Thanks to generous donations made by alumni and donors, Daniels Faculty students can apply for grants, fellowships, or scholarships to fund travel and research at sites of interest both within Canada and abroad.

We’ve asked students who received travel awards last year to share their experiences with us. Last week, we heard from Saarinen Balagengatharadilak and Vanessa Abram. Today, we hear from Master of Architecture student Hamza Vora , who spent six weeks conducting research in Casablanca, Marrakesh, and Fez in Morroco, and Tunis in Tunisia with support from the Paul Oberman Graduate Student Endowment Fund.

Why did you decide to go to Casablanca, Marrakesh, Fez, and Tunis, and what did you hope to learn while you were there?
I wanted to study street vendors in North African cities to see the urban condition and context they currently operate in.  I intended to observe the street vendors and public life of the souks (markets) that are still vital part of the old city centres. Morocco and Tunisia both have well preserved and vibrant old city centres where street vendors in the souks are an integral part of daily life.

Tell us about something interesting that you discovered.
I had this idea of authenticity and that the markets would only sell local goods and support the local community. It was a bit shocking to see that majority of the street vendors sold counterfeit goods made in China. This was particularly in the case Tunis. It is a real problem as it has been devastating to the local industries.

How has this travel research opportunity enhanced your academic career?
I got a better understanding of the meaning of public space. It informed some of my decisions for my thesis project. Urban life in these North African cities is very chaotic. It is an organized mess. To comprehend that, you have to experience it first hand.

How will this research inform your future work?
I am still very interested in street vendors and how they contribute to an informal economy. During my research trip I was looking at how they function and negotiate public pace. I still want to continue learning about this and how they contribute to different public spaces.

For more information on Hamza’s research download his report [PDF].

Visit the Current Students section of the Daniels Faculy's website for more information on the travel awards.

This winter, Montreal's art district, Quartier des Spectacles, became a space of urban play for the sixth annual Luminothérapie festival. The public space was transformed into an interactive landscape by Lateral Office, firm of Associate Professor Mason White.

Their creation, Impulse, is a series of thirty interactive see-saws that respond and transform when in motion. Each one produces a dynamic light and sound sequence that can be activated and played by the public. The unique set of tones generated by each see-saw was developed by Toronto sound-artist Mitchell Akiyama.

In order to create a unified Luminothérapie concept, the installation by Lateral Office was complemented by a series of video projections by Montreal artists Maotik and Iregular.

As an ever-changing urban instrument, Impulse embodies ideas of serialism, repetition and variation, encouraging public play and interaction.

photos by Ulysse Lemerise / OSA | Drawing by Lateral Office

Places Journal, an Academic Partner of the Daniels Faculty, recently published the first volume of the Places Books series, titled Where Are the Women Architects? by Despina Stratigakos. This short paperback grew out of two articles written for Places: “Unforgetting Women Architects” and “What I Learned from Architect Barbie.”

From Princeton University Press:

For a century and a half, women have been proving their passion and talent for building and, in recent decades, their enrollment in architecture schools has soared. Yet the number of women working as architects remains stubbornly low, and the higher one looks in the profession, the scarcer women become. Law and medicine, two equally demanding and traditionally male professions, have been much more successful in retaining and integrating women. So why do women still struggle to keep a toehold in architecture? Where Are the Women Architects? tells the story of women's stagnating numbers in a profession that remains a male citadel, and explores how a new generation of activists is fighting back, grabbing headlines, and building coalitions that promise to bring about change.

Despina Stratigakos, the author of Where Are the Women Architects?, is an architectural historian and the interim chair of the architecture department at the University of Buffalo. She has previously published five articles on Places Journal, and has published extensively on the history of women in architecture.

Places Journal is “a leading journal of contemporary architecture, landscape, and urbanism” that publishes “essays, criticism, photography, and narrative journalism, as well as peer-reviewed scholarship that deserves a wide audience.” Places Books is a recent project undertaken by Places Journal in collaboration with Princeton University Press. The series offers readers accessible paperbacks and e-books of writing that developed from Places articles.

From 1991 to 1994, Associate Professor Brian Boigon ran Culture Lab at the back of a rock club, where he would host guest participants with disciplinary backgrounds in architecture, art, film, video, music, comedy, science and fashion. The panel, with Boigon at the helm, 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. Culture Lab themes ranged from Insider Criticism and Weaklings to Dip Sticks.

On March 31, 2016, at 6:00pm Boigon will be giving a talk at the CCA titled "Fucking with Interoperability." He will be addressing the temporal and social ramifications that led up and into the Culture Lab project and beyond.

Culture Lab: Brian Boigon — "Fucking with Interoperability"
March 31, 2016 | 6:00 pm
Centre Canadien d'Architecture / Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)
1920 Baile, Montreal, Quebec H3H 2S6

RSVP to the event on Facebook.

Master of Architecture alumni Mario Christian (MArch 2012) and Heng Tang (MArch 2012) are co-founders, along with Luca Daniel, of the innovative jewery firm Daniel Christian Tang. The team recently launched a new line titled “ICON – An Exhibit at the Intersection of Jewery and Architecture,” which has received significant media attention.

Writes the National Post:

Tang and Mario Christian Lavorato, both 31, met at the University of Toronto, where they graduated from the masters of architecture program. During their studies, they started getting involved in digital fabrication and 3D printing, and worked on architectural pieces using the emerging technology.

“We realized at that time that we could actually take files and designs we had done for architecture and turn them into wearable pieces of art,” Mario Christian Lavorato recalled in a recent interview at an Oakville, Ont., 3D printing facility, where he and Tang awaited completion of one of their pieces.

“A lot of our pieces are inspiration from what we took from architecture, what we’ve designed, what we’ve learned in school,” said Tang, who also has a degree in biochemistry.

Daniel Christian Tang has seen their jewelry published in AZURE Magazine, ELLE, Globe & Mail, FLARE, among others. Additionally, they have recently been nominated for a Swarovski Award for Emerging Talent, Accessories from the Canadian Arts & Fashion Awards.

Their latest collection "ICON" will make its runway debut at Toronto Fashion Week, March 17^th on the Main Runway at David Pecaut Square.

Undergraduate architecture course "How to Design Almost Anything" introduces students to the process of design using a variety of media including photography, video games, and film. One of the assignments students were tasked with in the winter of 2014 was to create a video inspired by a poem. Students were asked to interpret the city and built world with the stanza as their starting point.

Students Martin Drozdowski and Kevin Ayala Diaz, under the direction of Instructor Jay Pooley, chose the poem "Design" by Billy Collins as the inspiration for their video:

"Design" by Billy Collins

"We understand Bill Collins' poem 'Design' as an exploration of interpreting basic shape based on experiences of the poet's life. The circle that he uses is simple enough that it can become the frame upon which his own imagination and thoughts can form. This process of extrapolation is what we want to showcase in our short film. From this poetic stanza we created a short video on the relationships between design, architecture, and the city. This was achieved through the magic of stop motion animation, a wooden tabletop, and a lot of salt." 

Martin and Kevin also broke their video down frame by frame into a storyboard, detailing the different geometric concepts featured in the film.

Watch the stop motion video, and other student videos, on the Student Work playlist on the Daniels Faculty Youtube Channel.

Professor Ted Kesik was recently featured in two Globe and Mail articles on building energy standards. A building science expert, Kesik has over 42 years of experience in the construction industry, specializing in building enclosure design, quality assurance, performance verification, and building systems integration.

In an article investigating the adoption of the recommended national building code into binding provincial building codes, Kesik offered an overview of the history of building codes and their current limitations. He argues that problems within the building code stem from the original focus being on basic fire and structural safety; “energy wasn't on the radar.”

He argues that "Canadian building codes contain troublesome loopholes that allow developers, contractors and renovators to build what he describes as 'high cholesterol' structures, especially high-rise apartment towers." 

Says Kesik: "The high-rise buildings we built in the 1960s perform better than what we’re building now. Tell me of any industry that would stand up and be proud to say that."

A similar article focuses more specifically on the energy loss created by buildings with predominately glass facades.

Under current rules, developers of large projects can use sophisticated energy 'performance' modelling software to meet energy targets – in effect, installing more expensive and ultra-efficient mechanical heating and ventilation systems as a 'trade-off' against the use of uninsulated floor-to-ceiling windows, which builders see as a strong marketing feature, especially in tiny apartments.

 

In Northern European and Scandinavian countries, Kesik says, builders can’t design buildings mostly clad in glass because their codes require robust materials and minimum insulation levels for the entire building envelope.

To read the full articles, visit the Globe and Mail:

• Why does Canada lag in demanding environmental diligence from builders and homeowners?
• Ontario looks to close loophole on energy standards for buildings

Assistant Professor Charles Stankievech, director of the Daniels Faculty's Visual Studies program, has been awarded the prestigious Audain Distinguished Artist-in-Residance program for Spring/Summer 2016.

The mandate of the residency is to bring renowned contemporary artists to Vancouver and to support the creation of new works. This week, Stankievech gave a public lecture in Vancouver titled "CounterIntelligence: A Glossary of Doubled Agency." His work addresses the way artefacts of warfare have helped us understand culture in conflict and the meanings they have when placed in the context of museum or art exhibition. It asks the question: what is the contemporary role of the exhibition as caught in the no-man's land between the didacic museum and the conceptual gesture?

On April 2, Stankievech will be speaking at the first annual Translations Symposium at The University of Waterloo School of Architecture. This year's symposium, Representing Ambience Today, will investigate contemporary representations of architecture's milieu. Stankievech will be part of the panel discussion titled "Atmospheres - the ambience of matter," which will explore the physical characteristics as well as the social and cultural characteristics of materiality in contemporary architectural investigations.

PLANT Architect Inc. — an interdisciplinary firm that branches into the domains of architecture, landscape, ecology, furniture, art, and graphic design — recently completed the renovation of a 900-square-foot loft in a former chocolate factory.

The high-end “Chocolate Loft” — designed by Daniels Faculty Instructor Lisa Rapoport, along with recent graduate Jason van der Burg (March 2014) and Danielle Rosen — reimagined the space for two mathematics professors who were looking for a flexible pied-à-terre in the City. The owners requested that the space be either a two-bedroom condominium or a one-bedroom unit with an expanded living room area.

“Our solution was to insert a wall that passes through the high-ceilinged unit on a gentle dogleg stretching from the hallway entry to the front of the building,” writes the firm on its website.

“Transitioning from mostly glazed at the street edge to entirely wood veneered closer to the entry, a series of sliding doors in this wall makes it possible to close off the northeast corner of the loft’s cube-like volume when a second bedroom is required, or append this space to the living room when the owners need only one bedroom.”

The space features architectural elements based on mathematical formulas. A feature wall in the entry niche boasts a series of parabolas, and the sliding doors are shaped in the proportions of the Fibonacci sequence. Both elements are created with high grade cherry wood that was slip-matched from the same slab of timber. The bathroom tile pattern follows an arithmetical sequence, increased intensity of colour around the room. 

Jason van der Burg has previously been recognized for his wood designs. In the fall of 2014, he participated in the Second Annual IIDEX Woodshop. His submission, The Leaning Loop, was a handcrafted multi-purpose upright organizer that incorporated a coat rack, a shoe rack, a small “catch-all” shelf, and a custom insert panel that can be outfitted with a magnetic mirror, chalkboard, or whiteboard.

Photos above by Steven Evans, Steven Evans Photography

Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni was recently featured in TED Ideas for her restoration of the al-Qarawiyyin Library in Fez, Morocco — the world's oldest library.

Built in 859, the building was conceived by Fatima El-Fihriya, who dedicated her inheritance to create a mosque and knowledge centre for her community. Chaouni was commissioned in 2012 to rehabilitate the building, which is set to open in May 2016.

The three year long restoration project has not been without its unique set of difficulties.

“When I first visited, I was shocked at the state of the place,” Chaouni, who grew up in Fez, told TED. “Throughout the years, the library underwent many rehabilitations, but it still suffered from major structural problems, a lack of insulation, and infrastructural deficiencies like a blocked drainage system, broken tiles, cracked wood beams, exposed electric wires, and so on.”

The library is a important monument for Morocco, which is why Kuwait's Arab bank provided a grant to rehabilitate the historic project. UNESCO describes the site as “the oldest operational education institution in the world, with a high-profile role call of alumni.”  The project was also recently featured in Al Huffington Post Maghreb, a French-language edition of The Huffinton Post.

“[The library is important because] it holds manuscripts that are more than 10 centuries old,” said Chaouni in an interview with Sixty7 Architecture Road. “Until today, it was not opened to the public, only a few researchers had access to it.”

When the library opens its doors in May, it will feature a cafe, an exhibition room for manuscripts, a reading room, multiple book stacks, a conference room, a manuscript restoration laboratory, a rare books collection, and a small museum to showcase the history of the al-Qarawiyyin complex.