The annual Thesis Booklet showcasing the final thesis projects of Master of Architecture (MARC), Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA), Master of Urban Design (MUD) and Master of Visual Studies (MVS) students at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is now available for viewing.

Thesis booklets are a Daniels Faculty tradition, printed for and distributed to graduate thesis students, as well as thesis advisors, external reviewers and guests.

The booklet contains images and brief statements by students who are presenting thesis projects for the semester(s) listed at the culmination of their studies.

Flip through the latest booklet below or download a PDF here.

Black City Builders in Canada, Daniels Faculty sessional lecturer Kaari Kitawi’s new video series profiling some of the country’s leading Black design professionals, has launched.

The four-part series—for which Kitawi (pictured below) received a grant from the Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation (LACF) last year to produce—will be shown on her existing YouTube channel, called Careers Unboxed with Kaari.

That channel features interviews with Black professionals from around the world and a variety of fields about their respective career journeys. Black City Builders in Canada, by contrast, hones in on the experiences and perspectives of architecture and design professionals working in this country.

“It is important for us to tell our stories in order to change the narrative,” Kitawi said when she received the LACF grant, referring to the need for BIPOC students to see themselves reflected among those already making their mark in disciplines such as architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and planning.

Both her YouTube channel and the new series expand on the in-person outreach that she has also conducted, such as giving career talks to BIPOC high-schoolers in her Toronto neighbourhood and elsewhere.

The first, 50-minute instalment of Black City Builders in Canada, featuring Nigerian-Canadian landscape architect Emeka Nnadi, is currently available for viewing, as is a trailer offering sneak peeks of future subjects.

Among those who’ll be profiled in upcoming segments are architect and Daniels Faculty assistant professor Anne-Marie Armstrong, urban designer Eldon Theodore and landscape architect Kellie Spence.

To view the trailer for Black City Builders in Canada, click here. To watch the first episode of the series, click here.

A paper co-authored and -supervised by Rasoul Yousefpour, assistant professor of forestry economics and policy at the Daniels Faculty, has just been published in the open-access online journal Nature Communications.

Called High economic costs of reduced carbon sinks and declining biome stability in Central American forests, the article is the result of a multi-year study into ecosystem services (ES) in the forests of the title region.

ES refer to the many social and climate benefits provided by tropical forests, such as carbon sinks for climate regulation and crucial habitats for unique biodiversity.

The study—which Yousefpour conducted with three colleagues at the University of Freiburg in Germany, from which he obtained his PhD in 2009—looks at the implications of climate change “for the economic value of these services,” an area that the co-authors say has “rarely [been] explored before.”

Among their findings: “projected ES declines in 24 to 62 percent of the study region with associated economic costs of $51 billion to 314 billion a year until 2100.”

These declines, they add, will particularly affect montane and dry forests and have strong economic implications for Central America’s lower-middle-income countries, such as El Salvador and Honduras.

“In addition, economic losses were mostly higher for habitat services than for climate regulation. This highlights the need to expand the focus from mere maximization of carbon dioxide sequestration and avoid false incentives from carbon markets.”

The maps above show what the authors call economic hotspots, forested areas with the highest projected monetary losses as a result of climate stress.

In his study of adaptive forest management and decision-making, which is Yousefpour’s specialty, he uses ecological modelling approaches to forecast the ways in which forests will grow and change over time, then performs analysis on those models to determine the effects of different human interventions.

The paper in Nature Communications is the latest of several he has written on the subject of forest management. His co-authors for this one are Lukas Baumbach, Thomas Hickler and Marc Hanewinkel.

Banner image of Costa Rican montane forest by wirestock on Freepik

Marshall Brown, the Princeton-based architect, urbanist, artist and scholar, is scheduled to speak at the Daniels Faculty on Wednesday, January 18. 

Brown’s presentation, called ENGAGEMENTS, will take place in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building at 12:30 p.m., part of the Exploring Design Practices undergraduate course being taught by Richard Sommer. 

As in previous years, the lunchtime lecture and dialogue is open to other students and faculty and to the public at large. Registration is not required.

An associate professor with tenure at the Princeton University School of Architecture, where he directs the Princeton Urban Imagination Center, Brown represented the United States at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale and has work (examples of which are shown at top) in the collections of several major museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Reflecting his belief that the architect’s role is to test and expand the boundaries of reality, he constructs “visions of urban worlds yet to come” through such media as collage, architectural drawings on drafting vellum, sketches on tracing paper, video, models, objects and built projects.

Wednesday’s talk by Brown is the first of several slated for the Exploring Design Practices series this term. Anticipated future speakers include Michael Murphy, Peter Clewes, Amy Whitesides and Justin Garrett Moore. More details will be forthcoming.

Banner images from left: Vanderbilt Tower (collage on inkjet print, 51 x 40 inches), 2009; Prisons of Invention 4: The Well (collage on archival paper, 44 3/4 x 35 3/4 inches), 2021.

Housing Multitudes, the exhibition conceived and co-curated by Daniels Faculty professors Richard Sommer and Michael Piper, has been reviewed in the November 22 edition of The Globe and Mail.

Subtitled Reimagining the Landscapes of Suburbia, the exhibition uses Toronto as a laboratory to create a composite big picture of how the postwar suburban templates that characterize many North American cities can be transformed into denser, more thoughtfully designed versions better suited for new realities.

In his review of the show, Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic notes that, in its exploration of “this vast territory,” it “asks a good question: Can we find a better way to build?”

The co-curators, Bozikovic writes, “present an incisive analysis of what’s happening across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and offer solutions — some utopian and some very practical — for the next century.”

The exhibition, which conveys its themes and scenarios through films, models, graphic-novel-like stories and monumental panoramas, has been on view in the Daniels Building’s Architecture and Design Gallery since October 20, when it was kicked off with a well-attended opening reception.

Early in 2023, a symposium centred around the themes raised by the show will be hosted at the Faculty by Professors Sommer and Piper. Topics and participants are still being organized and will be announced closer to the date.

In the meantime, Housing Multitudes will be on view in the A and D Gallery until February 17. The gallery is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. Admittance is free and open to all.

To view a PDF of the Globe and Mail review, click here.

It is with sadness, respect and tremendous gratitude that the Daniels Faculty reflects on the recent death and extraordinary life of alumnus and benefactor John H. Daniels (BArch, 1950; Hon LLD, 2011), who passed away on Saturday, October 22. 

An architect, developer, philanthropist and civic leader, Daniels had an immeasurable impact on the city of Toronto, on the University of Toronto, and on the Faculty, which has been forever transformed by the magnanimity and vision that he and his wife, Myrna Daniels, displayed over many years.

“The legacy of Mr. Daniels’ life will be felt for a very long time,” says Dean Juan Du. “His commitment to lifting communities around him, his dedication to excellence, and his optimism for the future are values that inspire and drive our school. John and Myrna’s generosity has contributed not only to the creation of the Faculty’s dynamic world-class hub at 1 Spadina Crescent, but to the lives and futures of the many who have passed and will pass through it. Our thoughts are with John and Myrna’s families, friends, and colleagues, and with the many people whose lives he has touched.”

Born in Poland in 1926, John H. Daniels immigrated to Canada when he was 12 years old, escaping Nazi oppression on the cusp of World War II. He later graduated from Toronto’s Central Technical School, addressing the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship in the speech he made as class valedictorian. In 1949, while a student in the architecture program at the University of Toronto, he made his first foray into real estate development by co-founding Modern Age Construction. Though only intended as a summer building project to raise tuition money before he graduated in 1950, the work demonstrated Daniels’ entrepreneurial capacities and established the tenor of his future career. 

As CEO of the Cadillac Fairview Development Corporation, he later helped build such impressive properties as the Eaton Centre in Toronto and the Erin Mills community in Mississauga. In 1983, Daniels left Cadillac Fairview to start The Daniels Corporation, a company that would quickly become synonymous with vibrant communities, affordable housing, social infrastructure and architectural innovation. Responsible for countless Canadian residential developments, The Daniels Corporation also worked closely with government agencies to create thousands of not-for-profit rental units and to lower market barriers for first-time homebuyers. Among its many noteworthy projects, the company was instrumental in revitalizing the Regent Park neighbourhood, transforming it from a failed public housing estate into a vital, growing community at the centre of Toronto.

Beyond Daniels’ work as a developer, he was also a remarkable Toronto philanthropist. Together with Myrna, he invested in a broad number of causes and gave significantly to cultural, healthcare and academic institutions, changing the city for the better at every step.  

John and Myrna Daniels’ gifts to the Daniels Faculty through their Foundation are unprecedented, totalling more than $30 million and resulting in its gateway building at 1 Spadina Crescent, a host of new scholarships, and an expanded global reputation. 

In 2008, John and Myrna Daniels gave the University of Toronto a $14-million gift, the largest private donation ever given to a Canadian architecture school. In recognition, the Faculty was officially named the  John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. The $14 million was designated to the capital renewal and expansion of the school (at that time located on College Street) and created an endowment and award program named The John and Myrna Daniels Scholars.

Gift to 1 Spadina Crescent Building Project 

The revitalized 1 Spadina Crescent site, to which John and Myrna Daniels contributed $10 million through their Foundation, opened in 2017.

In 2013, John and Myrna Daniels donated an additional $10 million through their Foundation to revitalize and expand an existing landmark building at 1 Spadina Crescent. Daniels Building, the Faculty’s new home, opened in November of 2017. Heralded in The Globe and Mail as “one of the best buildings in Canada of the past decade,” it has been awarded 30 international awards for its design so far. 

“John would joke that his favourite hobby was pouring concrete, an allusion to the more than 300 buildings he created during his lifetime,” says Richard Sommer, former dean of the Faculty and director of the Global Cities Institute. “In our case, John asked a deceptively simple question: How could he and Myrna help us make our school one of the best in the world, and in the process raise the prospects for young people from a broad section of society wanting to study architecture. The answer was Daniels Building, which speaks to John’s passion for architecture and cities. Together with the John and Myrna Daniels Scholars award fund and other financial-aid programs they support, they have created a unique place at 1 Spadina Crescent as well as the endowments that sustain many students who study there.” 

Former University of Toronto president David Naylor (standing in opening photo) joins John and Myrna Daniels for the design reveal of the future Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent in June 2013. Mr. and Mrs. Daniels (in second photo) at the official opening of the Daniels Building in November 2017. U of T president Meric Gertler (at right in third photo) and Professor Ronald Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins University, take part with Mr. and Mrs. Daniels in the ribbon cutting ceremony at the Daniels Building opening.

The John and Myrna Daniels Scholars

To date, the endowment has provided 287 individual awards to 128 graduate students, many of whom are the first in their families to access post-secondary education.

John and Myrna Daniels pose with former Daniels Faculty dean Richard Sommer and a group of John and Myrna Daniels Scholars. (Photo by Yvonne Bambrick)

In 2013, John and Myrna Daniels Scholar Nicholas Gosselin addressed Mr. and Mrs. Daniels at a luncheon, noting: “You are influential city builders in Toronto and beyond. However, you also shape cities indirectly — through the unbelievable support you provide the University of Toronto and future professionals. Toronto is going through incredible change and, consequently, behaves as a laboratory for students to experiment with different ideas and concepts. Unfortunately, not all students can support themselves to participate in this endeavour. Your generous donation to U of T makes a world of difference for students and has personally made graduate school a possibility for me — thank you.” 

John and Myrna Daniels Scholar Devin Tepleski with Mr. Daniels.

In 2016, Scholar Devin Tepleski spoke about the impact of John and Myrna Daniels’ support at a celebration at the school, saying: “What excites me most about my studies in landscape architecture is the opportunity to work on solutions — answers to the questions I’ve been asking for the last five years since finishing an undergraduate degree in anthropology. What makes places matter to the people who live there? What is worth protecting?

“I have been extremely lucky to be able to travel with my work, firstly to Ghana, where I worked as an ethnohistorian and documentarian with communities displaced by a hydroelectric dam. From there I went on to spend four years working with Cree and Dene communities in northern Alberta and on a marine use study with Salish nations of southern Vancouver Island. I got to interview everyone from the wisest elder to the youngest schoolchild about what matters to them about the places they live.

“Such opportunities have continued in no small part due to the generosity of the Daniels. Over the course of the last year, it is clear to me that John and Myrna have been asking these same questions about the importance of community and place. We could all learn a lot from the answers they have no doubt reached over their years of community service and philanthropy. I am inspired by their genuine curiosity in others and commitment to making a difference in Toronto. I thank them wholeheartedly for all that they have done for me and those around me.” 

Mr. and Mrs. Daniels with John and Myrna Daniels Scholar Bahia Marks.

At an event in honour of John and Myrna Daniels in 2018, Scholar Bahia Marks thanked them for bringing everyone together and spoke about the opportunities she had had as an undergraduate in the U.S. and then as a Master of Architecture student at the Daniels Faculty: “When you are in the trenches of people’s lives in the projects of Brooklyn, you can see how the design of the projects and housing affects the lives of families and young people. You begin to see the direct impact of design on people's lives. It is this search for justice that led me to pursue architecture and choose the Daniels Faculty. In my research, I was really looking for a school that would allow me to learn the skills, attitudes and qualities of an architect, the role of housing in society, and about empowering youth to contribute to the betterment of their neighbourhoods.” 

The John and Myrna Daniels Foundation Opportunity Awards

In April 2018, the couple gave an additional $6 million, establishing The John and Myrna Daniels Foundation Opportunity Awards, an endowment prioritizing the financial need of undergraduate and graduate students within the Faculty.

On November 12, 2018, Mr. and Mrs. Daniels were hosted by University and Faculty leadership at a luncheon recognizing graduate-student beneficiaries of the John and Myrna Daniels Scholars award program.

“In a way, John Daniels never left his alma mater,” says David Palmer, U of T’s Vice-President, Advancement. “His giving at U of T was strongly tied to a desire for future generations of students to enjoy the education he had, to make Canada a global leader, and to share in his vision for sustainable, innovative architecture that is accessible to all. For that, we will be forever grateful.”

After a months-long process of consultation and collaboration, the Daniels Faculty is excited to announce the members of its First Peoples Leadership Advisory Group, created in partnership with Indigenous stakeholders both within and outside the University to diversify the range of Indigenous knowledge at the Faculty and to increase the availability of the Advisors to students, faculty and staff. 
 
The new Advisors — Elder and Traditional Teacher Dorothy Peters, educator and advocate Amos Key Jr., and artist and community planner Trina Moyan — were brought together after an open call for members this past summer and a series of consultations with Indigenous members of the Faculty and University. 

The Advisors will provide regular and ongoing guidance to members of the Faculty, including its academic and administrative leadership teams, to facilitate a range of important goals, including greater incorporation of Indigenous knowledge into coursework and research activities, connecting students and faculty with Indigenous peoples and communities in productive and meaningful ways, and supporting the next generation of students through focused outreach and planning.   

Elder Peters, Key and Moyan will maintain regular office hours in Room 220 of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent, providing both in-person and online advisory time for Indigenous students at U of T as well as all members of the Daniels Faculty.   

In addition to the on-site Advisory Group, acclaimed architect Douglas Cardinal, who served as the Faculty’s Frank O. Gehry Chair in 2020-2021, will join the Faculty as Decanal Advisor on Indigenous Knowledge. In this role, Dr. Cardinal will work closely with Dean Juan Du and the Faculty’s leadership team on the strategic development of Indigenous knowledge and research, its integration with the school’s curriculum, its dissemination through courses and public programs, and the ongoing recruitment of Indigenous faculty, students and staff. 

Dr. Cardinal’s appointment, along with those of the Advisory Group members, significantly enhances Indigenous presence and capacity at the Faculty, as well as increases its ability to answer the Calls to Action articulated by the University’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Steering Committee.  

“I am very pleased by this appointment,” said Dr. Cardinal upon accepting the role of Decanal Advisor on Indigenous Knowledge. “Although I do not speak on behalf of all Indigenous people, I do look forward to contributing my perspective and to working with the Dean and the Faculty on enhancing the dissemination of Indigenous teachings.”  

Adds Dean Du: “We have made great strides in terms of promoting and integrating Indigenous knowledge over the past few years, but there is much more work to be done. Elder Peters, Amos, Trina and Douglas each brings a wealth of educational, professional and lived experience to our school, and I look forward to continued learnings from them. Under their guidance, our commitment as a Faculty to pursuing Truth and Reconciliation and to addressing the Calls to Action will only be strengthened in the years and decades to come.” 

Elder Dorothy Peters 

A Traditional Teacher and Community Nookmis, Elder Peters is a member of Jiima’aaganing (Seine River) First Nation. Throughout her career, she has worked in various consultative capacities with multiple Indigenous organizations in Toronto, including Aboriginal Legal Services and Anduhyaun Inc., and she has previously supported Indigenous students at the University of Toronto through First Nations House, where she served until recently as an Elder-in-Residence. A residential school survivor, Elder Peters is regularly called upon to share her stories, teachings and cultural expertise at events throughout the city.

Amos Key Jr. 

A member of the Mohawk Nation, Key is an educator, advocate and Traditional Faith Keeper of the Longhouse at Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. The long-time Director of First Nations Language at Woodland Cultural Centre, where he co-founded the Gaweni:yo Cayuga/Mohawk Immersion School System, Key is a leading figure in the ongoing language revitalization movement among First Nations people in Canada. He has also taught as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Indigenous Studies, and was the inaugural Vice-Provost, Indigenous at Brock University in St. Catharines.

Trina Moyan 

Artist and activist Moyan is nehiyaw iskwew (Plains Cree) from the Frog Lake First Nation in Alberta. She began her career as a writer and producer for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) and co-produced and directed the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards (now Indspire) for CBC Television. Moyan is a co-founder of Toronto-based Bell & Bernard, a First Nations consulting firm dedicated to including the histories and current realities of Indigenous peoples within urban planning projects, and has spoken widely on Indigenous inclusion and empowerment. Moyan is also a muralist, a traditional dancer and a University of Toronto alumna.

Douglas Cardinal 

One of the world’s most prominent Indigenous architects, Dr. Cardinal is known for his lifelong commitment to sustainable design and for such landmark buildings as the Canadian Museum of History. Born in Calgary to a father of Blackfoot heritage and a German/Métis mother, he served as the Daniels Faculty’s Frank O. Gehry Chair in 2020-2021 and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Toronto in June 2022. In 2018, Dr. Cardinal led a team of Indigenous architects and designers who represented Canada at the Venice Architecture Biennale, and he continues to design residential, institutional and industrial buildings. His role as Decanal Advisor on Indigenous Knowledge at the Daniels Faculty continues his longtime advocacy for the dignity and advancement of Indigenous Peoples.

The Daniels Faculty’s Centre for Landscape Research, led by Assistant Professor Fadi Masoud, will host the first post-pandemic gathering of the Great Lakes Higher Education Consortium this week during a three-day invite-only conference dedicated to the health and resilience of the vast Great Lakes Basin.

From Thursday to Saturday (September 29 to October 1), more than 30 designers, policy experts, planners, engineers and ecologists from around the Great Lakes region will meet in Toronto for a workshop on the critical role that blue-green infrastructure will play in the future adaptation of the basin to climate change. The majority of discussions and panels will take place in the Daniels Building on Friday and Saturday. This workshop will be preceded by a tour on Thursday of important aquatic sites in the Greater Toronto Area, including the Lower Don Lands on downtown Toronto’s waterfront and the Jim Tovey Lakeview Conservation Area and Bayview Village Site in Mississauga.

“This workshop,” say conference co-organizers Masoud and James Wasley of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, “aims to chart a clear path for the practice of integrative blue-green infrastructure design in service of a more climate-ready and resilient Great Lakes Basin.”

Launched in 2020, the Great Lakes Higher Education Consortium was co-founded by the Council of the Great Lakes Region (CGLR), the University of Toronto and the University of Illinois System to address the most pressing socio-economic and environmental challenges facing the region by promoting regular and impactful collaborations among academics, industry and governments. In 2021, four other major universities joined the Consortium. It is currently being administered by the CGLR.

This week’s conference, entitled Reimagining Water and sponsored by the CGLR, will look at blue-green infrastructure design through the lenses of just about every relevant field, including architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, civil and environmental engineering and the related sciences and public policy arenas.

Among the specific topics to be covered during the workshop, which Dean Juan Du will kick off with welcoming remarks on Friday morning, include conservation governance, emerging obstacles to design and governance innovation, keeping up with the changing science, and projective future models and partners.

“Synthesizing these diverse fields of knowledge,” say Masoud and Wasley, “is the daily work of design professionals in this field. Our goal is to better connect academic research to the cutting edge of the profession.”

For more information on the workshop and its mandate, contact Assistant Professor Masoud.

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is excited to present its Fall 2022 public program. Through a series of book talks, panel discussions, lectures and symposia, our aim is to foster meaningful dialogue on the important social, political and environmental challenges confronting our world today. Among the questions raised: How might we create new knowledge and leverage it as a tool for critical reflection and, ultimately, collective change?

Our programs — and the difficult questions that motivate them — address a range of topics that are central to what we do, including design and social justice, art and new media, urban development and housing, and ecology and landscape resilience.

All events are free and open to the public. Register in advance and check the calendar for up-to-date details at daniels.utoronto.ca/events. 

September 15, 6:30 p.m. ET
Gehry Chair Lecture: Marina Tabassum on Architecture of Transition
Featuring Marina Tabassum (2022-2023 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design, Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)
Moderated by Juan Du (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)

September 27, 6:30 p.m. ET
Artist Talk
Featuring Montreal-based new-media artist and composer Erin Gee
Moderated by Mitchell Akiyama (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)

October 3, 12:30 p.m. ET
Afterall Vol. 53 Launch
Featuring Stan Douglas in conversation with Charles Stankievech (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)

October 5, 12:30 p.m. ET
Site Constructed: Alvar Aalto, Luis Barragan
Featuring Marc Treib (College of Environmental Design, University of California at Berkeley)
Moderated by Georges Farhat (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)

October 6, 6:30 p.m. ET
Serious Fun: The Landscapes of Claude Cormier
Featuring Claude Cormier (Claude Cormier + Associés, Montreal) with Susan Herrington (School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia) and Marc Treib (College of Environmental Design, University of California at Berkeley)
Moderated by Elise Shelley (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)

October 20, 6:30 p.m. ET
Housing Multitudes: Reimagining the Landscapes of Suburbia
Exhibition Opening
Conceived and curated by Richard Sommer (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto) and Michael Piper (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto) in collaboration with Daniels Faculty colleagues, students and others

October 27, 6:30 p.m. ET
Hough Lecture: Dilip da Cunha on Ocean of Wetness: Where Design Begins
Featuring Dilip da Cunha (Michael Hough/OALA Visiting Critic in Landscape Architecture)
Moderated by Elise Shelley (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)
 
November 3, 6:30 p.m. ET
A Retrofitting Suburbia Agenda for Equity, Health and Resilience to Climate Change
Featuring June Williamson (Spitzer School of Architecture, The City College of New York) in association with the exhibition Housing Multitudes: Reimagining the Landscapes of Suburbia
 
November 8, 1:00 p.m. ET
Magnificent Modular  
Featuring Lina Lahiri (Sauerbruch Hutton, Berlin)
Moderated by Roberto Damiani (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)
 
November 10, 6:30 p.m. ET
Contemporary Indigenous Performance and Artist Discussion  
Featuring Sandra Laronde (Misko Kizhigoo Migizii Kwe) and Red Sky Performance
 
November 17, 6:30 p.m. ET
Feminist Architectural Histories of Migration
Featuring Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi (Architecture Department, Barnard College) and Rachel Lee (Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft) with Juan Du (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto), Alexandra Pereira-Edwards (Canadian Centre for Architecture), Armaghan Ziaee (California State University San Marcos), Meredith TenHoor (School of Architecture, Pratt Institute) and Pamela Karimi (Art Education, Art History and Media Studies, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth)

November 22, 12:30 p.m. ET
Resilient Urban Forests Require All Hands on Deck: Lessons from Ecology, Community Science and Working Across Disciplines
Featuring Carly Ziter (Biology Department, Concordia University)
Moderated by Sean Thomas (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)
 
November 29, 6:30 p.m. ET
The Art of Being of Service to Art
Featuring Cheryl Sim (Director and Curator, Phi Centre)
Moderated by Mitchell Akiyama (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto) 
 

The Daniels Faculty is pleased to announce that, as part of our ongoing commitment to developing and enhancing Indigenous knowledge and capacity in our Faculty, the role of the First Peoples Leadership Advisor is being expanded to a First Peoples Leadership Advisory Group in order to diversify perspectives and include multiple experiences and expertise from broader Indigenous communities. The expanded role and responsibilities, as well as the public open call for applications, have been made in close consultation with U of T’s Office for Indigenous Initiatives and First Nations House.  

In expanding this role to an Advisory Group to include three members, the Daniels Faculty, its students and our community will benefit from the contributions and advice of multiple perspectives. This group will work closely with a Faculty leadership team and use Wecheehetowin: Answering the Call, U of T’s response to the TRC report, to guide the directions of our efforts and build on work already undertaken within the Faculty.  

This First Peoples Leadership Advisory Group will provide leadership and guidance within the Faculty to enable greater incorporation of Indigenous knowledge into the teaching curriculum and research activities. It will also expand connections and engagement with Indigenous peoples and communities for our students and faculty. And, perhaps most importantly, they will further support the next generation of students in the Daniels Faculty.   

Key responsibilities include: 

Curriculum enrichment: 

• Providing curriculum and research support to the Daniels Faculty to ensure relevant and culturally grounded elements are included 
• Collaborating with faculty on the design and implementation of Indigenous research and education content 
• Supporting targeted requests from faculty for perspective and insight 

Student support: 

• Supporting current Daniels Faculty Indigenous students on culturally specific, financial, academic support or other issues as they arise; liaising with the Registrar or First Nations House as appropriate 
• Advising non-Indigenous students seeking cultural perspective, input, resources or guidance  

Advisory and outreach: 

• Offer advice and counsel to the Dean and Faculty leadership 
• Facilitating outreach or introduction into communities for projects or initiatives 
• Supporting cultivation of pathways for future students to the Daniels Faculty 
• Providing advice on pathways to admission for Indigenous youth and other potential students.  

Service: 

• Establish connections with the U of T Office of Indigenous Initiatives 
• Working with Assistant Dean, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion on broader Faculty initiatives 
• Advising or participating in ceremonies as requested  
• The First Peoples Advisory Group will lead the creation of its Terms of Reference 

Open Call: Those interested may apply via the following link by Friday, July 29, 2022:  

First Peoples Leadership Advisory Group – Application Form 

Applications will be reviewed by a committee comprised of members from U of T’s Office for Indigenous Initiatives and the Daniels Faculty Leadership Team, as well as representatives from Daniels Faculty Indigenous students and alumni. 

Banner image: This year’s Design Studio 2 (ARC 1012) tasked Master of Architecture students with designing a seedbank for the non-profit Kayanase organization (student Alice Dong’s is pictured above) using both science-based approaches and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge. Part of the Daniels Faculty’s ongoing commitment to integrating meaningful Indigenous content into the curriculum, the first-year core MARC course was developed in collaboration with multiple Indigenous experts and directly addresses Call to Action No. 17 in U of T’s response to the report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. (Photo by Harry Choi)