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.

Assistant professor Alstan Jakubiec has been named the latest beneficiary of the Mayflower Research Fund, an endowed research fund established at the Daniels Faculty in 2019. Jakubiec will use his grant to fund research into the effects of interior light on human psychology and physiology in Canada's subarctic and polar regions.

"Mayflower funding is going to be super helpful in pushing this project forward," Jakubiec says. "It's great because it allows me to focus specifically on design questions, which I think a lot of this type of work doesn't look at very rigourously."

The Mayflower Research Fund was established by a generous donor to encourage and stimulate research in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Each year, the Daniels Faculty's research committee recommends a top applicant for consideration and selection by the dean. Daniels faculty members with full-time appointments are eligible to apply for the annual $10,000 grant.

Jakubiec, who is the third faculty member to receive Mayflower funding since the fund's inception, plans to take the opportunity to fill what he sees as a glaring gap in the existing research on the relationship between far-north residents and light.

"The research that has been done has been mostly through the eyes of people working at climate monitoring stations or in the military, not long-term residents of the north," Jakubiec says. "I really want to understand how long-term residents perceive and react to light."

Jakubiec's Mayflower project will build on his earlier research into light and human biology. In 2017, Jakubiec worked with the software development firm Solemma, where he's the director of engineering, to create ALFA, a computerized tool that lets designers simulate the effects of various lighting conditions on human health and cognition. In 2020, he worked with a research assistant to scour the latest research on light, sleep, and human health.

An example of spectral daylight simulation in a dwelling, from Jakubiec's previous research.

From these investigations, Jakubiec has concluded that the presence or absence of light in buildings can have profound effects on the wellbeing of occupants. "We have this internal biological clock, which is regulated by some subcomponents of the hypothalamus," he says. "In places where there's very little light exposure for parts the year, it can have impacts on your mood and cognition. It can make you feel more sleepy throughout the day."

"Excessive light exposure, on the other hand, has been shown to have significant impacts on things like blood sugar. You can effectively have the symptoms of type-two diabetes."

The reason Jakubiec has chosen to focus his latest research on Canada's far north is that it's a part of the world where lighting conditions are especially variable — and therefore especially challenging to the human psyche. Iqaluit, Nunavut, for instance, gets more than 20 hours of daylight in summer and fewer than four hours of daylight in winter.

Working with a graduate student, Jakubiec will gather data on existing structures in Canada's subarctic and polar regions, and also conduct interviews with permanent residents of those regions, in order to get a sense of how they feel about the levels of light exposure the receive in their homes and workplaces throughout the year.

Using all that data, Jakubiec hopes to create a computational model that will allow architects and engineers to evaluate tradeoffs between natural light and energy efficiency in far-north building design. This computerized tool will, Jakubiec hopes, interface with 3D-modelling software to help designers figure out, for example, whether the potential heat loss from a large window is worth the potential benefit of increased natural light during the dark winter months — or whether it's better to make up some of the light deficit with artificial illumination.

"My goal is to have a standalone user interface that could work on top of a model for fixed geometry to give you outputs about circadian performance, or non-visual lighting performance," Jakubiec says.

While Jakubiec gears up for his research, the two previous Mayflower Fund recipients are putting their grants to work.

Assistant professor Fadi Masoud, the grant's inaugural recipient in 2019, used his funding to launch an in-depth study of the design of suburban parks, with a view towards creating a primer that would help designers, public agencies, and private developers create green spaces that respond to contemporary social and environmental needs. “The Mayflower funding enabled my research team at the Centre for Landscape Research to spend the summer documenting and analyzing a network of public parks along the Black Creek sub-watershed in Toronto –– a region that faces chronic social and environmental stresses,” Masoud says. You can view the group's findings on their website.

Assistant professor Maria Yablonina, who received the grant in 2020, is using her funding to advance research in the field of computational design and digital fabrication with a focus on innovative ways to use robotics in architecture and the environment.

Samantha Eby, who graduated from the Daniels Faculty's Master of Architecture program in 2019, has been named the recipient of the 2020 Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners, a prestigious $34,000 prize awarded annually by the Canada Council for the Arts to a recent architecture graduate who has demonstrated potential in contemporary architectural design.

This is the third year in a row that a Daniels Faculty alumnus has won the prize. The other two recent Daniels Faculty recipients were Kinan Hewitt, who graduated in 2018, and David Verbeek, who graduated in 2017.

Samantha Eby.

The Prix de Rome prize money can be used to finance travel to sites of architectural research interest. Once pandemic-related travel restrictions are lifted, Eby plans to use her new funding to make research trips to Australia, Germany, and Austria, so that she can visit and document examples of collective and non-profit housing developments. She hopes to gain a deeper understanding of the ownership models, financing practices, and planning policies that have made such developments possible.

Her interest in collective housing stems from her Daniels Faculty thesis project, for which she investigated new ways of adding affordable multi-unit housing to Toronto's single-detached neighbourhoods. "My research is looking for unrealized opportunities in Canada for new forms of housing that are outside the current practices of financing and site development," she says. "I'm looking at questions of how housing in Canada can be more than just a commodity, and how, by using communal financing and development practices, we can make multi-unit housing more accessible, sustainable, and desirable."

Images from Eby's Daniels Faculty thesis project.

"As an architect, Samantha balances a deep curiosity for the economies that contribute to architecture and urbanism with a provocative and tangible design sensibility," says Eby's thesis advisor, assistant professor Michael Piper. "Her thesis research about collective development models, the calculus of site selection, and the design of beautifully sensible housing demonstrates this unique combination of skills."

Eby says this fully funded travel opportunity will be a rare chance for her to elaborate upon some of the design concepts she studied during her time at Daniels. "I think, as architects, we often have very idealistic approaches, where we think we can change the world with our ideas — which is something that is amazing in school and often gets crushed when you get out into the real world," she says. "This is a really good opportunity for me to challenge myself to push back against those real-world constraints, and consider thoughtful and convincing ways to understand pro formas for development, how different ownership models actually work, and what the barriers are to these new architectural typologies."

Even as she has continued to pursue her research, Eby has been working in the architectural field. For the past two years, she has been an intern architect at Toronto-based Batay-Csorba Architects.

The pandemic-era shift to remote learning forced many Daniels Faculty students to get extra creative with their thesis projects. Milan Nikic, who presented his thesis in fall 2020, was no exception.

He had originally planned to display models for his thesis presentation, but the lack of a physical presentation space made him rethink the way he'd present that work. Instead, he ended up creating a 15-minute short film, titled Raft Islands.

Now, that film has gained Milan some international recognition. It was accepted by the International Architecture Film Festival Barcelona, where it will make its international debut as part of a short-film program on May 13.

"New and creative ways of representing architecture have emerged as a result of this pandemic," Milan says. "I never really explored storytelling and film as a medium before my thesis, but I found it to be a powerful tool to communicate the experience and atmosphere of the built environment. There is a lot you can show with just a simple pan of a camera."

The inspiration for Milan's short film came from a trip he took with his thesis advisor, assistant professor Adrian Phiffer, and the other members of Phiffer's thesis-prep studio. The group visited Tofino, British Columbia and made a stop at Freedom Cove, a giant floating home located off the shore of Vancouver Island.

The home — which is so sprawling and complex that it could be considered more of an artificial island — is an agglomeration of 12 floating platforms, cobbled together from salvaged materials. On top of those platforms is an off-the-grid homestead, complete with a cottage, gardens, dance floor, and artificial beach. The owners, Wayne Adams and Catherine King, are a pair of artists who began building the Freedom Cove complex in 1991. They welcomed the students and showed them around.

"I found it really fascinating to see how these two individuals lived in their environment, and how they managed to be self-sufficient atop this piece of floating infrastructure," Milan says.

He decided to use Freedom Cove as a jumping-off point for an imaginative exercise. His thesis project used film to weave a narrative about a future world where entire communities live on floating barges that are tailored to the needs of inhabitants. "I wanted to tell a story about a fictional future community that was inspired by Freedom Cove," Milan says. "As I was building physical models, a specific architecture evolved out of the necessity for them to actually float on water. I was quite interested in telling a story about how collective life was negotiated amongst individuals. Imagining a community on a floating island was a way to amplify that negotiation."

His film is an impressionistic mixture of water imagery and shots of his scale models. "I wanted the designs to feel like they were attainable to almost everybody, in the spirit of Freedom Cove," he says.

The Raft Islands trailer is embedded above. The International Film Festival Barcelona is not open to viewers outside of Spain, but Milan plans to make his full film available online at the conclusion of the festival.

Victoria Cardoso, Erman Akyol, and Eugenia Wong, all first-year students in the Daniels Faculty's Master of Architecture program, jointly created a design project that has been named one of five honourees in this year's SHIFT Challenge, a biennial competition, hosted by the Ontario Association of Architects, that invites students and architects to address social challenges through design.

Their winning project is a proposal for a community-oriented redesign of Ontario Place, the disused public amusement park located on a small chain of artificial islands off Toronto's western shoreline. They originally created the design for a fall semester course at Daniels, professor Ted Kesik's Building Science 1 (ARC1041).

Victoria Cardoso, Erman Akyol, and Eugenia Wong.

Cardoso, Akyol, and Wong, along with the four other groups whose designs were selected by the 2021 SHIFT jury, will present their work during the OAA's Virtual Conference. The online SHIFT event will begin at 4:30 p.m. on May 20, and will be viewable online on the OAA's YouTube channel.

"This was really an opportunity for us to open ourselves up to the field," Eugenia says. "We'll get to present our project not just to teachers and our colleagues, but also to architects, landscape designers, and urban designers. We're hoping to get our proposal out to decision makers and important stakeholders for the site."

The group's project, titled "Ontario Place: On-to-our Next Adventure," is a master plan for the revitalization of Ontario Place, a publicly owned piece of land that operated as an amusement park and exhibition ground from 1971 until 2012, when it was shuttered by Ontario's provincial government.

Although Ontario Place has fallen into disuse, it still has a number of architecturally significant buildings and landscapes designed by architects Eberhard Zeidler and Michael Hough.

Victoria, Erman, and Eugenia's master plan would attempt to draw diverse groups of users back into the site by adding a variety of new amenities, but without destroying or disfiguring any of the existing historic structures. They approached the problem by splitting the Ontario Place site into five different zones, each tailored to a different group of users.

A rendering of the group's proposed sports facility.

In the "play" zone, there would be indoor and outdoor public recreational spaces, including beaches and boardwalks. The "exhibit" zone would preserve two of Ontario Place's most important existing structures, Zeidler's iconic Cinesphere (a ball-shaped Imax theatre) and his "pods," large diamond-shaped structures that hover above Lake Ontario's waters on sets of stilts. Each of the five pods would get a modest interior retrofit for a different type of programming. (For instance, one pod would be an exhibition hall, and another would be a digital arts museum.)

The plan also calls for the addition of new sports facilities and the preservation of the Budweiser Stage, an existing concert venue on Ontario Place's central island.

A rendering of the group's proposed research campus.

But the most radical change proposed in Victoria, Erman, and Eugenia's plan is in the "innovation" zone, where they would add a university research campus to the southern edge of Ontario Place's east island. The campus would include student residences, which would give Ontario Place a permanent population, transforming it from a tourist destination into a neighbourhood.

"For Ontario Place to be sustainable financially, there's no point to just introducing new programming," Eugenia says. "The innovation hub can provide a source of economic activity that can sustain the island without casual visitors. So when casual visitors come there will be restaurants and other amenities available to them."

Top image: A rendering of Ontario Place's pods and Cinesphere.

Batoul Faour, a student in the Daniels Faculty's post-professional architecture program, has been named the first-prize winner in the 2021 Avery Review Essay Prize competition. Her winning essay is a distillation of her Daniels Faculty thesis project, which critically examines the role of architectural glass in exacerbating the damage from last year's catastrophic port explosion in Beirut.

The essay, which won Batoul a $4,000 prize and top billing in the Avery Review's April issue, describes the way shattered window glass piled up in Beirut's streets after the blast. It traces the historical and contemporary uses of glass in Lebanon to reveal the politics behind the fragile material.

Batoul writes:

Desired for its transparency in a country that has none to offer its people, glass in Beirut is a valuable form of absence: it provides unobstructed views of the city beyond. Windows permit one to see without having to smell, hear, or touch the power structures at play beyond the transparent panels. As political and economic corruption flourishes and the outside world grows exponentially more inhospitable, glass proliferates across the city. Glass, in all its many iterations, was the last line of defense for a people attempting to make a life within and around the failures of the Lebanese state.

A material designed to uplift quality of life through light and views, glass has instead become a weapon wielded by a corrupt state. On August 4, it splintered and stabbed for miles across Beirut’s homes and streets — disfiguring, blinding, and murdering. Some victims, left with dozens of stitches, described how the glass hit them like “shooting guns.” Shattered and splintered glass was blamed for causing an overwhelming number of the recorded injuries and deaths.

The Avery Review is a monthly architecture journal published by the Office of Publications at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture. The April issue is readable online.

Read Batoul Faour's winning essay here

Top image: A pile of broken glass in Beirut, after the blast. Photograph by Batoul Faour.

Four graduating Daniels students were among the recipients of this year's University of Toronto Student Leadership Awards, which recognize exemplary service and commitment to the university. We asked them about their time at Daniels, their advice for new students, and what they're planning to do now that they've finished school. Their answers are below.

Kurtis Chen

Kurtis was this year's GALDSU president, and he's an executive member of the Toronto Society of Architects — the youngest one in the society's history. "I'm really interested in standing up for the profession in general, and also in creating a more equitable and inclusive environment at Daniels," he says. He'll be receiving his Master of Architecture this spring.

What was it like finishing your degree during the pandemic?

I gained a little weight. Biking down to work or to school was more a part of my life than I thought it was. But actually, in terms of my education, I think I was pretty lucky. I was in my third year, so I'd developed a network of peers and support that I could rely on.

This year being virtual wasn't ideal, but it has been better than I could have expected. But I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's finishing the program, which is totally different from the perspective of someone who's new.

I think this year has shown has the role of technology in how we work is radically changing. I see remote work as opening up more opportunities for collaboration across borders.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I'm currently looking for work. And I'm continuing my work with the Toronto Society of Architects.

What advice would you give to a new Daniels student?

I think a strength of the Daniels program is that it accepts a diverse range of students. For instance, I came from film and advertising. So, what I'd say is: understand the value that you bring as someone coming from a non-architecture background. Leverage that as not only an important experience but as something you can bring to the table that's different from what everyone else is working on.

I kind of wish that in first year I didn't take the capital-A architecture part of it so seriously. Studying here is a really incredible opportunity to explore what you're interested in and why you decided to do your masters in architecture.

Do you have a favourite Daniels memory?

I guess my first year. Jumping into a professional Master of Architecture program coming from film was extremely challenging, but also extremely rewarding.

The Daniels Faculty is entering a period of rapid change, with the return to in-person learning and the arrival of a new dean. What do you hope will happen at the school?

Mass timber is the material of the future. Everyone is talking about mass timber, and everyone wants to build with mass timber. Here we are now, connected to the forestry program, where they're doing incredible research on mass timber and materials science. I think leveraging that opportunity and having more collaboration between design and cutting-edge forestry research could be really important. Daniels could become a hub for mass timber research globally.  

Yana Kaiser

Yana has been an active volunteer throughout her time at the Daniels Faculty. She served as GALDSU's social chair in 2019, organized several guest lectures, and co-created of Interiors of Isolation, a publication of student drawings related to the experience of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. She'll receive her Master of Architecture this spring.

What was it like finishing your degree during the pandemic?

It was definitely hard. So much happened during this time. In October, I moved back to Germany, to the middle of nowhere. I couldn't even get takeout food because I would have had to drive 20 minutes by car to get to the closest restaurant.

Doing thesis in almost complete isolation was definitely mentally challenging. I mean it was really hard, but we did it. And it was such an odd moment when it was done, because I really missed celebrating that milestone with my peers, and with my friends. I was happy that I had my parents with me, so I could celebrate with them. But I felt robbed of graduation, almost.

But a lot of good things happened, too. I'm still working on Interiors of Isolation. We just got funding from GALDSU to print a run of books. And in February I started an internship at Bjarke Ingels Group, in Copenhagen, so I've been working full time there and also teaching as a TA for undergraduates.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I'm planning on living in Copenhagen for the next few years and getting some experience in Europe. I also want to get registered in Canada, so I'm trying to get some of my international experience recognized for the license.

Do you have a favourite Daniels memory?

One of the highlights for me was definitely my option studio. We were able to go to Newfoundland and work with the community there. It was a very hands-on opportunity and it was the only opportunity I had to venture out a little bit into landscape architecture.

What advice would you give to a new Daniels student?

Try to get involved as much as possible. Either you're a part of GALDSU, or you're part of The Annual, or if the café is open you can do volunteering at the café. All of those things are extracurriculars that can really help you get to know people, and when you get to know people you get to know skills.

Those can sometimes be really practical skills, like figuring out a Rhino command. And you can also find out about opportunities. For instance a lot of people are afraid to travel because of the financial burden, but there are many opportunities at Daniels to receive funding.

Shalice Coutu

Shalice was the coordinator for the inaugural year of the Daniels Faculty's graduate mentorship program. She also served on GALDSU this year, as a third-year representative. She'll receive her Master of Architecture this spring.

What was it like finishing your degree during the pandemic?

I was actually fortunate. I struggle with ADHD, so I found online learning way more helpful than in-person learning, because it's very distracting to be in a classroom. Online everyone is muted and you just hear the prof.

The social side of things was definitely difficult. I live alone, so I tried to go on outdoor walks with friends as much as I could, keeping safety and safe distances in mind. Overall it was actually a way better year than I thought it would be.

Do you have a favourite Daniels memory?

I think it would probably be being in studio, late nights, and ordering huge platters of sushi with a bunch of friends. It was always the times in the studio when it was late at night and we were all kind of stressing over our reviews together.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I'm originally from Saskatchewan, but I think I'll stay in Toronto to work here and start to get my hours for getting licensed. I don't have any actual work lined up, but I'm going to start applying soon.

What advice would you give to a new Daniels student?

One thing I learned at Daniels is to never be shy about approaching upper-year students, especially when you're all in studio together. We have a really amazing community, and everyone is always so excited to help each other.

Also, take advantage of some of the programs that Daniels offers, including the mentorship programs. Just get involved where you can, because that three years is very short. The more time you spend in studio and meeting a bunch of people, the better memories you'll have when you walk out of there.

The Daniels Faculty is entering a period of rapid change, with the return to in-person learning and the arrival of a new dean. What do you hope will happen at the school?

I was a TA for this year's first-year MArch design studio, which was a First Nations project. That was an amazing change to see, that we're bringing First Nations into the core studio. I hope there are more electives that really focus on First Nations architecture, but also just First Nations culture itself and maybe ways of integrating that culture into design.

I'd also like to see us rethink this idea that we need to be in studio until five in the morning every day leading up to reviews. It's such a bad habit to expect that insane amount of work. It's tough on our bodies, and on our mental health.

Randa Omar

Randa was this year's AVSSU president. She was also a leader of the Student Equity Alliance, a group formed out of the Daniels Faculty's three student unions to address issues of diversity and equity at the Faculty. On top of all that, she was a co-founder of Making Difference, a student club that aims to empower women and nonbinary people in the design fields. She'll receive her Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies this spring.

What was it like finishing your degree during the pandemic?

It was challenging, but it also opened up a lot of opportunities that I don't think would have been opened up otherwise.

With remote learning, it can be more difficult to ask questions. It's just more difficult to learn when you're at home alone and you're not in a studio environment.

But I think the good thing about being online is that it was easier to organize the community. The shift to remote working made community discussions more accessible in many ways. I think that helped with new initiatives like the Student Equity Alliance and Making Difference. Because of the pandemic, people wanted new ways to build community.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I just heard last week that I’ve been fortunate enough to receive an NSERC award to do research under the supervision of Dr. Brady Peters. I've been wanting to work with him ever since I took ARC180 in first year. That class was my first introduction to parametric design, and it inspired me to go into the technology stream.

I'll also be taking the summer to work on my portfolio and to apply for jobs for the fall.

Do you have a favourite Daniels memory?

Peter Sealy's class, Close Readings in Architecture. That was a turning point for me. It made me feel like I had a place in architecture. I found a lot of my interests in the history courses.

Also, co-managing and volunteering at the café. That was always very joyful. Everyone likes coffee and muffins, so the café brought everyone together.

Some of my favourite memories are being at studio at three in the morning, working on models with my friends for ARC280. There’s something about bonding over cutting cardboard.

What advice would you give to a new Daniels student?

I would advise them to engage with the Daniels community and support their peers, especially their equity-seeking peers. And I'd tell them, if they don't feel like they have a community then they can just create their own, whether that's by volunteering at the café, or by being an orientation leader, or by creating their own clubs.

I would also say that they can reach out to professors throughout the university and express interest in their work or in speaking to them. It's a really great way to learn from people, and to learn outside of the classroom. That's something I wish I knew about earlier, because I asked questions in class but was always kind of shy about bothering professors outside of class.

Also, use the resources. My favourite one is the Writing Centre. The Writing Centre is absolutely amazing. The instructors can help with anything from brainstorming what to write, to revising, to figuring out how to cite. They can also help with more visual projects. I wouldn’t have made it to graduation without them.

The Daniels Faculty is entering a period of rapid change, with the return to in-person learning and the arrival of a new dean. What do you hope will happen at the school?

I'm looking forward to Dean Du coming in. I know her work in the urban design field deals with social issues. I really hope that kind of understanding, combined with her own experience working in Hong Kong, will bring new perspectives to the Faculty.

I just really hope that the Faculty becomes more diverse and prioritizes equity and being an inclusive learning and working environment. That's really all I want.

A group of three Daniels Faculty almuni have been named the winners of the Jury Prize in the "Ontario Place: A Call for Counterproposals" competition, which asked entrants to develop creative ways of preserving Ontario Place's architectural heritage.

Catherine Howell (MLA 2018), Ramsey Leung (MArch 2019), and Joseph Loreto (MArch 2019) jointly developed a proposal titled "Megalandscape Ontario" that charts out a future for Ontario Place as a lush recreational area for a nearby high-density residential community.

Their design was selected from a field of over 40 other entries by a jury of experts including urban designer Ken Greenberg and Daniels Faculty professor Brigitte Shim. The three teammates will receive a prize of $1,500 to split.

"This scheme's incremental approach with an emphasis on community engagement will ensure that Ontario Place responds to the city's future and evolving needs," Shim wrote in a statement.

The competition was an initiative of The Future of Ontario Place, a collective of architects and designers that formed in response to the Ontario government's ongoing efforts to redevelop Ontario Place. The organization is co-led by Daniels Faculty associate professor Aziza Chaouni; professor emeritus George Baird; Javier Ors Ausín, of the World Monuments Fund; and William Greaves, of Architectural Conservancy Ontario.

Ontario Place is former exhibition ground, located on a pair of islands on Toronto's western waterfront. It was the site of a publicly owned amusement park until 2012, when the Ontario government shut it down. Although Ontario Place hasn't been in daily use for nearly a decade, it still has an impressive architectural legacy, consisting of modernist structures and landscapes designed in the late 1960s by Eberhard Zeidler and Michael Hough. The Future of Ontario Place's goal is to ensure the preservation of those architectural features.

The "call for counterproposals" competition was open to students and recent graduates of Canadian architecture, urban planning, and urban design programs. The competition brief asked entrants to develop master plans for Ontario Place that would not only preserve Zeidler and Hough's designs, but that would also allow the site to continue to be used as a public amenity, without condos or other private development.

The plan's three phases. (Click here to see a larger version.)

Howell, Leung, and Loreto decided to create a plan with some intentional gaps. "We approached this master plan as a framework," Leung says. "We didn't want to design the whole site, but rather set up a system in which the community as a whole could design the site."

A key component of their strategy was the idea that not all of their proposed changes would happen quickly. "The important thing was the idea of slowness," Loreto says. "What we were trying to do was zoom out to a scale where we could look at the site and really understand its place in the city."

The pods would be transformed into a habitat for wildlife. (Click here to see a larger version.)

In the first phase of their plan, Lakeshore Boulevard would be re-graded to create smoother pedestrian connections between Ontario Place and the mainland to its immediate north. Ontario Place's "pods," a group of structures designed by Zeidler that protrude from the lake on sets of stilts, would become a habitat for wildlife. Native plants would be established on the pods' rooftops, and birds and other animals would be allowed to make homes there. "The pods haven't functioned in a long time as gallery spaces, which is what their original intent was," Howell says. "We wanted to re-imagine them as vessels of nature preservation, while rehabilitating the shoreline for more aquatic and amphibious life, and keeping the architecture as a monument."

At the same time, Ontario Place's islands would be enlarged with decontaminated landfill. The new landmass would allow the islands to be converted into a sprawling public park. To the north, on the mainland, a portion of Exhibition Place, Toronto's permanent fairgrounds, would be converted into an open mall — an unprogrammed area where various community events could take place.

A site plan showing Ontario Place at the conclusion of its transformation, with additional landmass from landfill and a residential community to the north. (Click here to see a larger version.)

In the final phase of the plan, parts of Exhibition Place would be redeveloped into a high-rise residential community, whose residents would then be able to use the revamped Ontario Place for leisure activities.

Howell, Leung, and Loreto hope their proposal helps nudge the Ontario Place redevelopment process in a more inclusive direction. "There are stakeholders that have not been consulted, to date," Leung says. "Marginalized groups that should be involved in the process of designing Ontario Place for the future."

Ontario Place: A Call for Counterproposals also gave out two other awards. Paul Arkilander, Tali Budman, Ryan Coates, and Connery Friesen, from Ryerson University and the University of Manitoba, won Special Mention. Blaike Allen, Michael Monaghan, and Kathryn Pierre, from the University of British Columbia, won the Public Vote prize.