Last November, Office OU was announced the winner of South Korea's International Competition for the National Museum Complex Master Plan of New Administrative City (Sejong City). The Toronto-based firm was founded by Daniels Faculty Lecturer Nicolas Koff, along with Uros Novakovic and Sebastian Bartnicki.

From Office OU's press release:

Chosen as the winning design among a field of 81 entries from 26 countries around the world, Office OU's Sejong Museum Gardens will play a crucial role in shaping the cultural landscape of South Korea's new metropolis. The competition entry was made in collaboration with Junglim Architecture as the local architect of record.

Sejong City, the new administrative city of South Korea, shifts many of the national government's functions south from Seoul. Already home to 36 government agencies and over 300,000 residents, Sejong City's growing political and administrative importance will be complemented by what the competition promoters hailed as a “world-class cultural complex that will be on par with Berlin's Museuminsel, Vienna's Museumsquartier, and Washington D.C's Smithsonian museums.”

Situated in the heart of the nascent city along the bank of the Geum River, Sejong’s National Museum Complex will be a major cultural center for all of Korea, hosting a diverse range of new institutions including Museums devoted to Architecture and the City, Design, Digital Heritage, Natural History, Korea's Archival Traditions and Children. In total, nearly a dozen museums — an exact number has yet to be set — will be spread throughout the site.

Office OU's master plan for the 190,000 m2 site draws on surrounding landscape typologies (rice paddies, wetlands, forests and riverbanks, as well as the urban fabric) to create a permeable and interconnected series of individually programmed outdoor spaces, organized around a central square. A subdued architectural expression privileges the distinctive landscapes as the museums’ defining design elements. Each museum’s unique identity will be defined by its relationship with adjacent landscapes, drawing these landscapes onto the site within courtyards and forecourts that characterize the museums. In naming the project Sejong Museum Gardens, the garden is recognized as a vital link between culture and nature, the designers hope that this project can give the people of Sejong—and South Korea—a place to nurture this relationship.

The master plans takes cues from traditional palace architecture of Korea’s Joseon Dynasty. According to Office OU principal Nicolas Koff “the palaces are simple and cohesive complexes, united in their architectural language and yet differentiated by their response to the natural landscape.”

At Sejong Museum Gardens architecture serves as a “vessel for the landscape,” Koff explains, allowing each distinct landscape to shape its respective museum's identity. Just as the buildings in Korea's historic palaces create a lattice of distinctive courtyards, Office OU's design looks for integration between nature and architecture. “The architecture is not iconic,” Office OU principal Uros Novakovic stresses, “it's a permeable, space framing device that allows the unique landscapes to be more fully experienced.” The forecourts and courtyards that front each museum will be framed by the architecture, Novakovic notes, making each landscape a locus of attention.

“There are also programmatic links between landscapes and museum identities,” Sebastian Bartnicki adds, describing the connections between each landscape and its museum. For example, the productive landscape that characterizes the Children's Museum invites kids to play and explore the space. By the same token, the Archives Museum will be tucked within a mountainous topography, fostering an appropriate sense of seclusion. Meanwhile, the Architecture Museum is defined by hard landscaping with a distinctly urban feel, relating to the city’s developing retail and arts district across the Che Creek.

Working in partnership with South Korea's acclaimed Junglim Architecture, Office OU will initially design the first three buildings of the National Museum Complex: The National Children's Museum, the Museum Complex's Central Storehouse and Central Operations Centre.

The competition jury praised the project’s “exquisite control of space,” as well as “the spatial relationship between nature and built form, which is successfully anchored in human scale.” Particular acclaim was also reserved for “the interpretation of nature as an architectural element,” and the unorthodox decision to emphasize landscaping over built form.

The competition jury included South Korea's Sungkwan Lee of Seoul National University, Yongmi Kim of Geumseong Architects & Engineers, Junsung Kim of Konkuk University and Architecture Studio hANd, and Sunghong Kim of the University of Seoul, as well as Japan's Nobuaki Furuya of Waseda University and Studio Nasca, and Christopher Sharples of SHoP Architects from the United States.

The first phase of the project, comprised of 5 museums, is set to be completed by 2023.

 

Office OU's master plan was recently profiled on archdaily and Landezine.

More information on the project can also be found on Office OU's website.

Come February 20, Toronto’s Balmy, Kew, and Ashbridges Bay beaches will be dotted with temporary public art installations — stations designed to engage passers-by and celebrate winter along the waterfront.

This year, a number of Daniels Faculty graduates and students are among the winners of Winter Stations, the international design competition held to select the installations.

Master of Landscape Architecture students Asuka Kono and Rachel Salmela reinterpreted a Japanese hot spring for their winning submission I See You Ashiyu. “Providing Torontonians the opportunity to engage physically with water in the winter creates an immersive experience that frames this harsh landscape in a new way,” wrote the duo in their submission.

In BuoyBuoyBuoy, another winning entry by Dionisios Vriniotis, Rob Shostak (MArch 2010), Dakota Wares-Tani (MArch 2016), and Julie Forand, each component of the “infinitely reconfigurable” installation is shaped in the silhouette of a buoy. When the installation is eventually dismantled, the pieces can be kept as a keepsake or donated to schools and community centres for reuse.

A team of students from the Daniels Faculty is also among the institutional winners, which include the University of Waterloo, and the Humber College School of Media Studies & IT, School of Applied Technology. The Daniels Faculty’s submission, Midwinter Fire, “reframes the narrative of our local forests to show the potential power of our urban ecology to city dwellers.” The team of Daniels students included John Beeton, Herman Borrego, Anna Chen, Vikrant Dasoar, Michael DeGirolamo, Leonard Flot, Monika Gorgopa, James Kokotilo, Asuka Kono, Karima Peermohammad, Rachel Salmela, Christina Wilkinson, Julie Wong, and Rotem Yaniv. Assistant Professor Pete North served as their advisor.

Honorable mentions were awarded to 18 teams, four of which involved Daniels Faculty alumni and students. These proposed installations included:

Catalyzed Winter
Seven (Xiru) Chen (MLA 2012), Naiji Jiao (MArch 2014), and Louis (Yi) Liu (MArch 2014)

Every Last Drop Of Sunlight
Yvan MacKinnon (MArch 2013)

Qbic Hangars
Stephen Baik (MArch student) and Abubaker Bajaman (MArch student)

Sift
Deagan McDonald (MArch 2015) and Kelsey Nilsen (MArch 2015)

Congratulations to everyone who participated in the competition. For more about the Winter Stations project, visit: http://www.winterstations.com/

Media:
Toronto beaches winter station design winners announced [CBC]
Eight art installations to make a splash at Toronto waterfront [Metro]

Pictured, above: 1. BuoyBuoyBuoy, by Dionisios Vriniotis, Rob Shostak (MArch 2010), Dakota Wares-Tani (MArch 2016)  2. I See You Ashiyu, by Asuka Kono and Rachel Salmela  3. Midwinter Fire, by Daniels Faculty students  4. Catalyzed Winter, by Seven (Xiru) Chen (MLA 2012), Naiji Jiao (MArch 2014), and Louis (Yi) Liu (MArch 2014)  5. Every Last Drop Of Sunlight, by Yvan MacKinnon (MArch 2013)  6. Qbic Hangars, by Stephen Baik (MArch student) and Abubaker Bajaman (MArch student)  7. Sift, by Deagan McDonald (MArch 2015) and Kelsey Nilsen (MArch 2015)

A celebration to honour graduate student accomplishments and to thank those who have contributed to student awards took place on October 27 at a luncheon at Hart House.
 
Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture, Master of Urban Design, and Master of Visual Studies students who received in-course awards and admissions awards were invited to meet the donors who have helped support their academic development. And the donors were able to meet the students who have benefited from their generosity.

Students Karima Peermohammad (MArch 3) and Devin Tepleski (MLA 1) spoke passionately on behalf of the student body about the value of their programs and the financial support that they received, which has helped them pursue their academic goals.
 
“You are investing in the opportunities for each and every one of us, to find answers within ourselves.” said Tepleski in his address to the donors. “We will work every day to make our communities better places."

Dean Richard Sommer also spoke to those assembled, thanking the donors for their ongoing contributions.
 
“Your generosity has had a catalytic effect on the prospects of our most talented students by recognizing their achievements and supporting their work,” he said

The Daniels Faculty would like to congratulate those who received awards this year — and express its sincere thanks to those who continue to support students year after year.

Alumni Kelsey Nilson (MArch 2015) and Deagan McDonald (MArch 2015) were recently awarded 1st place in the Iceland Trekking Cabins Competitionhosted by Bee Breeders with CDS NORD Property Developers.

“The structure is humble, directing focus outwards to the landscape,” says Nilson and McDonald of their submission titled Terra Firma. They proposed a three-roomed shelter distilled down to its basic functions, which incorporates gabion walls, a rainwater collection tank, photovoltaic cells, and translucent polycarbonate panels on a timber-framed roof.

From the Jury Commentary:

It is in this delicate balance between rigid structure and an untouched landscape that the project finds resonance. The play between manmade and natural heightens the visitors awareness of surrounding, allowing protection from the elements while still remaining fully engaged within the environment. In a landscape where the temporal patterns of hiking and camping are lauded for a leave no trace transience, the shelter challenges the perception that permanence and obstruction necessarily go hand-in-hand, developing an architectural language that both monumentalizes the act of camping and allows natural systems of the site — animals, hydrology, and fauna — to flow through uninterrupted.

The top three Iceland Trekking Cabin projects will be considered for construction by CDS NORD, with plans to build next year.

Nilson and McDonald are co-founders of ORIGINS — a small scale, multi-disciplinary design studio based in Toronto. Recently, the firm created a winning furniture entry into the IIDEX Canada's 2016 Woodshop Competition, and received honorable mention in the Sequoia Climbing Space Competition. In an interview with IIDEXCanada 2016, Nilson and McDonald spoke about the intersection functionality and aesthetics in design, and commented that “good design should be honest, humble, and useful above all else.”

Two Daniels Faculty Master of Landscape Architecture graduates will be receiving awards from the American Society of Landscape Architecture (ASLA) for their graduate thesis projects. Jordan Duke and Shan Yangwere among the 22 student award winners, selected out of 271 entries from 71 schools around the world.

Jordan Duke will receive an Honour Award in the General Design Category for her thesis project The Digital & The Wild: Mitigating Wildfire Risk Through Landscape Adaptations. Her thesis explored how wildfires could be mitigated through tools that exist within the realm of landscape architecture, and culminated in the development of a strategy for Cleland Conservation Park in South Australia. Her plan combined remote sensors embedded in the landscape with site-specific landscape design strategies that would produce both short- and long-term results for diminishing such disasters in the future. Duke’s thesis advisor was Assistant Professor Liat Margolis. You can also read more about Duke’s project here.

Shan Yang received an honor Award in the Analysis and Planning Category for her thesis project PHYTO-Industry: Reinvigorating the North Vancouver Waterfront Through a Phased Remediation Process.

For her project, Yang presented a remediation strategy that combined existing industrial land with future urban development along a 12-kilometre long industrial belt on the North Shore of Burrard Inlet in Metro Vancouver. Her proposal explored the area’s social and ecological potential, shoreline dynamics, ecology, industrial evolution, and in-situ site remediation strategies to support the development of a multifunctional, ecologically resilient green belt where urban redevelopment to help meet the area’s intense need for housing could take place. Yang’s thesis advisor was Assistant Professor Pete North.

Jury members for the student awards included:

• Laura Solano, ASLA, Chair, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Ned Crankshaw, ASLA, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky
• Terrence DeWan, FASLA, Terrence J. DeWan & Associates, Yarmouth, Maine
• Janelle Johnson, ASLA, Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, Chicago
• Jeffrey Lee, FASLA, Lee and Associates Inc., Washington, D.C.
• Elizabeth Miller, FASLA, National Capital Planning Commission, Washington, D.C.
• Forster Ndubisi, FASLA, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
• Trinity Simons, Mayor’s Institute on City Design, Washington, D.C.
• Barbara Swift, FASLA, Swift & Company Landscape Architects, Seattle

All 2016 ASLA winners will receive their awards at the ASLA Annual Meeting and EXPO in New Orleans on Monday, October 24.

The September issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM) features the winning projects and is available for free viewing via ASLA’s website.

Assistant Professor Charles Stankievech, director of the Daniels Faculty's Visual Studies program, has been short-listed for the 2016 Sobey Art Award.

From the Sobey Art Award Juror’s Statement given by Barbara Fischer:

“Charles Stankievech is an internationally recognized artist whose award-winning exhibitions include Counterintelligence (2014) and Monument as Ruin (2015). He often refers to his interests as “fieldwork” – a temporary form of architectural installation that combines a diverse array of physical and immaterial elements, from photography to film, light and sonic materials, as well as writings, archival documents and works by other artists. Concerned with the transformation of the physical landscape and immaterial spaces as effected by military, industrial and colonial interests, and the history of technology, his work manifests ambitious and intensely rich essays on contemporary social and technological upheaval.”

The Sobey Art Award is an annual art prize given to Canadian artists under the age of 40. It distributes $100,000 among the finalists: $50,000 to the winner, $10,000 to each of the four finalists, and $500 each to other long-listed artists. Last year, Abbas Akhavan took home the award for his work on the “domestic sphere, as a forked space between hospitality and hostility,” and his more recent work on “spaces and species just outside the home – the garden, the backyard, and other domesticated landscapes.”

Stankievech is joined by four other finalists, representing different Canadian regions: Jeremy Shaw, Brenda Draney, Hajra Waheed, and William Robinson.

“The jury chose five artists whose approaches are characteristic of the frequently transdisciplinary practice of the upcoming generation of artists,” writes Nicolaus Schafhausen, International Juror for the Sobey Art Award. “They all reflect the broad intellectual spectrum of the Canadian art world.”

The winner of the Sobey Art Award will be announced later this year. A group exhibition showcasing the work of the winner and four finalists will be presented at the National Gallery of Canada from October 6, 2016 to February 5, 2017.

Photo: Monument as Ruin (2011-2014), Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University. Photo by Charles Stankievech.

Related:

• #ReadingList: 4 essays and 2 books on colonialism and sovereignty
• Charles Stankievech named the Audain Distinguished Artist-in-Residance for Spring/Summer 2016
• Charles Stankievech Wins Best Solo Exhibition at OAAG Awards
• Charles Stankievech looks at art, photography, and culture "Through Post-Atomic Eyes"

Five Daniels alumni and faculty members are among eight finalist design teams for the Lord Stanley’s Gift Monument Public Art Competition:

• North Design Office — the firm of Daniels Faculty Professors Pete North and Alissa North — joined with Blackwell and Mulvi&Banani to form the team North Design/Blackwell/Mulvi&Banani.
• Lecturer Nima Javidi (MUD 2005) and Behnaz Assadi (MLA 2008) are working under the name Javidi/Errazuriz/Assadi.
• David Leinster (BLA 1985) collaborated with Douglas Coupland and Karen Mills to form Coupland/Leinster/Mills.

“The Jury was overwhelmed with the extraordinary qualifications and achievements of the design teams,” writes Adrian Burns, Jury Chair. “As you can imagine, evaluating so much talent and experience made our task exceedingly difficult.”

Earlier this year, the Lord Stanley’s Gift Monument Public Art Competition invited teams to submit design proposals for what is expected to become a prominent new landmark in Ottawa. The monument will be built in time for the 125^th anniversary of the Stanley Cup Trophy — a Canadian symbol that originated with Canada’s sixth governor general, Lord Stanley of Preston.

The winning design will be announced in October 2016 on the advice of a jury of eminent Canadians who are highly respected in the fields of public art, culture, history, and hockey. The monument will be donated to the City of Ottawa, and unveiled in December 2017 in downtown Ottawa at the corner of Elgin and Sparks Streets — steps from the site where Lord Stanley of Preston gifted the Stanley Cup on March 18, 1892.