The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is proud to announce that ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, an Indigenous-led exhibition organized by and first presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, will be on view in the Architecture and Design Gallery at 1 Spadina Crescent from October 25, 2023 – March 22, 2024.

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home was co-curated by Joar Nango (a Norway-based Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art - Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA). The exhibition showcases installations by Indigenous designers and artists, reflecting on how Arctic Indigenous communities relate to land and create empowered, self-determined spaces of home and belonging.

Through the exhibition, as well as its accompanying publication and programming, ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home aims to have long-term impact, opening new forms of dialogues and ways of thinking about Northern Indigenous practices of designing and building that are not normally considered in the canons of architecture.

“Towards Home recognizes that architectural design in this country has been generally insensitive to Indigenous peoples’ traditions and cultures,” says Jeannie Kim, Associate Professor at the Daniels Faculty and organizer of the Toronto exhibition. “Participating in this project, our Faculty hopes to broaden understandings, and to support our shared efforts towards fostering practices of land-based design.”

Work on view will include Taqralik Partridge and Tiffany Shaw’s The Porch, a transitional space unique to Northern living that welcomes Indigenous visitors into an institutional setting that has historically excluded them. Geronimo Inutiq’s I’m Calling Home presents a commissioned radio broadcast that recalls the central role that radio plays in both connecting Inuit communities and expediting colonialism. Nuna, an installation by asinnajaq (in conversation with Tiffany Shaw), is a tent-like structure that invites both sharing and reflection while evoking the four elements. Offernat (Votive Night) by Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson is an altar featuring a birch burl that evokes the burning of Sámi drums during Christianization in the 1700s.

The exhibition also facilitated the Futurecasting: Indigenous-led Architecture and Design in the Arctic workshop (co-curated Ella den Elzen and Nicole Luke) that brought together nine emerging architectural designers and duojars (craftpeope) to convene across Sapmi and Turtle Island to discuss what the future of design on Indigenous lands might become.

The full list of contributors includes: asinnajaq, Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson, Geronimo Inutiq, Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory. The original exhibition design was by Tiffany Shaw, Edmonton, with graphic design by FEED, Montreal.

The Exhibition Opening will take place on Wednesday, October 25. Additional updates and related programming will be announced soon.

Land Acknowledgement 

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. The land of 1 Spadina Crescent has been the home and an important trail of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Spadina is synonymous with Ishpadinaa, meaning “a place on a hill” in Anishinaabe. 

Also, we are acutely aware as architects, that unjust settler strategies and logics denigrated Indigenous land and architecture, particularly harming Indigenous people’s ability to create safe places to call home. Today, many of the ways these lands are used conflict with Indigenous values, practices, and histories. The acknowledgement of past wrongs and current realities are only the beginning of redressing and improving conditions, and creating a more just built environment. 

Image captions: 1) Nuna, asinnajaq in conversation with Tiffany Shaw. qulliq, asinnajaq in conversation with Ludovic Boney and Tiffany Shaw. 2) J'appelle chez nous / I'm calling home / Uvatinni Uqallajunga, Geronimo Inutiq. 3) All images credit ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home exhibition view, 2022. Photos Mathieu Gagnon © CCA. 

The presence of robotics in art, research, design and construction has undeniably changed the way these fields operate and will no doubt play an even bigger role in the future. For more than a decade, the Association for Robots in Architecture has been working to consolidate knowledge in this area, bringing universities together to form a transdisciplinary network of robot users worldwide.

This spring, the Daniels Faculty is pleased to host ROB|ARCH 2024, the Association’s highly regarded biennial workshop and conference, alongside the University of Toronto Robotics Institute, the Design + Technology Lab at The Creative School (Toronto Metropolitan University) and the Waterloo School of Architecture. 

Each gathering aims to bring together international teams of researchers and practitioners to share expertise, foster networks, increase knowledge and stimulate innovation. ROB|ARCH 2024 will consist of three days of hands-on workshops (May 21 to 23) and two days of conference presentations (May 24 to 25). 

The hosting team, which includes the Daniels Faculty’s Maria Yablonina, Zachary Mollica, Paul Howard Harrison, Nicholas Hoban and Brady Peters, has selected the theme Beyond Optimization. Intended as a provocation, the 2024 conference will reflect on the changes affecting the field of robotics in art, design and architecture—and how to respond by shifting priorities and examining the criteria by which we evaluate research. The hosts aim to move beyond technically focused discourse toward inclusive conversations that centre critical approaches in robotics. 

A detailed list of workshops and registration details will be announced in the fall of 2023, and discounted registration fees will be available for students. Conference events will be hosted in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent. 

Dates 

• Workshops: May 21 to 23, 2024 
• Conference: May 24 to 25, 2024 (call for papers deadline: October 16, 2023) 

Visit the ROB|ARCH website and follow @robotsinarchitecture for the latest information. 

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, assistant professor, and Jean-Paul Kelly, assistant professor and director of the visual studies program at the Daniels Faculty.

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.

Fall 2023

October 17, 6:30 p.m. ET
Amina Ross
Artist and educator

Amina Ross makes videos, sculptures, sounds, and situations that consider feeling, embodied knowledge, and intimacy as survival technologies for black, queer, trans, and feminine-spectrum people. Ross is the 2023-2024 Estelle Lebowitz Artist in Residence at Douglass College, Rutgers University. They also serve as faculty at Parsons School of Design, The New School, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art at Vassar College.

November 14, 6:30 p.m. ET
Zach Blas
Artist and writer

Zach Blas works across installation, moving image, theory, and performance, engaging the materialities of computation while also drawing out the philosophies and imaginaries that undergird artificial intelligence, biometric recognition, predictive policing, airport security, and the internet. Blas is an Assistant Professor of Visual Studies in the Daniels Faculty at U of T.

November 21, 6:30 p.m. ET
Tina Rivers Ryan
Curator, art historian, and critic

Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan is a curator, art historian, and critic specializing in art since the 1960s and is widely known as an expert on digital art. Dr. Ryan is a curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. This event is part of the Daniels Faculty's Fall 2023 Public Program in association with MVS Proseminar. Register in advance.

POSTPONED: November 28, 3-5 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. ET 
Weather Report: Where are we going with art and its institutions? 

Organized by the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and Fogo Island Arts (FIA), this tenth edition of The Fogo Island Dialogues is a series of panel discussions by renowned international museum directors and curators, moderated by significant contributors in the field.  

NOTE: Given the current context, Fogo Island Arts has decided to postpone the Fogo Island Dialogues originally scheduled for November 28, 2023, in Toronto. These remain important conversations that Fogo Island Arts look forward to in the future.

December 5, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Aisha Sasha John
Poet, dancer, and choreographer

Aisha Sasha John is interested in choreographing performances that occasion real love. She’s passionate about the creative potential of surrender and through her work builds structures that allow for experiences of entrancement. The expressive possibilities exclusive to Black being-together is one of her ongoing research interests. A celebrated poet, Aisha is author of the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize nominated collection I have to live.

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 Winter 2024 Public Program in association with MVS Proseminar. 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 19, 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) Cassils - Tiresias, Performance Still No. 3 (ANTI Festival, Kupio, Finland), 2012. Photo: Cassils with Pekka Mekinen. 2) Amina Ross - sample animation. 3) Zach Blas Profundior (Lacryphagic Transmutation Deus-Motus-Data Network) Mixed-media installation. (12th Berlin Biennale, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart), 2022. Photo by Mathias Völzke.

The Daniels Faculty is profoundly saddened to have learned of the death of Professor Emeritus George Baird, alumnus (BArch 1962), former dean and beloved friend of the Faculty. 

Professor Baird was a preeminent figure in the history and evolution of both the Faculty and the architectural profession. As an architect, scholar, educator and mentor, his contribution to the discourse around and practice of architecture was profound, progressive and international in its reach.  

Within the Faculty, Baird’s impact as a leader, teacher and guiding influence cannot be overstated. Five years after graduating from what was then U of T’s School of Architecture, he joined the faculty in 1967, serving as acting chair and chair of the architecture program from 1983 to 1985. In 1993, Baird left U of T to teach at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, then returned to serve as Dean of the Faculty from 2004 to 2009. As academic leader, he was dean when John H. Daniels and Myrna Daniels made their historic gift to the Faculty, changing its trajectory and reputation as the newly named John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.   

After the completion of his deanship, Baird continued to teach courses, serve as a thesis advisor and participate in thesis reviews as professor emeritus. The George Baird Lecture—established in his honour upon his retirement as an enduring legacy at the Faculty and the University—continues to bring scholars and practitioners from around the world to speak at the Faculty. (This fall’s George Baird Lecture, scheduled for Thursday, October 19 and featuring architect Bruce Kuwabara, took place as planned.) 

It is the rare architect whose voice and contributions straddle the worlds of practice and theory so significantly, but Baird’s very much did. The Faculty would like to offer its condolences to his wife Elizabeth and to his many colleagues, friends and admirers.  

Those who would like to share their remembrances are encouraged to do so in the comments on our social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn) or to send an email to communications@daniels.utoronto.ca and we will post them below. 

“George Baird was a brilliant intellectual who combined teaching and practice, design and building, research and writing, public lectures and criticism. I [had] known him since I was 18, when I began my first year at the University of Toronto. George was my thesis advisor, and upon graduating in 1972, I worked for him for three years, along with my contemporaries John Van Nostrand, Joost Bakker and Barry Sampson. It was an ongoing education. George was a very cool intellectual. He knew everybody.

“At George’s office, we [alternated] between doing projects and major pieces of public policy on the city. His knowledge and provocations expanded and enriched our understanding of architecture at the urban level, as propositions about the city, society, growth and change. George viewed architecture as a gesture in a social, physical and cultural context.

“Possessing astonishing curiosity, George evolved his prolific and enduring practice as a scholar, writer, teacher, practitioner and mentor with an exceptional kindness and generosity for generations of students and practitioners. He played at the level of what was happening in the context, whether it was a review, a symposium or just lunch. It was very fluctuating. It didn’t always stay at one level.

“One of the things that I most respect about George is that he was often the smartest person in the room. His knowledge base was so wide, and his curiosity covered everything: film, fashion, cars, food, cities, art, politics, provincial and municipal issues. He was all over it. [But] what I will cherish most is George’s generosity and kindness.”

– Bruce Kuwabara, alumnus (BArch 1972) and founding partner at KPMB Architects

“I knew George Baird for many decades, since my first year as a teacher, which for me began at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1994, a year after George joined its faculty as a senior member, already a renowned architect and critic.

“I mention the year and the venue simply to point out that, while George has been a central figure for the life of architecture in Toronto, his presence and impact were international. In addition to educating generations of architects during two different eras in Toronto—from the late 1960s through the time of his departure for Harvard in 1994, and then again beginning in 2004, when he returned as Dean of the Daniels Faculty—he also trained a generation of GSD students during his decade-long sojourn there. George’s impact on architecture, however, was far wider than even his direct role as teacher and mentor at this or any other school. He had been a critical voice in architecture since his continuous wave of criticism, commentary and analysis began in 1969. 

“But while George was an erudite scholar and critic, he was also the sort of architect and teacher who would scrutinize—in a student review, for instance—the placement of a column in parking bays, noting when it would interfere with the turning radius of a car and make parking impossible. He scrutinized, in other words, the most material conditions of architecture. One of his best pieces of writing is his observation in his small essay on Alvar Aalto of how Aalto used the travel of the hand on handrails to structure the experience of space. This was George’s interest in the haptic, not readily photographed reality of architecture.   

“T. S. Eliot once wrote of the novelist Henry James that James had a mind so refined that not an idea could penetrate it. Eliot was paying James a compliment, saying that, for James, ideas existed through the concreteness of things, of gestures, of the smallest observations of mood, of affect. Broad statements were of no value to James. Likewise, for George, the concreteness of architecture was its essence, as present to him as the voice of the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, whose thoughts and words he kept with him as some people do the verses of poets. All things precise and concrete.” 

– Robert Levit, Acting Dean of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design

“George was my professor and then Faculty associate. He always inquired into the deep roots of architecture and modernity. He rose the bar.” 

– Brian Boigon, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design

 “RIP George, a wonderful colleague and friend. We will miss you.”

 – Charles Waldheim, John E. Irving Professor of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director of the Master in Design Studies Program at Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Upon my arrival in Canada in 1975, artist and architect Melvin Charney suggested that, with respect to my interest in urban design and the study of cities, I should go to Toronto to study and meet with George Baird. I called George on a Friday before taking the train from Montreal to Toronto. In closing our long phone conversation, George suggested that we meet at his office first thing Monday morning. 

I arrived at George’s office at 35 Britain Street, where he asked me to give him a little time to sort out a few items for the week before he took me to the University. He suggested that while I was waiting I could look at two reports that his team had produced for the City of Toronto. (The reports were On Building Downtown and Built Form Analysis.)

Later, in the car going to the School of Architecture, George asked what I thought of the reports. I replied that they were interesting but lack an explicit theoretical framework to structure their methodology.

This was the beginning of a great and long-lasting exchange, a collaborative teaching relationship and ultimately a friendship.

I introduced George to the work of European theoreticians such as Saverio Muratori, Carlo Aymonino, Bernard Huet and Christian Devillers, to name a few. These architects, teachers and theoreticians had written extensively on the relationship between architectural typology and urban morphology. I had the opportunity of having been taught by some of them.

In exchange, George introduced me to his rigorous way of looking and analyzing every aspect of life, and understanding how from most daily actions one can see trends in the slow evolution of societies. Both sides of these approaches are based on the longue durée principle as defined by Fernand Braudel.

George’s interest in semiology and the concepts of langue and parole were other possible introductions to the reading of cities through the relationship between architectural typology and urban morphology.

Although I was 26 at the time, George gave me my first teaching assignment. He asked me to give a lecture to explain these theoretical concepts to his fifth-year students. This then became a fifth-year seminar and later became the basis of the North Jarvis study and project. 

George’s next fifth-year class studied a part of downtown Toronto. Under George’s direction, students analyzed North Jarvis’ urban morphology and studied in detail several of its architectural types. Then students produced projects, showing how it is possible, being inspired by the existing, to densify and transform the whole neighbourhood, with improvements to the urban fabric.

This study was certainly the first one of its kind produced in North America. It was published in “Vacant Lottery,” Design Quarterly 108, 1978. In this publication George was associated with Barton Myers.

My relationship with George on urban design developed further at the school after George became the director of the program in 1983, when he asked me to co-ordinate the third-year programme, then dedicated to human settlement.

When I was director of the Architecture and Urban Design Division for the City of Toronto, my team produced an analysis of the morphology of the city for the 1991 Plan. George was a significant critic and contributor to this work. He wrote an introduction to our City Patterns publication, entitled “A Short History of Toronto’s Urban Form.” This introduction, as well as the study, laid the foundations and many of the objectives for Cityplan ’91, Toronto’s official plan at the end of the 20th century.

The passing of George Baird is a loss not only for the school, or for the city, but for the discipline of architecture and urban design. It is all the more poignant at a time when Toronto seems to allow a free-for-all attitude to the city’s form, lacking any sense of the rigour, culture and quality that George had brought to the design of cities.

– Marc Baraness, architect and former associate professor at the University of Toronto

“George was a gentleman and a scholar. Kind and wise. Incisive and rigorous. Most of all, a supportive colleague and friend whose advice and friendship helped me find my voice.”

– Nina-Marie Lister, Professor and Graduate Director of the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University

“A tremendous loss for Toronto, for Canadian architecture and for U of T. He will be very missed, but always remembered.”

– Siobhan Sweeny, alumna (MARC 2016) and intern architect at Sweeny & Co. Architects Inc.

North Design Office, the landscape architecture practice led by the Daniels Faculty’s Peter and Alissa North, is among the co-winners of a 2023 Toronto Urban Design Award in the category of Small Open Spaces. The Award of Merit was bestowed for Stackt Market, the popular “cultural marketplace” composed of artfully assembled shipping containers on the north side of the rail corridor between Bathurst and Tecumseth Streets.

Founded by Alissa North (Associate Professor) and Peter North (Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream) in 2005, North Design Office oversaw Stackt Market’s landscape architecture. The architecture firm behind the project was LGA Architectural Partners. Other members of the award-winning team include Blackwell (structural engineering), Hidi Planner (mechanical engineering), MHBC (transportation), Crozier (civil engineering) and Giant (shipping containers).

According to the five-member jury that granted the Award of Merit, Stack Market “is a fresh new concept for Toronto, in which sustainability—the retrofitting of containers—is the driver behind the creation of a new city destination that has grown beyond the concept of a market. It has become an iconic artform, an animator of a once-derelict place, and a unique public space to simply come and enjoy.”

Added the jury of the project, which is not permanent: “The success of the Stackt Market has been its ability to evolve and change since its inception; it continues to do so as use and program demands shift. This may be attributed to the fact that the market is deemed temporary, which provides the luxury as well as ease of change and adaptation until it is dismantled. The success of the market is also enabled by the level of flexibility and adaptability in the design of space and use.”

Administered by the City of Toronto, the Toronto Urban Design Awards are given out every two years to acknowledge the significant contribution that architects, landscape architects, urban designers, artists, design students and city builders make to the look and livability of the city.

This year’s winners also include another faculty member: Professor Brigitte Shim, whose practice, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, was recognized with an Award of Merit for Ace Hotel Toronto, described by the jury as a “well crafted ‘brickworks’ project…that does a lot for the fabric of the city and the nearby park.”

It won in the category of Private Buildings in Context—Tall. 

Photos by Industryous Photography

The Daniels Faculty will honour the experiences of residential school survivors with a University-wide event to mark Orange Shirt Day and the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation. Daniels students, faculty and staff are invited to an in-person commemoration and live-stream on Friday, September 29, beginning at 9:30 a.m. in Main Hall. Register in advance here. 

Date: Friday, September 29, 2023 

Location: Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent, Main Hall (DA170) 

Agenda

• 9:30 a.m.: Arrival, light breakfast, coffee and tea 
• 10:00 a.m.: Remarks of welcome from the Daniels Faculty Indigenous Advisors and Acting Dean 
• 10:30 a.m.: Livestream of the University-wide Commemoration Event 
• 12:00 p.m.: Closing remarks, Q&A, lunch 

We encourage all members of the Daniels community to wear an orange shirt on September 29 and 30 to honour the thousands of survivors of residential schools, those who did not return home and their families and communities.  

Image Credit: Artwork by MJ Singleton 

The Daniels Faculty is playing host this month to Architecture of Health: The Annual Zeidler-Evans Lecture. The yearly public address, administered by McMaster University and delivered by a researcher with expertise and interest in the connections between architecture, physical space and health, will take place on Monday, October 23. 

This year’s lecture, entitled A City That Can Save Us, will be given by Dr. Robin Mazumder (pictured below). A post-doctoral research fellow at the Technical University of Berlin, Mazumder acquired his PhD in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo and is an outspoken advocate for healthy urban design.

His talk, which will be moderated by journalist Nahlah Ayed of CBC Radio’s IDEAS, will focus on innovative approaches to health education, research and care through the design, use and analysis of physical space.

The lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. and a reception will follow.

Attendees are requested to RSVP via email by October 18 at FHSevents5@mcmaster.ca or by phone at 905-525-9140 (Ext. 20250).

Established in 2022, when the inaugural talk was given by author and academic Annmarie Adams, the Zeidler-Evans Lecture is sponsored by the family of John Evans, the first dean of McMaster University’s School of Medicine, to honour renowned architect Eberhard Zeidler, who passed away last year at age 95.

Between 1967 and 1972, Zeidler and Evans collaborated closely on the creation of McMaster’s Health Sciences Centre, the design for which combined a tertiary hospital and a university facility to teach healthcare professionals, thereby transforming how hospitals are created, built and used.

The German-born architect, who also designed such iconic buildings as the Eaton Centre in Toronto, had a long and sustained relationship with the Daniels Faculty, serving as an adjunct professor at the school from 1983 to 1995 and establishing the Eberhard Zeidler Scholarship with his wife Jane in 1999.

He is also the namesake of the Eberhard Zeidler Library, a 37,000-volume facility in the revitalized Daniels Building, to which he and Jane generously contributed.

Banner image: John Evans (left) and Eberhard Zeidler, after whom the annual Zeidler-Evans Lecture is named, collaborated closely on the creation and building of the McMaster University Health Sciences Centre.

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is pleased to present its Fall 2023 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 social justice, urbanization and housing, art and media, and ecology and landscape resilience.  

All of the events in our Program are free and open to the public. Register in advance and consult the calendar for up-to-date details at daniels.utoronto.ca/events.  All events will be livestreamed and available to view on the Daniels Faculty's YouTube channel. 

September 21, 6:30 p.m. ET  
Architecture Rooted in Place
Featuring Nzinga B. Mboup (WOROFILA)

Register

September 28, 6:30 p.m. ET 
The Architecture of Disability
Featuring David Gissen (Parsons School of Design, The New School)

Register

October 4, 5:30 p.m. ET
Exhibition Opening—Le Corbusier: Models
A travelling exhibition of models of Le Corbusier works from the private collection of Singapore-based RT+Q Architects

Register

October 12, 6:30 p.m. ET  
Detroit-Moscow-Detroit: An Event in Honour of Jean-Louis Cohen
Featuring Claire Zimmerman (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto) and Christina E. Crawford (Art History Department, Emory University)

Register

October 19, 6:30 p.m. ET 
George Baird Lecture: Evolving Influence
Featuring Bruce Kuwabara  (KPMB Architects)

Register

October 25, 5:30 p.m. ET
Exhibition Opening—ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home
An Indigenous-led exhibition and publication project organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture with the Daniels Faculty

Register

November 2, 6:30 p.m. ET
Technical Lands: A Critical Primer
Featuring Charles Waldheim (Graduate School of Design, Harvard University)

Register

November 21, 6:30 p.m. ET
Media Art’s Future, Present, and Past: Notes from the Field
Featuring Tina Rivers Ryan (Buffalo AKG Art Museum)

Register

November 23, 6:30 p.m. ET
On Relationality in Housing and Design
Featuring David Fortin (School of Architecture, University of Waterloo)

Register

November 30, 6:30 p.m. ET
Landscape Strategies for a Fire-Prone Planet
Featuring Jonah Susskind (SWA Group)

Register

For decades, Phragmites australis (pictured above) has ranked among the worst weeds in Canada, damaging the biodiversity, wetlands and beaches of Ontario, Quebec and elsewhere. 

A new guide, co-developed by researchers at the Daniels Faculty and at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), aims to combat this destructive invader—a tall, dense grass that was introduced into North America from Europe in the 1800s and is also known as common reed—by offering “a suite of simple, easy-to-use identification tools” designed to distinguish it from vulnerable native species without relying on expensive, specialized lab analyses.

“Given the importance of Phragmites management in Ontario as a conservation concern,” says postdoctoral research fellow Michael McTavish of Forestry, “we think this tool would be of great use to land managers and other researchers.”

Dr. McTavish is the lead author of the guide, which was recently published in Invasive Plant Science and Management, the online peer-reviewed journal focusing on fundamental and applied research on invasive plants and the management and restoration of invaded non-crop areas.

His co-authors and collaborators include Professor Sandy M. Smith of Forestry and three researchers from AAFC: research scientists Tyler Smith and Robert Bourchier and research technician Subbaiah Mechanda.

“To effectively manage the invasive introduced subspecies of common reed and avoid misallocating resources,” they write, “land managers require practical, reliable tools to differentiate it from the desirable native subspecies. While genetic tools are extremely useful for identification, morphological identification is a valuable complementary tool that is easier [to use], cheaper, available in the field and thus more accessible for many land managers and researchers.”

In the course of the team’s research, a suite of 22 morphological traits were measured in 21 introduced and 27 native P. australis populations identified by genetic barcoding across southern Ontario. Traits were compared between the subspecies to identify measurements that offered reliable, diagnostic separation. Overall, 21 of the 22 traits differed between the subspecies, with four offering complete separation: the retention of leaf sheaths on dead stems; a categorical assessment of stem colour; the base height of the ligule, excluding the hairy fringe; and a combined measurement of leaf length and lower glume length. 

Additionally, round fungal spots on the stem occurred only on the native subspecies and never on the sampled introduced populations. 

“The high degree of variation observed in traits within and between the subspecies,” the researchers conclude, “cautions against a ‘common wisdom’ approach to identification or automatic interpretation of intermediate traits as indicative of aberrant populations or hybridization.”

As an alternative, their “five best traits” checklist offers simple and reliable measurements for identifying native and introduced P. australis. It is most applicable, they note, “for samples collected in the late summer and fall in the Great Lakes region, but can also inform best practices for morphological identification in other regions as well.” 

The full guide as well as the research that led to it is detailed in the IPSM report. To read it, click here.

The checklist, however, isn’t the only weapon in Dr. McTavish’s arsenal against common reed. This past spring, he publicized details about another initiative involving the release of “two old/new adversaries” of P. australis: a pair of European moth species expected to provide effective biological control of the native-choking plant.

“The two European moths, known by their scientific names Lenisa geminipuncta [pictured below] and Archanara neurica, were selected only after extensive safety testing confirmed they were highly specific to invasive Phragmites, meaning that they can only complete their lifecycle on this plant,” Dr. McTavish said. “The caterpillars of the two moths feed inside the invasive Phragmites stems, causing the weed to wilt or die. In 2019, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) approved the release of both biocontrol agents in Canada. To date, over 17,000 insects have been released at 13 locations across southern Ontario.”

According to Dr. McTavish, “early monitoring at the release sites is very promising for establishment and use of this new tool for Phragmites management. The released insect populations have survived over a year at the release points. They have completed their full lifecycle and are causing visible damage to Phragmites plants at several release locations. The research team is now focused on an intensive laboratory rearing program for the caterpillars and on testing release methods using insect eggs, caterpillars, pupae and adult moths.”

The program’s ultimate goal, he adds, “is to use these early ‘nurse’ locations for collection and redistribution of insects to land managers and the public with serious patches of Phragmites. Populations of the insects are still establishing, and initial results are very encouraging. Over time, as the insect populations continue to grow and spread, biological control is expected to become a valuable new component of the integrated management strategy for invasive Phragmites.”

This second, insect-based control initiative is based on a research program that began in 1998 as well as critical support from stakeholders including Ducks Unlimited Canada, MITACS, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, NSERC, the rare Charitable Research Reserve and AAFC.

The research team is an international one led by AAFC and U of T. Other members include collaborators from the University of Waterloo, Ducks Unlimited Canada and the Nature Conservancy of Canada in Canada, Cornell University and the University of Rhode Island in the United States and CABI (the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International) in Switzerland. 

Image of Lenisa geminipuncta moth on a stem of invasive Phragmites by Patrick Häfliger. 

Associate professor Daniel Chung is this year’s beneficiary of the Mayflower Research Fund, an endowment established by a generous donor to encourage and stimulate research in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, and allows for collaboration with other areas of the University.

Chung’s current research examines a building’s envelope—the roof, walls and surfaces that are in contact with the outdoors—to better predict the effects of climate change on buildings.  

With support from the Mayflower Research Fund, he will advance his research on building-envelope performance as it relates to moisture flows and moisture-related damage. 

“If we can more easily monitor moisture throughout the building, not just at the surface, and know what is happening across all facades, like a fit-bit that monitors day-to-day activity, we can attune buildings to have adaptive properties that respond to varying climatic conditions and prevent building deterioration before it becomes an expensive and time-consuming process to address and repair,” he says.

Both a registered architect and a professional engineer, Chung will direct his grant funding, totalling $10,000, to test and develop a new assessment method for real-time moisture-transport behaviour by validating the use of what is known as dielectric permittivity sensors (a type of water-sensitive probe ordinarily used to test the moisture content of soil) to measure and track the amount of water present in the facades of buildings. 

The data collected in this research will be used to demonstrate the potential of the method’s use for in-situ moisture content assessments, and will be leveraged when applying for additional external funding in the coming academic year that will focus on sensing transient three-dimensional moisture flows through multi-layered building envelope assemblies. 

A guarded hot box measures heat flow through building envelope materials. It is currently under construction in Chung's lab, and will be used in the project supported by the Mayflower Research Fund. 

Since its establishment in 2018, the Mayflower Research Fund has supported research across a range of topics, from improving fresh-air circulation in multi-unit buildings (Bomani Khemet, 2022) and the effects of interior light on human psychology and physiology in Canada’s subarctic and polar regions (Alstan Jakubiec, 2021) to advancing research in computational design with a focus on robotics (Maria Yablonina, 2020) and an in-depth study of the design of suburban parks (Fadi Masoud, 2019).

Faculty members with full-time appointments at the Daniels Faculty are eligible to apply.