The winners of this year's American Society of Landscape Architects Student Awards include a pair of recent graduates from the Daniels Faculty's MLA program.

Proposed intervention strategies for sand dune stabilization, recreational access, and vegetation growth. Image from Waiyee Chou's thesis project.

Waiyee Chou won an Honour Award in Research for her thesis project on water conservation in the Turpan Depression.

Turpan is an arid region in far-western China that relies on a system of "karez wells" for irrigation. The wells provide drinking water to approximately 50,000 households, but they aren't just infrastructure: they have existed since the days of the Silk Road, giving them immense historical value to the local — mostly Uighur — population. Chou's project examined the well system and proposed ways of supplementing it with new water conservation techniques, like grey-water recycling and atmospheric water generation.

"Through her thesis, Waiyee cleverly tackled a series of issues that link landscape knowledge with cultural heritage and climate change in a part of the world where an indigenous minority, and their way of life, are being challenged," says Chou's thesis advisor, assistant professor Fadi Masoud. "Her intensive research, site visits, and visual translation of these cultural and operative landscapes is of immense value for scholars, designers, and the local inhabitants."

The ASLA jury was impressed by the comprehensive nature of Chou's research. "This study," they wrote, "although regional in scale, promises to restore the ancient connections between people, nature, and landscape in contemporary life."

Section of "phase two." Image from Yantong Guo's thesis project.

Yantong Guo won an Honour Award in Residential Design for her thesis. The project tackled a unique urban design challenge in Mongolia, where nomadic peoples have had their traditional lifestyles upended by increasingly erratic weather patterns and changes in government policy. As a result, many nomads have left the steppes and settled on the fringes of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital, where they live in what have come to be known as "ger districts." ("Ger" is the Mongolian word for "yurt.")

These ger districts consist of a mixture of houses and tents surrounded by high fences. Municipal services are sparse, so many residents draw their water from communal water kiosks and use pit toilets.

Guo travelled to Ulaanbaatar and consulted with the Ger Community Mapping Centre and GerHub, a pair of NGOs that are working to improve conditions in the ger districts. Based on those conversations, she devised a three-step plan for creating new public amenities for ger district residents.

As a first step, ger communities would build shelters around their water kiosks. The shelters would provide protection from winter weather, and would have public seating. Guo believes this would stimulate community cohesion, setting the stage for step two: greenhouses, which residents would build in their courtyards. The greenhouses would replace some of the fencing between homes, which would further promote community cohesion while also providing a way for residents to grow food. Guo suggests that the greenhouses could even be used as a source of passive heat in winter, possibly reducing the amount of coal that ger district residents need to burn in order to stay warm.

In the third step, Guo envisions the ger district residents, empowered by the first two steps, taking the development process into their own hands. She envisions a future where homes in the districts share infrastructure for waste management and water filtration, leading to a cleaner and safer community for all involved.

"The Mongolian government has failed to provide help to ger district residents," Guo says. "As a result, most of the improvement is from NGOs. The NGOs can't plan large-scale projects, so this could be a starting point."

Her thesis advisor was associate professor Georges Farhat.

Chou and Guo will both receive free registration at the 2019 ASLA Conference on Landscape Architecture in San Diego, where all of this year's ASLA Awards recipients will be honoured with a ceremony. The conference begins on November 15.

Joel Goodwin, who is in the first year of his PhD studies in the Daniels Faculty's forestry program, has received one of this year's C. David Naylor University Fellowships.

The prestigious award, valued at $30,000, is granted annually to as many as two high-achieving first-year doctoral students (or doctoral-stream master's students) who graduated from a university in Atlantic Canada. It's named for former University of Toronto president David Naylor, and it was endowed by a gift from the Arthur L. Irving Foundation.

Goodwin's track record of volunteer work and his exemplary performance at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia, where he earned his MSc, made him eligible.

U of T News writes:

Goodwin will be studying trap optimization for bark, woodboring, ambrosia and other related beetle species – all considered invasive species in Canada.

Goodwin will be travelling to northern Ontario and central Louisiana to collect data and better understand the beetles' behaviour and how they interact with their environments.

Inspired by his master’s degree research, which involved the behaviour of invasive leaf-mining weevils in Nova Scotia forests, Goodwin says he wants to better understand insect behaviour to save native trees.

“Canada is big on importing and exporting and, with climate change, we can provide a home to these species who maybe couldn’t live here before and have routes to get here now,” said Goodwin.

Goodwin will be studying under the supervision of adjunct assistant professor Jeremy Allison and Sandy Smith, director of the Daniels Faculty's forestry graduate programs.

This year's other C. David Naylor University Fellow is Seshu Iyengar, who is studying biological physics.

Photograph of Joel Goodwin by Perry King.

The Daniels Faculty's new home at One Spadina Crescent has just added yet another trophy to its growing collection. At last night's Heritage Toronto Awards, the Daniels Building won this year's prize for Built Heritage.

The Heritage Toronto Awards honour organizations and individuals that support the preservation of the city's history. One Spadina caught the jury's attention for its reuse of the renovated 19th-century Knox College building, which now forms the southern portion of the Daniels Building. The jury was particularly impressed by the way the older structure exists "in dialogue, but not in competition" with the newly built northern portion.

The Daniels Building — designed by principal architects Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner of NADAAA, with heritage architects ERA — has recently also been recognized with awards from Architectural Conservancy Ontario and the city of Toronto.

Photograph by Nic Lehoux.

On Wednesday morning, the University of Toronto's Faculty Club hosted the Daniels Faculty's awards breakfast, where donors who have endowed student awards dine with the young architects and designers who have recently benefitted from their generosity.

More than a dozen donors were in attendance, and so were students from across the Daniels Faculty's graduate and undergraduate programs who had received admission awards or in-course awards.

Also in attendance were a number of Daniels Faculty instructors and staff members, including Dean Richard Sommer, who delivered remarks.

Dean Richard Sommer.

Addressing the donors in the room, he said: "Your generosity in establishing awards is an important means of recognizing the promise, academic excellence, and the sheer talent of so many of our students. And let's not forget the importance of providing financial support for our students in these sometimes difficult times."

Daniels students Elspeth Holland (third-year MLA) and Kevin Nitiéma (fourth-year BA) took the podium on behalf of their classmates to thank the gathered donors. "Congratulations to all the award recipients," said Holland. "It's extremely encouraging to be recognized for our work, and to be enabled to take opportunities that might not [otherwise] have been a financial option."

Students Elspeth Holland and Kevin Nitiéma.

The University of Toronto donors in attendance at the breakfast were:

Mr. Clive Allen, representing the Barbara Allen Memorial Scholarship in Visual Studies.

Ms. Brenda van Ginkel, representing the Professor Blanche Lemco van Ginkel Admission Scholarship.

Mr. Greg Hildebrand, representing the exp Scholarship.

Mr. Pradhan Prabhakara on behalf of Mrs. Komala Prabhakar, representing the Komala Prabhakar Graduate Student Endowment Award.

Mr. Nelson Wong, representing the Nelson Wong Architect Inc. Award.

David Rich, representing the Ontario Association of Architects’ Scholarship.

Ingrid Little, registrar at the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects, and Doris Chee, past president of the OALA, representing the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects Scholarship.

Mr. Brodie Townley and Mr. Taylor Townley on behalf of Ms. Eve Lewis, representing the Paul Oberman Graduate Student Endowment Award.

Mr. Peter Ortved, representing the Peter Prangnell Award.

Mr. Guillermo Cordero, representing the SOPREMA Award.

Mr. John Teshima, representing the Ted Teshima Memorial Leadership Award.

Mr. Carl Blanchaer, from WZMH Architects, representing the WZMH Architects – Oxford Properties Graduate Student Endowment Award.

The Daniels Faculty thanks all its donors for their continued support of our students, programs, and facilities.

The Daniels Faculty's new home at One Spadina Crescent has once again been recognized for its outstanding design. At Thursday's Architectural Conservancy Ontario Heritage Awards, the Daniels Building was named the winner of 2019's Paul Oberman Award for Adaptive Reuse.

The award—named for real estate developer and heritage preservationist Paul Oberman, who died in 2011—honours architectural projects that revive older buildings.

The Daniels Building—designed by principal architects Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner of NADAAA, with heritage architects ERA—incorporates a neo-Gothic structure that was originally built in 1875. The melding of that 19th-century building with a three-storey, modern rear addition makes One Spadina a prime example of adaptive reuse in Toronto.

The Daniels Faculty's new headquarters, now entering its third school year, was honoured with an Award of Excellence at last week's Toronto Urban Design Awards.

The TUDA jury recognized the Daniels Building for making the most of a "challenging but glorious" location in the midst of Spadina Crescent. "The designers have ingeniously exploited these constraints," the jury report says, "delivering an iconic landscape and building expansion that serves as a significant anchor to the university campus and, playing up its 360 degrees of exposure, addresses the public around the circle."

The award recognizes the work of One Spadina's designers, Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner, principals of NADAAA, and their collaborators: architect of record Adamson and Associates, landscape architects Public Work, and hertiage architects ERA.

And One Spadina's win wasn't the only point of pride for the Daniels Faculty. Zoal Razaq, a graduate student at the faculty, won an Award of Excellence for "The Urban Living Room," her concept for a new master plan for Toronto's Port Lands.

Also of note: an Award of Merit for the University of Toronto's new Myhal Centre for Engineering Innovation and Entrepreneurship, designed by Montgomery Sisam Architects Inc., in association with Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.

The TUDAs are held biannually by the city of Toronto. Details on all of this year's winners are in the jury report.

Photograph by Nic Lehoux

Kinan Hewitt (MArch 2018), a Daniels Faculty graduate, is the winner of 2018’s Prix de Rome in Architecture for emerging practitioners, a prestigious award presented annually by the Canada Council for the Arts.

The Prix de Rome is awarded to a recent graduate of a Canadian architectural school who has shown promise in the field of contemporary architectural design. The $34,000 prize can be used to finance an internship at a renowned architectural firm anywhere in the world. Winners can also use their prize money to travel to sites of architectural interest.

Hewitt, who is currently interning at KPMB in Toronto, is exploring internship options at firms in London and Copenhagen. He intends to use his prize to engage in research on the topic of co-housing—the increasingly popular practice of concentrating multiple households under one roof.

“Co-housing interests me as an alternative housing model that can address the city’s housing affordability crisis,” Hewitt says. “The Prix de Rome is giving me the opportunity to pursue a topic that I’m interested in and passionate about. I hope I can bring my research back to Toronto, or wherever I land in Canada, and start to apply it.”

While at Daniels, Hewitt completed a master’s thesis, “Grounding the Cloud,” that explored humanity’s relationship with data and data centres in the digital age. His previous awards include the AIA Henry Adams Medal and Certificate (2018) and the OAA Architectural Guild Medal (2018).

Images of Kinan Hewitt's thesis project, "Grounding the Cloud."

"Kinan’s work showed evidence of extraordinary creative ambition," says John Shnier, Hewitt's thesis advisor. "He consistently chose to explore avenues without a direct path to a result and set goals with inherent challenges. His work at Daniels no doubt laid a foundation for a lively and productive creative future."

Another of Shnier's thesis students, David Verbeek (MArch 2017), won the Prix de Rome for emerging practitioners last year.

Several Daniels faculty and alumni have received the Professional Prix de Rome, a separate prize that is awarded to established (rather than emerging) practitioners. They are:

Alumni Monica Adair and Stephen Kopp (2018)

Alumnus Omar Gandhi (2014)

Associate professor Shane Williamson (2012)

Associate professor Mason White (2010)

Alumnus Pierre Bélanger (2008)

Associate professor John Shnier (1987)

A group of graduate students from the Daniels Faculty who were among the winners of the 2019  International Garden Festival Competition have constructed their installation Making Waves at Reford Gardens / Jardins de Metis. While there, they learned that they were the first student team to have ever won the competition.

The team included Master of Landscape Architecture students Cornel Campbell, Thevishka Kanishkan, and Reesha Morar, and Master of Architecture student and Anton Skorishchenko. Professor Ted Kesik was the students' advisor.

From the students' project description:

In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the energy built up within it due to its motion. Building upon this idea, our team wanted to show how the motion of just two individuals could build up, expand, and multiply kinetic energy to create a spectacular wave of colour. Visitors are invited to play on a seesaw, but will be surprised at how a familiar activity can have such unfamiliar and exciting results. As the seesaw moves up and down, a wave of kinetic energy radiates from pink to blue as the colourful bars oscillate from the motion created by the users. The fantastic displays of colour and movement created by kinetic energy allows each participant to “make waves” in their own way.
 

Established in 2000, the International Garden Festival is the leading contemporary garden festival in North America. Making Waves was among six new garden projects that were selected from 154 submissions around the world.

The International Garden Festival runs until October 6 at Jardins de Metis / Reford Gardens on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River between Rimouski and Matane in Quebec. Visitors to the festival can explore 27 contemporary gardens, and enter the interactive spaces created by more than eighty-five landscape architects, architects, designers, and visual artists.

For more information, visit the International Garden Festival website.

Photos, top by Martin Bond for the Reford Gardens

It is our great pleasure to announce Yuluo Wei as the 5th Annual Recipient of the Reesa Greenberg Curatorial Studies Award. The $5,000 Award recognizes exceptional work by a student in the first semester of Graduate Studies in the Daniels Faculty's Master of Visual Studies (MVS) Curatorial Studies program. Adjudicated by visual arts and curatorial faculty at the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto, prior recipients include cheyanne turions (2015), Jenn Goodwin (2016), Christophe Barbeau (2017), and Kate Whiteway (2019).  
 
About Yuluo Wei
Yuluo Wei entered the MVS Curatorial Studies program at the University of Toronto with an economics and business background. Her passion for contemporary art stems from her work at the Robert Langen Art Gallery at Wilfrid Laurier University. The encounter with an abundance of artistic resources and the strong humanities focus on campus drew her into pursuing curatorial study. Yuluo was Youth Advisor to the Board of Directors for Art Awards Waterloo Region in 2017, and has been a writer and translator for the China Central Academy of Fine Arts since 2018. She assisted in curating the Chinese contemporary art exhibition emergence (Toronto, 2018) with Emerging Young Artists (EYA), and is currently collaborating with the Jackman Humanity Institute for its annual exhibition (Strange Weather, 2019-2020). In her research, she is interested in overlooked narratives embedded in myths, legends, and fairytales in a cross-cultural context.

About the Award
The Reesa Greenberg Curatorial Studies Award was created by Reesa Greenberg, internationally renowned scholar on museums and exhibition studies, for the benefit of the students in the MVS Curatorial Studies Program and for the benefit of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at Hart House, which is today part of the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. Greenberg’s donation provides an annual monetary award of $5,000 as well as an additional biannual award of $10,000 in support of international travel or a paid-internship position of students in the MVS Curatorial Studies Program in the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto.
 
About Reesa Greenberg
Reesa Greenberg is an art historian, independent scholar and museum consultant whose research focuses on exhibitions and display. She has consulted on exhibitions and installations for the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Edmonton Art Gallery, the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam and Mirroring Evil at the Jewish Museum in New York. She is best known as co-editor (with Bruce Ferguson and Sandy Nairne) of Thinking About Exhibitions, Routledge, 1996 and the author of numerous articles on exhibition presentation and politics. Her recent research examines the web as an exhibition space. An alumnus of the University of Toronto Art History program, she is an Adjunct Professor at both Carleton University, Ottawa, and York University, Toronto.
 
About the Master of Visual Studies Curatorial Studies Program
Initiated in 2008, the Curatorial Studies stream in the MVS program at the University of Toronto is currently in its tenth year.  Embedded within a rich environment of study, teaching assistantships, internships and mentorship within the internationally renowned Daniels Faculty and the Art Museum at UofT, students immerse in recent developments in the visual arts, theory, and critical writing in an interdisciplinary context to support their research interests and curatorial engagement. In particular, the program focuses on the presentational challenges arising from the diverse and complex modes of contemporary art -- from material and historical artefacts to installation, from performance to image, text, sound, and digital media – within the broader context of contemporary global culture. Significantly, the program offers students the opportunity to produce their own Graduating Exhibition for public presentation within the professional context and support of the Art Museum on the downtown campus of the University of Toronto, and at the centre of Canada’s largest city.
 
The highly respected degree affords students access to a sustained professional network and mentorships. With an outstanding history of accomplishments of Graduating students’ exhibitions, graduates of our program continually achieve successful curatorial careers and institutional positions in Canada and internationally. They include directorial, curatorial and related positions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Power Plant, the Art Gallery of York University, the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, the Esker Foundation and many others art institutions across Canada and around the world.
 
Recent examples of MVS Curatorial Studies Exhibitions:
•    http://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/rehearsal-objects-lie-table/
•    http://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/talking-back-otherwise/
•    http://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/morning-star/
•    http://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/far-near-distances-us/
•    http://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/2017-university-toronto-mvs-cur…
•    https://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/why-cant-minimal/
•    http://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/all-this-time/
•    https://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/sovereign-acts/
•    https://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/learning-from-the-lake/
•    https://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/islands/
•    https://artmuseum.utoronto.ca/exhibition/weight-of-light/

On Thursday, April 25th, the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) announced Mark Laird, Associate Professor at Daniels Faculty, as one of the two winners of the 2019 Elizabeth Blair MacDougall Book Award for his book A Natural History of English Gardening.

Elizabeth Kryder-Reid was the other recipient of the Award, for her book California Mission Landscapes: Race, Memory, and the Politics of Heritage publication.

This annual award was established by the SAH Board in 2005 to recognize the most distinguished work of scholarship in the history of landscape architecture or garden design.

SAH, a non-profit organization, was founded at Harvard University in 1940 and it focuses on the history of the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life.

Visit the SAH website to learn more about the organization and its awards.