe the way that I work, and to be able throughout January and February to have conversations with visitors about the show. As well, I wanted the show to evolve throughout the two months, and believe that it will only be complete as we head into the lecture I will give on February 26. 

USING TREES has been a multifaceted endeavor for you while at the Daniels Faculty. Can you speak to how all of these elements have informed each other? And what do you hope to be the outcome of your research? 

@UsingTrees has become a big umbrella to cover and somehow bring together a wide range of efforts and small projects under one central idea. At the core is a desire to use raw materials in ways that are close to their natural forms and best properties. Surrounding this is an alternative approach showing how we can design starting from material and an array of what I have come to refer to as tools for close observation—processes and implements that enable incredibly close working.  

The MARC studio, summer design-build program and seminar courses have each provided an opportunity to share and test out new methods—critically, assigning work to students that I don’t know quite what to expect from. 

Asked several years ago, I would have told you that I hoped the outcome of my work would be to inspire and produce a range of wooden structures made from forked and otherwise weird bits of tree. With enough time to think, it has become clear that the ambition for me is far wider and a lot more diffuse. Though a rapidly changing climate has become a common part of our discourse in design schools, we don’t often acknowledge just how bad even the best of our green buildings continue to be for the planet. And so, while I don’t have an easy answer for how we lessen the harm of the act of building at the scale we need to, I believe that a fundamental contribution I can make is to train and demonstrate better ways of seeing, and to help students to develop closer relationships to materials and landscapes. 

At the end of the day, this work is me sharing in public my utter beguilement and love for trees and their products. Here are the oldest living beings on Earth who helped to create the atmosphere that allows us to breathe. There is far more that we can do to make the best use of the products they offer us. 

USING TREES AS THEY ARE is on view until February 26. Register for the corresponding public lecture here.

The national theme for Black History Month 2024 is Black Excellence: A Heritage to Celebrate, a Future to Build. 

This month is an opportunity to celebrate the contributions that Black individuals and communities have made to Canadian society, history and heritage—and for the Daniels Faculty to demonstrate its ongoing commitment to inclusion.  

The Faculty is marking Black History/Black Futures Month with public lectures that explore Black identity and the built environment, and by highlighting ongoing initiatives such as the Faculty’s Building Black Success through Design program, a curated book display in the Eberhard Zeidler Library, and an art installation that reflects interpretations of Black Flourishing.

Mark your calendar for public lectures

The Daniels Faculty’s Winter 2024 Public Program continues on February 1 with “I heard you were looking for me,” a lecture by architect and academic Germane Barnes (pictured above) exploring themes of community-oriented design, the expansion of architectural representation and alternative design authorship.  

Barnes’s award-winning research and design practice, Studio Barnes, investigates the connection between architecture and identity by examining architecture’s social and political agency through historical research and design speculation. Mining architecture’s social and political agency, he examines how the built environment influences black domesticity.  

Two weeks later, on February 15, architect Kholisile Dhliwayo of afrOURban Inc. will be at the Faculty to present “Black Diasporas Tkaronto-Toronto.” Dhliwayo (pictured above) leads the afrOURban project Black Diasporas, a community-led, geolocated oral-narrative mapping initiative that examines the experiences, spaces and places having meaning to Black people.

This lecture will outline how oral narrative, filmmaking and exhibition are both archival and aspirational—archival in their celebration of the spaces and places created by Black communities in Toronto and aspirational in the articulation of hopes and dreams and how these manifest in the built environment. 

Dhliwayo is a founding member of afrOURban Inc., an Adrian Cheng Fellow at the Social Innovation Change Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School and a 2023 resident at the Center for Architecture Lab in New York City.

Visit an installation of student artwork 

Head to the Historic Stairwell between the second and third floors of the Daniels Building to view Black Flourishing: Six Student Artworks, a temporary installation that reflects diverse interpretations of Black flourishing and Blackness in design and community. 

In response to an open call by the Daniels Art Directive and the Daniels Faculty during the Winter 2023 term, the six artists represented offer their creative expression of Black traditions and futures of excellence. In alignment with the broad objectives of the University of Toronto’s Anti-Black Racism Report (2021) and the Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism and Black Inclusion in Higher Education: Principles, Actions and Accountabilities (2021), this installation celebrates and promotes Black art and representation in university spaces. 

Check out a curated display in the Library

Stop by the Eberhard Zeidler Library all monthlong to check out a display of books about Black architects who made history, like Norma Sklarek and Paul R. Williams, and those who are making history today, like Afaina de Jong and Tosin Oshinowo.

Curated by Master of Architecture students Jessica Chan and Justina Yang, the recommendations are grouped into books on the general history of Black architects and books about specific Black architects. 

Learn more about Building Black Success in Design 

Since 2021, the Faculty has taken a proactive approach to addressing the lack of diversity in the design industry through its Building Black Success through Design (BBSD) program: a 12-week mentorship program for Black high school students interested in architecture and design.

BBSD partners high school students with current Black students or alumni from the University of Toronto serving as mentors. The current cohort includes 36 high-school-aged mentees and 13 mentors. Participants hone their skills across various mediums and software, while also delving into topics that resonate with their experiences and identity. At the end of the program, mentees will take away practical technical design skills, be able to research and use community feedback to inform their designs, and confidently present their ideas to their peers and mentors.

Now in its third year, the program was originally founded by three Black undergraduate students, Clara James, Renee Powell-Hines and Rayah Flash, while in the Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies program together. James continues to lead the program as the Faculty's Public Programming and Outreach Coordinator, while Powell-Hines is now a second-year Master of Architecture student and Flash is slated to graduate this year.

Follow along @bbsd.daniels and keep an eye on Daniels News & Events for future updates on the program.  

The Daniels Faculty’s Mauricio Quirós Pacheco and Hans Ibelings, along with contributor Andrés Fernández, recently published Modern Architectures in Central America, an overview of different forms of modern architecture in Central America since the outset of the 20th century. 

“The purpose of this book is to study modern architecture in Central America from within,” says Assistant Professor Quirós Pacheco. “And not only as a global, generalized phenomenon, but also as a complex and local one, where each region and country has an equally important story to tell.” 

Although modern architecture constituted only a small percentage of total building production in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, these buildings hold evident symbolic significance, functioning as models for desired societal, economic and cultural changes or as aspirational placeholders for a future state of modernity.  

Years in the making, the book features essays and contributions by Gloria Grimaldi, Sandra Gutiérrez, Martín Majewsky, Darién Montañez, Raúl Monterroso and Florencia Quesada Avendaño, plus a set of never-before-published images by Leonard J. Currie from his posthumous slide collection at Virginia Tech. 

The book is available for purchase online.

If you are in Toronto and want to pick up a copy locally, contact mauricio.quiros@daniels.utoronto.ca.