The Daniels Faculty is pleased to announce that Gareth Long, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, has been appointed Director of Visual Studies for a two-and-a-half-year term, starting January 1 of this year and concluding on June 30, 2026. He takes over from Jean-Paul Kelly, who had led the VS programs since 2021.  

An accomplished artist whose diverse practice often questions traditional notions of creation and production—his latest exhibition, entitled Delaware Abstract Corporation, opened last week at Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto and runs until February 24—Long joined the Faculty as a Sessional Instructor in 2017 and was hired two years later as an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream.

In July of 2021, he assumed the role of Undergraduate Coordinator for the Honours Bachelor of Arts in Visual Studies (HBA VS) program. 

The Daniels Faculty offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees in the discipline: the HBA in Visual Studies and two Masters (MVS) degrees—a Master of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies and a Master of Visual Studies in Studio Art.

“My Immediate priorities,” says Long, “are to work with the excellent [VS] team to build on and further the stability of the department as well as the rich learning experience for students that has already been put in place.”

Regarding longterm goals, he says, “I am someone who really values the friendships, collegiality and networks that working together fosters, both in my work as an artist and in my professional work as an educator. I would love to draw on these networks to further build partnerships and new collaborative opportunities locally and abroad for both staff and students—much like the partnership I established last summer with Fogo Island Arts that allowed us to bring eight undergraduate Visual Studies students to Fogo Island for a 10-day Studies Abroad course. Through this and other efforts, I hope that we can raise the visibility of our remarkable programs.”

According to Long, “Visual Studies at both the undergraduate and graduate levels offer a unique approach to art at a research university—and not just any research university, but one of the top research institutions in the world. As such, we try to take advantage of the rich and varied research-based academic ecology in asking students to situate themselves and their practices in our specific contemporary moment. Students must address complex and critical questions about what it means to make and exhibit work in our current milieux.”

The cross-pollination between Visual Studies and Architecture, he adds, “expands students’ view of art, contemporary practices, the built environment, questions of publics and how their work can and will interface with said publics, bringing more voices with varied practices into their orbits.”

Associate Professor Pina Petricone (BArch 1991) has been appointed to Waterfront Toronto’s Design Review Panel, the independent advisory body responsible for setting design standards across the city’s lakefront.

Formed in 2001 by the federal, provincial and municipal governments, Waterfront Toronto has a 25-year mandate to transform some 800 hectares of brownfield lands on the city’s lakefront into “beautiful, sustainable mixed-use communities and dynamic public spaces.” Comprised of experts in the fields of architecture, landscape design, engineering and planning, its Design Review Panel is responsible for establishing design standards across the waterfront and with helping Toronto achieve recognition as a centre of creativity and design.

“The Panel strives to add value to every project by providing expert advice that is professional, fair and constructive,” Waterfront Toronto says. “Its role is to promote design excellence, improve environmental performance, and ensure a cohesive approach to waterfront revitalization.” 

Petricone replaces the late George Baird on the advisory body. The professor emeritus and former dean of the Faculty passed away in October.

She also joins two other members of the Daniels Faculty—Professor Brigitte Shim and Associate Professor Fadi Masoud—already on the panel.

A founding principal with Ralph Giannone of Giannone Petricone Architects (GPA) in Toronto, Petricone teaches design and theory at all levels of the Faculty’s architecture programs and was recently awarded a LEAF Impact Grant by the Vice Provost for Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching.

The LEAF grant was awarded to assist in the development of a unique design research internship program (known as DRIP) for graduating Architectural Studies students. Centred around tectonics, craft and detail, Petricone’s work and research seek diversity and durability from the specificity of projects to define an approach to city-building at every scale. 

Among the award-winning projects that Petricone has executed with GPA are the Daniels Waterfront City of the Arts in Toronto and the Trinity College Centre for Ethics, an interfaculty and interdisciplinary initiative at U of T. Other projects include the Block 22 affordable housing complex for the Regent Park Revitalization Project, the Herman Miller Canadian Design Centre and the Royal Hotel and Annex in Ontario’s Prince Edward County.

Presented by the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, the annual MVS Proseminar offers visual studies graduate students in curatorial studies and studio art the opportunity to connect and exchange with field-leading international and local artists, curators, writers, theorists, and other creative scholarly practitioners and researchers.

The 2023-2024 MVS Proseminar series is organized by Zach Blas and Jean-Paul Kelly.

All events take place in Main Hall at the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent (unless otherwise noted) and are free and open to the public. View or download the series poster.

Winter 2024

January 16, 6:30 p.m. ET
Hearth 
Curatorial collective

Hearth seeks to provide a site to present projects by a diverse range of emerging collaborators within a context that values experimentation and community. Hearth works towards an anti-oppressive, queer-positive environment and welcomes marginalized and racialized folks through programming that celebrates the work of a diverse range of emerging collaborators.

February 13, 6:30 p.m. ET
Corina L. Apostol
Curator, art historian, and editor

Dr. Corina L. Apostol curates and researches at the intersection of art and politics, focusing on artists who create long-term, pedagogical, community-based projects to empower their audiences. Dr. Apostol is the co-founder of the seminal activist art and publishing collective ArtLeaks and editor-in-chief of the ArtLeaks Gazette. Dr. Apostol is an Assistant Professor in Social Practice in Contemporary Art and Culture in the Faculty of the Humanities at the University of Amsterdam.

February 27, 6:30 p.m. ET
P. Staff
Artist

P. Staff is a filmmaker, installation artist, and poet, whose interdisciplinary practice explores necropolitics, affect theory, the transpoetics of writers, modern dance, astrology, and end of life care to emphasise the processes by which bodies––especially those of people who are queer, trans, or disabled––are interpreted, regulated, and disciplined in a rigorously controlled society. This event is part of the Daniels Faculty's Fall 2023 Public Program in association with MVS Proseminar. Please register in advance.

March 5, 6:30 p.m.
Cassils
Artist

Cassils, Associate Professor of Visual Studies in the Daniels Faculty at U of T, is a transgender artist who makes their own body the material and protagonist of their performances. Their art contemplates the history(s) of LGBTQI+ violence, representation, struggle and survival. Drawing from the idea that bodies are formed in relation to forces of power and social expectations, Cassils’s work investigates historical contexts to examine the present moment.

March 26, 6:30 p.m. ET
Elisa Giardina Papa
Artist

Elisa Giardina Papa is a research-based artist whose practice, employing discarded AI training datasets, censored cinema repositories, factitious colonial travel accounts, or fabricated heretical accusations, seeks forms of knowledge and desire that have been lost or forgotten, disqualified, and rendered nonsensical by hegemonic demands for order and legibility. Papa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.

All images courtesy of the artists. Image captions: (1.) P. Staff's In Ekstase, (Kunsthalle Basel, 2023). Photo by Philipp Hänger. (2.) Cassils-Tiresias, Performance Still No. 3 (ANTI Festival, Kupio, Finland, 2012). Photo by Cassils with Pekka Mekinen.

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is excited to present its Winter 2024 Public Program. 

Our program this semester addresses a range of pertinent issues concerning the natural and built environments, continuing the Faculty’s tradition of fostering dialogue and exchanging knowledge through a curated series of exhibitions, lectures, book talks, panel discussions and symposia. 

Through these events, we aim to engage our local and international communities on the important social, political and environmental challenges confronting our disciplines and the world today. Topics addressed include design and ecology, space and social justice, urbanization and housing, art and biopolitics, and architecture land sovereignty. 

All of the events in our program are free and open to the public. Register in advance through Eventbrite and consult the calendar for up-to-date details at daniels.utoronto.ca/events. 

January 23, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Jeffrey Cook Memorial Lecture: HEALING
Featuring Võ Trọng Nghĩa (VTN Architects)

RSVP

February 1, 6:30 p.m. ET
I heard you were looking for me
Featuring Germane Barnes (School of Architecture, University of Miami)

RSVP

February 8, 6:30 p.m. ET
Michael Hough/OALA Visiting Critic in Landscape Architecture Lecture: Design and the Just Public Realm
Featuring Chelina Odbert (Kounkuey Design Initiative) 

RSVP

February 15, 6:30 p.m. ET
Black Diasporas Tkaronto-Toronto
Featuring Kholisile Dhliwayo (afrOURban Inc.)

RSVP

February 27, 6:30 p.m. ET
MVS Proseminar: In Ekstase
Featuring P. Staff (visual and performance artist)

RSVP

February 29, 6:30 p.m. ET
Architecture’s 21st-Century Promise: Spatial Justice Practices
Featuring Dana Cuff (UCLA Architecture and Urban Design) 

RSVP

March 7, 6:30 p.m. ET
Designing Delivery: An Examination of the Intersection of Design and Birth
Featuring Kim Holden (School of Architecture, Yale University) 

RSVP

March 21, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Architecture and the Right to Housing
Generously Supported by the Irving Grossman Fund in Affordable Housing
Featuring Leilani Farha (The Shift) and  Paul Karakusevic (Karakusevic Carson Architects) with Karen Kubey (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)

RSVP

March 28, 6:30 p.m. ET 
CANCELLED: Cabin as Tactic and Strategy
Featuring John Bass (School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia) and Snxakila Clyde Michael Tallio (Cultural Director, Nuxalk First Nation)

Events will be livestreamed and available to view on the Daniels Faculty’s YouTube channel. 

EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW

October 25, 2023-March 22, 2024
ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home
Organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture with the Daniels Faculty

December 11, 2023-February 26, 2024
USING TREES AS THEY ARE
Curated by Zachary Mollica (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto) 
Public Lecture: USING TREES AS THEY ARE, February 26, 6:00 p.m. ET 

RSVP

March 6-May 14, 2024
How to Steal a Country
Curated by Lukas Pauer (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)
Exhibition Opening: March 6, 5:30 p.m. ET

RSVP

Public Lecture: Recognizing Facts on the Ground: Deconstructing Power in the Built Environment, March 14, 6:30 p.m. ET 

RSVP

“Berlin is a food you have to marinate carefully.”

With this metaphor, the writer, musician and podcaster Musa Okwonga (pictured at centre below) welcomed a group of 18 Daniels Faculty students on their first morning in Berlin as part of a unique global studio led by Assistant Professor Peter Sealy.

Having read Okwonga’s Berlin memoir In The End, It Was All About Love (Rough Trade Books, 2021) before travelling there, the students engaged in a lively discussion about his creative process, why he left Britain for Berlin, and what life is like as a Black, bisexual man in Germany’s capital.

“Musa is a wonderfully generous person whom the students were thrilled to meet,” says Sealy. “His writing captures Berlin’s essence: It’s a city that requires patience to discover in all its complex flavours; you have to find your own way in.”

For Sealy, that “way in” to learning about Berlin is through films. He titled his iteration of ARC 300/2016 “Berlin, A City in Film,” and designed the course to reflect cinema’s powerful role in the construction of Berlin’s image as a modern metropolis. “Berlin’s unique status as a place where movies are made, whether that was in the 1920s or today, makes film an ideal lens for deciphering this huge city,” according to Sealy.

As a historian of media such as film and photography, Sealy himself has studied the Berlin Wall as it has appeared in films. “I believe film is a uniquely accessible medium for students to learn about new places,” he says. “As a society, we constantly consume moving pictures, which often show how people inhabit urban spaces.”

Prior to travelling to Germany, the students watched a series of films set in Berlin, beginning with Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987). Their spectatorship continued with a series of nightly screenings during their three-week stay in Berlin. Highlights included seeing Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin—Symphony for a Metropolis (1927) at a freiluftkino (open-air cinema) in one of Berlin’s ubiquitous courtyards. The film was accompanied by a live performance by the electronic music group Tronthaim. Other films watched included Roberto Rosseillini’s Germany Year Zero (1948), Heiner Carow’s The Legend of Paul and Paula (1973), Cynthia Beatt’s Cycling the Frame (1988) and Sebastien Schipper’s Victoria (2018).

By day, the students explored the city through an intensive schedule of guided tours, site visits, meetings with local experts, and workshops. Among the highlights was an emotionally moving tour of the archives of the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police: a repository showcasing the banal bureaucracy of evil. Architect and U of T alumnus Bruce Kuwabara arranged a tour of the Canadian Embassy on Leipziger Platz, which he designed with his firm, KPMB Architects. The students also took day trips to Potsdam, Hamburg and Dessau, seeing the famous Bauhaus in the latter.

Yixuan Zhang, a third-year student in the Daniels Faculty’s Bachelor of Arts, Architectural Studies program, “loved exploring buildings we usually only see on [lecture] slides…going inside a building and being able to feel its materials is something I treasured from all our site visits.”

In addition to Okwonga, local Berliners who met the students included the architects Christoph Heinemann, Jochen Jürgensen and plattenbaustudio, the photographer Stefan Berg, and the author Maria Zinfert. In the course’s spirit of experimentation and discovery, one afternoon was spent learning to use analog printing presses at galerie p98a, and an evening was set aside for a Hertha Berlin soccer match at the Olimpiastadion.

The students’ main assignment was to make an eight- or 16-millimetre film using Super-8 or Bolex cameras. To do so, they were guided by three young Berlin-based filmmakers from the LaborBerlin collective: Christian Flemm, Jules Leaño and Adèle Perrin. Working in small groups, the students traversed Berlin, each trying to capture some aspect of the city’s unique spatial tapestry. “The goal of the project,” Sealy says, “was to introduce a new, unfamiliar medium [analog filmmaking] while prompting the students to see Berlin ‘through the lens.’ In other words, making films provided an opportunity to glimpse the city as filmmakers do.”

For Auden Tura, a fourth-year student in Daniels’ Bachelor of Arts, Visual Studies program, “the slowness and careful preparation required for 16mm filmmaking” allowed her and groupmates Ella Spitzer-Stephan and Gillian Stam to consider “Berlin’s urban spaces from a new perspective. With our Bolex, we began to see Berlin’s overgrown courtyards and empty buildings as mystical spaces.” Inspired by Maya Deren’s ground-breaking 1943 short Meshes of the Afternoon—which the students watched at a special screening curated by Flemm—their film investigated the surreal qualities of these semi-abandoned spaces found all over Berlin.

For Taylor Joseph, a second-year student in the Faculty’s Master of Architecture program, the entire cinematic focus of the course proved edifying. “Without the context of the course, I don’t think I would have watched or had the knowledge to be pointed in the direction of these films, most of which are in the German language. They provided a wealth of information on and such insight into the metropolis over generations. As an architecture student, I was able to understand the built environment of the past through the films and thus experience it [more richly] in the present.”

The participating students (both undergraduate and graduate) were drawn from the Daniels Faculty’s many disciplines, including architecture, visual studies and landscape architecture. “I was blown away by the way the students’ own knowledge of architecture and urban practices—how people inhabit cities—helped them decipher a multicultural city like Berlin,” Sealy says. “I took a lot of joy from the students’ own moments of discovery and cannot wait to return as soon as possible!”

“All in all,” concludes Joseph, “every moment of Berlin could make the highlight reel, as it was an unforgettable experience and hopefully will be ongoing.”

“Berlin, A City in Film” was one of four global studios offered by the Daniels Faculty in 2023. Other courses included studies in Athens, Greece; Kumasi, Ghana; and Fez, Morocco. A domestic studio also took place on Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Banner image by John Henry. Last image by Mint Song. All other photos by Peter Sealy.

Two practices spearheaded by members of the Daniels Faculty—Lateral Office and Ja Architecture Studio—have been awarded 2023 Canadian Architect Awards of Merit.

A Toronto-based platform for new spatial environments, Lateral Office is co-led (with Lola Sheppard) by Professor Mason White, Director of the Faculty’s Master of Urban Design and Post-Professional programs. The practice was recognized, with Verne Reimer Architecture Inc., for the Inuusirvik Community Wellness Hub, a multipurpose community centre in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut.

Also based in Toronto, Ja Architecture Studio was co-founded (with architect and alumnus Nima Javidi) by Assistant Professor Behnaz Assadi. Ja was recognized by Canadian Architect for The Parti Wall, a multigenerational residential project proposed for a narrow lot in downtown Toronto.

Opened officially on November 30, the ICWH (pictured above and below) unites counselling services, a daycare, a wellness research centre, a research library and food-preparation and gathering spaces in a single, 883-square-metre facility.

Characterized by lightweight materials and panelized components, “the building utilizes the practical modular building techniques necessary for the North, but introduces colour and setbacks to the massing to make a building that will stand out and welcome the community,” as architect and urban strategist Michael Heeney, one of the awards jurors, put it.

“The building section, with its clerestory central atrium, pushes the boundaries of what can be achieved in Northern public buildings.”

Architect and urbanist Claire Weisz, another juror, was equally impressed. “This building does so much with a very constrained set of design moves. It uses straightforward means to prevent environmental damage and mitigate strong winds for the users, and [it] improves local conditions for passersby. Its bright yellow ramps and entrance walls can be seen in lower light conditions, and set the stage for it to connect to other community assets in this High Arctic city.”

Ja’s winning design (pictured in slideshow below) envisions the spine shared by two adjoining residences and their respective laneway suites as an armature that works with the context of its block to draw natural light deep into the homes, incorporate a range of outdoor spaces within each property...and create interior, multi-storey “nested gardens” for the two street-facing houses.

“This exploration of space and materials,” Heeney enthused, “is just the kind of thing that is good to see in small-scale residential work.”

Fellow juror Omar Gandhi, an architect celebrated for his own housing projects, added: “It is evident that the end result is the product of a highly intensive formal investigation based on spatial relationships, access to natural light, responses to climate, and relationships to the landscape.”

In total, Canadian Architect bestowed 18 Awards of Excellence and Merit for projects around the country this year. For a full list of recipients, click here.

Monday, December 4 to Tuesday, December 19
Daniels Building
1 Spadina Crescent

Whether you're a future student, an alum, or a member of the public with an interest in architecture, forestry, landscape architecture or urban design—you're invited to join the Daniels Faculty for Fall 2023 Reviews. Throughout December, students from across our graduate and undergraduate programs will present final projects to their instructors and guest critics from academia and the professional community.

All reviews will take place in the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (unless otherwise stated). Follow @UofTDaniels on social media and join the conversation using the hashtags #DanielsReviews and #DanielsReviews23.

Please note that times and dates are subject to change.

Monday, December 4 | Graduate 

Design Studio I
LAN1011Y
Coordinators: Alissa North, Peter North 
Room: 330 

Tuesday, December 5 | Graduate 

8:45 a.m.–6:30 p.m. ET 
Design Studio I 
ARC1011Y
Coordinator: Chris Cornecelli 
Instructors: Fiona Lim Tung, Anya Moryoussef, Aleris Rodgers, Julia Di Castri, Tom Ngo 
Rooms: 215, 230, 240, 330 

Wednesday, December 6 | Graduate 

Integrated Urbanism Studio
ARC2013Y, LAN2013Y, URD1011Y
Coordinators: Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Rob Wright, Roberto Damiani
Instructors: Karen Kubey, Aziza Chaouni, Jon Cummings, Christos Marcopoulos, Mariana Leguia Alegria, David Verbeek, Megan Esopenko
Rooms: 200, 215, 230, 240, 330 

Thursday, December 7 | Graduate  

Integrated Urbanism Studio
ARC2013Y, LAN2013Y, URD1011Y
Coordinators: Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Rob Wright, Roberto Damiani
Instructors: Karen Kubey, Aziza Chaouni, Jon Cummings, Christos Marcopoulos, Mariana Leguia Alegria, David Verbeek, Megan Esopenko
Rooms: 200, 215, 230, 240, 330 

Friday, December 8 | Graduate  

Design Studio Options 
LAN3016Y

The Hart House Farm
Instructor: Liat Margolis 
Room: 330 

Urban Design Studio Options 
URD2013Y
Instructors: Kanwal Aftab, Maya Desai 
Room: 230 

Monday, December 11 | Undergraduate  

Drawing and Representation I 
ARC100H1
Coordinator: James Macgillivray
Instructors: Matthew De Santis, Dan Briker, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Nicolas Barrette, Anne Ma, Jeffrey Garcia, Monifa Charles-Dedier, Angela Cho, Mariano Martellacci, Connor Stevens, Ji Hee Kim, Kyle O’Brien, Lara Hassani, Brandon Bergem 
Rooms: Main Hall (170A, 170B), 215, 230, 240, 315, 330, 340 

Tuesday, December 12 | Graduate & Undergraduate 

9 a.m.–2 p.m. 
Drawing and Representation II 
ARC200H1
Coordinator: Roberto Damiani
Instructors: Nova Tayona, Simon Rabyniuk, Reza Nik, Paul Howard Harrison, Sam Dufaux, Karen Kubey, Katy Chey, Phat Le, Samantha Eby, Alejandro Lopez 
Rooms: Main Hall (170A, 170B, 170C), 209, 215, 230, 240, 315, 330, 340 

10 a.m.–3 p.m. 
Capstone Project in Forest Conservation 
FOR3008H
Instructor: Catherine Edwards 
Room: 200 
View detailed schedule.

Wednesday, December 13 | Graduate & Undergraduate 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 1 
ARC3020Y

Rehearsing the Parade: Ephemeral Assemblies and Persuasion on the Move
Instructor: Miles Gertler 
Rooms: Main Hall (170C), 209 

Architecture and Health Equity in an Imperiled World
Instructor: Stephen Verderber 
Room: 330 

Architecture Studio III
ARC361Y1
Coordinator: Adrian Phiffer
Instructors: Shane Williamson, Carol Moukheiber 
Rooms: Main Hall (170A, 170B), 230 

10 a.m.–3 p.m. 
Capstone Project in Forest Conservation (FOR3008H)
Instructor: Catherine Edwards 
Room: 200 
View detailed schedule.

Thursday, December 14 | Graduate & Undergraduate 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 1 
ARC3020Y

The Certainty of Uncertain Forms, or in search of anexact typologies
Instructor: Carol Moukheiber 
Room: 330 

Counterhegemonic Architecture
Instructor: Lukas Pauer 
Rooms: 215, 240 

If robots are the answer, what was the question?
Instructor: Brady Peters 
Rooms: 209, 242 

Bridging the Divide: An Architecture of Demographic Transition
Instructor: Shane Williamson 
Room: 230 

Design Studio Options 
LAN3016Y

Generative Design in Landscape Architecture: Explorations and Applications
Instructors: Rob Wright, Matthew Spremulli 
Room: 200 

Landscape Architecture Studio III 
ARC363Y1
Instructor: Behnaz Assadi 
Rooms: 315, 340, Main Hall (170C) 

Technology Studio III
ARC380Y1
Instructors: Nicholas Hoban (Coordinator), Maria Yablonina 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Friday, December 15 | Graduate 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 1
ARC3020Y

Swarm / Counterarchive
Instructor: Jeannie Kim 
Room: 330 

ARCHIPELAGO, 4.0: Docu-Drawing, Activism, Re-Building
Instructor: Petros Babasikas 
Room: 230 

SUPERNATURAL
Instructor: Laura Miller 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

USING TREES
Instructor: Zachary Mollica 
Room: 240 

HOUSE FOR PIRANESI at Hadrian’s villa: TRIUMPH OF THE FRAGMENT DRAWING AS THESIS An allegory for illustrated ARCHITECTURAL narrative
Instructor: John Shnier 
Room: 1st Floor Hallway 

Monday, December 18 | Undergraduate & Graduate

9 a.m.–2 p.m. 
Design Studio II
ARC201H1
Coordinator: Miles Gertler
Instructors: Brian Boigon, Jennifer Kudlats, Aleris Rodgers 
Rooms: 215, 240, 315, 340 

9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. and 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Post-Professional Thesis Review
ALA4021
Rooms: 209, 242

Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Research) 
ARC456H1
Instructor: Petros Babasikas 
Room: 330 

Senior Seminar in Design (Research) 
ARC461H1
Instructor: Laura Miller 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Senior Seminar in Technology (Research) 
ARC486H1
Instructor: Nicholas Hoban 
Room: 230 

Tuesday, December 19 | Undergraduate 

Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Research) 
ARC456H1
Instructor: Petros Babasikas 
Room: 330 

Senior Seminar in Design (Research)
ARC461H1
Instructor: Laura Miller 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Senior Seminar in Technology (Research)
ARC486H1
Instructor: Nicholas Hoban 
Room: 230 

Ja Architecture Studio, the Office of Adrian Phiffer and artist/designer Tom Ngo are among the Faculty-related contributors to this month’s Drawing For Food auction in aid of maintaining healthy food supplies to vulnerable Toronto residents.

“Since the pandemic, homelessness in Toronto has become more visible, but there is a lot of invisible homelessness and food precarity,” say the auction’s organizers. “Drawing for Food leverages the power of architectural drawing and spatial illustration to advocate for the needs of our most vulnerable community members. The auction…solicits drawings from designers and architects in support of social causes,” with the entire proceeds from this month’s going to a Toronto organization, Seeds of Hope, assisting community members experiencing homelessness, precarious housing and food shortages.

“Lots of architecture studio briefs have taken on themes such as affordable housing,” say the auction team leaders, which include assistant professor Adrian Phiffer of the Daniels Faculty, architects Stephanie Davidson and Georg Rafailidis of Davidson Rafailidis and fourth-year TMU student Eira Roberts. “However, this project aims to leverage our architectural work to help vulnerable community members more directly.”

More than two dozen firms and individuals have donated drawings to the auction, including all of the team members above, Daniels Faculty sessional lecturer Tom Ngo (a widely exhibited visual artist and a project architect at Kongats Architects) and Ja Architecture Studio (the Toronto-based practice co-founded by Daniels Faculty assistant professor Behnaz Assadi with architect and alumnus Nima Javidi).

Others on the list of international contributors include Fala Atelier of Portugal, NOMOS of Spain, Drawing Architecture Studio of China and Studio Märkli of Switzerland, to name only a few.

For now, the drawings are viewable as a gallery on the auction’s website. The auction will go live at 9:00 a.m. ET on November 24 and conclude at midnight ET on December 1.

All of the drawings have the same starting price of $100 Canadian and buyers will make their bids on the website. Top bidders will be contacted via e-mail on December 2 and asked to donate their bid amount directly to Seeds of Hope using an online donation portal. Credit cards, Google Pay and PayPal will all be accepted.

Once payments have been processed, each donor will ship the drawing to the buyer. Drawing for Food will act as a go-between, hosting the website, taking any questions from bidders and verifying that bids have been donated so that tax receipts can be issued.

“The hope,” says the organizing team, “is to add to the collection of drawings with a new auction each year,” ideally generating funds for a different organization in Ontario or Western New York.

“A broader aim of this auction project,” team members add, “is to explore ways that architectural drawings can be used for public good. Realizing spatial projects of any scale typically relies on a financial backer: an owner, a client, an entity with a commercial interest, etc. The interests of the moneyed participant drive, or at least influence, the interests of the spatial project. But the instrument of drawing, we argue, is entirely ours. It belongs to us, and as designers we can decide what and how we draw, who we draw for, and who benefits from our work.”

Drawings in banner by 1. Ja Architecture Studio. 2. Office of Adrian Phiffer. 3. Tom Ngo. 4. Fala Atelier. 5. Nathalie Du Pasquier. 6. Kemetic Blue. 7. Studio Märkli. Drawing for Food logo on homepage by Claudia Draghia.

Celebrated architect Douglas Cardinal will be giving a lunchtime lecture at the Daniels Faculty on Thursday, November 16.

Entitled “Indigenous Principles for Architecture,” the talk will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Room 200 of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent.

To register for the lecture, at which lunch will be provided, click here. The talk is free and open to all Daniels Faculty students and instructors.

In addition to designing such iconic buildings as the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau (pictured above) and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., Dr. Cardinal has been a long-time advocate for the dignity and advancement of Indigenous peoples and last year joined the Daniels Faculty as Decanal Advisor on Indigenous Knowledge.

In his talk on November 16, he will outline how adopting an Indigenous worldview can guide architects and planners in the creation of sustainable built environments that harmonize with nature for at least “seven generations,” the traditional Indigenous benchmark for decision-making and stewardship. Among his key focuses will be planning.

“The planning that cities and communities are conducting presently,” he says, “is not only not sustainable, but destructive to all life, including our own. Indigenous principles offer an innovative way [of building] that is rooted in their traditions [and] accounts for all life-givers that the land hosts, so plants, animals and humans may have a future together.”

One of the projects that Dr. Cardinal will cite in his talk is the 2017 planning work he conducted for the Ojibway community of Stony Point in Ontario. Previously, the land in question had been occupied by Canada’s Department of National Defense as a military training base. “I will show the multifaceted analysis and holistic integration necessary to reach a sustainable community,” he says of his work, which at Stony Point “integrated all my life experience” in terms of both process and result.

Prior to signing on as Decanal Advisor on Indigenous Knowledge, Dr. Cardinal was the Faculty’s 2020-2021 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Toronto in June of 2022.

Standing 7.5 metres tall and weighing three metric tons, The Lodestar is the British Columbia city of Kelowna’s newest civic landmark, animating a previously underused public plaza and serving as “a guide and a gateway” to a burgeoning mixed-use neighbourhood formerly defined by railway tracks, a mill and abandoned warehouses.

Located in North Kelowna, the recently completed wood structure, which has a radius of four metres at its base and includes a canopy, lighting and seating, was designed and executed by Toronto-based DS Studio, of which Daniels Faculty alumna and sessional lecturer Dina Sarhane is a founding partner, along with multidisciplinary company Fishtnk and architectural consultant Tom Svilans.

The Lodestar was the top choice in a 2018 design competition, and functions as both “a place maker and a shining example of how an age-old material can be digitally modified to suit contemporary needs,” according to the project team.

“We summarized what we absolutely needed to make this a successful public space that draws people to it,” says Sarhane, who holds a Bachelor of Architectural Science degree from Carleton University (where she is also a professor of urban design) and a Master of Architecture degree from U of T. “The three necessary components were: an enclosed structure for protection and to bring the massiveness of the city’s scale down to the human scale, a colonnade to define space and signal that something special is happening here, and a marker so that the gathering space can be seen from afar.” 

Posted just outside a new RCMP station, the sculpture is made from FSC-certified and laminated Yellow Alaskan Cedar (a carbon-negative material) as well as custom-fabricated steel braces. 

Its design, says the project team, was not predetermined—the resultant shape was driven by exploring the strength and capacity of the wood. Through an iterative process, the legs and cells of the piece were gradually stretched and pulled into the augmented straight and curved pieces now in place. 

“Repeat prototyping and testing was key, as was developing strategies for custom joinery and detail resolution,” says Svilans.

Only braced where necessary, The Lodestar gives a nod to the history of Kelowna’s timber industry, with its nearly vertical legs suggesting tree trunks that coalesce into a canopy overhead.

Adding to the drama of the soaring structure is a carefully considered lighting system composed of LEDs tucked into the ground. Their positioning illuminates the interior faces of the installation’s components while also creating exterior silhouettes. 

The result, says one team member, is akin to “a campfire in a dark forest,” with attendant warm embrace and safe locus for gathering.

Photos by Andrew Latreille