The Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) have named Denegri Bessai Studio — the firm of Daniels Faculty Lecturer Maria Denegri and Assistant Professor Tom Bessai — Best Emerging Practice as part of its annual OAA Awards.

The Best Emerging Practice award recognizes "the contribution of young firms that have been in practice for five years or less and demonstrate a clear vision, well-articulated goals and proven effective strategies that provide a competitive advantage."

Duncan Sabiston (MArch 2014), pictured with Denegri and Bessai above, is also part of the firm.

Toon Dreessen, President of the OAA, says the Denegri Bessai Studio is to be commended “for its commitment to pushing the boundary of cutting edge, experimental architecture in Canada."

"With each project, the studio strives to innovate and, in the process, uncovers new techniques and finds new uses for cutting-edge technologies," says Dreessen. "As one of our jury members noted: 'a firm showing such commitment to the exploration of new ideas, with such excitement and enthusiasm, will always be able to distinguish itself as new and emerging.’ Additionally, the firm embraces new avenues in business, creating a niche market for their talent that sets them apart.”

This isn't the first time the OAA has commended Denegri and Bessai. Last year the firm received recognition in the “Concepts” category of the OAA Awards for “Dancing Cubbies,” designed for Huron Public School in Toronto.

Last summer, the OAA highlighted panAMaze a temporary installation design by Denegri Bessai for the International Plaza of the Athletes’ Villiage built for 2015 Pan-Am Games in Toronto.

Denegri Bessai Studio has also been recognized in local media in the recent past. In 2014, the firm was featured in the summer issue of Designlines magazine, which highlighted many of the daring ideas they bring to small living spaces. Likewise, the Globe and Mail commended Denegri Bessai for the imaginative and innovative ways it has made small downtown living spaces appear large.

Writes Mike Doherty in Designlines, Denegri and Bessai "consider themselves 'translators' who bring ideas from academia into the domestic sphere. Their Annex studio features a fabrication laboratory (nicknamed the FabLab) full of quizzical objects that recall boomerangs, paper planes and alien artefacts." Pictured above is Mangrove Structure, an installation completed for the Design Exchange's pop up exhibition at 363 King St. W. last spring.

This backyard project, which tackled the design of a small outdoor living space in the city by creating a courtyard between a house and garage was also profiled in the Globe and Mail.

As part of their research, Denegri and Bessai study the role of computation in architecture and design, and present regularly at conferences and forums.

The OAA will present its awards at a Celebration of Excellence Awards Ceremony & Dinner on May 13.

Several faculty and alumni will be recognized at the Ontario Association of Architects annual OAA Awards, presented May 13th. 

The OAA Awards offers the Ontario architectural profession an annual opportunity to present its work to a public and professional audience. It advertises the excellence of both individual award winners and the profession as a whole, and it fosters a greater appreciation of architecture and architects among all levels of society, professional and non-professional.

The Daniels Faculty would like to extend its congratulations to alumni and faculty members recognized this year.

The Design Excellence category recognized the “innovative skills of Ontario architects in creating spaces, buildings and communities that respect and enhance the environment an enrich human activity.”

• Harbord Towns by Superkül Inc. — the firm of Daniels Faculty Instructor Meg Graham
   
• Prince Arthur’s Landing, Thunder Bay Waterfront by Brook McIlroy Inc. — the firm of Anne McIlroy (BArch 1986) and Calvin Brook (BArch 1982)
   
• Richard Ivey Building, Western University by Hariri Pontarini Architects — the firm of David Pontarini (BArch 1983)
   
• Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre, University of British Columbia by KPMB Architects — the firm of Bruce Kuwabara (BArch 1972) and Shirley Blumberg (BArch 1976) — and HCMA Architecture + Design in a joint venture
   
• Toronto Public Library Scarborough Civic Centre Branch by LGA Architectural Partners Ltd. — the firm of Janna Levitt (BArch 1986) and Dean Goodman (BArch 1983) — and Phillip H. Carter, Architect in joint venture

​

The Concepts category recognized the “clarity and uniqueness of expression of an architectural idea as well as promoting the involvement of individuals in the areas of design presentation, art and other design related endeavors.”

• Dominique Cheng (MArch 2007): Planespotting

The Landmark Designation category recognized the “buildings that demonstrate architecture’s beauty, endurance and lasting contribution to community and society.”

• 299 Queen Street West renovation by Quadrangle Architects — the firm of Sheldon Levitt (BArch 1980)
   
• St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Church by John Stefura (BArch 1953) and Carl Skerl (BArch 1958), Townend Stefura Baleshta and Pfister Architects

Additionally, Professor Emeritus George Baird received the Lifetime Design Achievement Award for his career-long contribution to Architectural Design Excellence. William N. Greer (BArch 1948) received the Order of da Vinci for his significant and meaningful contribution to the profession of architecture. Finally, Douglas Cumming Johnson (BArch 1950) was included in the OAA Honour Roll, a category that recognizes prominent members of the architectural profession who are now deceased.

The final three awards (the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Design Excellence in Architecture, the Michael V. and Wanda Plachta Award, and the People’s Choice Award) will be announced at the Celebration of Excellence on May 13th as part of the OAA Conference 2016 being held in Toronto.

Place-Holder, a graduate student-run publication, has been awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The third edition of the journal, edited by Michael Abel (MArch 2016) and Mina Hanna (MArch 2014), includes work by contributors Patrick Pregesbauer, Maarten Lambrechts, Daniel Tudor Munteanu, Nancy Webb, Zoé Renaud-Drouin (MArch 2014), Elliott Sturtevant (MArch 2014), Max Powell (MArch 2015), and many more.

Place-Holder was started in 2012 as “an active catalogue of design, for contemporary use and future reference, a repository and mediator of ideas that are floating in our (corporeal and digital) memories.”

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

This student-run journal addresses the unspoken aspects of architectural pedagogy and reveals the relics of the architecture design process, which form an archive of unseen products, set-aside ideas, and scrapped technologies. Whether they are temporary trends or resilient values, these, too, are part of the public discourse on design and cities and should be part of the conversation. Place-Holder creates a home for that which is otherwise lost—off-hand musings, abandoned models, interviews with practitioners—as well as the residual effects of the making of architecture. It is active catalogue of design, for contemporary use and future reference, a repository and mediator of ideas that are floating in our (corporeal and digital) memories. Place-Holder is an open conversation.

Last year, Place-Holder’s interview with Greg Lynn — conducted by Roya Mottahedeh (MArch 2014), Mark Ross (MArch 2014), and Paul Harrison (MArch 2014) — was featured in Archinect’s Screen/Print series.

“The so-called Issue 1/2 takes a look at the things that may seem out of architecture’s wheelhouse, but in the end prove themselves as major influencers,” writes Archinect in its introduction to the interview, “in short, the life around architecture always bleeds back in.”

The third edition of Place-Holder will be released soon. This most recent edition will focus on the influence of the network in the public domain and the implications it has on architecture’s autonomy as a discipline. For more information, visit www.place-holder.net

The exhibition titled How to Make Space, curated by Jennifer L. Davis (MArch 2011) and Su-Ying Lee (MVS 2011) featuring work by Tings Chak (MArch 2014), has received a 2016 Grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The exhibition explores temporary structures built by women in Hong Kong as gestures of female spatial agency. Other artists featured in the exhibition include Stephanie Comilang, Devora Neumark, and Rowena Yin-Fan Chan.

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

How to Make Space is an exhibition that frames the temporary architectures built by Hong Kong's population of female migrant domestic workers (MDWs) as gestures of female spatial agency. Three commissioned projects reveal the oppressive legal and cultural forces that compel the women to occupy public spaces and build structures of provisional materials in which to spend their Sundays off from work. The projects are researched and authored by artists Stephanie Comilang (Toronto/Berlin), Tings Chak (Toronto), and Devora Neumark (Montreal) with Rowena Yin-Fan Chan (Hong Kong). By presenting these works in an accessible and unconventional setting, the exhibition heightens awareness in a broad audience and directly engages the spaces and people with which it is concerned. Together, the projects point toward the possibility of a feminist architecture by striving to employ tactics learned from the MDWs, questioning existing disciplinary and social power structures, and developing new methodologies of How to Make Space.

How to Make Space is one of the projects organized by Davis and Lee under the name of Rear View (Projects). Both a curatorial collective and an itinerant site for art, Rear View (Projects) experiments with unconventional platforms to mobilize new interactions between art, place, and audiences. Recent exhibitions include Flipping Properties (2014), a large-scale installation commissioned for a Toronto Laneway designed by architect Jimenez Lai (HBA 2002, MArch 2007) with Bureau Spectacular.

How to Make Space will be on display from June 25 to July 23, 2016 in Hong Kong, China. For more information, visit rearviewprojects.com

Artist Kaegan Walsh (MArch 2016) has completed a permanent installation entitled Provenance located in a rural region of Ontario.

The piece positions concrete as unintentional land art. The key concept for the project is how an individual concrete construction can be traced back to a very specific location within the natural environment by identifying the unique stone types found in every sample of concrete that uses a natural aggregate. In this way, all concrete buildings and infrastructure, ubiquitous in our cities, can be linked to a unique origin within the natural environment.

Provenance consists of three 1m concrete cubes installed in the landscape; abstract boulders that mimic the natural boulders deposited in this region during the last ice age. In this era, an ice sheet moved through the landscape, depositing these boulders along the way and grinding massive amounts of stone into what is now used for aggregate in our concrete. Our concrete constructions are once again displacing the rock material created by this phenomenon. This project's abstract boulders juxtapose these natural and human geologic actions.

Paradoxically, the transformation of our planet through our built environment appears both drastic and minute when considered in direct comparison to a natural counterpart. In illustrating this link between modern construction techniques and ancient history, this project argues for a new consideration to architectural preservation that incorporates this unique feature of concrete and the geologic history in which it plays a part.

Provenance will be documented in an upcoming edition of the journal Prospect.

View the gallery below for more images of the project, courtesy of Kaegan Walsh.

For more information on Walsh's work, visit his website: www.kaeganwalsh.com

Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni, in collaboration with composer/percussionist Sushi Ibarra, has designed a musical installation for the Medina of Fez in Morocco, titled Musical Water Routes.

“Musical Water Routes of the Medina of Fes honors the history of rivers and water routes in the Medina, the sacredness of water and its use, while expressing it in a palette to invite an urban community today to interact and reflect upon the future of the Medina’s water heritage,” writes Chaouni and Ibarra.

The project proposes a walking meditation and musical experience that invites the public to interact with and contemplate the visible and invisible manifestations of water in the Medina of Fez. The audience will stop at 3 sites along the Medina: the Noria square, Souk El Henna, and the Seffarine square. There, they will be introduced to the historic architecture of the site, and they will listen the to live music compositions created for each space. Reminiscent of the water that stills runs or once was in the 3 sites, Ibarra’s music is composed from a myriad of local percussion sounds created with metal, brass, bronze, wood, skins and glass.

Musical Water Routes was created for the 2016 Fez Sacred Music Festival, a 10-day-long celebration held in mid-summer that showcases major musical traditions of sacred, spiritual, and world music. In 2014, Chaouni created a project for the Festival titled Simorgh Stage Set. The artwork, a magical bird, was created by dancers each carrying a panel covered with origami feathers made out of recycled newspapers.

Associate Professor Mary Lou Lobsinger gave the CBC program Spark a lesson on Brutalist Architecture over the weekend — background for an episode Brutalist web design.

Writes Spark:

It's easy to get frustrated by bloated websites that are slow to load with their big photos that move and take over the screen, JavaScript pop-ups, giant ads, and autoplay videos.

All this has some people longing for a return to old-school websites. And we've been seeing an emerging trend toward stripped down website design.

To listen to Lobsinger’s full interview with host Nora Young, visit the Spark website.

Mary Lou Lobsinger is a historian and teaches the history and theory of architecture and design. Her research focuses on the histories and theories of modern architecture and urbanism with specific expertise in issues around historiography, science, technology, and techniques of articulation. She is currently working on two book projects, the most immediate is titled, Architecture Institution: Media,Techniques,Territories.

Related:

• History and theory of architecture professor Mary Lou Lobsinger speaks in Toronto and abroad
• CBC Radio features Making Camp on Spark
• RAD director Rodolphe el-Khoury talks to CBC's Nora Young about responsive architecture

Associate Professor David Lieberman will be presenting a paper and chairing a panel at the Continuum2016 conference happening June 12^th to 14^th in Nicosia, Cyprus. The event, hosted by the University of Cyprus Department of Architecture and the European University of Cyprus Music Department, intends to further research of the last decade in architecture, music, and acoustics.

At the conference, Lieberman will present the film titled within the Sounds of these Waves, which was edited and composed by Parastoo Najafi (MArch 2016) and produced by the Studio of David Lieberman Architect.

“The three hour film is a series of visual texts as an investigation in time, in thoughts and in dreams as we move through the spaces of discovery and imagining,” says Lieberman. “The texts interweave original musings and the words of Virginia Woolf in her meditations ‘The Waves.’ ”

Later this month, Lieberman will be returning to the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on June 27^th and 28^th to participate in their final reviews as an external reviewer for two of the graduate programs in architecture. His time at the Academy will include participating in post-graduate seminars, advising doctoral students, and continuing research concerned with the birch forests as painted by Gustav Klimt and the properties of the Austrian Spruce tree (a favoured species for string instruments and piano soundboards).

Related:

• David Lieberman delivers keynote lecture on sound, light, and architecture and contributes to an exhibition on hippie modernism
• David Lieberman publishes a chapter in the book Xenakis Matters

• North House to become a permanent installation and research laboratory

Lecturer Hans Ibelings, Lecturer Alex Josephson (PARTISANS), and friend of the Daniels Faculty Eve Lewis (MSc., Urban and Regional Planning 1981) will participate in a discussion exploring the condominiumization of Toronto on June 22 as part of the Luminato Festival. The panel discussion will reflect on the book Rise & Sprawl: The Condominiumization of Toronto. Co-authored by Hans Ibelings and PARTISANS, the new book investigates the emergence of a new pressure-cooked architectural vernacular and posits alternative ways of tackling design and development processes to ensure better architectural outcomes.

Rise and Sprawl: The Condominiumization of Toronto
by Hans Ibelings and PARTISANS

June 22, 2016, 5–6:30 PM, Side Room
The Hearn (440 Unwin Avenue, Toronto)

“While rapid densification is contributing to Toronto’s increased liveliness, the unbridled development of monotonous condo towers is resulting in a significant facelift we may later come to regret,” write Ibelings and PARTISANS. “We are failing to create a cityscape that serves our citizens, let alone a skyline we can be proud of as a legacy for future generations.”

The discussion is part of a series of events hosted by After School + PARTISANS for Luminato 2016 that focus on the future of Toronto in terms of arts institutions, civic infrastructure, architecture and design, and overall cultural and economic prosperity.

For more information, visit Luminato's website.

In March, Associate Professor Brian Boigon lectured at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) as part of the exhibition The Other Architect. The exhibition explored architecture in terms of different collaborative strategies, strange concepts, and new kinds of tools.

From the CCA:

“Brian Boigon ran Culture Lab at the back of a rock club in Toronto from 1991 to 1994. The object of Culture Lab was to intellectually entangle and compress the distance between theory and product—and to ultimately create a new space of interoperability whereby speakers, hosted on stage by Boigon, would be thrown into an unknown social architecture, yielding new speculations about what constitutes cultural production in the transitional years between the analogue and the digital. Boigon’s talk addresses the temporal and social ramifications that led up and into the Culture Lab project and beyond.”

After the talk, Boigon was joined by Joan Ockman and Phyllis Lambert to discuss the internet and social media in today’s context.

“We are barely able to function in the digital and yet there’s a new layer, this social media layer,” said Boigon. “I think this social media layer, despite the tropes of it being superficial and…curiously problematic, there’s something in their networks and meshes that are producing a new kind of social space and temporality and we have to pay attention to this as architects.”

The transcription of the discussion was included in the online CCA publication What the future looked like. To view the publication, visit: cca.qc.ca/what-the-future-looked-like