On June 14, the Daniels Faculty held a reception to celebrate students graduating from our Honours Bachelor of Arts, Architectural Studies; Honours Bachelor of Arts, Visual Studies; Master of Architecture; Master of Landscape Architecture; Master of Urban Design; and Master of Visual Studies programs.

During the reception, a number of students were bestowed with awards, established through the generous support of Daniels Faculty donors and friends. Pictured at the top of this page is Kinan Hewitt, who received the OAA Architectural Guild Medal, with OAA Senior Vice President & Tresurer, Kathleen Kurtin.

Providing recognition and financial support to our students is essential to sustaining the high reputation and scholarship that the our Faculty enjoys, and we are deeply grateful to everyone who has made this possible.

Below is a list of the awards that were presented — and the names of those who received them. Congratulations to all!

Undergraduate

Academic Merit Award
Chen Yu Huang / Tian Wei Li / Aaron Chung-Lon Lo / Elif Ayse Ozcelik / Robert Kenneth Raynor / Artin Sahakian / Rachel Jeanne Schloss / Taylor James Urbshott / Yujie Wang / Chenglin Zhu / Clara Ziada

Daniels Undergraduate Community Leadership Award
Najia Fatima (pictured above) / Robert Kenneth Raynor / Ece Ulusoy

Daniels Undergraduate Critical Practices Award
Laura Tibi

Daniels Undergraduate Design Award
Tian Wei Li

Daniels Undergraduate History and Theory Award
Yasmine El Sanyoura (pictured above)

Daniels Undergraduate Studio Art Award
Emily Nalangan (pictured above)  / Qian Zhou

Daniels Undergraduate Technology Award
Taylor James Urbshott

Distinction
Dina Al Masri / George Barcham / Irem Benli / Marienka Bella Bishop-Kovac / Victor Yih-Sheng Chang / Eric Co / Shalice Coutu / Ambra Del Frate / Daniel Dempsey / Bo Fan / Xinting Fan / Cody Foo / Bita Gharadaghi / Zeshen Hu / Julia Anna Johnston / Yunqian Li / Jiawen Lin / Peiyun Liu / Kate Marie Lyne / Richard Riad Mohammed / Soha Sadegi / Veronika Salamun / Christine Song / Jingchu Sun / Ece Ulusoy / Hao Ran Wan / Linru Wang / Ziai Wang / David Warrick / Joyce Szeman Wong / Chuchu Xie / Yixin Yang / Kristen Yue / Meichun Zhu

High Distinction
Connor Edwin Arms / Chaya Bhardwaj / Sean Broadhurst / Nicolas Castaneda Torres / Selina / Margo Chau / Nina Christianson / Adaeze Onyinyechukwu Chukwuma / Yasmine El Sanyoura / Yuan Fang / Najia Fatima / Jenna Li Rei Gauder / Jonathan Patrick Graham / Sierra Lucia Gri / Jessica Ho / Chen Yu Huang / Qiao’Er Jin / Adolphus Yik Chun Lau / Jia Wen Li / Tian Wei Li / Ming Liu / Nian Liu / Xin Liu / Aaron Chung-Lon Lo / Sebastian Lopez / Bryn Martin / Farah Michel / Emily Nalangan / Elif Ayse Ozcelik / Odin William Paas / James Alexander Profiti / Robert Kenneth Raynor / Alexandra Shea Rigby / Adriana Priscilla Sadun / Artin Sahakian / Homa Samiezadeh / Rachel Jeanne Schloss / Dinky Shah / Haocheng Si / Alexandra Jane Spalding / Laura Tibi / Olivia Tjiawi / Taylor James Urbshott / Lisa Kathryn Veregin / Yujie Wang / Kimberley Sonia Wint / Carolyn Wu / Chenglin Zhu  / Clara Ziada

Graduate

Academic Honors Certificate
Yossr Abou Elnour / Jaysen Paul Ariola / Herman Borrego / Maxine Cudlip / Michael DeGirolamo / Darryn Mitchell Guise Doull / Kinan Hewitt / Catherine Beatrice Howell / Vincent Alexander Javet / Marianne Lafontaine-Chicha / Irene Ying-Ju Lai / Meikang Li / Jia Lu / Liusaidh Howorth / Murdoch Macdonald / Lauren Pamela Marshall / Noah Mcgillivray / Kearon William Roy Taylor / Genevieve Simms / Michael Townshend

AIA Henry Adams Medal & Certificate
Kinan Hewitt (pictured top of page)

Alpha Rho Chi Medal
Matthew De Santis (pictured above)

ARCC / King Student Medal
Richard Freeman

ASLA Certificate of Honor
Vincent Alexander Javet / Marianne Lafontaine-Chicha

ASLA Certificate of Merit
Meikang Li / Qiwei Song

CSLA Student Award of Merit
Stacey Zonneveld

Faculty Design Prize
Maxine Cudlip / Michael DeGirolamo / Catherine Beatrice Howell

Governor General’s Academic Medals Program
Tian Wei Li

Heather M. Reisman Gold Medal in Design
Genevieve Simms

Irving Grossman Prize
Kellie Chin (pictured above)  / Lauren Pamela Marshall

John E. (Jack) Irving Prize
Jaysen Paul Ariola / Jia Lu (pictured above with Associate Professor Liat Margolis and Assistant Professor Pete North)

Kuwabara-Jackman Architecture Thesis Gold Medal
Herman Borrego

OAA Architectural Guild Medal
Kinan Hewitt

OALA Certificate of Merit
Marianne Lafontaine-Chicha (pictured above with Assistant Professor Pete North and Ingrid Little, Registrar, OALA)

RAIC Honour Roll
Irene Ying-Ju Lai / Liusaidh Howorth Murdoch Macdonald / Noah Mcgillivray / Kearon William Roy Taylor (pictured above with RAIC representative, Barbara Ross. Absent from the photo: Liusaidh Macdonald)

Both Graduate and Undergraduate

Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Award
Marienka Bella Bishop-Kovac / Karima Habib Peermohammad / Naomi Shewchuk / Christine Song

The Daniels Building at One Spadina has received a 2018 American Architecture Award in the Schools and Universities category.

Organized by The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, together with The European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies and Metropolitan Arts Press, The American Architecture Awards honor "the best, new significant buildings and landscape and planning projects designed and/or built in the United States and abroad by the most important American architects and planners practicing nationally and internationally."

The Daniels Building was designed by Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner, principals of the internationally acclaimed firm NADAAA — in collaboration with Architect-of-record Adamson & Associates, landscape architects Public Work, and heritage architects ERA.

As NADAAA writes in the Project Description:

The design of this building presents a case where problems of pedagogy come face to face with a physical environment that is inhabited and tested daily by an audience of experts, critics, teachers, practitioners, and students, the very protagonists of the medium. It is perhaps one of the few occasions where the audience is engaging with the building and its authors at a higher level, making it an added challenge –and responsibility– to speak to architectural questions with a greater degree of nuance.
 

For more information about The Daniels Building, visit the About section of the Daniels Faculty's website.

A team of students from the University of Toronto — including Master of Architecture students Stephanie Tung and Lori Chan, Master of Science in Planning students Sarah Qi-Ying Chan and Lucy Cui, and Master of Business Administration student Krizia Napolitano — received an Honorable Mention in the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Hines Student Competition.

The competition challenged students to "devise a comprehensive design and development scheme for an actual, large-scale site in an urban area."

Titled "The Seam," the students' project focused on a piece of land south of Eastern Avenue, east of the Don River, and north of the Port Lands.

Write the students in their design narrative for the competition:

The Seam is a master-plan strategy that revitalizes Toronto’s formerly industrial east Donlands area by creating a vibrant mixed-use district. Punctuated by cutting-edge architecture and creative public art, the site will leverage existing proximity to major employment centers, transit infrastructure and natural assets to create a new development area that will be instrumental to Toronto’s wider city-building strategy.

A seam is a line along which two pieces of fabric are sewn together; it joins, links and connects.

Owing to its unique geographic location, The Seam is a connection between zones of new development and existing communities. Broadway Avenue will be extended north through the site and connect it to East Harbour and Sidewalk Labs to the south, while the new pedestrian bridge across the Don River will link the site to Corktown Commons and the larger West Donlands area. Thus, the site becomes the final piece to creating a new major corridor. Pedestrian walkways and bicycle lanes will be dispersed throughout to improve connectivity and walkability. Residential units will move from stacked townhouses on the north side to condominium towers on the south side, creating an accompanying gradient of density linking together existing residential to the north and commercial to the south.
 

Congratulations to all involved! For more information about the competition, including a full list of the winning submissions, visit the ULI website.

First year Master of Architecture student Pedram Karimi and fourth year Master of Architecture student Parham Karimi (who happen to be brothers) received an honourable mention for their submission to BOUN: International Urban Furniture Design Competition.

The 2018 competition sought design for furniture that would enrich the built environment and improve the quality of the urban landscapes marked by "ever-increasing skyscrapers" that tend to overpower smaller elements.

The duo's proposal, titled GATHERING-TIME, is a series of modular urban furniture that encourages the discovery of interstitial spaces within urban university campuses.

Writes Pedram, "The design proposal intends to redefine the campus bench from a repeatable object into a distinct, expressive space that can attract and delight people, inviting them to gather in small and large groups."

Congratulations to Pedram and Parham on their successful competition entry!

The Daniels Building received a Best of Year award in the higher education category from Interior Design magazine. Winners of the Best of Year awards were announced in the magazine's December issue:

"Designing a space that will in turn inspire great design. That was the heady task that principals Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner undertook at this undergraduate and postgraduate facility. What they accomplished is a rich mix of old and new, patina and polish."

Designed by Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner, principals of the internationally acclaimed firm NADAAA — in collaboration with Architect-of-record Adamson & Associates, landscape architects Public Work, and heritage architects ERA — the Daniels Building at One Spadina includes dynamic, flexible learning and research environments for faculty and students, and will nurture the next generation of leaders in the field.

Other awards that the Daniels Building has received include:

• The Plan Awards, Honorable Mention (2017)
• CISC Ontario Steel Design Award of Excellence (2017)
• Society of American Registered Architects Silver Award of Honor (2015)
• Acknowledgement Prize Holcim Awards (2014)
• Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design: Green Good Design Award (2014)
• Boston Society of Architects: Unbuilt Architecture Award (2013)

“It is commendable when a design student tackles a tough building typology, and exceptional when the author discovers real invention within that typology. The developer-driven world of mid-rise residential housing requires just such invention and new thinking.”

In 2016, Ontario landscape and industrial design students were challenged to redesign the exterior space at Artscape Youngplace, a popular community cultural hub in Toronto. The competition, organized by the Ontario Tire Stewardship (OTS), asks participants to find new life for old tires, and has taken place in different locations since 2011. It’s a project that Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture Elise Shelley has been working with the OTS over the past six years to help organize.

Daniels Faculty students, who have since become alumni — Tom Kwok, Leonard Flot and Andrey Chernykh — won the landscape design portion of last year’s competition and were on hand on September 19 to celebrate the realized design. The project features new durable paving surfaces, improved site furnishings, and a series of spaces using poured rubber in a way never before seen in Canada: they are surfaced specifically for chalk drawing, informal and performance art, extending the artistic mandate of Artscape into their new outside space.

Joining the students from the winning design teams were Councillor Mike Layton; LoriAnn Girvan, Artscape COO; Andrea Nemtin, Inspirit Foundation President & CEO; and Artscape Youngplace tenants and community members.

Interesting in seeing the newly designed outdoor space for yourself? Visit Artscape Youngplace at 180 Shaw Street in Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood near the intersection of Queen and Ossington.

Photo, top: by Andrew Miller/Awesome Photography

Congratulations to Associate Professor Alissa North and students from the 2016 Option Studio: Ravine Re-Create. The studio (LAN 3016) has received the 2017 Sloan Award, also known as ARCHITECT Magazine's Studio Prize.

The ARCHITECT Studio Prize recognizes thoughtful, innovative, and ethical studio courses at accredited architecture schools. Ravine Re-Create was a cross-disciplinary studio in landscape architecture, urban design, and architecture that explored how “rivers and ravines could be repositioned as living and dynamic systems within a city.” Working with the City of Toronto, Evergreen Brick Works, and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA), students in the studio envisioned and developed innovative design ideas to inspire targeted catalytic solutions of change.

Writes Nate Berg for ARCHITECT magazine:

The Don River and the Humber River weave through the heart of downtown Toronto, but they’re often regarded as separate from the urban life of the city. Associate professor of landscape architecture Alissa North has studied rivers for years, and she argues these two in particular are more than just visual assets. The city government has developed a draft strategy for how to address the rivers and the surrounding ravines. Students worked with the city to build on that plan and develop design ideas for implementing it.

Through mapping, hydrogeological studies, and digital and physical modeling, the students analyzed the rivers as systems, and considered the environmental, social, infrastructural, and economic roles the two waterways could play in broader civic life.

Visit ARCHITECT’s website to read more about the award-winning studio, including projects by Andrew Hooke, Kangning Zhao, and Hannah Soules.

And congratulations to all of the students who participated in the studio:

Andrew Hooke, Rachel Salmela, Tianjiao Yan, Zhoufan Wan, Yuan Zhuang, Anna Varga-Papp, Stephen Brophy, Asuka Kono, Leonard Flot, Kangning Zhao, Kamila Grigo, Christina Boyer, Hannah Soules, Xinyu Hao

Stay tuned: more images from the studio will be posted soon!

Image, Top by Andrew Hooke

Two recent Master of Landscape Architecture graduates from the Daniels Faculty — Zhuofan Wan and Tianjiao Yan — received Honor Awards in the Analysis and Planning Category from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). A total of 28 winners were selected from 295 entries, representing 52 schools around the world.

Zhufan Wan’s project, Desert River Water Conservation, looked at the conservation of water in desert rivers. Tarim River, in China’s Taklamakan Desert, which has "only 50mm precipitation/year, but 2000mm evaporation/year ” was the site of her project. She investigated “water-balance and water-saving strategies to restore the degraded desert river, by balancing the desert river’s resilience and humans’ water demand.”  Associate Professor Robert Wright was her adviser.

“The environmental sensitivity is impressive,” said the 2017 Awards Jury of her work. “It’s very, very responsive to its setting in a really harsh climate.”

View Wan’s full project description here.

TianJiao Yan’s project, Reviving the 30 Meters, confronts the negative effects of China’s Three Gorges Dam. Writes Yan, “The construction of the hydroelectric station has displaced over 1.24 million residents and led to immense ecological degradation.”

Using Yunyang City as a testing ground, Yan’s project seeks to “transform the negative human disturbance into opportunities for ecological productivity and economic development that are both synergetic and resilient.” Assistant Professor Justine Holzman was her advisor.

The 2017 Awards Jury called Reviving the 30 Meters “A really strong project from analysis level through the planning down to site-specific proposals.”

View Yan's full project description here.

Wan and Yan, and other winners, will receive their awards at the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in Los Angeles on Monday, October 23, at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The September issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM) features the winning projects and is available for free viewing here.

Images (top & bottom) by Tianjiao Yan; Image (middle) by Zhuofan Wan

Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni will help revive the Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex — a historic site of modern architecture in Morocco — thanks to a generous grant from the Getty Foundation.

The Foundation’s Keeping It Modern grant was established to support important works of modern architecture around the world. Chaouni led an initiative to preserve the Complex,  built in 1957 by Moroccan-born French architect Jean-François Zevaco as a gathering place in “a Moroccan oasis where ancient mineral springs have drawn visitors for centuries.”

The project to preserve the Thermal Bath Complex’s architecture and reopen it as a dynamic tourist center will be led in collaboration with the Fondation Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion (CDG), which owns the site; the CDG’s hospitality branch HRM, and the following experts: Robert Silman and Eytan Solomon (Conservation engineers); Karim Bennani (Engineer); Mohammed Boumeshouli (Lab); Salim Belemlih (Surveyor;, Andreea Muscurel (Photographer and film director); Camelia Bennani (Research assistant); and Aziza Chaouni, Veronica Gallego, Lamiss Ben El Haj and Zineb Tazi (Aziza Chaouni Projects).

Sidi Harazem is the first North African project to receive the Keeping it Modern Fund.

From The Getty Foundation’s website:

The Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex represents a marriage of nature, public space, and modern architecture. Built four years after Moroccan independence, the complex is the ambitious statement of a new nation determined to create modern and forward-thinking gathering places for its citizens. In 1957, a state-owned pension fund commissioned Moroccan-born French architect Jean-François Zevaco to design the site. Opened a year later to widespread acclaim, the complex is Zevaco's largest work and marks an early example of concepts that he would revisit throughout his prolific career.

By the 1980s the aging baths had waned in popularity and today only limited parts of the site are open to the public. The market, bungalows, and central courtyard—envisioned by Zevaco as the heart and soul of the site—remain closed indefinitely. The Fondation Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion (CDG), which owns the site, is committed to reopening it fully in response to a renewed interest in the oasis. By using Getty funds to create a conservation plan to inform future interventions, the CDG can preserve the complex's architectural significance while allowing careful adaptations that will improve the location as a tourist center. The resulting plan will create a preservation roadmap that puts the site's owner and the local community on the path to revitalizing and restoring the baths to their full functionality.

For more information visit the Aziza Chaouni Projects website.