Their work co-designing a groundbreaking Indigenous wellness centre in the Northwest Territories has garnered Daniels Faculty architecture professor Mason White and lecturer and alumnus Kearon Roy Taylor a prestigious 2022 Architectural Education Award, which they share with Lola Sheppard of the University of Waterloo. 

White, who directs the Master of Architecture Post-Professional program at Daniels Faculty, is a co-founder with Sheppard of the Toronto design practice Lateral Office, where Roy Taylor is an associate partner.  

The collaborators have won a Faculty Design Award, one of the various Architectural Education Awards handed out annually by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) in partnership with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS). It is for their work on the Arctic Indigenous Wellness Centre — a soon-to-be-constructed wellness and cultural facility for Indigenous people in Canada’s North — that they’re being recognized. 

Earmarked for a prominent perch of Canadian Shield adjacent to Frame Lake in Yellowknife, the project as envisioned now began as a research studio at Daniels Faculty, where White first led efforts to define its program, siting and form. At the time, he met and talked extensively with Elders leading the initiative, visited possible locations for the centre, and developed an understanding of the key cultural priorities behind it.

The resulting design is a “de-institutionalized,” camp-like facility organized into three distinct yet unified glulam-spruce volumes “closely tuned to the environment, climate and ground conditions” of the setting. In accordance with the wishes of the Elders, no rock will be blasted or excavated to construct the complex, which will also include an outdoor fire circle, site-wide medicine gardens, and multiple connection points to surrounding trails and landmarks. 

Gallery: Construction of the award-winning Arctic Indigenous Wellness Centre, comprising three site-sensitive glulam-spruce volumes in a lakeside network of trails, gardens and amenities, is scheduled to begin in Yellowknife this year.

Fittingly, the Lateral Office team won the Faculty Design Award (which acknowledges work that, among other things, “centres the human experience”) in the Excellence in Community/Research category. All of the 2022 Architectural Education Award winners will be celebrated, on March 18 and 19, at a ceremony in Los Angeles.

The ACSA award isn’t the first prize bestowed on the project. This past fall, the Arctic Indigenous Wellness Centre was also recognized with a 2020-2021 Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction, taking Silver for the North America region at a ceremony in Venice, Italy. 

At the same presentation, held during the International Architecture Biennale, a team led by associate professor Aziza Chaouni of the Daniels Faculty won a Global Holcim Award, taking Bronze for a proposed music school and ecotourism centre in Morocco.

Called Joudour Sahara, the project prioritizes environmental and social sustainability through the programmatic overlapping of the music school, an eco-lodge and an anti-desertification testing ground. Among the complex’s defining features are courtyards that promote passive cooling and user collaboration, outdoor reed canopies that enable active use of the site during North Africa’s hot summers, and multi-use spaces (such as shared administrative facilities and an outdoor auditorium) that reduce the built footprint and maximize resources. 

Gallery: Prioritizing social and environmental sustainability, Morocco's Joudour Sahara Cultural Centre by Aziza Chaouni Projects is a music school, eco-lodge and anti-desertification testing ground in one.

Chaouni was born in Morocco and is the founder of Aziza Chaouni Projects, her multidisciplinary design firm based in Toronto and Fez. At Daniels Faculty, Chaouni leads the collaborative research platform Designing Ecological Tourism (DET), which investigates the challenges faced by ecotourism in the developing world.

Her win in Venice marks the second Global Holcim Award for Chaouni, whose practice won Gold in 2009. The 2020-2021 Bronze comes with $50,000 (U.S.), as does Lateral Office’s regional Silver. 

Banner images: From left to right in the first image, Daniels Faculty architecture professor Mason White poses with Holcim Foundation board member Kate Ascher and Jean Erasmus of the Arctic Indigenous Wellness Foundation during the presentation of the 2020-2021 Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction in Venice, Italy. Recipient of a Global Bronze, Daniels Faculty assistant professor Aziza Chaouni (left in the second image) talks with jury member Meisa Batayneh Maani after her win. 

Third-year Master of Landscape Architecture student Stefan Herda is among the 17 scholars chosen by the Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation to receive one of its 2021/22 scholarships.

Every year the Ottawa-based LACF bestows the awards to two national and 15 regional winners across Canada. The scholarships are awarded to landscape architecture students who display “superior academic performance, promote leadership, and encourage original and creative design work and research,” according to the Foundation.

“I am humbled to have been selected by the LACF for the award,” says Toronto-based Herda, whose regional win was officially marked during an online celebration on February 11. “There is so much to learn in landscape architecture, and I appreciate being recognized early on in the journey.”

Herda’s “enthusiasm for traditional ecological knowledge, land stewardship and cultivating landscape literacy” were cited among the reasons for his selection.

Stefan Herda has undertaken research projects that analyze the environmental impacts of sites such as the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario.

“Every recipient had a chance to introduce themselves, discuss their research and interests, and [elaborate on] what inspired them to study landscape architecture,” says Herda, who found the virtual ceremony convenient since he and his fiancée have a newborn. “What was most compelling was the profound influence that local geography had on everyone’s work, the breadth of research, and how they focused on equity, climate justice, and truth and reconciliation.”

In addition to his fiancée, Herda credits his fellow classmates, his mentors at the Daniels Faculty, and Elder Whabagoon and the Nikibii Dawadinna Giigwag family for helping him achieve this milestone. “I would not be where I am without my classmates,” he says. “The Landscape Architecture faculty across the board at Daniels have been incredibly supportive of my interests over the last three years.”

One of the research projects that Herda has undertaken at the Daniels Faculty is Under the Humber, in which he and his Integrated Urbanism Studio classmates studied sites in Toronto (such as the point where the Humber River meets Lake Ontario) that they designated as needing some form of design intervention due to environmental, economic and social pressures.

To view more of Herda's work, click here.

Banner image: Master of Landscape Architecture student Stefan Herda was awarded a 2021/22 scholarship by the Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation. (Photo provided by Herda)

Ja Architecture Studio, the Toronto-based practice co-founded by Daniels Faculty assistant professor Behnaz Assadi with architect and alumnus Nima Javidi, has been singled out as one of 2022’s top Emerging Voices by The Architectural League of New York. Every year a jury assembled by the League chooses eight emerging practices as winners of its by-invitation Emerging Voices competition. Landscape architect Assadi co-founded Ja with Javidi, a former professor at Daniels Faculty, a decade ago. Their work was cited by the League for representing “the best of its kind,” addressing “larger issues in architecture, landscape and the built environment.” 

“We are extremely honoured to have been named one of the eight 2022 Emerging Voices by The Architectural League of New York,” says Assadi. “No other recognition could have given more meaning to the past decade of our practice or make us look forward to the next.” 

The Emerging Voices award spotlights North American firms and individuals “with distinct design voices and the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape design and urbanism.” The jury reviews significant bodies of realized work and considers accomplishments within the design and academic communities as well as the public realm. Among the illustrious practitioners recognized by the League as Emerging Voices in the past are Steven Holl (in 1982), Toshiko Mori (1992), Jeanne Gang (2006) and Tatiana Bilbao (2010). 

This year the selection process involved a two-stage review of work from approximately 50 entrants invited to submit their portfolios. Paul Lewis, a jury member and the president of The Architectural League, was struck by the breadth of the submissions. 

“Rather than indicating a fracturing of our discipline,” Lewis noted, “this year’s winners were united in how they each clarified new types of agency and new notions of value motivated by an optimism about what an architect could and should do.”  

Assadi and Javidi’s work, which explores “how iconographic, geometric, formal and tectonic pursuits relate to broader contexts such as politics, construction, landscape, and urbanism,” ranges from creatively executed residential and commercial projects on tight city plots to ambitious international competitions that draw on the collective repertoire of their multidisciplinary firm. 

Ja Architecture Studio's 2015 design for the Bauhaus Museum in Germany came in fourth out of hundreds of submissions.

Over the past several years, Assadi has been teaching and coordinating two of the foundational core studios in the Daniels Faculty’s MLA program, as well as a number of graduate and undergraduate courses in both the architecture and landscape architecture departments. Former Daniels Faculty member Javidi is currently the Gwathmey Professor of Design at Cooper Union in New York City.

As part of the Emerging Voices program, winners are invited to present their work through a series of lectures. Assadi and Javidi are to join fellow winner Tsz Yan Ng of Michigan to discuss their projects in a moderated Zoom discussion on March 17.  

Revitalizing streetscapes is a Ja specialty. The cafe/bakery at left is housed in a former mechanic shop on Toronto's Queen Street West.

Among the other practices recognized by the League this year are Estudio MMX of Mexico City, Borderless Studio in Chicago and Felecia Davis Studio in State College, Pennsylvania. 

For details on the Emerging Voices award and lectures, visit archleague.org. To learn more about Ja’s work and principals, visit jastudioinc.com. 

Banner image: For a residence on a quiet Toronto sidestreet, Ja proposed a sinuous yet sensitive brick addition. The work of co-founders Javidi and Assadi (pictured) combines "the rootedness of a local architecture firm with the broad interests of an international design studio."

Daniels Faculty sessional lecturer Abdi Osman’s video installation Shadowboxing (2021) has been selected as part of the Berlinale Forum program at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. This is the first time the Toronto-based Somali-Canadian artist’s work has been featured at the festival, also known as Berlinale.

“It feels amazing to have my work included at a such a prestigious festival where people from around the world will get to see it,” says Osman, who attended the February 9 premiere in Germany.

Osman’s Shadowboxing is being shown as part of the group exhibition of films and installations in the Forum Expanded: Closer to the Ground segment of the Berlinale Forum. Showcasing international filmmakers and artists, the Forum is an event within the film festival organized by Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art. The group exhibition will conclude on March 13.

Shadowboxing (2021) features various shots of parks and landmarks from across Toronto. (Video stills provided by Abdi Osman)

Osman describes Shadowboxing as a public installation that builds on his ongoing research into the “gaps between experiences and representations of queer cruising, space- and place-making in the city.” He goes on to explain:
 

“A projection of lush, green park environments that I have documented from sites across [Toronto] appears on the screen. My holdings and records of queer, locational fortitude speak to the countless compounded sites around us where bodies have forged connections in time and space in spite of the continued realities of homophobia, racism and white supremacy that exist in Toronto and beyond.”
 

The projection is augmented by an online audio work featuring local oral histories about queer cruising from the perspectives of Black, queer and trans community members, recorded by the artist.

As well as appearing in the Berlinale Forum, Shadowboxing has also been nominated for a Teddy, an official festival prize. First established in 1987, the Teddy Award recognizes and celebrates works of art with a focus on LGBT+ artists and themes. Osman has been nominated under the category of Experimental Film.

The Teddy Award ceremony will take place on February 18 at 9 p.m. CET (3 p.m. EST). To learn more about the awards and to view the event online, please click here.

Banner image: This marks the first time that the Toronto-based artist’s work has been featured at the Berlin International Film Festival. (Photo by Gelek Badheytsang)

A team of Daniels Faculty architecture students has begun construction on an installation titled Introspection, selected as one of six projects to be featured in the upcoming Winter Stations 2022 exhibition. The winners were announced on January 17.

“We are very proud to be representing the Daniels Faculty at this year’s Winter Stations,” says Christopher Hardy, a second-year student in the Master of Architecture program and team lead for Introspection. “This project is an opportunity for us to not only showcase our design talents and creativity but also to reconnect with our fellow peers after almost two years of remote learning.”

Illustrations of Introspection’s floor plan and interior rendering.

Launched in 2014, Winter Stations is a yearly exhibition of outdoor installations that invite the public to reenvision and interact with spaces and objects usually avoided in winter. Erected along the shoreline of Toronto’s east-end beaches, the projects are selected through a single-stage international design competition and stay up for six weeks. To date, the Winter Stations competition has received entries from more than 90 countries.

Conceived by a team of 10 Daniels students, Introspection joins a number of previous Faculty projects that have been presented at the exhibition: Midwinter Fire in 2017, I See You Ashiyu in 2017 and Calvacade in 2019.

In response to the pandemic and how people have adapted to it, the exhibition’s theme this year is “resilience.” With that in mind, the Introspection team members designed a red pavilion – plywood sheets covered with wooden slats – surrounding a lifeguard tower. The pavilion’s inner walls will be lined with mirrors. “We chose to base our design on the emotions felt throughout the past two years’ worth of quarantine and isolation,” the project description reads. It goes on to explain:
 

“Playing with the idea of reflection, we utilize mirrored walls to cast the visitors as the subjects of our bright red pavilion. While the trellis roof allows the sun to illuminate the interior and its visitors, the red lifeguard tower stands unyielding in the centre of the pavilion, reminding us of the inherent stability within us.”
 

Dean Juan Du looks forward to visiting Introspection and the rest of the installations when Winter Stations opens in late February. “This pavilion is a timely and creative expression of a theme we’ve all had to navigate intimately,” she says. “Our faculty, students and staff have come together and risen to incredible challenges these last couple of years. Both Introspection and the larger exhibition invite people to reflect on our vulnerabilities and strengths, on what it means to be resilient both individually and collectively.”

On a separate but related note, the Dean will also be hosting a symposium on April 2 titled Design for Resilient Communities. Details of the event will be available closer to the date.

Hardy and his team hope to start installing Introspection at Woodbine Beach during the week of February 7. The exhibition runs from February 21 to March 3.

“We invite Daniels community members to check out our pavilion,” he says. “It’s a space that hopefully will inspire people to not only think about what we’ve been through, but also what we’re capable of.”

The Introspection team is comprised of the following members:

Christopher Hardy - Master of Architecture
Tomasz Weinberger - Bachelor of Arts, Architectural Studies
Clement Sung - Master of Architecture
Jason Wu - Master of Architecture
Jacob Henriquez - Master of Architecture
Christopher Law - Bachelor of Arts, Architectural Studies
Anthony Mattacchione - Master of Architecture
George Wang - Master of Architecture
Maggie MacPhie - Master of Architecture
Zoey Chao - Master of Architecture

Fiona Lim Tung, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, serves as project sponsor and supervisor.

For more information about Winter Stations 2022, please click here.

Introspection project members assemble the pavilion at the Daniels Faculty on January 22, 2022. (Photos by Christopher Law)

Over the past several years, Daniels Faculty graduate student James Bird has worked tirelessly toward reconciling Canada-First Nations relations, liaising with top government officials and disseminating Indigenous teachings. And he has done it all while working toward his Master of Architecture degree, which he achieved earlier this month.

In December and January, the residential-school survivor and knowledge keeper from the Nehiyawak and Dene Nations was recognized not once but twice for his ongoing efforts, receiving both a prestigious Challenge Coin from the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and a 2022 Clarkson Laureateship from Massey College, where Bird is a junior fellow.

Named after Adrienne Clarkson, Canada’s 26th Governor General, “the Clarkson Laureateships in Public Service are the highest honour that the College awards annually,” Bird explains. “This award dates back to 2004, during the final year of Madame Clarkson’s term. The Laureateships honour her many years of service to Canada by recognizing members of the Massey College community who also contribute to the public good.”

At Massey, Bird is one of three tobacco keepers of the college’s Chapel Royal, which was given that status by the Queen in 2017 and is known in Anishinaabek as Gi-Chi Twaa Gimaa Kwe Mississauga Anishinaabek AName Amik (The Queen’s Anishinaabek Sacred Place). A tobacco garden sits outside the Chapel Royal, the crop being a “sacred” resource long central to Crown-Indigenous relations. 

In June, Bird had co-hosted a luncheon and tour of the garden for the Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, Ontario’s Lieutenant Governor.  About a month before Bird accepted his Clarkson Laureateship during a virtual ceremony on January 14, he was at Queen’s Park, receiving his Challenge Coin from Dowdeswell in her office on December 10.

The Challenge Coin, a medallion bestowed annually to a select few, is a more personal honour, given by the Lieutenant Governor as a token of appreciation for supporting her office over the years of her term. 

In addition to hosting Dowdeswell at Massey College, Bird had also joined her for a July 1 Sunrise Ceremony, where he delivered the opening prayer. Such ceremonies are “a time to welcome goodness into the world and to move our collective intentions to kindness,” Bird said at the time. “As we move into these difficult times, let us all remember our collective humanity and move gently on Mother Earth.”

True to form, Bird will not be resting on his steadily growing laurels. Academically, a Doctorate of Philosophy in Architecture, Landscape, and Design will be next on his radar, while his work as a member of the University of Toronto’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission steering committee continues.  

“Although I am grateful for these [honours],” he says, “there is still so much more to be done, and I will continue to work on these issues that plague so many First Nations peoples in Canada.” 

Image Credits: First image: James Bird holds the Challenge Coin given to him by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario as a token of appreciation for supporting her office during her term. Second image: Bird receives the Challenge Coin from the Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell at Queen’s Park on December 10. (Photos courtesy of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor)

Dana Collins, a Daniels Faculty Master of Forestry Conservation alumna, has been named one of Canada's 100 Most Powerful Women. The 2021 list was released by Women's Executive Network in recognition of outstanding women across Canada who advocate for workforce diversity and inspire tomorrow’s leaders.

Collins was selected in the Manulife Science and Technology category for the varied roles she has played in challenging the status quo for knowledge and female empowerment within Canada’s forest sector.

“I’m honoured to be named amongst this illustrious group of powerful women who are all committed to inspiring change,” Collins says. “In a country that hosts nine percent of the world’s forests, I feel fortunate to work within Canada’s forest sector, building a career dedicated to the sustainable management of our natural resources. Inclusion begets innovation and I’m committed to making the forest sector more inclusive. Given women make up approximately 17 percent of the workforce, it’s imperative that we break down barriers, uplift underrepresented voices and encourage women to pursue rewarding careers in forestry.”

Collins is currently a forest professional in British Columbia, serving as the managing director of the Juniper Collective, a forward-looking inclusion and diversity consultancy that partners with organizations in the forest sector to develop practical solutions for respectful and inclusive workplaces. Collins has been widely recognized as a changemaker in the sector, pursuing every undertaking through a critical, intersectional lens. In her previous role as the executive director of the Canadian Institute of Forestry, she spearheaded a national initiative to support the recruitment, retention and advancement of women in Canada’s forest sector. She has also been a recipient of the Prince of Wales Award for Sustainable Forest Management.

“When we actively enable diversity and inclusion,” says Collins, “and foster a sense of belonging, workplaces, industries and whole sectors can only strengthen.”

Join us in celebrating Collins’s many accomplishments at the Awards Gala on Thursday, November 25 at 5:30 p.m.

About The Juniper Collective

The Juniper Collective is an inclusion and diversity consultancy that partners with organizations to develop practical solutions for respectful and inclusive workplaces. By using data specific to an organization’s unique needs, the Juniper Collective creates individualized strategies for inclusion and diversity with a measurable impact.

About Women’s Executive Network (WXN)

A member-based organization, Women’s Executive Network (WXN) is North America’s first and only organization that meaningfully propels and celebrates the advancement of women at all levels, in all sectors and of all ages. WXN delivers this advancement through training, events, mentoring, networking and award and recognition programs for members and partners. It operates in Canada and the U.S.

Click here to read the full article

SOURCE: The Juniper Collective

Top image: CNW Group/The Juniper Collective

Christopher Hardy, Master of Architecture student, and Tomasz Weinberger, second-year undergraduate student, have received first place and a $3,000 award out of 81 entries from student teams around the world in the Canadian Academy of Architecture for Justice (CAAJ) competition: Breaking the Cycle Student Design for their project Black Creek Community Corridor. 
 
The CAAJ invited architecture students to design a new Community Justice Centre, an informal community setting that challenges the present justice system and the issues faced by communities. As CAAJ shares “the long waits for trials, high rates of recidivism, harsh sentences for minor infractions, failure to rehabilitate offenders, and the overrepresentation of certain racial groups is one of these institutions being challenged in the context of social unrest, systematic racism and discrimination, and violent protests.” The design was evaluated by a jury of justice experts, architects and industry professionals.   

Black Creek Community Corridor - Christopher Hardy and Tomasz Weinberger

Located within an underutilized hydro-corridor at Jane and Finch, the Black Creek Community Corridor aims to provide the residents of an underserved neighbourhood with a mix of recreational and judicial services. The site was selected based on its proximity to a popular community garden, a recreational trail, and its multiple access points to different modes of public transport.  

The cut-outs within the rammed earth walls separate community and justice programming to facilitate an ease of wayfinding between the provided social, legal and recreational services. The motive was to create a striking and welcoming multi-program floor plan that can address all the needs of the Jane and Finch area. As a way to destigmatize the surrounding community, the project names its public amenities after notable citizens from the neighbourhood, such as Anthony Bennet, Jessie Reyez, and Paul Nguyen. The intent was to highlight their contributions to society in an effort to celebrate the community’s achievements and to inspire the youth to fight against stigma and adversity. They abolished the linearity, darkness and hierarchical seating of the Ontarian court.  
 
Hardy and Weinberger share: “We’re very thankful to have been given the opportunity to explore how architecture can act as a tool for social change in disadvantaged communities. Through our ethnographic study of the neighbourhood of Black Creek, we devised a scheme that would restore the connections between the community and justice system through the integration of key social services and much-needed public amenities.” 

They recently presented their winning competition entry at the AIA Academy of Architecture for Justice (AAJ) Fall 2021 Conference discussing the topic of the emerging typology of Community Justice Centre with fellow panelists David Clusiau (NORR Architects, CAAJ Chair), Jacob Kummer (Montgomery Sisam Architects, CAAJ Communications & Competition Co-chair), Julian Jaffary (Justice Architecture Specialist, AIA Liaison & Competition Co-chair), and Julius Lang (Community Justice Expert, former Sr. Advisor at Center for Court Innovation). 
 

Learn more about the CAAJ competition  

Claude Cormier, celebrated Canadian landscape architect and designer and founding principal of Claude Cormier et Associés has made a $500,000 commitment to his alma mater, the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto to support remarkable Masters in Landscape Architecture (MLA) students, and to bolster recognition for the importance of the landscape architecture profession.

The Claude Cormier Award in Landscape Architecture will annually cover the domestic tuition fees of a talented MLA student, in their third and final year, who shows promise to pursue creative and pioneering forms or approaches to practice.

The scholarship builds on gifts that Cormier has made to the school since 2000, and is the largest private gift designated to U of T’s landscape architecture program to date.

“This is an important moment for landscape architecture,” says Cormier. “There is growing recognition that landscape architecture is not about selecting plants to adorn a building, but rather that landscape is integral to making meaningful places. Landscape architecture is about drawing connections between people and buildings, connecting natural ecosystems with urban environments, and positively steering the health of ourselves and our planet. We need to support the next generation of landscape architects to discover new ways of designing for our built environment.”

Cormier first studied agronomy at the University of Guelph before graduating from the University of Toronto’s Bachelor of Landscape Architecture professional program in 1986. He went on to complete his Masters in History and Theory of Design at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. After working for several esteemed Québec design practices, he formed his eponymous studio in 1995.

Blue Stick Garden (Claude Cormier et Associés)

His breakout moment was in 2000 at the Métis Garden Festival in northern Québec with the installation Blue Stick Garden (Jardin de Batons Bleus). Recognizing the limited time for the festival installations’ planting and growth, Cormier used an intensive arrangement of painted wooden sticks in lieu of plant material. Cormier’s abstracted perennial garden delighted visitors and quicky established his reputation for subversive designs that extended the perception and definition of landscape architecture. In Montréal, the summer installation, Pink Balls – a kilometre-long canopy of pink plastic balls swaying over St. Catherine Street – conceived as a landmark for a pedestrian-only district during Pride season that was later reinstalled in rainbow hues as 18 Shades of Gay. With an optimized modest budget, the installation has established an iconic image for its neighbourhood (the Gay Village), attracting international media, more visits by locals and tourists (local and international), and an overall improvement in the reputation of the neighbourhood.

18 Shades of Gay, Montréal (Our American Dream).

With Sugar Beach in 2010, Cormier wowed Torontonians with a permanent installation of pink umbrellas and a soft sand beach just south of the Business District. The park demonstrated that contemporary public spaces could add value and fun in equal measure. More recently, the design for Berczy Park in Toronto features a huge three-tier, 19th century-style fountain with 27 cast-iron dogs, a large bone, and a cat. The unusual installation establishes a welcoming environment and prompts conversation amongst strangers.

Berczy Park, Toronto (Industryous Photography).

“As I am getting older, I am grateful to those who supported my trajectory, and for the life I have been able to enjoy designing spaces that bring surprise and delight to people irrespective of their demographic or background,” says Cormier. “The notion of legacy has become very important to me, and with that is a great desire to uplift to others. I am proud to support the Daniels Faculty, its students, and the University of Toronto because it is both my alma mater and such a progressive and cosmopolitan school.”

Associate Professor Liat Margolis, director of the landscape architecture program, says, “Claude is not only an inspiration to our students, he is also a ‘joyful giver.’ His extreme generosity and joie de vivre elevates both our program and the art and profession of landscape architecture. He inspires our students with his designs, through their unconventional materiality, and their ability to address serious concerns with good humour. With this award our students will be forever reminded of his remarkable career.”

Agata Mrozowski, third-year MLA student and the 2021 recipient of the Claude Cormier Award in Landscape Architecture remarked, “It has taken a village to make this experience of graduate school at U of T in the Master of Landscape Architecture program possible for me. To receive this gift means a sense of relief, for there were times I was not sure I would have the means and capacity to complete my studies.”

Mrozowski’s connection to Cormier’s work began during her first year of the MLA program when she focused on Sugar Beach as a precedent study for her visual communications course. “I spent a lot of time there and learned that what is an aesthetically playful and whimsical design, was deeply rooted in the historical context of the site and in direct conversation with the Redpath Sugar Plant directly across the harbour,” says Mrozowski. “I appreciate that his work does not romanticize or idealize notions of nature yet works within urban constraints in creative and thoughtful ways to produce public spaces.”

Sugar Beach, Toronto (Nicola Betts).

The scholarship was established in 2020 and is now being announced publicly as the Daniels Faculty has returned to in-person learning.

Portrait of Claude Cormier (Image Credit: Annie Ethier).

The Green New Deal Superstudio is a joint initiative of the Landscape Architecture Foundation (LAF) in association with the Weitzman School of Design McHarg Center, the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes, the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), and the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA). The year-long open call was designed to give form to policy ideas by translating the core goals of decarbonization, justice, and jobs into place-specific design and planning projects. It attracted the participation of 3,000 designers and students from over 90 universities across 10 countries, including the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto.  

The projects ranged from pragmatic to speculative and covered a wide variety of issues, innovation, scales, and geographic regions. A curated set of 55 projects were selected to illustrate the breadth of work submitted and are organized into six categories: Adapt, Empower, Energize, Remediate, Retrofit and Cultivate. 

Out of 670 submissions, two Daniels Faculty Masters of Landscape Architecture projects from last year’s Integrated Urbanism Studio (Design Studio 3) were selected: Re:charge by Joey Chiu, Agata Mrozowski, Tina Cui, and Nadia Chan; and Welcome To Black Creek: Re-Imagining Water as Life by Alex Sheinbaum, Agata Molendowski, Evelyn Babalis, and Natasha Raseta. Alongside, three projects were selected from Architectural Design Studio 4  (ARC2014): East Harlem: The Bank by Natalia Enriquez Goyes and Clara Ziada; Buildings within Buildings by Lucy Yang, Jeff Jang; and Overlapping Celebration by Zak Jacobi, Evan Webber.

Design Studio 3 is an integrated urbanism studio led by studio coordinators Fadi Masoud, Michael Piper, and Mason White, in which students from all three of the Daniels Faculty's design disciplines — architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design — collaborate on shared projects. In the fall 2020 semester, student groups investigated and reimagined Toronto's postwar neighbourhoods, taking into consideration social inequality and the environmental imperatives of the Green New Deal.   

Assistant Professor Fadi Masoud shares: “As evident by many of the projects from the Green New Deal Superstudio, landscape architecture strategies, tools, and methods will be central to the retrofit and adaption of cities to climate change. The Daniels Faculty student projects foreground key relationships between design and social, environmental, and policy opportunities." 

Design Studio 4, also known as comprehensive design studio led by studio coordinator Sam Dufaux, is where Master of Architecture students create detailed whole-building designs.  The Studio explores both the conceptual and technical dimensions of post-carbon thinking at the building scale. It asked the students to re-think and reimagine the social and material dimensions of buildings to create a Net Zero Center for Activism in East Harlem. 

Studio Coordinator Sam Dufaux shares "The work by the students for the Green New Deal Superstudio demonstrates a new attitude toward the climate and social crises. The projects not only imagine a new type of civic institution but also demonstrate how it can be built around the principles of circularity, energy efficiency and low carbon construction. Training our students with this focus is essential given that buildings generate nearly 40% of annual CO2 emissions and that we have less than 9 years to decarbonize our industry."

The full set of submissions are catalogued and freely accessible as part of the Green New Deal Superstudio archive in the JSTOR digital library. Each submission includes three image boards and descriptive text. The curators included Barbara Deutsch (LAF), Kate Orff (SCAPE; Columbia University), Kofi Boone (North Carolina State University), Kristina Hill (University of California, Berkeley), Michael Johnson (SmithGroup), and Roberto Rovira (Florida International University). 
 
Learn more about the Green New Deal Superstudio curated projects through its website.  

Re:charge - Joey Chiu, Agata Mrozowski, Tina Cui, and Nadia Chan 

Joey, Agata, Tina, and Nadia write: "Our project is called Re:charge. It looks at redefining the existing technology, industry, and open spaces of West Rexdale through the lens of the Green New Deal. Most of the site is currently occupied by the Woodbine Racetrack and Casino, with plans for a mega entertainment complex. However, we envision a different development approach that prioritizes community investment and climate change adaptation and mitigation. Our proposals centre around investing in local renewable energy production to power community infrastructure and empower the community. There are three main programmatic areas. 

The Efficiency Commons takes the existing warehouse and manufacturing district and retools it for new green energy generation and green manufacturing jobs. It will house new high-tech industries and the Sleepless Circuit, a new entertainment destination. The Common Sink is a large central green space on the defunct Woodbine Racetrack. This new park will include a horse sanctuary, a large wetland green space, a successional forest that connects the two ravines, and a land-art sculpture park that takes into consideration hydrology and habitat connectivity. The Verve is a long north-south mixed-use residential, manufacturing, and employment corridor that has a unique typology of warehouse co-op housing and civic amenities that do not currently exist. It includes artist-run galleries, and the Knowledge is Power Community Center. The corridor creates connections between residential areas within West Rexdale and provides connection to a new GO transit hub near Pearson." 

Website 
 
Instructors: Fadi Masoud and Megan Esponeko 

Welcome To Black Creek: Re-Imagining Water as Life - Alex Sheinbaum, Agata Molendowski, Evelyn Babalis, Natasha Raseta 
 

Alex, Agata, Evelyn, and Natasha write: "The reality is that WE ARE IN A CLIMATE CRISIS. While we understand the normalcy of a fluctuating landscape, our urban systems and regions are built with static, unchanging infrastructure that can rarely withstand modern ecological disasters. 

In identifying Rockcliffe-Smythe and the Black Creek as a significant design action zone in Toronto, this project strives to gain a better understanding of the relationship between water as infrastructure and water as life, since both the natural and built systems exist symbiotically within our urban environment. 

Though there is no perfect solution to the growing ecological crises faced by Toronto's vulnerable communities, the project's thoughtful design integrates and innovates socio-ecological resiliency strategies tailored to the Rockcliffe-Smythe neighbourhood, including new housing programs, research facilities, floodable programming, and spaces for engagement. These interventions desegregate human and natural communities and reconnect people to their environments within newly designed spaces full of life, all grounded by the Black Creek." 

Website 

Instructors: Fadi Masoud and Megan Esponeko 

East Harlem: The Bank - Natalia Enriquez Goyes and Clara Ziada

Clara and Natalia write: "Our project exploits the opportunity in embracing 'waste' as a valuable resource that is being discarded. By designing within the principles of a circular consumption model, we treat the building as a new home for materials within a continuous recovery and reutilization process. This narrative lends itself to a focus on embodied energy where the material choices, their lifecycle considerations, and design for (dis)assembly become main strategies. The dynamics between physical durability and functional obsolescence underline the need to accommodate adaptability and flexibility to maximize the life cycle and minimize the ecological footprint of building components. The Bank stands as an intermediary between multiple iterations in a cycle of disassembly and new assembly."

"Through continuous chains of supply and demand, The Bank connects donors to builders, users, and consumers. The centre acts as a physical and social infrastructure mediating between people and materials. It provides a space of education, information sharing, and material distribution. Besides serving as a storage facility, it lends the community a toolkit for constructing change."

Website

Instructor: Sam Dufaux
Studio Coordinator: Sam Dufaux

Buildings within Buildings - Lucy Yang, Jeff Jang

Lucy and Jeff write: "This proposal provides a platform for social and environmental activism. It announces the urgency of social and environmental reform through relinquishing ownership of the ground plane, offering an open courtyard for the community in East Harlem."

"The courtyard is a public and flexible space where social movements and voices are amplified, but also hidden processes of building construction and demolition waste are brought to the foreground. The proposed building not only serves as a storage area for salvaged building elements, but it is also comprised of reclaimed elements itself. Reclaimed windows and bricks from the local contexts become critical components that give the project its architectural identity and reduce embodied energy."

"The concept of nested thermal buffer zones, inspired by the flimsy facade of reclaimed windows, also bolsters the building performance. The temperature gradient blurs the distinction between outside and inside, creating a composition of buildings within buildings that is composed of found objects."

Website

Instructor: Carol Moukheiber
Studio Coordinator: Sam Dufaux

Overlapping Celebration - Zak Jacobi, Evan Webber

Zak and Evan write: "Harlem as a community has a rich heritage tied to celebration. Celebration plays an active role in encouraging social gathering and empowering community members through the sharing of experiences, stories, and talents. This project looks to create spaces of celebration through diverse and dynamic programs that overlap and blend into one another, augmented and emphasized by floods of colour, prompting informal interactions between community members. This is done in consideration of the site's connection with environmental and ecological systems and how this enhances and engages with acts of celebration."

Website

Instructor: Sam Dufaux
Studio Coordinator: Sam Dufaux