The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is proud to announce that ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, an Indigenous-led exhibition organized by and first presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, will be on view in the Architecture and Design Gallery at 1 Spadina Crescent from October 25, 2023 – March 22, 2024.

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home was co-curated by Joar Nango (a Norway-based Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art - Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA). The exhibition showcases installations by Indigenous designers and artists, reflecting on how Arctic Indigenous communities relate to land and create empowered, self-determined spaces of home and belonging.

Through the exhibition, as well as its accompanying publication and programming, ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home aims to have long-term impact, opening new forms of dialogues and ways of thinking about Northern Indigenous practices of designing and building that are not normally considered in the canons of architecture.

“Towards Home recognizes that architectural design in this country has been generally insensitive to Indigenous peoples’ traditions and cultures,” says Jeannie Kim, Associate Professor at the Daniels Faculty and organizer of the Toronto exhibition. “Participating in this project, our Faculty hopes to broaden understandings, and to support our shared efforts towards fostering practices of land-based design.”

Work on view will include Taqralik Partridge and Tiffany Shaw’s The Porch, a transitional space unique to Northern living that welcomes Indigenous visitors into an institutional setting that has historically excluded them. Geronimo Inutiq’s I’m Calling Home presents a commissioned radio broadcast that recalls the central role that radio plays in both connecting Inuit communities and expediting colonialism. Nuna, an installation by asinnajaq (in conversation with Tiffany Shaw), is a tent-like structure that invites both sharing and reflection while evoking the four elements. Offernat (Votive Night) by Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson is an altar featuring a birch burl that evokes the burning of Sámi drums during Christianization in the 1700s.

The exhibition also facilitated the Futurecasting: Indigenous-led Architecture and Design in the Arctic workshop (co-curated Ella den Elzen and Nicole Luke) that brought together nine emerging architectural designers and duojars (craftpeope) to convene across Sapmi and Turtle Island to discuss what the future of design on Indigenous lands might become.

The full list of contributors includes: asinnajaq, Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson, Geronimo Inutiq, Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory. The original exhibition design was by Tiffany Shaw, Edmonton, with graphic design by FEED, Montreal.

The Exhibition Opening will take place on Wednesday, October 25. Additional updates and related programming will be announced soon.

Land Acknowledgement 

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. The land of 1 Spadina Crescent has been the home and an important trail of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Spadina is synonymous with Ishpadinaa, meaning “a place on a hill” in Anishinaabe. 

Also, we are acutely aware as architects, that unjust settler strategies and logics denigrated Indigenous land and architecture, particularly harming Indigenous people’s ability to create safe places to call home. Today, many of the ways these lands are used conflict with Indigenous values, practices, and histories. The acknowledgement of past wrongs and current realities are only the beginning of redressing and improving conditions, and creating a more just built environment. 

Image captions: 1) Nuna, asinnajaq in conversation with Tiffany Shaw. qulliq, asinnajaq in conversation with Ludovic Boney and Tiffany Shaw. 2) J'appelle chez nous / I'm calling home / Uvatinni Uqallajunga, Geronimo Inutiq. 3) All images credit ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home exhibition view, 2022. Photos Mathieu Gagnon © CCA. 

The IDEAS Impact Award seeks to recognize Daniels Faculty students for their contributions towards advancing inclusion, decolonial work, equity, accessibility and sustainability at the Faculty or in external communities. 

Seeing the opportunity to recognize their peers for exemplary contributions in this space, the Faculty’s three student unions—the Architectural and Visual Studies Student Union (AVSSU), the Forestry Graduate Student Association (FGSA) and the Graduate Architecture Landscape and Design Student Union (GALDSU)—established the award during the 2022-2023 academic year with the support of the Office of the Assistant Dean, Equity Diversity and Inclusion.  

Nominations were reviewed by the Student Impact Award Committee, which was composed of representatives from AVSSU, FGSA, GALDSU and the Office of the Assistant Dean, Equity Diversity and Inclusion. The mandate of the selection committee is to help the Daniels Faculty advance values of equity and inclusion by ensuring that the candidates selected meet or exceed the award criteria. 

Each recipient of the IDEAS Impact Award is given the lifetime title of Impact Fellow and will join a growing network of students in support of their development as social impact advocates and change-makers.

Meet the inaugural cohort of Impact Fellows:

Oluwatamilore (Tami) Ayeye  

A fourth-year student in the Honours Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies program, Ayeye is recognized for his impact as a mentor for younger students, and his sincere efforts in facilitating these relationships to build community among Black students. Through his spirited work in Black Students in Design, Ayeye supports fellow students while making design and industry skills more accessible to budding Black designers. 

Megan Barrientos  

Barrientos, a Master of Architecture (MARC) student, is recognized for asking critical questions about race and design, her demonstration of her involvement in supporting BIPOC communities, her responsiveness and spirited advocacy in the face of rising racial discrimination, and her honouring and support of Asian communities during critical times. 

Gal Volosky Fridman 

A third-year MARC student, Fridman is recognized for her commitment toward finding ways to create spaces that facilitate appropriate and meaningful experiences for the elderly population, and her efforts toward navigating a sincere and personal connection and new insights on larger global demographic trends. 

Farwa Mumtaz 

Mumtaz, a recent graduate of the MARC program, is recognized for her efforts to facilitate meaningful connections and mentorship between students of all backgrounds while navigating the unforeseen challenges brought on by the pandemic, and for her sincere and fierce commitment to building meaningful relationships and honouring Muslim women and the Muslim community at large. 

Emilie Tamtik  

A third-year MARC student, Tamtik is recognized for facilitating a space for students to navigate unconventional and innovative modes of fashion design and production, her efforts to ask critical questions about the life of materials, and her work in planning and executing the Victoria College Environmental Fashion Show, demonstrating tangible impacts through sustainable design practices and honouring the creativity and activism of student designers. 

The presence of robotics in art, research, design and construction has undeniably changed the way these fields operate and will no doubt play an even bigger role in the future. For more than a decade, the Association for Robots in Architecture has been working to consolidate knowledge in this area, bringing universities together to form a transdisciplinary network of robot users worldwide.

This spring, the Daniels Faculty is pleased to host ROB|ARCH 2024, the Association’s highly regarded biennial workshop and conference, alongside the University of Toronto Robotics Institute, the Design + Technology Lab at The Creative School (Toronto Metropolitan University) and the Waterloo School of Architecture. 

Each gathering aims to bring together international teams of researchers and practitioners to share expertise, foster networks, increase knowledge and stimulate innovation. ROB|ARCH 2024 will consist of three days of hands-on workshops (May 21 to 23) and two days of conference presentations (May 24 to 25). 

The hosting team, which includes the Daniels Faculty’s Maria Yablonina, Zachary Mollica, Paul Howard Harrison, Nicholas Hoban and Brady Peters, has selected the theme Beyond Optimization. Intended as a provocation, the 2024 conference will reflect on the changes affecting the field of robotics in art, design and architecture—and how to respond by shifting priorities and examining the criteria by which we evaluate research. The hosts aim to move beyond technically focused discourse toward inclusive conversations that centre critical approaches in robotics. 

A detailed list of workshops and registration details will be announced in the fall of 2023, and discounted registration fees will be available for students. Conference events will be hosted in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent. 

Dates 

• Workshops: May 21 to 23, 2024 
• Conference: May 24 to 25, 2024 (call for papers deadline: October 16, 2023) 

Visit the ROB|ARCH website and follow @robotsinarchitecture for the latest information. 

The Daniels Faculty is profoundly saddened to have learned of the death of Professor Emeritus George Baird, alumnus (BArch 1962), former dean and beloved friend of the Faculty. 

Professor Baird was a preeminent figure in the history and evolution of both the Faculty and the architectural profession. As an architect, scholar, educator and mentor, his contribution to the discourse around and practice of architecture was profound, progressive and international in its reach.  

Within the Faculty, Baird’s impact as a leader, teacher and guiding influence cannot be overstated. Five years after graduating from what was then U of T’s School of Architecture, he joined the faculty in 1967, serving as acting chair and chair of the architecture program from 1983 to 1985. In 1993, Baird left U of T to teach at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, then returned to serve as Dean of the Faculty from 2004 to 2009. As academic leader, he was dean when John H. Daniels and Myrna Daniels made their historic gift to the Faculty, changing its trajectory and reputation as the newly named John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.   

After the completion of his deanship, Baird continued to teach courses, serve as a thesis advisor and participate in thesis reviews as professor emeritus. The George Baird Lecture—established in his honour upon his retirement as an enduring legacy at the Faculty and the University—continues to bring scholars and practitioners from around the world to speak at the Faculty. (This fall’s George Baird Lecture, scheduled for Thursday, October 19 and featuring architect Bruce Kuwabara, took place as planned.) 

It is the rare architect whose voice and contributions straddle the worlds of practice and theory so significantly, but Baird’s very much did. The Faculty would like to offer its condolences to his wife Elizabeth and to his many colleagues, friends and admirers.  

Those who would like to share their remembrances are encouraged to do so in the comments on our social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn) or to send an email to communications@daniels.utoronto.ca and we will post them below. 

“George Baird was a brilliant intellectual who combined teaching and practice, design and building, research and writing, public lectures and criticism. I [had] known him since I was 18, when I began my first year at the University of Toronto. George was my thesis advisor, and upon graduating in 1972, I worked for him for three years, along with my contemporaries John Van Nostrand, Joost Bakker and Barry Sampson. It was an ongoing education. George was a very cool intellectual. He knew everybody.

“At George’s office, we [alternated] between doing projects and major pieces of public policy on the city. His knowledge and provocations expanded and enriched our understanding of architecture at the urban level, as propositions about the city, society, growth and change. George viewed architecture as a gesture in a social, physical and cultural context.

“Possessing astonishing curiosity, George evolved his prolific and enduring practice as a scholar, writer, teacher, practitioner and mentor with an exceptional kindness and generosity for generations of students and practitioners. He played at the level of what was happening in the context, whether it was a review, a symposium or just lunch. It was very fluctuating. It didn’t always stay at one level.

“One of the things that I most respect about George is that he was often the smartest person in the room. His knowledge base was so wide, and his curiosity covered everything: film, fashion, cars, food, cities, art, politics, provincial and municipal issues. He was all over it. [But] what I will cherish most is George’s generosity and kindness.”

– Bruce Kuwabara, alumnus (BArch 1972) and founding partner at KPMB Architects

“I knew George Baird for many decades, since my first year as a teacher, which for me began at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1994, a year after George joined its faculty as a senior member, already a renowned architect and critic.

“I mention the year and the venue simply to point out that, while George has been a central figure for the life of architecture in Toronto, his presence and impact were international. In addition to educating generations of architects during two different eras in Toronto—from the late 1960s through the time of his departure for Harvard in 1994, and then again beginning in 2004, when he returned as Dean of the Daniels Faculty—he also trained a generation of GSD students during his decade-long sojourn there. George’s impact on architecture, however, was far wider than even his direct role as teacher and mentor at this or any other school. He had been a critical voice in architecture since his continuous wave of criticism, commentary and analysis began in 1969. 

“But while George was an erudite scholar and critic, he was also the sort of architect and teacher who would scrutinize—in a student review, for instance—the placement of a column in parking bays, noting when it would interfere with the turning radius of a car and make parking impossible. He scrutinized, in other words, the most material conditions of architecture. One of his best pieces of writing is his observation in his small essay on Alvar Aalto of how Aalto used the travel of the hand on handrails to structure the experience of space. This was George’s interest in the haptic, not readily photographed reality of architecture.   

“T. S. Eliot once wrote of the novelist Henry James that James had a mind so refined that not an idea could penetrate it. Eliot was paying James a compliment, saying that, for James, ideas existed through the concreteness of things, of gestures, of the smallest observations of mood, of affect. Broad statements were of no value to James. Likewise, for George, the concreteness of architecture was its essence, as present to him as the voice of the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, whose thoughts and words he kept with him as some people do the verses of poets. All things precise and concrete.” 

– Robert Levit, Acting Dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design

“George was my professor and then Faculty associate. He always inquired into the deep roots of architecture and modernity. He rose the bar.” 

– Brian Boigon, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design

 “RIP George, a wonderful colleague and friend. We will miss you.”

 – Charles Waldheim, John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies Program at Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Upon my arrival in Canada in 1975, artist and architect Melvin Charney suggested that, with respect to my interest in urban design and the study of cities, I should go to Toronto to study and meet with George Baird. I called George on a Friday before taking the train from Montreal to Toronto. In closing our long phone conversation, George suggested that we meet at his office first thing Monday morning. 

I arrived at George’s office at 35 Britain Street, where he asked me to give him a little time to sort out a few items for the week before he took me to the University. He suggested that while I was waiting I could look at two reports that his team had produced for the City of Toronto. (The reports were On Building Downtown and Built Form Analysis.)

Later, in the car going to the School of Architecture, George asked what I thought of the reports. I replied that they were interesting but lack an explicit theoretical framework to structure their methodology.

This was the beginning of a great and long-lasting exchange, a collaborative teaching relationship and ultimately a friendship.

I introduced George to the work of European theoreticians such as Saverio Muratori, Carlo Aymonino, Bernard Huet and Christian Devillers, to name a few. These architects, teachers and theoreticians had written extensively on the relationship between architectural typology and urban morphology. I had the opportunity of having been taught by some of them.

In exchange, George introduced me to his rigorous way of looking and analyzing every aspect of life, and understanding how from most daily actions one can see trends in the slow evolution of societies. Both sides of these approaches are based on the longue durée principle as defined by Fernand Braudel.

George’s interest in semiology and the concepts of langue and parole were other possible introductions to the reading of cities through the relationship between architectural typology and urban morphology.

Although I was 26 at the time, George gave me my first teaching assignment. He asked me to give a lecture to explain these theoretical concepts to his fifth-year students. This then became a fifth-year seminar and later became the basis of the North Jarvis study and project. 

George’s next fifth-year class studied a part of downtown Toronto. Under George’s direction, students analyzed North Jarvis’ urban morphology and studied in detail several of its architectural types. Then students produced projects, showing how it is possible, being inspired by the existing, to densify and transform the whole neighbourhood, with improvements to the urban fabric.

This study was certainly the first one of its kind produced in North America. It was published in “Vacant Lottery,” Design Quarterly 108, 1978. In this publication George was associated with Barton Myers.

My relationship with George on urban design developed further at the school after George became the director of the program in 1983, when he asked me to co-ordinate the third-year programme, then dedicated to human settlement.

When I was director of the Architecture and Urban Design Division for the City of Toronto, my team produced an analysis of the morphology of the city for the 1991 Plan. George was a significant critic and contributor to this work. He wrote an introduction to our City Patterns publication, entitled “A Short History of Toronto’s Urban Form.” This introduction, as well as the study, laid the foundations and many of the objectives for Cityplan ’91, Toronto’s official plan at the end of the 20th century.

The passing of George Baird is a loss not only for the school, or for the city, but for the discipline of architecture and urban design. It is all the more poignant at a time when Toronto seems to allow a free-for-all attitude to the city’s form, lacking any sense of the rigour, culture and quality that George had brought to the design of cities.

– Marc Baraness, architect and former associate professor at the University of Toronto

“George was a gentleman and a scholar. Kind and wise. Incisive and rigorous. Most of all, a supportive colleague and friend whose advice and friendship helped me find my voice.”

– Nina-Marie Lister, Professor and Graduate Director of the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University

“A tremendous loss for Toronto, for Canadian architecture and for U of T. He will be very missed, but always remembered.”

– Siobhan Sweeny, alumna (MARC 2016) and intern architect at Sweeny & Co. Architects Inc.

Architect and academic Ludovico Centis is scheduled to speak at the Daniels Faculty on Friday, September 15. 

Based in Northern Italy, Centis is Assistant Professor in Urbanism at the University of Trieste and founder of the Verona-based architecture and planning office The Empire.

From 2010 to 2019, he also edited the architecture magazine San Rocco, of which he was a co-founder.

The title of Centis’s Friday lecture at Daniels, which will take place between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. in Room 330 of the Daniels Building, is “On the art of reshaping lagoons.” His talk is part of this semester’s Integrated Urbanism Studio, but attendance is open to all.

In 2013-14, Centis was the Peter Reyner Banham Fellow at the University at Buffalo, and his research focuses on the ways in which individuals and institutions, as well as desires and power, shape cities and landscapes.

Recent books include 2022’s The Lake of Venice: A Scenario for Venice and its Lagoon (co-authored with Lorenzo Fabian), They Must Have Enjoyed Building Here: Reyner Banham and Buffalo (2021) and A Parallel of Ruins and Landscapes (2019).

The Integrated Urbanism Studio, in which the Faculty’s architecture, landscape architecture and urban design students collaborate on shared projects, explores design’s agency in dealing with subjects such as the climate crisis, housing, spatial justice, decarbonization and other urban infrastructures.

Centis is the first of several speakers who will be addressing the Studio this term.

The Daniels Faculty is playing host this month to Architecture of Health: The Annual Zeidler-Evans Lecture. The yearly public address, administered by McMaster University and delivered by a researcher with expertise and interest in the connections between architecture, physical space and health, will take place on Monday, October 23. 

This year’s lecture, entitled A City That Can Save Us, will be given by Dr. Robin Mazumder (pictured below). A post-doctoral research fellow at the Technical University of Berlin, Mazumder acquired his PhD in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo and is an outspoken advocate for healthy urban design.

His talk, which will be moderated by journalist Nahlah Ayed of CBC Radio’s IDEAS, will focus on innovative approaches to health education, research and care through the design, use and analysis of physical space.

The lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. and a reception will follow.

Attendees are requested to RSVP via email by October 18 at FHSevents5@mcmaster.ca or by phone at 905-525-9140 (Ext. 20250).

Established in 2022, when the inaugural talk was given by author and academic Annmarie Adams, the Zeidler-Evans Lecture is sponsored by the family of John Evans, the first dean of McMaster University’s School of Medicine, to honour renowned architect Eberhard Zeidler, who passed away last year at age 95.

Between 1967 and 1972, Zeidler and Evans collaborated closely on the creation of McMaster’s Health Sciences Centre, the design for which combined a tertiary hospital and a university facility to teach healthcare professionals, thereby transforming how hospitals are created, built and used.

The German-born architect, who also designed such iconic buildings as the Eaton Centre in Toronto, had a long and sustained relationship with the Daniels Faculty, serving as an adjunct professor at the school from 1983 to 1995 and establishing the Eberhard Zeidler Scholarship with his wife Jane in 1999.

He is also the namesake of the Eberhard Zeidler Library, a 37,000-volume facility in the revitalized Daniels Building, to which he and Jane generously contributed.

Banner image: John Evans (left) and Eberhard Zeidler, after whom the annual Zeidler-Evans Lecture is named, collaborated closely on the creation and building of the McMaster University Health Sciences Centre.

Welcome to the start of the 2023-2024 academic year! Whether you’re a returning student or it’s your first year on campus, I hope that your time with us is a happy and productive one. The Daniels Faculty is a special place, and we want you to reap as much out of your experience here as possible. 

This year as in previous ones, your coursework will be complemented by an exciting roster of extracurricular offerings. Our Fall 2023 Public Program series, launching this month, includes lectures and presentations by some of the leading designers and thinkers in their fields, such as architect Bruce Kuwabara (October 19), curator Tina Rivers Ryan (November 21) and wildfire expert Jonah Susskind (November 30); the series kicks off on September 21 with a lecture by Senegalese architect Nzinga Mboup on the subject of Architecture Rooted in Place.

Look out, too, for the staging of two new exhibitions at One Spadina—a unique display of scale models of Le Corbusier works (opening October 4 in the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery) and the Indigenous-led exhibition ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home (in the Architecture and Design Gallery starting October 25)—as well as a range of year-round activities planned around the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Black History Month, and other noteworthy dates.

To be sure, your schoolwork will keep you busy, but I urge you all to attend and to take in as many of these inspiring and illuminating events as you can.

During Orientation and in the coming weeks, I’ll look forward to connecting with as many of you as possible. Dean Juan Du recently embarked on a short-term leave, and will be back in the Dean’s Office later this fall. I will be serving as Acting Dean until her return.

Now and throughout the year, please feel free to reach out to the Dean’s Office (daniels-dean@daniels.utoronto.ca) and to the Office of the Registrar and Student Services (registrar@daniels.utoronto.ca) if you have any questions or concerns.

On behalf of the Faculty, I want to wish you all a great start of term and a happy and productive semester.

Robert Levit (he/him) 
Acting Dean
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design

Photos by Harry Choi

The Daniels Faculty community is saddened to learn of the passing of Raymond Moriyama on September 1, 2023 at the age of 93.  

Moriyama was a leading light in the world of Canadian and global architecture. While his fascination with environments and architecture began much earlier, his formal education in architecture started at the University of Toronto, where he received his Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1954. His studies continued at McGill University, where he received his Master of Architecture degree in 1957. After establishing his own firm in 1958, Moriyama joined with the late Ted Teshima in 1970 to form Moriyama & Teshima Architects (now MTA). His career soared in the postwar period of significant investment in public architecture, and his buildings contributed to both the nation’s buoyant modern identity and its message of multicultural democracy.  

Architecture, Moriyama stated in a 2020 biographical documentary, “has to express democracy, equality, inclusion of all people and social justice. If not, then architecture really is a hollow sham.”  

“My appreciation for Raymond’s achievements,” says Robert Levit, Acting Dean of the Daniels Faculty, “began before I knew his name. Twenty some years ago, when I was a newcomer to this city and to Canada, I remember entering the Toronto Reference Library and being startled by its beauty and sumptuous accommodation of public life. Since those days I have come to develop a deep appreciation not only for the much larger legacy of works he has left to all of us, but also for the culture of architecture that he has left to those who have known him and in the firm that he built: Moriyama Teshima Architects. The country and the architectural community will miss him deeply.” 

Born in Vancouver in 1929, Moriyama knew that he wanted to be an architect from an early age. After a severe burn at the age of four, he had an extended period of convalescence, during which he became fascinated by his observation of a nearby construction site—an experience that was the spark for his life-long interest in architecture. As a Japanese-Canadian, however, he endured tremendous racism and discrimination. When Moriyama was 12, his father was incarcerated as a prisoner of war, and the rest of his family was forcibly interned in a wartime camp. When Moriyama used the public shower there, he would be teased about his burn-scarred back. Consequently, he took great risk to escape for baths in a nearby river, where he also constructed a treehouse lookout. The totality of this experience instilled in him the powerful combination of landscape, architecture and freedom. 

After Moriyama enrolled in the University of Toronto School of Architecture in 1949, Professor Eric Arthur, an innovator in the world of modern architecture, became a great mentor. Arthur’s encouragement, along with a financial scholarship, reinforced to Moriyama that he could succeed with his design talent. Of his University of Toronto education, he recalled, “In many ways, I guess architecture gave me a much better basis to think about life, kind of a push to start thinking about what I could start contributing to the country, to the community.” 

Among Moriyama’s many celebrated buildings are the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre, the Ontario Science Centre, the Toronto Reference Library, the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, Science North in Sudbury and the National War Museum in Ottawa. While individually unique, Moriyama’s museums, cultural centres, universities, city halls and other public places collectively express his signature inventiveness and humanism. For Moriyama, successful public buildings inspire new physical and emotional experiences.  

Moriyama & Teshima’s Yorkville office was a magical place. The partners transformed an autobody shop into a haven that from its gates could easily have been mistaken for a temple. Passing through a lushly planted courtyard, one left the city behind. At reception, one needed to cross an interior moat with lily pads and large goldfish to reach the rear offices. The boardrooms were hidden behind Japanese sliding doors, and the tiered, abundantly daylit open studios were complimented by an adjacent daycare centre for employees’ children. Staff worked hard but also participated in a range of social and wellness activities, including not one but two softball teams—demonstrating Moriyama’s emphasis on both hard work and comfort, humanity and well-being. 

Throughout his life, Moriyama was recognized with numerous awards and honours. He was a member of both the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada, as well as Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun. He received the Gold Medal from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, and was an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Moriyama received 10 honorary degrees, including an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Toronto in 1994. His buildings received numerous Governor General’s Awards for Architecture and other esteemed design awards. 

Long before his retirement in 2003, Moriyama mentored a new generation of architectural leaders, including his sons Ajon (who now runs Ajon Moriyama Architect) and Jason Moriyama (a partner at MTA), along with MTA partners Diarmuid Nash, Daniel Teramura, Carol Phillips and Brian Rudy. The practice bearing his name retains an esteemed reputation for innovation and placemaking.  

The sincerest of condolences are offered to Moriyama’s wife Sachi, to his children, grandchildren and extended family, and to his many friends and colleagues. 

On September 8, CBC Radio’s The Current with Matt Galloway aired an interview with architect and alumnus Bruce Kuwabara on Mariyama’s childhood experience in a Japanese internment camp and how it led him to make buildings that bring people together. To listen to it, click here.

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is pleased to present its Fall 2023 Public Program.

Our Program this semester addresses a range of pertinent issues concerning the natural and built environments, continuing the Faculty’s tradition of fostering dialogue and exchanging knowledge through a curated series of exhibitions, lectures, book talks, panel discussions and symposia. 

Through these events, we aim to engage our local and international communities on the important social, political and environmental challenges confronting our disciplines and the world today.  Topics addressed include design and social justice, urbanization and housing, art and media, and ecology and landscape resilience.  

All of the events in our Program are free and open to the public. Register in advance and consult the calendar for up-to-date details at daniels.utoronto.ca/events.  All events will be livestreamed and available to view on the Daniels Faculty's YouTube channel. 

September 21, 6:30 p.m. ET  
Architecture Rooted in Place
Featuring Nzinga B. Mboup (WOROFILA)

Register

September 28, 6:30 p.m. ET 
The Architecture of Disability
Featuring David Gissen (Parsons School of Design, The New School)

Register

October 4, 5:30 p.m. ET
Exhibition Opening—Le Corbusier: Models
A travelling exhibition of models of Le Corbusier works from the private collection of Singapore-based RT+Q Architects

Register

October 12, 6:30 p.m. ET  
Detroit-Moscow-Detroit: An Event in Honour of Jean-Louis Cohen
Featuring Claire Zimmerman (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto) and Christina E. Crawford (Art History Department, Emory University)

Register

October 19, 6:30 p.m. ET 
George Baird Lecture: Evolving Influence
Featuring Bruce Kuwabara  (KPMB Architects)

Register

October 25, 5:30 p.m. ET
Exhibition Opening—ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home
An Indigenous-led exhibition and publication project organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture with the Daniels Faculty

Register

November 2, 6:30 p.m. ET
Technical Lands: A Critical Primer
Featuring Charles Waldheim (Graduate School of Design, Harvard University)

Register

November 21, 6:30 p.m. ET
Media Art’s Future, Present, and Past: Notes from the Field
Featuring Tina Rivers Ryan (Buffalo AKG Art Museum)

Register

November 23, 6:30 p.m. ET
On Relationality in Housing and Design
Featuring David Fortin (School of Architecture, University of Waterloo)

Register

November 30, 6:30 p.m. ET
Landscape Strategies for a Fire-Prone Planet
Featuring Jonah Susskind (SWA Group)

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Associate professor Daniel Chung is this year’s beneficiary of the Mayflower Research Fund, an endowment established by a generous donor to encourage and stimulate research in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, and allows for collaboration with other areas of the University.

Chung’s current research examines a building’s envelope—the roof, walls and surfaces that are in contact with the outdoors—to better predict the effects of climate change on buildings.  

With support from the Mayflower Research Fund, he will advance his research on building-envelope performance as it relates to moisture flows and moisture-related damage. 

“If we can more easily monitor moisture throughout the building, not just at the surface, and know what is happening across all facades, like a fit-bit that monitors day-to-day activity, we can attune buildings to have adaptive properties that respond to varying climatic conditions and prevent building deterioration before it becomes an expensive and time-consuming process to address and repair,” he says.

Both a registered architect and a professional engineer, Chung will direct his grant funding, totalling $10,000, to test and develop a new assessment method for real-time moisture-transport behaviour by validating the use of what is known as dielectric permittivity sensors (a type of water-sensitive probe ordinarily used to test the moisture content of soil) to measure and track the amount of water present in the facades of buildings. 

The data collected in this research will be used to demonstrate the potential of the method’s use for in-situ moisture content assessments, and will be leveraged when applying for additional external funding in the coming academic year that will focus on sensing transient three-dimensional moisture flows through multi-layered building envelope assemblies. 

A guarded hot box measures heat flow through building envelope materials. It is currently under construction in Chung's lab, and will be used in the project supported by the Mayflower Research Fund. 

Since its establishment in 2018, the Mayflower Research Fund has supported research across a range of topics, from improving fresh-air circulation in multi-unit buildings (Bomani Khemet, 2022) and the effects of interior light on human psychology and physiology in Canada’s subarctic and polar regions (Alstan Jakubiec, 2021) to advancing research in computational design with a focus on robotics (Maria Yablonina, 2020) and an in-depth study of the design of suburban parks (Fadi Masoud, 2019).

Faculty members with full-time appointments at the Daniels Faculty are eligible to apply.