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.

Earlier this year, Bachelor of Arts, Architectural Studies student Jan Doroteo was awarded first prize for the Berkeley Essay Competition — an endowment established by the Department of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Winning the Berkeley Prize has given me a sense of agency to investigate architecture that I find inclusive and considerate, and the confidence to determine what I value as 'good' architecture,” says Doroteo about winning the prize. “In my future career, I hope to practice architecture through words, writing, analysis, and exploration.”

The essay, titled “The Little Pinoy Sari-Sari Store: Of Otherness and Belonging in a Global Diaspora,” explores the importance of small convenience stores in the Philippines and more specifically in Filipino ethnoburbs in Toronto.

From Doroteo's essay abstract on the Berkeley Essay Competition website:

“[Sari-Sari Stores] are numerous, found in many cities worldwide, and aesthetically unexceptional. Yet I've come to declare these stores as a legitimate, if not symbolic and rhetorically impactful, architectural type with a program that isn’t just commerce. They are significant as safe-spaces of ‘otherness.’ They allow Filipinos to exercise their ethnic identity in the complicated and contradictory way that it functions as neo-colonial subjects.”

Since 1999, the Berkeley Essay Prize has asked questions critical to the discussion of the social art of architecture. This year, a total amount of $25,000 USD was spread out among one First Prize, one Second Prize, one Third Prize, and one Fourth Prize Winner, and two Honorable Mentions. Semifinalists for the Prize are invited to submit proposals for funding to travel to an architecturally-significant destination of their choosing to participate in a hands-on service-oriented situation.

Visit the Berkeley Prize Essay Competition website to read Doroteo's essay.

A team of undergraduate students from the Daniels Faculty — including Kian Hosseinnia, Pearl Cao, Tina Siassi, Dimah Ghazal, and Ous Abou Ras — won the URB PRK Emerging Young Architecture + Planning Program (EYAPP) design-build competition. The competition “was inititiated to provide an outlet for students and interns in Architecture and Planning to showcase their creative talents and show to the community the importance of design and how it can be both clever and environmentally sustainable."

Each year, students are challenged to create a summer refuge or “parklet” within a city using innovative strategies and sustainable materials. This year the site was two parking stalls on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton Alberta.

Hosseinnia and Cao were guests on CBC’s Edmonton AM to discuss their design on June 8.

The students are now raising money to realize their winning plan. The extra funds will assist them securing the necessary materials.

“This is a very important project for us as it gives us the opportunity as emerging designers to provide for the public and enhance their social experience of Whyte Avenue,” write the students on their Go Fund Me page. “We greatly appreciate your support in helping us with this exciting project and for taking the time to read about our cause.”

Daniels Faculty undergraduate student Victoria Cardoso was part of the winning team in the “Towers on the Ravine, 1967-2067: Transitioning to Net-Positive Biophilic Urbanism” competition, which took place in May. Her team members included York University graduate students Alex Gatien, Assaya Moustaqim-Barrette, Kiana Javaheri, Nick Brownlee, and Steven Glass.

The competition, launched at the 2017 Ontario Climate Symposium May 11 & 12, asked students to envision the transformation of the tower neighbourhood north of Finch on Kipling Avenue into a resilient and environmentally and socially sustainable community.

The winning proposal included a focus on honouring indigenous history; strategies for addressing the projected population increase; the formation of a local community land trust to develop, fund, and manage public spaces; recognition of emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles; and the reintegration of a ‘lost’ stream  with the neighbourhood’s commercial and public spaces.

A number of other Daniels Faculty students participated in the competition. They included: Master of Landscape Architecture students Catherine Howell and Stacey Zonneveld; Master of Architecture students Zoal Razaq, Shou Li, and Xiaolong Li; and undergraduate students Adaeze Chukwuma, Feng Le, Tian Wei Li, and Yujie Wang. Images from Howell, Li, Razaq, and Zonneveld’s proposal (Alisa Nguyen was also part of this team) are pictured above.

Master of Visual Studies graduate Sandra Brewster has been awarded the Gattuso Prize for her exhibition It's all a blur… on at Georgia Scherman Projects (133 Tecumseth Street) until June 24.

The Gattuso Prize of $5,000 acknowledges an outstanding Featured Exhibition in the CONTACT Photography Festival. The jury, which includes Rosemary Heather (writer and curator) and Anique Jordan (executive director, Whippersnapper Gallery), based their decision on the caliber and concept of the work, the curatorial vision, and overall impact and presentation of the exhibition.

Wrote the jury:

With It’s all a blur… Sandra Brewster takes portraiture in a strongly metaphoric direction. Using a labour-intensive method, the artist creates tactile works suggestive of a number of ideas. While evoking the customary role of the photograph as memento, at the same time, these works appear to call forth the emerging subjects of history. The unavoidable scale, presence, and motion embedded in these still images command the attention of viewers to discover the details and traces left behind by the portrait participants.
 

Sandra Brewster is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist based in Toronto whose work has been exhibited nationally and abroad, engaging many themes that grapple with notions of identity, representation and memory.  

For more information, visit the CONTACT website.

Post Doctoral Fellow Roberto Damiani has received a 2017 grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts for a proposed book on the work of Professor Emeritus George Baird, former Dean of the Daniels Faculty (2004-2009). Titled The Architect and the Public: The Contribution of George Baird to Architecture, the book will include contributions by Daniels Faculty members Lecturer Hans Ibelings, Director of Master of Architecture Program Robert Levit, Assistant Professor Michael Piper, Professor Brigitte Shim, and Dean Richard Sommer. Other contributors include Pier Vittorio Aureli, Joseph Bedford, Louis Martin, Joan Ockman, Jorge Silvetti, Hans Teerds, and Roemer van Toorn.

From the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts' website:

The Architect and the Public is a collection of essays and interviews on the work of George Baird, and serves as evidence of the architect's public engagement with contemporary society. With the rise of mass media, traditional modes of producing and communicating architecture have been transformed, as many practitioners choose to express the cultural and societal relevance of buildings, and to ground architectural design beyond personal agendas. George Baird's work and research reflects this practice, and Baird—along with Colin Rowe, Kenneth Frampton, and Peter Eisenman—has served as a model for North American architectural debate. From his early theoretical writings as a doctoral student, to his involvement with Toronto city planning, to his commitment to teaching at the University of Toronto and Harvard, Baird played a key role in shaping the relationship between architecture and its multiple publics, many of which emerged in the second half of the twentieth century.

In 2017, the Graham Foundation awarded $568,500 to 72 projects by individuals. The Architect and the Public is one of 34 publications included in the 2017 Grantees list. It is scheduled to be published in 2018.

Damiani is the organizer and curator of Italy under Construction, a program of exhibitions and lectures on contemporary Italian architecture, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto. Earlier this year, he curated an exhibition titled Palimpsests and Interfaces that presented four civic buildings by the Venice based architect Renato Rizzi, and seven buildings — four residential and three office buildings — by Cino Zucchi Architetti based in Milan. Information about the exhibition can be found on the Italian Cultural Institute website.

Photo, top: George Baird (front), Ted Teshima (behind). Courtesy of Canadian Architectural Archives, University of Calgary. Toronto, May 1959.

One Spadina recently received an Award of Excellence from the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (CISC) for its steel-framed roof — the building's signature architectural feature. Representatives from Entuitive, who worked with One Spadina designers NADAAA as the project’s structural engineer and building envelope consultants, were on hand to receive the award May 9.

The roof spans over 110 feet “across a column-less hall that will house the Faculty’s graduate design studios,” writes NADAAA on its blog. “A series of 3 cantilever trusses form the geometry for a modified ‘sawtooth,’ composed of clerestory windows that will admit high-quality northern light into the studios below.”

The architectural category of CISC’s awards honours buildings in which architectural considerations predominantly influenced the design of the structure. The bow-tie configuration of the steel trusses provide a total of eleven clerestory windows. The dramatic ceiling is its own landscape, determined by the structural, lighting and water drainage requirements. It creates a compelling civic interior and spectacular new platform from which to view the city and Spadina Avenue to the north.

Writes NADAAA on its blog:

The trusses themselves do not comprise a true span, in fact, they are 3 distinct structural components: two cantilevers and a link beam.  As such, the trusses function like a cantilever bridge such as the Forth Bridge in Scotland (see also illustration below), or the Confederation Bridge which connects New Brunswick with Prince Edward Island.  Cantilever bridges are characterized by greater structural depth aligned with the vertical supports, tapering to thin cantilevers at opposite ends between two adjacent spans.  These twin cantilevers establish an equilibrium about the vertical support, balancing equal and opposite overturning forces.

Above: “Living model illustrating the principle of the Forth Bridge,” Coutesy of NADAAA

For more details on the design and construction of steel trusses at One Spadina, visit NADAAA’s website.

Several faculty and alumni will be recognized at the Ontario Association of Architects annual OAA Awards, presented May 26th. 

The OAA Awards offers the Ontario architectural profession an annual opportunity to present its work to a public and professional audience. It advertises the excellence of both individual award winners and the profession as a whole, and it fosters a greater appreciation of architecture and architects among all levels of society, professional and non-professional.

The Daniels Faculty would like to extend its congratulations to alumni and faculty members recognized this year.

Boulevard Club West Wing Replacement by Teeple Architects Inc. Photo by Scott Norsworthy

The Design Excellence category recognized the “innovative skills of Ontario architects in creating spaces, buildings and communities that respect and enhance the environment an enrich human activity.”

• Boulevard Club West Wing Replacement by Teeple Architects Inc. — the firm of Daniels Faculty Instructor Stephen Teeple
• Eva's Phoenix by LGA Architectural Partners (formerly Levitt Goodman Architects) — the firm of Janna Levitt (BArch 1986) and Dean Goodman (BArch 1983)
• Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre, University of Waterloo by KPMB Architects — the firm of Shirley Blumberg (BArch 1976) and Bruce Kuwabara (BArch 1972)
• River City – Phase 1 & 2 by ZAS Architects Inc. — the firm of Paul Stevens (BArch 1987) — in joint venture with Saucier + Perrotte Architects

• Rosemary House (pictured above) by Kohn Shnier Architects — the firm of Daniels Faculty Associate Professor John Shnier
• Story Pod by Atelier Kastelic Buffey Inc. — the firm of Kelly Buffey (MArch 2007)
• Williams Parkway (Phase 1) by Rounthwaite Dick & Hadley Architects Inc. — the firm of Rob Boyko (BArch 1974)

Shobuj Pata by Studio JCI Inc.

The Concepts category recognized the “clarity and uniqueness of expression of an architectural idea as well as promoting the involvement of individuals in the areas of design presentation, art and other design related endeavors.”

• Shobuj Pata – Multi-Unit Residential Development by Studio JCI Inc. — the firm of Jaegap Chung (BArch 1999) and Sue Jean Chung (BArch 1999)
• Forwards and Backwards by Sessional Lecturer Jennifer Davis (MArch 2011) and Jon Sasaki

Ontario Science Centre by Moriyama & Teshima Architects

The Landmark Designation category recognized the “buildings that demonstrate architecture’s beauty, endurance and lasting contribution to community and society.”

• Ontario Science Centre by Moriyama & Teshima Architects — the firm of Raymond Moriyama (BArch 1954; Hon. 1994) and the late Ted Teshima (BArch 1962)
• The Fielding Memorial Chapel of St. Mark, Thornloe University by Townend Stefura & Baleshta Architects — the firm of John Stefura (BArch 1953) and Carl Skerl (BArch 1958)

The final three awards (the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Design Excellence in Architecture, the Michael V. and Wanda Plachta Award, and the People’s Choice Award) will be announced at the Celebration of Excellence Ceremony on May 26th as part of the 2017 RAIC/OAA Festival of Architecture being held in Ottawa.

The Townships Farmhouse designed by LAMAS — the firm of Assistant Professor Vivian Lee and Lecturer James Macgillivray — won Architizer’s A+ Awards, in the Residential – Private House XL > 5000 sq ft category.

From the project description on Architizer:

“In the eastern townships of Quebec, the courtyard configuration for barns has been used since the mid-19th century for convenience of access and for shelter against the wind.
For this working farm, our first design decision was to take the concept of the “aisle” from barns—essentially a thoroughfare for bringing in materials and livestock—and repurpose it outwards to capture views from the surrounding fields. Because the house is arranged in a courtyard formation it goes back in on itself and the interior spaces can be superimposed onto the background of the landscape in unexpected compositions.”
 

For each category, five finalists were chosen as a winner through a popular vote. The Jury Winners and Popular Choice Winners was announced on April 11, 2017 with an Award Gala Event taking place in May.

To view all projects considered for the Architizer A+ Awards, visit awards.architizer.com/winners-gallery/finalists/

Alumni Zhengyan Jin (MUD 2015), Weiming Shi (MUD 2015), and current undergraduate Architectural Studies students Yujie Wang and Yang Yue recently won the Director’s Choice Award for the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) Underground Bath House Competition hosted by Arch Out Loud.

The competition asked participants to explore the possibility of creating an underground bathhouse within the Korean DMZ that responded to the surrounding geopolitical conditions. Titled “Unresolved Line,” the team created a proposal that could perpetually respond to the political tension between two nations.

“By having a series of chronological assigned vertical pipelines that connect to the underground mechanical system dotting along the demarcation line of DMZ zone, the project becomes an effort to both reconnect people to the geopolitical history and unify them in the realm of light, water, and fog,” writes the team in their project statement. “More importantly, the architecture has to grow along with such political tension, and therefore, remains as an unfinished project.”

All the winning entries to the competition can be viewed on the Arch Out Loud website.

Jin and Shi previously won honorable mention in the 2015 Urban Ideas Competition for their Brampton City Centre Revitalization proposal, which also included team member Zhiyu Liu (MLA 2016). Liu, Jin, and Shi envisioned transforming the commuter suburb by ennhancing accessibility, improving the main streets and traffic circulation, and encompassing stategies to expand restaurant and retail businesses in the area.