As the City of Toronto awaits provincial approval for transformative new zoning bylaws, Daniels Faculty Instructor Joshua Thorpe suggests other cities around the world look to Toronto's Tower Renewal initiative for inspiration.

In his article "How to rethink the suburbs: A lesson from Toronto," published in the online magazine Doggerel, Thorpe explores the unique conditions of Toronto's inner suburbs. Unlike any other North American city, Toronto's suburbs contain about two-thousand towers, housing almost a million residents. These towers, which were built following the Second World War, were largely designed for middle-class car-dependent families. Though the demographics of Toronto's inner suburbs have since changed, these neighbourhoods are still shaped by existing zoning policies that limit commercial resources and amenities. Things like cafés, grocers, bike paths, and playgrounds — often taken for granted by people living downtown — are simply non-existent in these suburban neighbourhoods. 

Thorpe outlines the history of the suburban tower-in-the-park typology as well as the important role they continue to play today. He writes about the architects and planners who have been advocating for changes to the city's zoning bylaws, resulting in the Residential Apartment Commercial (RAC) zone, accepted by Toronto City Council in 2014. The final approval for the RAC zone at a provincial level is expected in early summer 2016.

Final approval will create opportunities for small businesses, fresh food vendors, community gardens, medical clinics and more to open up in these suburban tower communities.

Writes Thorpe: "This is the beginning of a new phase for Toronto — and an important part of fulfilling the promise of a fair, equitable, and welcoming city, a city that champions its diversity instead of hiding it."

Related:

• CBC's Metro Morning interviews alumni and faculty about Tower Renewal
• Ted Kesik featured in Globe and Mail article on Tower Renewal
• Alumnus Graham Stewart shares his vision for Toronto's Tower Neighbourhoods with the Toronto Star
• Graham Stewart wins the 2014 Jane Jacobs Prize
• Tower Renewal Guidelines
• Alumus Jesse Colin Jackson presents solo exhibition, Radiant City, at the Pari Nadimi Gallery
  
   

The work of alumni Jasmeen Bains (MLA 2013), Matthew Blunderfield (MArch 2014), Javid Alibhai (MArch 2014), Robin Heathcote (MLA 2013), and Benjamin Matthews (MLA 2013) was recently featured in an article written for the Journal of Architectural Education. The article, titled “Grounding Diaspora”, was based on work done for a Fall 2012 option studio taught by Alison Hirsch, Aroussiak Gabrielian, and Andrea Mantin.

Students were asked to reconsider concepts of democracy, justice, citizenship, and multiculturalism (multi-ethnic, multi-racial) in city planning and urban & public space design. Instructors Hirsch and Gabrielian used the student concepts and designs to write an article focusing on the method of instruction used in the course, the global dynamics of migration and settlement, and the cultural practices of ritual and everyday expression in Queens, New York.

From the abstract:

“The term 'diaspora' connotes a dynamic social formation—a process of settlement and a tenuous sense of belonging based on the negotiation between the collective memory of home and responsive adaptations to host locales. While a global phenomenon, the local impact of shifting patterns of settlement in the multicultural city transforms urban spaces through the varied and overlapping inscriptions of new and adapted rituals. Using a Landscape Architecture studio conducted at the University of Toronto as the experimental means through which to investigate diasporic and transnational urban settlement and its implications for design, this paper focuses on final proposals for the case study site—a particular area of contestation in Queens, New York—as well as the pedagogical methodology used to generate them.” 

To view the full article, visit the Journal of Architectural Education.

Join Shift Magazine in celebrating the launch of this year's publication. SHIFT16 showcases student work created by Architecture and Visual Studies undergraduates. The third issue focuses on reactions: emotional responses and physical impulses generated from images/representations/symbols have been combined to create the collection of student work featured in the magazine. 

The official launch will be held Saturday, April 16th in the lobby of the Daniels Faculty building (230 College Street) from 3PM to 5PM. Refreshments and free copies of SHIFT16 will be provided. An afterparty will also be held at 10PM in Kensington Market. The exact location will be announced on the Facebook event page closer to the date: https://www.facebook.com/events/1722101428070055/

Shift Magazine is the annual undergraduate publication of the John H. Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, & Design at the University of Toronto.

List of Contributors to SHIFT16:
Lindsay Wu
Tawny Stoiber
Josh Silver
Rupa Morzaria
Valerie Marshall
Abby Yu 
Bo Zhang 
Kathy Zhong
Danni Zhang
Alexandra Kalman
Charlene Lo
Aisha Ali
Sebastian Lopez
Tala Alatassi
Megan Tan
Marienka Bishop-Kovac
Jessie Ji Huang
Lindsay Wu
Vincent Yung
Andrew Keung
Sunny Kim

Editorial Team:
Alexia Hovis, Editor In Chief
Najia Fatima, Editor
Emily Suchy, Editor
Valerie Marshall, Architecture Editor
Phat Le, Editor
Ashita Parekh, Editor
Abby Yu, Layout Designer
Josie Northern, Layout Designer
Isaac Seah, Website Designer
Jayvee Doroteo, Website Designer
Monique Lizardo, Communications Rep.
Gianina Ramos, Communications Rep.

The 4th Annual Gladstone Grow Op returns April 21-24.

This four-day festival will transform the Gladstone Hotel’s second floor with 30+ immersive installations that take on urbanism, environmental sustainability, landscape design, and contemporary art. The exhibit will include evening events as well as both on and off-site participatory events.

This year, the Daniels Faculty is proud to provide support for the art, architecture, and design collective NomadicVisionStudio, founded by Daniels Faculty masters students Claire Kurtin, Nadia Pulez, and Ramin Yamin. Their installation, Hypha, explores “the relationship between nature and urbanity through those places that they undesirably intersect.” The project is inspired by “the form of fungi and mould” and promises to challenge our “assumptions about the interdependency between architecture and the environment.”

Exhibition Hours:

April 21: 11am - 8pm
April 22: 11am - 10pm
April 23: 11am - 10pm
April 23: 10am - 5pm

Events:

Wednesday, April 20: Gow Op Talks 8:00 - 10:00pm
Thursday, April 21: Grow Op’s Alternative Food + Drink Show 6:00 - 1:00pm
Friday, April 22: Opening reception 7:00 - 10:00pm (After party 10:00pm - late)
Saturday, April 23: Offisite Installation by Robert Cram + After Party, OCADU Gallery, 7-10pm
Sunday, April 24: Gladstone Flea Goes Green, Melody Bar, 10:00am - 4:00pm

Daniels Faculty alumni also participating in the Gladstone Grow up include Rui Felix (MLA 2015) and Victoria Taylor (MLA 2008), the curator of last year’s festival.

For more information, visit the Gladstone Hotel’s website or the Facebook page for the event.

Follow NomadicVisionStudio on instagram @nomadicvisionstudio

Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni’s Shobak Special Protected Area Masterplan was commended by the Architectural Review as part of its 2016 MIPIM Future Projects Awards.

The Masterplan was developed under the Designing Ecological Tourism (DET) — a research platform led by Chaouni out of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. DET collaborated with the Royal Society of Conservation of Nature (RSCN) in Jordan, as well as Canadian and Jordanian experts and scholars on the masterplan, which was the only project by a university team to receive an award.

The groundwork research for the masterplan was initiated by an option studio at the Daniels Faculty. Students in the studio spent two weeks in Shobak and later developed speculative ideas for its future and eco-accommodations. The project was subsequently developed and detailed with RSCN, an interdisciplinary group of experts, and three Daniels students: Mani Tabrizi, Nicolas Roland and Keren Golan. In 2015, the masterplan was recognized with a ACSA Collaboration Award.

The project is explored in great detail in Chaouni’s book Ecotourism, Nature, Conservation, and Development: Re-imagining Jordan’s Shobak Arid Region.

Writes DET on its website:

In the field of desert conservation, this book presents a new conservation approach that preserves ecosystems, fosters local economic development and capitalizes on both natural and cultural landscapes for ecotourism. Situated in the special protected area of Shobak, a Jordanian desert region rich in historical background and biodiversity, the innovative strategic plan unites the goals of nature preservation and regional development in a groundbreaking way, by developing tools for promoting the untapped potentials of wild arid areas. It integrates the professions of landscape architecture and architecture with various other disciplines including natural resources management and ecology in order to provide complex, tailored solutions that are resilient to shifting socio-political contexts and harsh arid environments.

Related:

• Research team at Daniels launches a new website: Designing Ecological Tourism
• Daniels Faculty students complete two-week research workshop in Jordan
• Designing Ecological Tourism (DET) presents: "Living in the 'Rurban' — The furture of Guaratiba," in partnership with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
• Aziza Chaouni volunteers to design a music school for 2,000 children and youth in Morocco
• Aziza Chaouni participates in the New Cities Summit 2015

The 4th Annual Gladstone Grow Op takes place this weekend. (Don’t miss the opening reception this Friday, April 22!) Among the "must-see home farming prototypes” to take in (according to Canadian Architect) is Cricket Reactor by alumnus Jakob Dzamba (MArch 2011) of Third Millennium Farming.

Writes Christine Leu in Canadian Architect:

Cricket Reactor by Third Millennium Farming is an alternative approach to urban agriculture where city bio-wastes are used to farm algae and fungi, which are in turn fed to insects. In turn, the crickets are processed into an edible flour—a low carbon footprint form of protein.

…

The architectural language of the Reactor could be described as “antfarm-Modernist.” A large, clear, central atrium with detachable clear pods at the sides to accommodate a variety of programmes, or in this case, different bio-wastes. The density of the insects per square inch is evocative of urban living, and reminiscent of maximizing return on investment for repeating condominium units in the sky.

On Sunday, Dzamba the Cricket Reactor moves to the AGO for the Terrior Hospitality Symposium, which will include a number of “art installations that look beyond food production and preparation to draw from the wider ecology that informs these systems and open up new ways of thinking about the anthropocene, locality and place.”

Installations at the symposium will include Soil is the Mother by Victoria Taylor (MLA 2008) and Hypha by NomadicVisionStudio (founded by Daniels Faculty masters students Claire Kurtin, Nadia Pulez, and Ramin Yamin).

Related:

• Fungi and mold inspire NomadicVisionStudio's installation at the 4th Annual Gladstone Grow Op: April 21-24
• Daniels alum Jakub Dzamba interviewed on CBC radio stations across Canada
• M.Arch alum Jakub Dzamba featured speaker at upcoming Future Food Salon II

Lateral Office — the firm of Associate Professor Mason White and Lola Sheppard — has won a  Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) Urban Design Award for Impulse — a playful installation in the Place des Festival in Montreal.

The full team for the project included: Lateral Office (Architect & Co-Designer); CS Design (Lighting Design & Co-Designer); EGP Group (Engineering); Generique Design (Fabrication); Mitchell Akiyama (Sound); Robocut (Interactive); Iregular (Video); Maotik (Video).

Held in cooperation with Canadian municipalities, the winning projects are announced by the RAIC along with the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP), and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CLSA).

Impulse transforms Montreal’s arts district “into a space of urban play through a series of thirty interactive acoustic illuminated see-saws that respond and transform when in motion. The seesaws form repetitive units of light and sound that can be activated and played by the public to create a temporal, ever-changing event.”

The installation also incorporates a series of nine commissioned videos that visualize sound and are projected on buildings in the neighbourhood.

The Jury for the award commended the project for bringing people out into the city — even on cold winter evenings.

Related:

• Lateral Office transforms Montreal's art district with playful installation
• Lateral Office 'Makes Camp' at Chicago Architecture Biennial
• CBC Radio features Making Camp on Spark
• Mason White and Lateral Office win the Arctic Inspiration Prize
• Mason White and Lateral Office chosen to represent Canada at the 2014 Venice Biennale

Pin-ups have been un-pinned, exams have been written and students are undoubtedly catching up on some much needed sleep. Before shifting into summer mode, we thought this would be a good time to reflect on the past academic year. Here are the six most read news stories of the last 8 months.

6. Architectural Studies graduate Omar Gandhi "one of Canada's most exciting emerging designers," says the Globe and Mail

January 18, 2016

5. View the competition entries and have your say in the redesign of U of T's St. George Campus

October 5, 2015

View the winning design by KPMB Architects, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) and Urban Strategies.

4. #ReadingList: 3 books to read over the holidays

December 15, 2015

3. Photographs by Peter MacCallum document the transformation of One Spadina

June 4, 2014 (updated regularly)

View all One Spadina photos on the Daniels Faculty's Flickr page

2. Multigenerational housing: Daniels faculty and alumni rethink the family home

February 25, 2016

1. 12 things every grad student presenting their thesis should know

March 25, 2015

This year's Jane's Walks — a series of free, citizen-led walking tours held in nearly 200 cities around the world — take place this weekend. Inspired by writer and activist Jane Jacobs, the event gives participants the opportunity to explore neighbourhoods through the eyes of local residents.

With over 175 walks to choose from in Toronto alone, deciding which walks to attend can be overwhelming. Here is a list of 9 Jane's Walks being led by Daniels Faculty alumni and faculty May 6-8.

1. Why Socks Are Not Enough: Social Justice on the Danforth
Walk leader: Denise Pinto (MLA 2011) and Lois Didyk
May 6, 2016, 4:00 PM, 1.5 Hours
May 8, 2016, 4:00 PM, 1.5 Hours

2. East Danforth East - A Culinary Walking Tour
Walk leader: Phil Pothen (MLA 2006), Elise Aymer, Danning Liao, and Janet Masching
May 6, 2016, 11:00 AM, 2 Hours
May 8, 2016, 1:00 PM, 2 Hours
 

3. King and Spadina: One of The Two Kings
Walk leaders: Margie Zeidler (BArch 1987) and Paul Bedford (U of T Adjunct Professor)
May 7, 2016, 10:00 AM, 2.5 Hours

4. Walking around Gerrard Square
Walk leaders: Todd Irvine (Co-Instructor, Urban Ecology Field Course) and Dylan Reid
May 7, 2016, 10:00 AM, 2 Hours

5. Listening to the Language of Plants
Walk leaders: Yi Zhou (MLA 2013), Jasmeen Bains (MLA 2013), and Tyler Bradt (MLA 2013)
May 7, 2016, 11:00 AM, 1 Hour

6. Summerhill Summerdale
Walk leader: John van Nostrand (BArch 1972)
May 7, 2016, 2:00 PM, 2 Hours

7. Little Free Libraries: An Impromptu Reading Walk With Neighbours
Walk leader: Denise Pinto (MLA 2011)
May 7, 2016, 4:00 PM, 1.5 Hours

8. Walk the Green Line: Infrastructures of Park Space
Walk leader: Netami Stuart (MLA 2004)
May 8, 2016, 10:00 AM, 1 Hour

9. Walk with us Woodbridge!
Walk leaders: Gail Shillingford (BLA 1995) and Moira Wilson (MLA 2006)
May 8, 2016, 2:00 PM, 1 Hour

Did you know?

• Jane's Walk originated in Toronto, and Master of Landscape Architecture alumna Denise Pinto (MLA 2011) is the Global Director of the festival. Read our Q&A with Pinto, published last year.
• Jane Jacobs, who lived in Toronto from 1968 until her death in 2006, would have celebrated her 100th birthday this year on May 4. In honour of her centenary, a number of events are planned throughout Toronto (and beyond), including an exhibition at Urbanspace Gallery, Jane at Home, curated by Jim Jacobs and Margie Zeidler (BArch 1987).

The Daniels Faculty would like to congratulate Ja Architecture Studio — the office of Daniels Faculty alumni Nima Javidi (MUD 2005), Behnaz Assadi (MLA 2008), and Hanieh Rezaei (MUD 2004) — on receiving an Award of Merit from Canadian Architect for its project “111”. The project team included Master of Architecture students Kyle O'Brien and Zhou Tang.

111 is an urban infill project — three 3-storey residential units — set atop a commercial podium in Toronto’s Queen West neighbourhood. The Studio describes the project as “an exercise in architectural massing and typology,” which “aims to create change in this sensitive historic context without falling into either extremes of aggressive development or low-rise domestic conformity.”

Canadian Architect's Awards of Excellence is an annual awards program open to all architects registered in Canada and Canadian architectural graduates with buildings in the design stage. It is one of only two national award programs devoted exclusively to architecture.

This year's jury included Maxime Alexis Frappier, principal and lead designer at ACDF Architecture in Montreal; Pat Hanson, founding partner of gh3 in Toronto; and Johanna Hurme, cofounder of 5468796 Architecture in Winnipeg.

Canadian Architect will provide exclusive coverage of the award winners in it’s December 2015 issue. For more information, visit: www.canadianarchitect.com