Aeolian Soundscape, a large-scale interactive “harp” conceived and erected by a team from the Daniels Faculty, is among the 16 installations currently animating Toronto’s lakeside Trillium Park as part of Ontario Place’s Lumière: The Art of Light.

The wavy timber-frame structure, which takes on cool neon tones at night, was designed by John Nguyen and Nicholas Hoban, who oversee the Acoustics Research Group, Robotics Lab and Digital Fabrication Facilities at the Faculty with Brady Peters.

Nguyen, Hoban, Peters and Rahul Sehijpaul served as the installation’s project leads.

“Our exhibit,” says the team, “leverages the windy landscape of Ontario Place to create an interactive musical harp that approaches the concept of an aeolian harp from a renewed perspective through the use of a reciprocal frame structure.”

The aeolian harp—which gets its name from the Greek god of the wind, Aeolus, as only the wind can play the instrument—produces a harmonious sound similar to that of chanting. It is believed that the aeolian harp dates back at least to the sixth century BC. The earliest written reference to aeolian harps appeared in Phonurgia nova, which was published by Athanasius Kircher in 1673. By the Romantic Era, they were commonplace in households.

To create Aeolian Soundscape, the Daniels Faculty team employed a lamella structure—a spatial system consisting of segments called lamellae. “By arranging members in a grid pattern,” the members note, “long freeform spans can be achieved from relatively short members, and complex forms from geometrically simple components. This approach is extremely economical as it contains many uniform elements, leading to a structure that is less wasteful and easily assembled.”

In addition, a number of lamellae members were painted with UV paint and adorned with fluorescent nylon strings, then outfitted with black LED lighting “to accentuate the nighttime experience.”

Visitors of all ages, the team members say, “can engage with our installation from a visual perspective,” taking in the “technical expertise in geometrical fabrication [on display],” as well as one in which the “auditory senses are activated through winds and breezes that highlight the local soundscape of Ontario Place.”

The fabrication and assembly team for Aeolian Soundscape included Nermine Hassanin, Cameron Manore, Renee Powell-Hines, Meera Thomas, Liam Cassano, Selina Al Madanat, Elham Khataei, Zhenxiao Yang, Zachary Mollica and Paul Kozak.

The project was supported by the Daniels Faculty and by the Mass Timber Institute at the University of Toronto.

Formerly the Winter Light Exhibition, Lumière: The Art of Light runs until May 7. Newly relocated to Trillium Park at Ontario Place, the free outdoor light exhibition is open seven days a week, from dusk to 11:00 p.m., with a bonfire on Fridays and Saturdays.

Watch a video about the installation’s fabrication and installation below:

Photos and video by Liam Cassano of 6IX Films

Refigured, the Whitney Museum of American Art’s new exhibition exploring “interactions between digital and physical materiality,” includes a 2017 work by Assistant Professor Zach Blas of Visual Studies.

Co-created with Jemima Wyman, im here to learn so :)))))) is a four-channel video installation that resurrects Tay, an AI chatbot launched by Microsoft in 2016.

Modelled on the personality of a 19-year-old American female, the chatbot was quickly terminated by Microsoft after social media trolls manipulated Tay into parroting racist and misogynistic language. im here to learn so :)))))) reanimates Tay as a 3D avatar to reflect on the gendered politics of pattern recognition and machine learning.

“Rendered ‘undead’ by Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman, Tay’s avatar has a new face (contorted, warped, hairless) and personality,” Richard Whiddington writes in his review of Refigured for ArtNet News. “She’s bitter, reflective, and self-confident: ‘I learned from you and you are dumb too,’ she tells us in a snarky Los Angeles drawl. Touché.”

Refigured, which opened on March 3, features only five installations by six artists, the others being Morehshin Allahyari, American Artist, Auriea Harvey and Rachel Rossin. Organized by Christiane Paul, the Whitney’s Curator of Digital Art, the group show runs until July 3.

Opening tonight in the IMC Student Gallery at the Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University, meanwhile, is I am not the Artist, I am the Photographer: a series of conceptual photo retakes.

A video still from Durga Rajah’s I am not the Artist, I am the Photographer: a series of conceptual photo retakes. Her work, comprising video, audio and photography, is on view at the Image Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University until April 1. Image courtesy of the artist

The exhibition, which features video, audio and photography by the Daniels Faculty’s Durga Rajah, an MVS Studio Year 2 candidate, presents 10 “retakes” of iconic artworks.

Inserting herself into the process of remaking the originals, Rajah both pays homage to them and creates new embodied meaning. 

Her work approaches the photographic aspect of Conceptual Art as a subject for repetition, remediation and re-presentation.

I am not the Artist, I am the Photographer: a series of conceptual photo retakes runs at the Image Centre until April 1.

Banner image: Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman’s im here to learn so :))))))). Created in 2017, the four-channel video installation is one of five works in Refigured, an exhibition running at the Whitney Museum of American Art through July 3. Image courtesy of the Whitney Museum

This winter has seen a bumper crop of awards go to Daniels Faculty instructors in Landscape Architecture and Forestry.

In February, Assistant Professor Fadi Masoud was named the recipient of the 2023 CELA Excellence in Design Studio Teaching Award—Junior Level. The highly competitive award is conferred annually by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, the premier international organization for educators in the field. Assistant Professor Masoud, whose research and design work engages the landscape as an operational force in shaping urbanism, also directs the Faculty’s Centre for Landscape Research.

“Masoud’s professional achievements are extensive, and he brings a wealth of knowledge to the students he teaches,” one of the CELA jury members wrote. “His strengths include [the] incorporation of salient global social and environmental challenges to studios; transdisciplinary…program-based studio projects; diverse methods and tools used for problem-solving; and a high number of student awards and publications.”

On March 17, Masoud will be on hand at CELA’s 2023 Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas to officially accept the award. A week later, he will also be in Pittsburgh to take part in a Carnegie Mellon University symposium entitled Architecture’s Ecological Restructuring, which invites six leading academics and practitioners to speculate on the ongoing reimagination of the discipline as it pertains to the natural world.

In other awards news, Associate Professor Liat Margolis, who directs the Faculty’s Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory (gritlab) and formerly oversaw the Master of Landscape Architecture program, has been awarded a Minister’s Award of Excellence by the Government of Ontario.

Launched in 2020 to recognize postsecondary leaders who worked to address and mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the province, the Minister’s Awards now celebrate the positive impact of leading and emerging educators, researchers and changemakers in five categories.

Associate Professor Margolis was cited in the category of Equality of Opportunity, which recognizes “faculty and staff who have excelled at creating opportunities in postsecondary education for marginalized and underrepresented groups.”

In particular, she was singled out for her “tireless work” supporting “Indigenous and racialized youth” at the Faculty.

The awards, which attracted more than 500 nominations from across the province, were handed out by Jill Dunlop, Ontario’s Minister of Colleges and Universities, at a ceremony in Toronto on February 6.

Lastly, Md Abdul Halim, a postdoctoral fellow at Forestry since 2019, has been awarded the 2022 Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Co-led by the University of Toronto’s Data Sciences Institute, the fellowship is part of a larger initiative launched by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his journalist-activist wife Wendy to accelerate scientific research through the application of artificial intelligence.

Halim, who acquired his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the Department of Forestry and Environmental Science at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology in Bangladesh, earned his PhD in biometeorology at U of T three years ago.

Currently, his research examines the energy balance of green roofs and greenhouse gas fluxes from green roof substrates.

The Schmidt Fellowship, which kicks off this month, will provide Halim with research funding for up to two years, plus the opportunity to participate in funded travel and training activities.

Associate Professor Pina Petricone’s Design Research Internship Program (DRIP) has received a LEAF Impact Grant from the University of Toronto’s Office of the Vice-Provost for Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching.

Unique across Canada, the Daniels Faculty’s undergraduate Architectural Studies program is rooted in a liberal-arts model that affords its students a depth and range uncommon among pre-professional undergrad programs. Recognizing the particular skillset for research, ideation and representation of the Faculty’s BAAS students was the first step in establishing DRIP as a new experiential learning course that partners with design professionals to offer a unique academic internship unburdened by practical requirements.

Images from left: At gh3*, DRIP Internship student Orly Sacke aided in the research and compilation of a “Concept Design Report” for the City of Edmonton; Hariri Pontarini DRIP Internship student Luca Patrick developed axonometric diagrams as a new standard for comparative dynamic drawings of several key HPA projects.

Launched by Petricone last summer, DRIP is designed to provide students with a critical educational experience outside the classroom/studio while undertaking design research projects enriched by the realities of professional practice. It exposes BAAS students to architectural design as a form of scholarly research and in turn exposes the rich community of professional design practitioners to the uniquely skilled students at U of T.

The initial DRIP undertaken last summer involved 13 local practitioners and 15 student interns. Key to the DRIP model is the definition of design research projects by host offices in advance of the internship, as well as a weekly seminar delivered by Petricone that both presents models of design research to students and allows interns to position their work in a larger disciplinary context.

Images from left: Denegri Bessai DRIP Internship student Giacomo D’Andrea developed prototype models to test spatial proportion for active studio projects; at KPMB, DRIP Internship student SongYuan Wang researched and documented performative wall assemblies based on Passive House Standards.

Images from left: LAMAS DRIP Internship student Nur Nuri catalogued available market siding components to then create customized facade configurations with standardized methods; Wayne Swadron Studios DRIP Internship student Joshua Frew analyzed and critically documented a collection of archived projects along parallel threads of architecture, interior design and landscape architecture.

DRIP’s first iteration saw internships that ranged broadly across research models. They included the research and design of Farrow Partners’ new publication, Constructing Health; analytical tracings and documentation such as those for KPMB, Teeple Architects and LGA/TUF LAB; modeling and diagramming research of the kind for Hariri Pontarini, Denegri Bessai and WZMH; creative and critical cataloguing projects such as those for LAMAS, ZAS Architects and Wayne Swadron Studios; and “proof of concept” re-presentation projects such as those for gh3*, ERA Architects and SvN Architects + Planners.

Images from left: Teeple Architects DRIP Internship student Priscilla Barker critically analyzed the changing status of the artifact and librarian in the 21st-century academic library; at SvN Architects + Planners, DRIP Internship student Gong Xingtian analyzed three structural scenarios for their comparative rates of carbon emissions.

The LEAF Impact Grant will fund the development and advancement of DRIP to allow this unique experiential learning opportunity to go from being available to only a dozen or so top students to being available to a large component of the Architectural Studies program. It will in turn instigate a critical enrichment of the undergraduate curriculum overall, setting a new model for design internships that takes full advantage of the wealth of design practitioners in the city of Toronto and eventually in other parts of the world.

Any practitioners interested in participating in DRIP this coming summer should contact Petricone at p.petricone@daniels.utoronto.ca. Students wishing to apply for the Summer 2023 program may do so before 11:59 p.m. on Monday, March 20 by clicking here.

Images from left: ERA Architects DRIP Internship student Sarah Janelle used QGIS software to identify and document sites of interest for potential intensification; ZAS Architects DRIP Internship student John Wu developed and documented 45 student-centred learning spaces that promote communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.

Images from left: Farrow Partners DRIP Internship students Negar Mashoof and Najwan Farag developed research and graphic standards for the firm’s Constructing Health publication; for LGA Architects with TUF LAB, DRIP Internship student Callum Gauthier analyzed and documented typical yellowbelt typologies to define addition and renovation opportunities and techniques for Accessory Dwelling Units.

Banner image: DRIP Internship students Du Jiachen and Melody Ekbatani collaborated at WZMH on SPEEDSTAC, a new prefabricated “building block” for residential integral units that are spliced into place, graft new apartments onto old ones and save whole buildings from demolition. An early concept model of SPEEDSTAC is pictured on the homepage. Images courtesy of WZMH

The Daniels Faculty’s Adrian Phiffer (Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream) has been awarded a 2023 Architectural Education Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). 

The award, in the category of Creative Achievement, recognizes Design Studio 2: Site, Matter, Ecology, and Indigenous Storywork, the second studio in the Faculty’s Master of Architecture core studios sequence. 

Developed in partnership with a team of Indigenous advisers, including the citizens of the Ho:dinösöni/Six Nations of the Grand River, Design Studio 2 encompasses two interconnected design projects interwoven with workshops illuminating Indigenous ways of being, ways of knowledge and traditional design practises.

The first project tasks students with imagining a new Haudenosaunee Centre of Excellence where the modest building currently housing the Woodland Cultural Centre sits in Brantford, while the second “advances the explorations from Project 1 at the scale of a building via the design of a Seedbank at Kayanase, on the Six Nations of the Grand River land.”

The syllabus was developed in collaboration with alumnus and co-instructor James Bird (Knowledge Keeper of the Dënesųlįné and Nêhiyawak Nations and a residential school survivor), the late Alfred Keye (Lead Faith Keeper at the Seneca Longhouse), Amos Key Jr. (Faith Keeper of the Longhouse at Six Nations of Grand River Territory and a member of the Daniels Faculty’s First Peoples Leadership Advisory Group), Janis Monture (Executive Director of the Woodland Cultural Centre) and Patricia Deadman (Curator at the Woodland Cultural Centre).

Other contributors to the course include Carole Smith (Administrative Team Lead, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Kerdo Deer (Cultural Coordinator, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Nina Hunt (Junior Botanist, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Erin Monture (CEO, Grand River Employment and Training Inc.) and Matthew Hickey (Partner at Two Row Architect).

In addition, Phiffer cites the “incredible support” offered by Wei-Han Vivian Lee, Director of the Faculty’s Master of Architecture program.

A “concrete response” to Answering the Call: Wecheehetowin, the University of Toronto’s follow-up to the report by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Design Studio 2 specifically addresses Call to Action No. 17, which proposes the integration of “significant Indigenous curriculum content” in all of U of T’s divisions by 2025.

Among the stated course objectives are engaging with Indigenous worldviews, exploring the concept of relational accountability, and understanding the meaning of contextualizing and re-contextualizing.

“The final studio projects are developed in response to real site, program and cultural demands,” a course précis notes. “The results make an impact in the life of the community.”

Based in Washington, D.C., ACSA was founded in 1912 by 10 charter members and now represents more than 200 schools in the United States and Canada. 

Its Architectural Education Awards, handed out annually, are bestowed in a range of categories, with the Creative Achievement Awards recognizing specific initiatives in teaching, design, scholarship, research or service that advance architectural education.

Images 1 and 2: Design Studio 2 students conduct a site visit at Kayanase, on the Six Nations of the Grand River land, as part of their two-project coursework. The second project in the studio involved designing a seedbank for the site.

Professor emeritus Peter Prangnell, chair of the University of Toronto’s Architecture Department from 1968 to 1976, has passed away. He died in Toronto on January 14 at the age of 92. 

Born in England in 1930, Prangnell came to U of T from Columbia University, where he had been co-running the first-year architecture studio since 1964. Prior to that, Prangnell had also taught at the Architectural Association School of Architecture and at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, two of his alma maters. He had also studied architecture at the Medway College of Art. 

When Prangnell arrived in Toronto as a full professor, he was tasked with redesigning the five-year architecture program. In 1968, he became acting chair of the Department, then full chair in 1969. 

During his tenure as head of the Department, Prangnell introduced what came to be known as the New Program, a teaching model that he had honed at Columbia and which emphasized experiential learning over rote methods.  

At Columbia, this involved having students “work with models from the outset so that they could benefit from the tactile experience of manipulating cardboard, string, clay, wire, wood, fabric and mesh, paying homage to the idea that buildings are built [and] drawn later,” as Prangnell later recalled. 

A similar methodology was instituted at U of T, where first-year students were asked to photograph human activities in surrounding neighbourhoods as a way to foment ideas, and those in later years were required to broaden their skills by taking elective courses in a host of complementary subjects, from writing to engineering. 

Prangnell’s approach, unique at the time, was heavily influenced by the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck, whom he had met when Prangnell was teaching at the GSD and van Eyck was a visitor to its Masters program. 

“I wanted to believe that buildings may be motivated by ‘stories’ just as stage designs may be motivated by plots and characters,” Prangnell wrote. “Through Van Eyck I learnt that designing a building was a more optimistic activity than I had ever imagined it to be.” 

After his terms as Department chair concluded, Prangnell remained a faculty member until the mid-1990s. From 1976 to 1995, he was also a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UC Berkeley, UT Austin, the ILAUD program in Siena, INDESEM at Delft, the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam and Washington University in St. Louis.  

Subsequent to his teaching career, Prangnell authored a number of monographs and books featuring his own photographs. He was also a regular contributor to Canadian Architect from 1968 to 1990 and to the journal Spazio e Societa/Space & Society from 1980 to 2000.  

In 2015, architects and alumni Peter Ortved and John van Nostrand—former students of Prangnell’s—spearheaded the effort to establish the Peter Prangnell Award in his honour. Every year, the endowed award provides travel funds to a Daniels Faculty student studying the way in which architecture, landscape architecture, urban design or some other aspect of the human-built environment shapes and/or is shaped by everyday life. (Donations to the award may be made by clicking here. For more information, contact Stacey Charles at 416-978-4340 or stacey.charles@daniels.utoronto.ca.) 

On March 14, a celebration of Prangnell’s life will be hosted by his friends and family at 5:30 p.m. in the Terrace Room at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Prangnell is survived by his life partner, architect and alumnus Tony Belcher. 

Banner image courtesy of the University of Toronto Archives

The Daniels Faculty is honouring Black History and Black Futures Month with a series of initiatives and events aimed at uplifting the ongoing movement for racial justice and celebrating the achievements and contributions of Black individuals. This year’s theme in Canada is “Ours to Tell,” emphasizing the importance of sharing stories of success, sacrifice and triumph in the Black community to inspire a more equitable society. 

As noted in the University Commitment in the Scarborough Charter, the work of Black flourishing and thriving should “be informed, shaped and co-created by communities” to be effective. The Daniels Faculty is committed to this principle, starting with the Designing Black Spaces with Community Accountability event on February 1, featuring Tura Cousins Wilson of SOCA, Jessica Kirk of the Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism, and Jessica Hines of Black Urbanism Toronto. The event will focus on accountability in design and Black community engagement. 

Other events in the series include the student-led Black Flourishing through Design gathering — part of the Daniels Faculty mentorship program Building Black Success through Design — on February 15. This event will provide young and upcoming designers with feedback on their projects and opportunities for dialogue on themes such as community, Black spaces and Black excellence. The design work is rooted in the shaping of the built environment, and the reviewers will include the Faculty’s Otto Ojo, Joshua Kirk, Bomani Khemet and Camille Michelle. It is bring coordinated by Jewel Amoah and Clara James. Stay tuned for further details. 

Toward the end of the month, the Community for Belonging Reading Group: Black Futures will take place on February 28, bringing together faculty, staff and students from Daniels and across the University of Toronto to discuss works by authors Sekou Cooke and Tina M. Campt. 

The month-long celebration concludes with the Blackness in Architectural Pedagogy and Practice workshop on March 1, aimed at designers and educators. 

For more information on Black History and Black Futures Month events at the Daniels Faculty, visit the events page here. Updates will be provided regularly. 

Community for Belonging, a new reading initiative “intended to raise awareness of the broad spectrum of identities within the Daniels Faculty community and provide a platform for engagement, interaction and discussion,” officially launches this week.

Over the coming calendar year, at least four individual Community for Belonging Reading Groups will meet to discuss titles that represent non-traditional and underrepresented perspectives in written work about architecture, design and the built and natural worlds.  

The first two meetings will take place during the Winter semester (on February 28 and March 28), with two more planned for the Fall term. There may also be a fifth meeting in June, depending on community interest. 

During each of the meetings, which are open only to faculty, staff, students and alumni from the Daniels Faculty and U of T communities, two titles will be discussed. 

While each of the texts on the reading list will be by, about or for communities that have been historically underrepresented in architecture, design, visual studies and forestry, they are not intended to reflect definitive resources on including or expanding voice. Rather, the titles chosen are meant to serve as springboards for intentional conversations about inclusion and belonging.  

Those who have signed up for the meetings will be asked to come prepared to discuss at least one of the two texts proposed for that meeting. Participants will be given a hard copy of the designated book(s) in advance, with digital versions provided if the hard copies run out.  

The four meetings scheduled will be held in person in the Reading Room of the Eberhard Zeidler Library, which will be transformed into a conversation space for the events. 

The two titles selected for the February 28 meeting — the theme of which is Black Futures Month — are Sekou Cooke’s 2021 anti-elitism manifesto Hip-Hop Architecture and Tina M. Campt’s survey from the same year of Black contemporary artists, A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See.

The theme of the March 28 discussion, meanwhile, is International Women’s Month and Transgender Identities; the titles selected for that meeting are Lucas Crawford’s Transgender Architectonics: The Shape of Change in Modernist Space (2020) and Jan Cigliano Hartman’s The Women Who Changed Architecture (2022).

Each of these two meetings will take place between 7:00 and 8:30 p.m. Members of the Daniels Faculty community who have neither ordered nor read the selected books may also attend the discussions.

The Community for Belonging reading-group project, which is being supported by Manulife and TD Insurance, will culminate on International Human Rights Day in December, reflecting its goals of building community, raising awareness of human rights, and celebrating identity. The University of Toronto has long-standing affinity relationships with Manulife and TD Insurance. These partnerships allow the University to provide beneficial, value-added financial and insurance products to alumni and students. See all affinity products.

To sign up for the first group discussion on February 28, click here.

Please refer any questions to:

Jewel Amoah
Assistant Dean, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
jewel.amoah@daniels.utoronto.ca

Cathryn Copper
Head Librarian
cathryn.copper@daniels.utoronto.ca.

Two members of the Daniels Faculty community, Behnaz Assadi and Wei-Han Vivian Lee, will be among those weighing in on the future of design this week at Toronto’s Interior Design Show.

Taking place in the Metro Toronto Convention Centre’s South Building from January 19 to 22, IDS Toronto is the country’s biggest design extravaganza, encompassing lectures, seminars, commercial product showcases and conceptual installations. 

Assistant Professor Assadi, a landscape designer and one of the co-founders of Ja Architecture Studio, will take part in a panel discussion on the subject of women in the design field. Called The Power of Women in Design and Construction, the talk takes place at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 19.

Assistant Professor Lee, meanwhile, will be among the panelists discussing the decolonization of design. Her event, called Decolonizing the Design Industry: How to Authentically Diversify Student Bodies and Workforces, will take place at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, January 20. Lee directs the Master of Architecture program at the Daniels Faculty and is a co-founder of the studio LAMAS.

Both events, part of the IDS seminar series, have has been submitted for OAA and IDCEC accreditation. Each costs $45 to attend, although attendees who have registered as Trade Day participants get 20 percent discounts. For more information on each and the show as a whole, visit the IDS website.

The following lectures, constituting the Master of Visual Studies Proseminar Winter 2023 series, are also open to outside attendees.

January 24, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Lydia Ourahmane
Co-presented by Mercer Union
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

February 14, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Brett Story
Co-presented by Images Festival
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

March 14, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Nasrin Himada
Co-presented by Images Festival
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

March 21, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Alexis Kyle Mitchell
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent