What does Canada sound like? Is it possible to capture the essence of an entire nation through sound?

Mitchell Akiyama tackled this topic in a recent CANADALAND podcast that revisited a 1974 CBC broadcast made up of field recordings from across the country. The 10-hour episode, which aired on Ideas, attempted to encapsulate the country's acoustic environment.

An Assistant Professor who teaches in the Daniels Faculty’s Visual Studies programs, Akiyama’s eclectic body of work includes writings about plants, animals, cities, and sound art; scores for film and dance; and objects and installations that trouble received ideas about history, perception, and sensory experience. He is currently a SSRHC Postdoctoral Fellow at York University’s Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts & Technology.

The full episode, “That Time the CBC Aired 10 Hours of Crickets and Church Bells,” is available through CANADALAND’s website.

Photo, top: The World Soundscape Project group at SFU, 1973; left to right: R. M. Schafer, Bruce Davis, Peter Huse, Barry Truax, Howard Broomfield

Several faculty and alumni will be recognized at the Ontario Association of Architects annual OAA Awards, presented May 26th. 

The OAA Awards offers the Ontario architectural profession an annual opportunity to present its work to a public and professional audience. It advertises the excellence of both individual award winners and the profession as a whole, and it fosters a greater appreciation of architecture and architects among all levels of society, professional and non-professional.

The Daniels Faculty would like to extend its congratulations to alumni and faculty members recognized this year.

Boulevard Club West Wing Replacement by Teeple Architects Inc. Photo by Scott Norsworthy

The Design Excellence category recognized the “innovative skills of Ontario architects in creating spaces, buildings and communities that respect and enhance the environment an enrich human activity.”

• Boulevard Club West Wing Replacement by Teeple Architects Inc. — the firm of Daniels Faculty Instructor Stephen Teeple
• Eva's Phoenix by LGA Architectural Partners (formerly Levitt Goodman Architects) — the firm of Janna Levitt (BArch 1986) and Dean Goodman (BArch 1983)
• Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre, University of Waterloo by KPMB Architects — the firm of Shirley Blumberg (BArch 1976) and Bruce Kuwabara (BArch 1972)
• River City – Phase 1 & 2 by ZAS Architects Inc. — the firm of Paul Stevens (BArch 1987) — in joint venture with Saucier + Perrotte Architects

• Rosemary House (pictured above) by Kohn Shnier Architects — the firm of Daniels Faculty Associate Professor John Shnier
• Story Pod by Atelier Kastelic Buffey Inc. — the firm of Kelly Buffey (MArch 2007)
• Williams Parkway (Phase 1) by Rounthwaite Dick & Hadley Architects Inc. — the firm of Rob Boyko (BArch 1974)

Shobuj Pata by Studio JCI Inc.

The Concepts category recognized the “clarity and uniqueness of expression of an architectural idea as well as promoting the involvement of individuals in the areas of design presentation, art and other design related endeavors.”

• Shobuj Pata – Multi-Unit Residential Development by Studio JCI Inc. — the firm of Jaegap Chung (BArch 1999) and Sue Jean Chung (BArch 1999)
• Forwards and Backwards by Sessional Lecturer Jennifer Davis (MArch 2011) and Jon Sasaki

Ontario Science Centre by Moriyama & Teshima Architects

The Landmark Designation category recognized the “buildings that demonstrate architecture’s beauty, endurance and lasting contribution to community and society.”

• Ontario Science Centre by Moriyama & Teshima Architects — the firm of Raymond Moriyama (BArch 1954; Hon. 1994) and the late Ted Teshima (BArch 1962)
• The Fielding Memorial Chapel of St. Mark, Thornloe University by Townend Stefura & Baleshta Architects — the firm of John Stefura (BArch 1953) and Carl Skerl (BArch 1958)

The final three awards (the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Design Excellence in Architecture, the Michael V. and Wanda Plachta Award, and the People’s Choice Award) will be announced at the Celebration of Excellence Ceremony on May 26th as part of the 2017 RAIC/OAA Festival of Architecture being held in Ottawa.

The Rosemary House designed by Kohn Shnier Architects — the firm of Associate Professor John Shnier — was one of five residential projects featured in Azure Magazine’s Annual House Issue. Blending in with its pseudo-Tudor style neighbours, Rosemary House is innovative in its flexible programming and sensitive use of materials.

“Rosemary House encourages modern family living that is interactive, open to choices and growth, [which is achieved with] spaces that are zoned, yet not necessarily enclosed,” describes Kohn Shnier Architects. “An innovative use of custom solid limestone masonry is tonally sympathetic with other homes, yet demonstrates how contemporary design can contribute difference.”

For a copy of Azure’s 2017 House Issue, visit shop.azuremagazine.com/products/the-annual-houses-issue

Photos by Amanda Large & Younes Bounhar, Doublespace Photography.

“In Toronto alone, the number of official noise complaints to the City has more than doubled since 2011, rising roughly in tandem with the new skyscrapers that are causing endless construction commotion downtown” writes Matthew Hague of The Globe and Mail.

He describes how designers such as Pierre-Emmanuel Vandeputte have taken inspiration from this nuisance to create noise-blocking and sound-dampening solutions like Diplomate, a desk-partition for offices, and Cork Helmet a dome on a rope that lowers onto the user’s head.

Hague's recent article, "Sound off," profiles Daniels Faculty Assistant Professor Brady Peters, who believes that sound/noise can be made more pleasant through the design of the physical environment. Peters’ research focuses on auralization, that is, exploring ways to communicate and investigate sound.

“While architects have many tools to help draw, investigate and explore the way buildings look, there aren’t similar technologies to test and understand how a space might sound," Peters tells Hague. "Visualization is easy, auralization not so much.”

Peters worked with an international team to build the FabPod, a meeting room that showcases the innovations of acoustically driven design. Hague describes it as a cavernous space seemingly made up of a cluster of bubbles. The meeting room is located in the open-plan office of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Design Hub in Melbourne Australia.

Peters teaches graduate level courses in design studio, computational design, comprehensive building design, and visual communication focusing on parametric modelling and digital fabrication. He also teaches computation and design in the undergraduate program.  He completed his PhD at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture in Copenhagen focusing on computational methods for predicting, measuring and evaluating sound in architectural spaces. Prior to this, he was an associate partner at Foster + Partners. One of his most notable projects with the firm is the new roof enclosure for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

Recently, Peters has received a Connaught New Researcher Award from the University of Toronto and a grant from the Federal Natural Sciences and Research Council which will go towards furthering his research on sound.

For the full article on Peters and his work, visit the Globe and Mail's website.

Come February 20, Toronto’s Balmy, Kew, and Ashbridges Bay beaches will be dotted with temporary public art installations — stations designed to engage passers-by and celebrate winter along the waterfront.

This year, a number of Daniels Faculty graduates and students are among the winners of Winter Stations, the international design competition held to select the installations.

Master of Landscape Architecture students Asuka Kono and Rachel Salmela reinterpreted a Japanese hot spring for their winning submission I See You Ashiyu. “Providing Torontonians the opportunity to engage physically with water in the winter creates an immersive experience that frames this harsh landscape in a new way,” wrote the duo in their submission.

In BuoyBuoyBuoy, another winning entry by Dionisios Vriniotis, Rob Shostak (MArch 2010), Dakota Wares-Tani (MArch 2016), and Julie Forand, each component of the “infinitely reconfigurable” installation is shaped in the silhouette of a buoy. When the installation is eventually dismantled, the pieces can be kept as a keepsake or donated to schools and community centres for reuse.

A team of students from the Daniels Faculty is also among the institutional winners, which include the University of Waterloo, and the Humber College School of Media Studies & IT, School of Applied Technology. The Daniels Faculty’s submission, Midwinter Fire, “reframes the narrative of our local forests to show the potential power of our urban ecology to city dwellers.” The team of Daniels students included John Beeton, Herman Borrego, Anna Chen, Vikrant Dasoar, Michael DeGirolamo, Leonard Flot, Monika Gorgopa, James Kokotilo, Asuka Kono, Karima Peermohammad, Rachel Salmela, Christina Wilkinson, Julie Wong, and Rotem Yaniv. Assistant Professor Pete North served as their advisor.

Honorable mentions were awarded to 18 teams, four of which involved Daniels Faculty alumni and students. These proposed installations included:

Catalyzed Winter
Seven (Xiru) Chen (MLA 2012), Naiji Jiao (MArch 2014), and Louis (Yi) Liu (MArch 2014)

Every Last Drop Of Sunlight
Yvan MacKinnon (MArch 2013)

Qbic Hangars
Stephen Baik (MArch student) and Abubaker Bajaman (MArch student)

Sift
Deagan McDonald (MArch 2015) and Kelsey Nilsen (MArch 2015)

Congratulations to everyone who participated in the competition. For more about the Winter Stations project, visit: http://www.winterstations.com/

Media:
Toronto beaches winter station design winners announced [CBC]
Eight art installations to make a splash at Toronto waterfront [Metro]

Pictured, above: 1. BuoyBuoyBuoy, by Dionisios Vriniotis, Rob Shostak (MArch 2010), Dakota Wares-Tani (MArch 2016)  2. I See You Ashiyu, by Asuka Kono and Rachel Salmela  3. Midwinter Fire, by Daniels Faculty students  4. Catalyzed Winter, by Seven (Xiru) Chen (MLA 2012), Naiji Jiao (MArch 2014), and Louis (Yi) Liu (MArch 2014)  5. Every Last Drop Of Sunlight, by Yvan MacKinnon (MArch 2013)  6. Qbic Hangars, by Stephen Baik (MArch student) and Abubaker Bajaman (MArch student)  7. Sift, by Deagan McDonald (MArch 2015) and Kelsey Nilsen (MArch 2015)

The Daniels Faculty’s public programming has a tradition of bringing together scholars, professionals, and leaders in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, art, and urbanism. This year, as we prepare for our Faculty's big move to One Spadina Crescent, we decided to take a different approach to the staging of our events.

For the 2016-2017 season, we will mostly forego the traditional monographic lecture format for one that presents interdisciplinary discussions and debates that promise to deepen the discourse on the role our disciplines play in creating more culturally engaged, ecologically sustainable, socially just, and artfully conceived artifacts, cities, and environments.

To this end, we have organized seven signature events in venues throughout the University of Toronto’s St. George Campus.

The first event will take place today, October 17th. Co-organized with the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), “What comes after the environment?” — this year’s George Baird Lecture — will feature a discussion between award-winning author and filmmaker Naomi Klein, and the director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Mirko Zardini at Convocation Hall (31 King's College Circle).

The events that follow include this year’s Frank Gehry International Visiting Chairs in Architecture Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee in conversation with Michelle Addington from the Yale School of Architecture (“When do looks matter more than performance?”), contemporary media artist Walid Raad on the role of narrative in our understanding of reality (“How can fiction replace reality”), and the 2016-2017 Michael Hough / OALA Visiting Critic Pierre Bélanger in conversation with NYU Environmental Studies scholar Jessica Green, (“What is the geography of energy?”) — among others. Each presentation considers problems that cannot be solved by any one discipline or singular expertise, highlighting the role of architects, artists, and designers in facilitating new modes of research and practice tuned to our changing planet and the evolving needs of society.

For our full schedule of public events, visit daniels.utoronto.ca/events, where you may also find information on our Building, Ecology, Science, and Technology (B.E.S.T.) Lectures, midday talks, Master of Visual Studies Proseminar Series, and other public lectures.

For more information on our public lectures, contact Pam Walls at pamela.walls@daniels.utoronto.ca or 416-978-2253. 2016-2017 Public Lectures
 
MONDAY, OCTOBER 17 | 6:30PM – 8:30PM
What comes after the environment?
Convocation Hall, 31 King’s College Circle
George Baird Lecture
Co-organized with the Canadian Centre for Architecture
Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
Mirko Zardini, director of the CCA and author of the forthcoming book It’s All Happening So Fast — A Counter-History of the Modern Canadian Environment
 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3 | 7:00PM – 9:00PM
When do looks matter more than performance?
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue
Gehry Chair Lecture
Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, Johnston Marklee, Los Angeles
Michelle Addington, Yale University, New Haven
 
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 21 | 6:30PM – 8:30PM
What shapes the city?
Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street West
Richard Florida, University of Toronto
Adam Greenfield, Urbanscale, London
 
THURSDAY, JANUARY 19 | 6:30PM – 8:30PM
What is the geography of energy?
Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street West
Michael Hough / Ontario Association of Landscape Architects Visiting Critic Lecture
Pierre Bélanger, Harvard University, Cambridge
Jessica Green, New York University, New York
 
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9 | 6:30PM – 8:30PM
How can fiction replace reality?
Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles Street West
Walid Raad, The Cooper Union, New York
 
TUESDAY, MARCH 14 | 6:30PM – 8:30PM
When is a model a beginning or an end?
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue
Amale Andraos, Columbia University, New York
D. Graham Burnett, Princeton University, Princeton
 
FRIDAY, APRIL 7 | 6:30PM – 8:30PM
Where is the critical voice in architecture today?
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue
Co-organized with the Canadian Centre for Architecture
Kenneth Frampton, Columbia University, New York
Keller Easterling, Yale University, New Haven
Craig Buckley, Yale University, New Haven

(Photo, above, by Tom Ryaboi / tomryaboi.com)

In June of 2013, the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design unveiled its plans to transform One Spadina Crescent into a focal point for education, research, and outreach — a centre where students, scholars, artists, and urbanists throughout the city and around world can convene to discuss and debate the most pressing design issues and creative challenges facing society today.

Today, with the project well underway and scheduled for completion in 2017, the Faculty hosted an event in the emerging Daniels Building to thank and celebrate the many members of Toronto’s architecture, design, development, business, and philanthropic communities who have come together to support this vision. Their gifts, totaling over $28 million to date, are a testament to the incredible promise of this project, which aims to situate architecture, landscape architecture, art, and urban design among the key disciplines to transform the way we conceive and build cities and other environments in the 21st century.

“Our donors’ generosity will have a profound impact not only on the quality of education and research at the Faculty, but also on our ability to engage communities in the Greater Toronto Area as well as a global network of partners and collaborators,” said Professor Richard Sommer, Dean of the Daniels Faculty. “Our role is to bring critical new ideas, technical knowhow and artistry to the task of imagining and – literally – building a better future. The new Daniels Building at One Spadina is a physical embodiment of that promise and possibility.”

Among the celebrated donors present at today’s event, were John H. Daniels (BArch 1950, LLD Hon. 2011) and his wife Myrna Daniels, whose historic $24 million donation, $19 million of which was earmarked for the One Spadina project, has been a catalyst for the Faculty’s recent expansion and transformation.

“The Daniels Faculty stands out among its peers in North America for its excellence in scholarship and breadth of programming,” said Professor Meric Gertler, President of the University of Toronto. “John and Myrna Daniels, and our wider community of alumni and friends, are enabling us to enhance the Faculty’s standing as a world-leading school of architecture, landscape, and design, while contributing to U of T’s growing role as a city-builder here in Toronto. It is incredibly exciting, and we are immensely grateful for their leadership, generosity, and commitment.

Eberhard and Jane Zeidler, well known throughout Toronto for effecting positive change in their own right, were among other distinguished guests. The architect of Toronto’s Eaton Centre and Ontario Place, Eberhard Zeidler and his family — which includes alumna Margie Zeidler (BArch 1987) — have left a lasting mark on the city. The couple’s generous gift to One Spadina will fund the Eberhard Zeidler Library, which will provide students, researchers, and design aficionados throughout Toronto with unrivalled collections in art, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design.

Also recognized was Eve Lewis — who together with her late husband Paul Oberman, brought to light the important role that developers can play in heritage preservation in Toronto. Lewis joined forces with Oberman’s business partner Ron Kimel and their respective families to provide funding for the planned Paul Oberman Belvedere, an elevated terrace on the formal south-facing entrance to the original 19th century heritage building, where students and the public will gather for celebrations with a view down Spadina Avenue to the lake.

Nader Tehrani, principal of the firm NADAAA — who, with collaborator Katie Faulkner, designed the new complex at One Spadina — was also in attendance, along with Michael McClelland (BArch 1981), founding principal of ERA Architects, the project’s preservation architects, and Marc Ryan, principal and co-founder of Public Work, the project’s landscape architects.

Architecture and development firms throughout the city — including The Daniels Corporation, Stantec Architecture, KPMB Architects, Hariri Pontarini Architects, Perkins+Will, Greensoil Investments, DiamondCorp, Giannone Petricone Associates Inc. Architects, Janet Rosenberg & Studio, ERA Architects, superkül, Kohn Shnier Architects, and Shim-Sutcliffe Architects — have provided generous support for the Daniels Building at One Spadina as well. Thanks to their engagement and charitable gifts, the Daniels Faculty’s capital campaign has met 80% of its fundraising goal. The Faculty is working to raise an additional $8 million in private gifts to meet its ambitious target as part of U of T’s Boundless campaign.

With a combined 30,000 square feet of undergraduate and graduate studio spaces that boast commanding views over the city, an innovative fabrication lab, and additional spaces for graduate and undergraduate scholars to meet informally, the Daniels Building will further enhance the faculty’s ability to attract exceptional students to its programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and art/visual studies.

The new building will help strengthen the Faculty’s award-winning research and outreach facilities as well. Its Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory (GRIT Lab), for example, will have the opportunity to expand its research through a second site at One Spadina, with funding from Tremco Incorporated, while the Global Cities Institute (GCI) — which is leading the creation of the first internationally certified standards on city data and metrics — will relocate to a 2,324-square-foot street-front pavilion on the north-western edge of the building in a future phase of the project. GCI will be linked to a planned Model Cities Theatre and Laboratory that will bring together the Faculty’s talents in data visualization, 3D modeling, digital fabrication, and design and analysis, and place them within a public forum to develop holistic solutions to complex urban problems. A new 400-seat principal hall will enable the Faculty to elevate its popular public programming and lecture series, while a large 10,000-square-foot Architecture and Design Gallery will present internationally significant curated exhibitions on architecture, design, and cities — the only one of its kind devoted to these themes in Ontario.

“The Daniels Building at One Spadina Crescent will provide us with a site to advance collaboration across all disciplines with a stake in the built environment, creating a space for modeling new modes of research, practice, and outreach,” said Professor Sommer. “This is a key moment in the history of our Faculty, and I am heartened by the members of the community who have stepped forward to join us in creating this project. The citizens of Toronto and the many visitors to Toronto — and actually anyone who is interested in architecture or the nexus between landscape, art, and cities — will be drawn to the Daniels Faculty at One Spadina.”

Learn more about the One Spadina project and our generous donors. View our Fact Sheet [PDF].

On Wednesday, September 21st, the City of Toronto will be holding a party to celebrate the multiple award wins of the recently finished Nathan Philips Square Revitalization — including, most notably, the Governor General’s Medal in Architecture awarded by the RAIC. The event’s program will include speeches, music, and site tours. 

With a scheme entitled AGORA/THEATRE, PLANT Architect won the NPS Revitalization Design Competition in 2006. The project has also received a Toronto Urban Design Award and a Canadian Architect Award of Excellence. Perkins + Will Canada served as venture partners for the project.

The founding partners of PLANT Architect Inc., Lisa Rapoport, Mary Tremaine, and Chris Pommer, have all served as sessional lecturers at the Daniels Faculty. 

“In built form, Toronto looks at first glance like many other large North American cities. But up close, the city reflects the various and often conflicting urban planning and urban design ideas that shaped it.”

Filmmaker Ian Garrick Mason’s latest documentary interviews some of the city’s experts on design, urbanism and history as he unpacks the conflicting visions that have shaped the city of Toronto over the years. He writes: “[The film] explores how the city came to look like it does today -- and the processes likely to determine its future form.”

The faculty’s director of the Master of Urban Design program, Mark Sterling, appears as one of the interviewees, along with a number of Daniels alumni who now serve as leading design and planning practitioners in the city including Anne McIlroy (BArch 1986), Lorna Day (BArch 1984), and Kim Storey(BArch 1978) and James Brown (BArch 1978) of Brown + Storey Architects. UofT Canadian History instructor Richard White joins the panel of experts. As part of the project, Mason will release extended selections from the interviews.

The film was presented at the "Toronto Dialogues 1" symposium last October 4, 2016, and is also available for viewing through Mason’s website.

After extensive renovations led by Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni and her firm Aziza Chaouni Projects, the Qarawiyyin library in Fez, Morroco is set to open within this year. On September 19, The Guardian featured the restoration of the library in its "cities" section.

Located in the old Medina of Fez, the library is widely considered to be the world’s oldest and joins the Qarawiyyin Mosque and the Qarawiyyin University as significant cultural artefacts in the ancient Medina of Fez. Citing its large pedestrian network and immense collection of historic buildings within its walls, Chaouni considers the potential of the Medina to become a model for sustainability. Her firm’s renovation is one of the projects leading the current restoration of Fez as a spiritual and cultural capital of Morocco.

Chaouni approached the renovation with a philosophy of sustainable architecture. Writes Kareem Shaheen in The Guardian: “for Chaouni [this] means that the library cannot be a relic of ages past, but a breathing part of the city, much like the old medina is still an inhabited living organism.” Apart from structural work, the library’s renovation also included restorative work on the library’s collection of books and manuscripts that date as far back as the ninth century.

Having begun work on the library in 2012, Chaouni was inititally surprised by the appointment given that architecture is, as The Guardian writes, “a field traditionally seen as a man’s province” in Morocco. That said, the Qarawiyyin library was founded by a woman, Fatima al-Fihri, the daughter of a wealthy Tunisian merchant in the ninth century. Chaouni’s personal attachment to the library extends to familial ties. She tells The Guardian stories of how “her great-grandfather travelled on a mule from his ancestral village in Morocco to study at Qarawiyyin University in the 19th century.”

Chaouni has also drafted a plan to restore the river in Fez. For a more in-depth article, visit the article by The Guardian.