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

Three Daniels Faculty student projects have won Toronto Urban Design Awards (TUDA), the biennial program announced.  

Each winner was revealed in a virtual ceremony earlier this week: Power and Place was the recipient of an Award of Excellence. Elsewhere, Embodied Energy: Living Lab and XS Spaces: A New Laneway Urbanism earned Awards of Merit. All won awards in the student category. 

Held by the City of Toronto, the TUDA program recognizes architects, landscape architects, artists, city builders and students who help improve the livability of their cities. This year, the TUDA received 170 submissions across nine categories, with the student category inviting theoretical or studio projects.  

Here’s a closer look at the three ambitious student projects that won TUDA recognition. 

Power and Place 

Developed by third-year M. Arch students Erik Roberson, Yoyo Tang and Zak Jacobi, the Award of Excellence-winning Power and Place proposes a design intervention for Princess Gardens — located in Toronto’s west end — that includes affordable housing, energy infrastructure and new community spaces.  

Initially completed as part of the Integrated Urbanism Studio — which, for fall 2020, challenged students to reimagine Toronto’s postwar neighbourhoods through the lens of the Green New Deal — the plan challenges the inequities built into an area populated with detached, single-family homes. Daniels professor Mason White was the team's studio instructor, along with fellow studio coordinators Fadi Masoud and Michael Piper. 

Developed around the site of a future Eglinton Crosstown Light Rail Transit (LRT) station, the project proposes the addition of mixed-use, mid-rise development the reimagination of a present hydro corridor. Along Eglinton Avenue, where the LRT station will reside, Power and Place proposes the replacement of parking lots of car- and bike-sharing facilities, with buildings that will provide space for housing, offices and local retailers. Along Kipling Avenue — another major thoroughfare — mixed-use developments will step back the Princess Gardens’ interior, integrating with the existing low-rise subdivisions. 

The reimagined hydro corridor, along the Princess Gardens’ western edge, will add solar panels, wind turbines and kites that harness high-altitude wind energy to the Etobicoke Spine. With renewable energy, community space and mixed-use development, the project aims to make the suburbs more equitable — and explores the possibility hidden in Toronto’s residential neighbourhoods. 

Embodied Energy: Living Lab 

Agata Mrozowski and Madison Appleby’s Embodied Energy: Living Lab earned a TUDA Award of Merit for its reimagination of Willcocks Street on U of T’s St. George campus. Along with proposing a pedestrian-centred redesign, Embodied Energy aims to increase the area’s permeability — which will take pressure off existing city infrastructure — while adding learning spaces focused on urban ecology. The project was completed as part of Landscape Design Studio 2, led by Associate Professor Liat Margolis and Assistant Professor Elise Shelley. 

First, the project considered Willcocks’ current state. While walking the stretch, Mrozowski and Appleby noticed three things: first, boulders line the street in an attempt to direct pedestrian and car flow. Secondly, they noticed vegetation pushing its way through paving patterns. And finally, the influence of Modernist architecture was notable in the area’s usage of concrete laid along vertical plains. 

Reconstituting the site’s existing materials — ashpalt, concrete and clay, after all, all have natural origins, histories and life cycles — Embodied Energy imagines the site with five programmatic zones. Grass seams, with species common in alvar prairies, are proposed; canopy and understory layers expand from existing tree locations; rock gardens include excavated deposits of piled concrete; boulders are employed as landmarks and gathering spaces; and finally, experimental drifts are the site’s living lab, where students and passersby can note how species change over time. 

The reconstitution of existing materials was key to Embodied Energy. It’s an approach that, in the project’s description, aims to honour objects as keepers of memory — a perspective understood by many Indigenous worldviews. “By honouring the spirit and life-cycle of these materials, and centering land-based learning pedagogies, our project also responds to the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action for more Indigenous spaces on campus,” write Appleby and Mrozowski. 

XS Spaces: A New Laneway Urbanism for Toronto 

The city’s laneways are often hidden in plain sight, but they needn’t be. As part of an undergraduate thesis project — with Jeannie Kim, an associate professor, as its instructor — Declan Roberts developed XS Spaces: A New Laneway Urbanism for Toronto, a project that aims to reclaims these spaces for city-dwellers. And, as the project’s title suggests, it imagines laneways not as excess spaces, but as untapped urban resources. 

In their current state, laneways are “functionally obsolete, devoid of ownership and surrendered to the car,” per the project’s description. The thesis project activates these spaces by turning them into decentralized, hyper-local and DIY spaces — and by framing them not simply as interstitial areas, but as connective tissue for the city. Roberts imagines a new street typology for the laneway, and one that is geared towards the pedestrian — not the vehicle. 

In examining the renderings produced for XS Spaces, the transformation is vivid. First, housing lines the newly pedestrianized laneways, and with them, come rooftop patios, colourful clotheslines and gathering spaces carved from cantilevered buildings. Between the houses, recreational and gathering spaces abound, with benches, planters, greenhouses, community gardens and even a volleyball net. In renderings, the project’s DIY proclivities are especially evident: note, for instance, a film screening projected against the side of a home. 

XS Spaces imagines that these redesigned laneways can address the housing crisis, sustainability, urban circulation and public-space access. Hidden no more. 

The design for the revitalized University College Library on U of T’s St. George Campus has been recognized with the Ontario Library Association’s 2021 Library Architectural and Design Transformation Award. The 24,000 square foot renovation project was completed by Kohn Shnier + ERA Architects in association. One of the project’s leaders was John Shnier, a principal with Kohn Shnier Architects, as well as an Associate Professor in the Master of Architecture program at Daniels.

The revitalization project is deeply important for University College – returning the Library space to its original location within the existing building, modernizing the library’s function with the ability to support new programming, updating building infrastructure while renewing other areas for students and faculty, and providing new measures for barrier-free accessibility.

Even before the award, the refreshed library spaces were notable within the context of the campus for their integration within University College, a beloved neo-gothic campus building. Linear black and white contemporary structures and detailing within the refreshed spaces stand in contrast against the building’s existing stained-glass windows and wood panelling, creating a memorable juxtaposition. The overall project also includes a new elevator tower, clad in scaled copper to reflect the aesthetic of the surrounding campus.

“Our approach to this project was driven from the outset by a significant respect for the historic building and a reverence for the spaces within. University College is a significant building within the legacy of U of T, but also an exceptional piece of Ontario’s history and the history of higher education in Canada,” said Kohn Shnier architects in a written statement.

“Every effort was made to touch the existing fabric lightly, yet aspects of the programme, the mandate to create barrier-free accessibility and improve technology and infrastructure, required a deft hand to ensure these requirements did not overwhelm or compromise the qualities of the building that we and the stakeholders held dear. Every new element was carefully considered in its relationship to the historic fabric, but also in how it could service the technical requirements of the project both now and mindful of future requirements.”

The Library Architectural and Design Transformation Award is given in recognition of exemplary renovation, restoration, or conversion projects. In a comment from the jury for the award, the University College revitalization project was described as “a beautiful and skilled renovation of a significant heritage building. The new elements of the library are considerately designed to draw on and respect their context in the fabric of the carefully restored existing building.”

The University College revitalization is one of three projects being recognized with the award, given at a digital ceremony earlier in July. The project is the second OLA-awarded library that Kohn Shnier Architects has designed for the University of Toronto. In 2004, their design of the beloved EJ Pratt Library at Victoria College was recognized with an Award of Excellence by the OLA (that project was designed in association with Shore Tilbe Irwin Partners).

Images courtesy of Kohn Shnier (University of Toronto – University College, Kohn Shnier + ERA Architects in Association).

On the occasion of winning the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Gold Medal with her partner, Howard Sutcliffe, Professor Brigitte Shim took the time for a virtual interview to reflect on her 33 years of teaching at the Daniels Faculty.

You have been teaching at the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto since 1988. Why is teaching so important to you?

Educating the next generation of architects is essential to fostering design excellence in Canada and to helping to guide the future of our world. I see teaching as a form of design advocacy: part of permeating, contributing and being deeply invested in what really matters.

The Daniels Faculty fosters an environment of tremendous reciprocity: The Faculty is comprised of esteemed colleagues who feel equally serious about this commitment to the future of the profession and students who draw on diverse backgrounds, cultures and perspectives. Together we all invest a tremendous amount of our time, energy and optimism into our undergraduate and graduate students sharing our knowledge and experiences with them.

How do you determine the topics of your studios?

My studios always addressed pressing themes, and are often taught in collaboration with other architects, landscape architects, urban planners, artists, and academics to cultivate rich, cross-disciplinary perspectives. With each new studio, I try to seek out themes that are not just exercises, but rather opportunities to explore and test issues that are fundamentally shaping the future of cities and the broader environment.

We aim to empower our students to not only discover these themes, but to develop a different reading of the city and to think about how they can shape better futures. Take for example: advancing the intensification of Toronto laneways, building for northern climates, rethinking community-based healthcare, interrogating the challenge of contested and sacred sites, and more recently, the role of places of production linking our forests to factories – to name just a few.

How would you encourage new students to approach experimentation and invention in the design process?

The work that my students undertake while in architecture school must push the boundaries and rethink the possibilities of design to reshape the built environment. Through collaboration, exploration, and experimentation there will be invention and discovery.

Are there particular lessons from your time in university that have proven resonant as you have moved through your career?

As a young architecture student, seeing built work in person enabled me to experience different kinds of spaces and to understand the importance of landscape and context. The many field trips to visit buildings while in architecture school at the University of Waterloo had a huge impact on my understanding of architecture’s potential.

Subsequently, as a faculty member at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, I led many field trips to give Daniels students the same opportunities to see buildings and their landscapes. These travels have helped my students to develop a deep respect for, and understanding of, the physicality of architecture, landscape, and to understand the importance of site and context.

Brigitte Shim and a group of students visit Robert Smithson's earthwork "Spiral Jetty" (1970) during a reading week trip to Utah in 2017. 

Your studio, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects Inc. is recognized for uniting architecture and landscape; and for its experimentations — of materiality, craft and light. What do you think a student should understand about these themes?

Howard and I regard our practice as a part of a broader conversation about making, feeling, learning, expressing, and cultivating responsible stewardship. Each project, regardless of its scale or budget, is part of this continuum. The process is as important as the outcome. Clients and craftspeople are also friends and teachers, helping us to find great pleasure in making things. We see through drawing and model-making. There’s irrational intent behind the movement of the pencil. Drawing allows us to see and explore possibilities – it literally enables us to see.

Building buildings is a physical act. To realize architecture, we are reliant on materiality, craft, and light. Our designs develop from ideas that are rooted in materials and the landscape. We assemble materials such as brick, steel, glass, wood, and concrete and ask them to speak eloquently about who we are and what we value. This notion of connecting ideas, craft, production, materials, architecture, landscape, and the participation of clients and craftspeople is important for creating meaningful places.

And finally, do you have any other advice for current students before they enter their professional life?

I believe that the perceived boundaries between the disciplines of architecture, landscape and urban design, visual art and forestry are false. The best thing about being a student at the Daniels Faculty is that you are under one big roof with engaged students in all these disciplines. Each student must take advantage of this opportunity to discover the disciplines and the very interesting territories in-between.