Lateral Office — the firm of Associate Professor Mason White and Lola Sheppard — has won a  Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) Urban Design Award for Impulse — a playful installation in the Place des Festival in Montreal.

The full team for the project included: Lateral Office (Architect & Co-Designer); CS Design (Lighting Design & Co-Designer); EGP Group (Engineering); Generique Design (Fabrication); Mitchell Akiyama (Sound); Robocut (Interactive); Iregular (Video); Maotik (Video).

Held in cooperation with Canadian municipalities, the winning projects are announced by the RAIC along with the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP), and the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CLSA).

Impulse transforms Montreal’s arts district “into a space of urban play through a series of thirty interactive acoustic illuminated see-saws that respond and transform when in motion. The seesaws form repetitive units of light and sound that can be activated and played by the public to create a temporal, ever-changing event.”

The installation also incorporates a series of nine commissioned videos that visualize sound and are projected on buildings in the neighbourhood.

The Jury for the award commended the project for bringing people out into the city — even on cold winter evenings.

Related:

• Lateral Office transforms Montreal's art district with playful installation
• Lateral Office 'Makes Camp' at Chicago Architecture Biennial
• CBC Radio features Making Camp on Spark
• Mason White and Lateral Office win the Arctic Inspiration Prize
• Mason White and Lateral Office chosen to represent Canada at the 2014 Venice Biennale

Pin-ups have been un-pinned, exams have been written and students are undoubtedly catching up on some much needed sleep. Before shifting into summer mode, we thought this would be a good time to reflect on the past academic year. Here are the six most read news stories of the last 8 months.

6. Architectural Studies graduate Omar Gandhi "one of Canada's most exciting emerging designers," says the Globe and Mail

January 18, 2016

5. View the competition entries and have your say in the redesign of U of T's St. George Campus

October 5, 2015

View the winning design by KPMB Architects, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA) and Urban Strategies.

4. #ReadingList: 3 books to read over the holidays

December 15, 2015

3. Photographs by Peter MacCallum document the transformation of One Spadina

June 4, 2014 (updated regularly)

View all One Spadina photos on the Daniels Faculty's Flickr page

2. Multigenerational housing: Daniels faculty and alumni rethink the family home

February 25, 2016

1. 12 things every grad student presenting their thesis should know

March 25, 2015

Last month Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni led a design workshop for a music school in southern Morocco. Located in the oasis of M'hamid El Ghizlane, the Joudour Sahara music school will focus on empowering the 2,000 local children and youth through music education programming in a safe and welcoming space. Its main objectives are to transmit and preserve traditional music heritage, offer training in music-related disciplines such as recording and videography, and to spread environmental awareness in the region.

In addition to classroom instruction, the school will offer a visiting artist exchange, performance spaces for local and travelling acts, an instrument-making and repair workshop, and accommodaions for tourists who are interested in supporting and visiting the school.

The project is led by local NGO Zaila and supported by two other NGOs: Playing for Change and the Sahara-Roots Foundation. Chaouni, who is volunteering for the project, is tasked with developing the project design as well as overseeing the construction process. The design workshop she led involved mapping out the variety of singing styles in the oasis, meeting and recording the performers, and collaborative design work. Three undergraduate Daniels students, Ashita Parekh, Sarah Gaines and Mengyi Zhang, contributed to the project by creating the study model used in the workshop.

Last month, Chaouni presented the project at the Visa for Music Festival in Rabat, Africa's largest music professionals event. She presented again during a session at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference.

When Daniels Faculty lecturer Katy Chey and her partner Javier Viteri struggled to find the right furniture for their home, they decided to simply design their own. With too little space for both a dining room table and living room seating, the two architects looked for a way to blend the two spaces with one hybrid piece. The result is +Table, which quickly came to the attention of Toronto furniture manufacturer Speke Klein.

"We conceived the table as one continuous surface to support the idea of one fluid line connecting two spaces," Chey told The Globe and Mail. +Table is now being manufactured and sold by Speke Klein, with various options for material and finish. It has since received a lot of media attention and has been featured in Azure Magazine and Interior Design Magazine and was promoted by Design Exchange.

Omar Gandhi, a graduate of the University of Toronto’s Honours, Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies program, has been profiled as “one of Canada’s most exciting emerging designers" in the Globe and Mail.

The 36-year-old Halifax-based architect is a featured speaker at Interior Design Show in Toronto on January 23, and is planning to open a satellite office in Canada’s largest city.

Gandhi is a tribute to the success of the Daniels Faculty’s undergraduate program. In 2014, he was awarded the Prix de Rome and named among the world’s top 20 young architects by Wallpaper magazine.

Writes the Globe and Mail’s Design Editor Danny Sinopoli:

Gandhi joins the steadily growing ranks of elite Atlantic Canadian architects who are boldly contemporizing East Coast building forms, redefining the region’s design aesthetics in the process. “My work certainly isn’t unique, nor does it aspire to be,” Gandhi says with some of that inherited Maritime modesty, citing others, such as Halifax master Brian MacKay-Lyons, Newfoundland-born Todd Saunders and New Brunswick’s Acre Architects as those who have produced “incredible regionally inspired work” before and alongside him. There is, however, one significant difference between Gandhi and many of his East Coast colleagues: Having been born in Toronto and raised in Brampton, he is essentially an outsider who learned and subsequently mastered the regional vernacular, then reinterpreted it. Such sensitivity to setting isn’t commonplace. And it will serve Gandhi well as he expands his practice to other parts of Canada and beyond.

The full article is available on the Globe and Mail’s website.

Fast Company recently celebrated design work by Associate Professor Steven Fong and alumnus Lorne Gertner (BArch 1982) for Tokyo Smoke Found, a shop that specializes in coffee, clothing, and cannabis, located in Toronto's West End.

“The architecture of Tokyo Smoke's Toronto outpost reinforces the narrative of a gritty product having its Pretty Woman moment,” writes Diana Budds for Fast Company. “Like Julia Roberts's Vivian emerging from a Beverly Hills boutique prim, polished, and 'respectable,' the industrial-meets-modern interiors—designed with architect Steven Fong—speak to the power of packaging and branding to sway the pendulum of perception.”

Tokyo Smoke was founded by Alan Gertner and his father Lorne, who is also a member of the Daniels Faculty's campaign cabinet, a committed group of alumni and friends of the Faculty whose vision, passion, and expertiese are helping support the Faculty's ambition to relocate and expand the school at One Spadina Crescent — a site of deep historical significance in Toronto.

Last week Associate Professor An Te Liu was featured in the ninth insallment of a series by the Globe and Mail in collaboration with Wondereur called "Why we love the art we love."

The series explores the diversity of contemporary art by approaching creative minds across Canada and the world and asking them to share the work of a contemporary Canadian artist.

In last week's insallment, the Globe and Mail profiled Marianne McKenna, founding partner of architecture firm KPMB, who selected Liu's work for the seires. According to McKenna, Liu is "thinking about temporal and spiritual time; with these pieces he evokes the totemic representation of man, the order of the world, and yet it has a beautiful texture and materiality."

As part of the series, Wondereur created a photo documentary exploring Liu's artwork. In it, Liu describes his process. "I often begin with something familiar and 'strange-ify' it," he says. "I like the idea that the work can instill a sense of curiosity and giv an opportunity to pause and reflect, and maybe scratch your head and wonder what it is you're looking at."

Works by An Te Liu. (Ryan Walker)

Visit the Globe and Mail's website for the full article.

The Architectural League of New York has named Architectural Studies graduate Omar Gandhi one of the up and coming “voices” of 2016.

The Architectural League’s annual Emerging Voices Award spotlights North American individuals and firms with distinct design “voices” that have the potential to influence the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. The work of each Emerging Voice represents the best of its kind, and addresses larger issues within architecture, landscape, and the built environment. Other recipients of this year's award include:

• Alex Anmahian and Nick Winton, Principals and Co-Founders, Anmahian Winton Architects, Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Cesar Guerrero, Ana Cecilia Garza, Carlos Flores, and Maria Sevilla, Partners, S-AR, Monterrey, Mexico
• Frank Jacobus and Marc Manack, Principals, SILO AR+D, Cleveland and Fayetteville, Arkansas
• Jon Lott, Principal, PARA Project and Co-Founding Member, Collective-LOK, New York City
• E.B. Min and Jeffrey L. Day, Principals, Min | Day, San Francisco and Omaha
• Rozana Montiel, Founder, Rozana Montiel | Estudio de Arquitectura, Mexico City
• Heather Roberge, Principal, Heather Roberge | Murmur, Los Angeles

Omar Gandhi is among several Daniels Faculty alumni to be given the prestigious award. Past recipients include Williamson Chong (2014), Carol Moukheiber and Christos Marcopoulos (2012), Mason White (2011), An Te Liu (2007), and Brigitte Shim (1995).

The practice of Omar Gandhi has been receiving significant media attention lately; he was recently profiled as “one of Canada’s most exciting emerging designers" in the Globe and Mail, and was named among the world’s top 20 young architects by Wallpaper magazine.

CBC's radio show Spark featured a segment on Making Camp — a project by Lateral Office that was presented at the Chicago Architecture Biennial and, later, the Daniels Faculty's Eric Arthur Gallery.

In the February episode, titled "Challenge the past to design campsites of the future," host Nora Young speaks with Lateral Office co-counders Lola Sheppard and Associate Professor Mason White about the evolution in camping and camp gear across North America. While innovations to camp gear has been made over the years, "there has been very little innovation in the campground itself," says Sheppard. 

"Our question was... if one were to redesign the campsite, what could it be today?" says White.

The project team, which also included Daniels MArch students Kinan Hewitt and Safoura Zahedi, explored how architecture could generate a new approach to campsite design. The result was a set of five campsite deisgns, each tailored to a specific terrain that can be found in Canada.

White says Making Camp recieved positive feedback after an early presentation to Parks Canada and that full-scale prototyping would be the next step to making this project a reality at campsites across Canada. 

Photos from the opening of the Januray-February exhibition at the Eric Arthur Gallery can be viewed here.

Daniels Alumnus Aaron Jacobson (MArch 2012) is receiving a lot of media attention for his new clothing line, Faan.

The gender-neutral clothing line is heavily influenced by Jacobson's background in architecture. "I'm not drawn to a red-carpet gown," he tells the New York Times Style Magazine. "I'm drawn to the proportions and shapes and construction details that you see every day."

After graduating from the Daniels Faculty, Jacobson went on to work in architecture firms in Beijing and Shanghai. It was in Shanghai's fabric district where he found himself drawn to the idea of clothing design. As the New York Times Style Magazine reports, Jacobson began designing pieces for himself; his early sketches more like architectural drawings. "I was even cutting sections through them, and blowing up details to try to explain the construction," he says.

Once his personal collection grew, he returned to the United States to continue expanding his line before officially launching Faan. According to Jacobson, his newest collection, Fall Winter 2016, is his "first collection that feels lived in."

A slideshow of the 14-piece collection can be seen here.