Ever wondered what's inside 1 Spadina Crescent? Curious about the history of the revitalized neo-Gothic building at its centre? Whether you have always wanted to wander the halls or simply haven’t visited in a while, there is something for everyone to discover during Doors Open Toronto 2025. 

Each May, Doors Open Toronto invites the public to explore the city’s most-loved buildings and sites, and the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent will welcome visitors for tours May 24-25 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Plus, don’t miss a special lecture by the Toronto Society of Architects on Sunday, May 25 at 2:00 p.m.

Originally built as a prospect to the lake, the historic structure was the first site of Knox College in 1875, a military hospital during the First World War and the place where Connaught Laboratories manufactured insulin in the 1940s. Today it’s home to the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, which reimagined the complex for the 21st Century.

A striking contemporary addition, designed by NADAAA and completed in 2018, combines the Knox College structure with cutting-edge facilities, from versatile new studios to a digital fabrication lab. In addition to taking in the architectural splendours and storied history of the revitalized 1 Spadina hub, visitors will have plenty of current work to take in as well.

Here’s a glimpse at what will be on view:

End of Year Show 2024/2025 

The End of Year Show 2024/2025 presents a broad spectrum of student work from across the degree programs at the Daniels Faculty throughout the past academic year. Organized by Office In Search Of (OISO), an interdisciplinary design practice founded by Daniels Faculty lecturers Brandon Bergem and Jeffrey Garcia, this exhibition celebrates the creative accomplishments of our students and their commitment to reshaping the future. 

Eberhard Zeidler Library 

The library is open to the public, offering students, researchers, urban planners, design professionals, journalists and design aficionados access to art, architecture, landscape architecture and urban design collections unrivalled in Toronto.  

Admission to the Daniels Building and to all Doors Open venues is free. A dedicated brochure with map of the Daniels Building will be available for visitors.

Visit the Doors Open Toronto website for a full list of participating sites.

Three exhibitions coming up this spring at the Daniels Faculty will highlight the diverse academic and artistic research that students across our graduate and undergraduate programs have undertaken this year. 

Sixty-four students from the undergraduate thesis cohorts in Visual Studies (BAVS) and Architectural Studies (BAAS) will present their work in Studio, Critical Practices, Design, History and Theory, and Technology in two exhibitions: As the Archive Dreams on view at Foy House (92 Isabella St.) from April 17 to April 19, and Scales of Inquiry on view in the Daniels Building from May 22 to June 27.

The BAVS exhibition, As the Archive Dreams, posits the archive as a living network—an assemblage of memories and stories and objects that transcends time. It tends to the roots of the archive not as a static repository, but as a dynamic apparatus of preservation and transformation. The works within the exhibition draw upon personal histories, cultural narratives, communal knowledges, and proverbial legacies to reinterpret processes of remembrance and renewal. Visitors are invited to engage in the archival process, witnessing and contributing to ever-evolving temporal narratives that situate the archive as both a keeper of the past and an active participant in the present and the future. Here, as the archive dreams, it stands as testimonial to action, transformation, and the enduring power of memory; it is imbued with life. Mark your calendar for the exhibition opening on Thursday, April 17, 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. 

The BAAS exhibition, Scales of Inquiry, meditates on the foundational concept of scale within design disciplines. It questions why, despite this foundation, the idea of scale itself seems to fall to the background, often reemerging only in discussions of representation and scope. Drawn to the immediate legibility afforded by a scalar logic, this exhibition organizes itself around a diverse range of design and research projects, sidestepping the simplicity of unilateral sorting by considering diverging conceptualizations of scale and scalability. Working between ideas from Charles and Ray Eames’s iconic Powers of Ten and Anna Tsing’s meditations on nonscalability and real world frictions, Scales of Inquiry moves beyond normative notions of scale, aiming to reflect the confluence of existing rational systems while challenging those same systems through subtle deviation and strategic disruption. 

In tandem, these exhibitions ponder memory, mutability, and friction as they manifest in time and space. The presented works themselves embody these concepts, not only through their conceptual and technical focuses, but in their prescription as thesis projects that simultaneously cumulate the past and hold future potential. Collectively, the 2025 undergraduate thesis cohort presents an assortment of works that survey what exists and speculates on what could be, inviting and intuiting worlds beyond the one we inhabit. 

The End of Year Show 2024/2025 (May 23–June 27, 2025) showcases a broad spectrum of student work from across the degree programs at the Daniels Faculty throughout the past academic year. Organized by Office In Search Of (OISO), an interdisciplinary design practice founded by Daniels Faculty lecturers Brandon Bergem and Jeffrey Garcia, this exhibition celebrates the creative accomplishments of our students and their commitment to reshaping the future. Current students interested in submitting their work from the Fall 2024 and Winter 2025 terms can do so via the online form by May 4. 

Tuesday, April 8 – Wednesday, April 30
Daniels Building
1 Spadina Crescent

Whether you're a future student, an alum or a member of the public with an interest in architecture, landscape architecture or urban design—you're invited to join the Daniels Faculty for Winter 2025 Reviews taking place April 9-30.  

Throughout the month, students from across our graduate and undergraduate programs will present final projects to their instructors and guest critics from academia and the professional community. 

All reviews will take place in the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (unless otherwise stated). Follow @uoftdaniels on social media for updates and join the conversation using the hashtags #danielsreviews and #danielsreviews25. 

Please note that times and dates are subject to change. 

Tuesday, April 8 | Undergraduate 

Design + Engineering I (ARC112) 
Instructors: Jennifer Davis (Coordinator), Natalia Semenova, Mohammed Soroor 
Room: 200 

Wednesday, April 9 | Undergraduate 

9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. 
Drawing and Representation II (ARC200) 
Instructors: Michael Piper (Coordinator), Samantha Eby, Aziza Chaouni 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Design Studio I (JAV101) 
Instructors: Jeffrey Garcia (Coordinator), Phat Le, Francesco Valente-Gorjup, Mahsa Malek, Marcin Kedzior, Youssef el Helou, Scott Sorli, Mariano Martellacci, Harry Wei, Onah Jung, Danielle Whitley, Kara Verbeek 
Rooms: 215, 230, 240, 330, 340, PM: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Thursday, April 10 | Graduate 

Landscape Design Studio 2 (LAN1012) 
Instructors: Liat Margolis (Coordinator), Terence Radford, Agata Mrozowski 
Rooms: 230, 330 

Urban Design Studio 2 (URD1012) 
Instructors: Carol Moukheiber, Kanwal Aftab 
Room: Main Hall (170B) 

Friday, April 11 | Undergraduate and Graduate 

9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. 
Design Studio II (ARC201) 
Instructors: Fiona Lim Tung (Coordinator), Anne Ma, Katy Chey, Maria Denegri, David Verbeek, Daniel Briker, Jennifer Kudlats, Lara Hassani, Kara Verbeek, Francesco Martire 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B, 170C), 215, 230, 240, 242, 315, 340 

Landscape Design Studio 4 (LAN2014) 
Instructors: Robert Wright (Coordinator), Todd Douglas 
Room: 330 

Monday, April 14 | Graduate 

Design Studio 2 (ARC1012) 
Instructors: Behnaz Assadi (Coordinator), Fiona Lim Tung, John Shnier, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Vivian Lee, Francesco Martire
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B, 170C), 230, 330 

Tuesday, April 15 | Graduate 

MLA Design Studio Thesis (LAN3017) 
Advisors: Elise Shelley (Coordinator), Fadi Masoud, Alissa North, Peter North, Liat Margolis, Francesco Martire, Robert Wright 
Room: 209, 215, 230, 240, 242, 330 

Wednesday, April 16 | Graduate 

MLA Design Studio Thesis (LAN3017) 
Advisors: Elise Shelley (Coordinator), Fadi Masoud, Alissa North, Peter North, Liat Margolis, Francesco Martire, Robert Wright 
Room: 209, 215, 230, 240, 242, 330 

MUD Urban Design Studio Thesis (URD2015) 
Advisors: Mason White (Coordinator), Michael Piper, Zahra Ebrahim 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Thursday, April 17 | Undergraduate and Graduate 

9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. 
Post-Professional Thesis (ALA4022) 
Advisors: Mason White (Coordinator), Christos Marcopolous, Carol Moukheiber, Miles Gertler, Noheir Elgendy 
Room: 209, 242, Second-Floor Hallway 

10:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. 
Comprehensive Studio III (ARC369) 
Instructors: Daniel Briker (Coordinator), Mauricio Quiros-Pachecho, Fiona Lim Tung 
Room: 230, 330 

9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. 
Landscape Architecture Studio IV (ARC364) 
Instructor: Peter North 
Room: 240 

Monday, April 21 | Graduate 

Architectural Design Studio 4 (ARC2014) 
Instructors: Sam Dufaux (Coordinator), Brigitte Shim, Jon Cummings, Daniel Chung 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B), 230, 330 

Tuesday, April 22 | Graduate 

Architectural Design Studio 4 (ARC2014) 
Instructors: Sam Dufaux (Coordinator), James Macgillivray, Maria Denegri, Christopher Cornecelli 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B), 230 

Wednesday, April 23 | Undergraduate 

Architecture Studio IV (ARC362) 
Instructors: Shane Williamson (Coordinator), Chloe Town, Mariana Leguia Alegria  
Room: Main Hall (170B), 230, 330 

Thursday, April 24 | Undergraduate 

9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. 
Design and Community-Engagement Capstone Project (ARC490) 
Instructor: Michael Piper 
Room: Main Hall (170C)  

Architecture Studio IV (ARC381) 
Instructors: Paul Howard Harrison, Suzan Ibrahim 
Room: 230 

Undergraduate Thesis 

• Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Thesis) (ARC457) 
  Instructor: Simon Rabyniuk 
  Room: Main Hall (170A) 
   

• Senior Seminar in Design (Thesis) (ARC462) 
  Instructor: Jeannie Kim  
  Room: Main Hall (170B/C) 
   

• Senior Seminar in Technology (Thesis) (ARC487) 
  Instructor: Nicholas Hoban  
  Room: 330 

Friday, April 25 | Undergraduate 

Undergraduate Thesis 

• Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Thesis) (ARC457) 
  Instructor: Simon Rabyniuk 
  Room: Main Hall (170A) 
   

• Senior Seminar in Design (Thesis) (ARC462) 
  Instructor: Jeannie Kim  
  Room: AM: 230, Main Hall (170B/170C)
   

• Senior Seminar in Technology (Thesis) (ARC487) 
  Instructor: Nicholas Hoban  
  Room: 330 

Monday, April 28 | Graduate 

MARC Thesis – Architectural Design Studio (ARC3021) 

• Making with Machines 
  Advisor: Maria Yablonina 
  Room: Main Hall (170A)  
   

• LUNAR HABITAT: Design for Extreme Environments as a Driver of Architectural Innovation 
  Advisor: Brady Peters 
  Room: Main Hall (170B)  
   

• Architecture and the Right to Housing: The Practical Case for Radicalism  
  Advisor: Karen Kubey 
  Room: Main Hall (170C), 209 
   

• Architecture and Health Equity in an Imperiled World 
  Advisor: Stephen Verderber 
  Room: 230 
   

• String Figures 
  Advisor: Jeannie Kim 
  Room: 330, Library, AM: First-Floor Hallway, Commons near East Entrance 

Tuesday, April 29 | Graduate 

MARC Thesis – Architectural Design Studio (ARC3021) 

• LOBSTER TALES and Other Architectures Between Land and Sea 
  Advisor: Richard Sommer 
  Room: Main Hall (170A), 242 (PM) 
   

• Rehearsing the Parade: Ephemeral Architectures and Persuasion on the Move  
  Advisor: Miles Gertler 
  Rooms: AM: Main Hall (170B), 209, 230, PM: 209, 240, 315 
   

• Politics Policy and Architecture 
  Advisor: Michael Piper 
  Room: Main Hall (170C) 
   

• The Certainty of Uncertain Forms, or in search of anexact typologies / The Stone Edition Advisor: Carol Moukheiber 
  Room: 242 (AM), 330 

Wednesday, April 30 | Undergraduate 

10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. 
Advanced Topics in Architecture: Tools for Close Observation (ARC465)
Instructor: Zac Mollica 
Room: 230 

2:00-6:00 p.m. 
Advanced Topics in the Technology of Architecture: Attributes of Aliveness: Human-Computer Interaction in Design (ARC480)
Instructor: Humbi Song 
Room: 209, 230, 242

A community-focused exhibition that documents and celebrates the experiences, spaces and places that have significance to Black Torontonians will open in the Faculty’s Architecture + Design Gallery on Tuesday, March 11.

Black Diasporas Tkaronto-Toronto is an interactive exhibition and geolocated digital archive featuring over 500 stories and 12 commissioned short films created by more than 150 Black Torontonians. 

Facilitated by afrOURban Inc. and the Museum of Toronto, it will run in the Daniels Building until April 14.

The multifaceted project exemplifies how oral narratives, filmmaking and exhibitions can be both archival and aspirational—archival in celebrating the diversity of Black life and communities in Canada’s largest city and aspirational in articulating the hopes and dreams that manifest within the built environment.

In 2024, architect and academic Kholisile Dhliwayo discussed the tenets and methodology behind Black Diasporas Tkaronto-Toronto (as well as a Naarm-Melbourne version) as part of the Faculty’s annual Public Program series.

Dhliwayo is a founding member of afrOURban Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting and celebrating the spaces that have meaning to Black communities worldwide.

Since 2017, the organization has, in addition to Toronto and Melbourne, hosted exhibits and screenings in Manahatta-New York City, Tiohtià:ke-Montreal and Warrane-Sydney. The Black Diasporas project was started by afrOURban in 2020.

Located on the lower level of the Daniels Building, the Architecture + Design Gallery is open Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.

To watch Dhliwayo’s 2024 lecture at Daniels, visit the Faculty’s YouTube channel by clicking here.

Image by Bonn Creative from the exhibition Black Diasporas Naarm-Melbourne.

Taught by Professor Richard Sommer, Exploring Design Practices (ARC302) introduces students to the practice of architecture and its allied disciplines through a series of presentations by an array of leading practitioners and scholars. 

The emphasis is on a diversity of vocations pursued by individuals with architectural training both inside and outside the field. Presentations and conversations will go beyond the case studies and examples of architecture and design typically presented in lecture-based courses to probe the ideas and influences speakers have drawn on, whom they collaborate with, and the background frameworks to their work.

The following lectures are open to all members of the Daniels community as well as to the public. Each takes place in Main Hall in the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent. Registration is not required.

Winter 2025

January 15, 12:30 p.m.
Nader Tehrani
Architect, founder of NADAAA in Boston/NYC and designer of 1 Spadina

January 22, 12:30 p.m.
Diana Anderson
Architect and physician, Montreal

January 29, 12:30 p.m.
Jay Pooley
Architect, film set designer and Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the Daniels Faculty, Toronto

February 5, 12:30 p.m.
Tosin Oshinowo
Architect and urbanist, Oshinowo Studio, Lagos, Nigeria

March 5, 12:30 p.m.
Maria Yablonina
Architect, artist, robotics researcher and Assistant Professor at the Daniels Faculty, Toronto

March 12, 12:30 p.m.
Brandon Donnelly
Developer, architect and founder of Globizen Group, Toronto

March 19, 12:30 p.m.
Amy Whitesides
Landscape architect and resilience researcher, STOSS/Harvard GSD, Boston

March 26, 12:30 p.m.
Andrea Mastrandrea
Fornaio, architect and retailing entrepreneur, Forno Cultura, Toronto

The annual Eyeball exhibition showcasing recent artwork by the Daniels Faculty’s undergraduate students in Visual Studies is currently on view at 1 Spadina Crescent.

The 2024 exhibition features works by more than 30 students, the yearly survey will be on display in the Daniels Building's Larry Wayne Richards Gallery into the new year.

Students represented include: Karooni Ahmed, Selina Al Madanat, Nicholas Aoki, Juanita Arango Corchuelo, Evan Bulloch, Ariel Clipperton, Julian Gentile, Athen Go, Eli Guan, Helia Honarmandi, Gaven Jin, Ashlyn Kent, Amber Kwok, Alaya (Phuong Anh) Le, Lucy Lin, Nusha Naziri, Sandy Nguyen, Mitsuko Noguchi, Hadassah Okebugwu, Megan Price, Salma Ragheb, Line Sato Bouziri, Angie Song, Ella Spitzer-Stephan, Gillian Stam, Junjing Sun, Kara Tsenov, Auden Tura, Kara Tsenov, Jennifer Wang, Olive Wei and Songzi Zhou.

The exhibition encompasses a range of media, including painted works on paper and canvas, film and video pieces and mixed-media installations.

An opening celebration will be held in the LWR Gallery on Thursday, November 21, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. All artists, supporters, Visual Studies faculty and Daniels Faculty staff are invited to attend. Light refreshments will be provided.

Currently on display across all three floors of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent, the 2023/24 End of Year Show spotlights student work from each of the degree programs at the Daniels Faculty, including graduate and undergraduate studies in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Forestry, Urban Design and Visual Studies.

On view until the end of June, the annual exhibition this year encompasses “three-dimensional, two-dimensional, audio and digital projects,” say Brandon Bergem and Jeffrey Garcia, co-curators of the 2023/24 Show.

Both are sessional lecturers at the Faculty as well as the co-founders of the interdisciplinary design practice Office In Search Of (OISO).

“Our best approximation,” they say, “is that 300-plus students are represented [in the show], with contributions ranging from…a four-foot-by-four-foot orthographic drawing [and] a collection of gifs on a monitor [to] a three-foot-long section drawing and a handcrafted wooden lounge chair.”

According to the curators, the selection and organization of the vast body of student submissions was based largely on two guiding principles.

“The first was how to celebrate the immense collective creative output produced by students at the Faculty and not focus on individual students or prioritize any course or program. The second was how to best represent the projects optimally without compromising the integrity of the work.”

For example, they say, “students in the Forestry program produce exceptional research, and Visual Studies students often display work in formats that require different consideration than what we are accustomed to in studio reviews.”

As a whole, the exhibition offers a comprehensive and revealing survey of the wide-ranging yet synergistic study taking place at the school right now.

Still, say Bergem and Garcia, how to exhibit the breadth of this work presented no small challenge.

“The layout of an entire exhibition catalogue was spread across every pin-up panel in the main-floor hallway. In the second-floor hallway, each pin-up panel was dedicated to specific drawing types (site plans, sections, elevations, etc.), then covered in a wallpaper of black and white drawings from students’ projects, assembled like puzzle pieces. 

“On the second floor, we devised a continuous 16-foot strip composed of collages and renderings that were mounted on the walls in one of the rooms that projected into the space by wrapping around the columns. In another, tree-based objects like mallets, chairs and a memorial sculpture were staged like a tableau in the centre of the room, with research graphics attached to the walls.

“In a room on the third floor, most of the 2D material was suspended rather than pinned to the walls and the 3D objects were placed on a clustered field of plinths and light tables.”

Through these various entry points, visitors are consequently invited “to discern the themes based on commonalities and differences—for example, how can design be used as a method to advocate for biodiversity and the prevention of environmental degradation? How can the intersection of urbanism, architecture and social equity be used to inspire a higher quality of living? [And] how can the concept of a building site transcend physical location to be inclusive of cultural, historical and ecological influences?"

At the same time, questions based on medium and methodology—such as the effectiveness of orthographic drawings in communicating design intent and organization or the degree to which unconventional two- and three-dimensional forms challenge expectations of how design is interpreted—are also posed in the show.

The End of Year Show in its current building-wide incarnation will be on view at 1 Spadina until the end of June. A curated selection will then be installed in the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery and the Commons until early September. 

The Daniels Building is open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. every weekday, with fob access only on Saturdays and Sundays.

All photographs by Adrian Yu + Office In Search Of

The SHIFT* Collective, a student-run publishing group based within the Daniels Faculty, will be hosting a launch event this week to celebrate the first edition of its new digital and print publication, called Scaffold* Journal.

The launch will take place on Friday, May 31, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., in the Student Commons at 1 Spadina Crescent. Remarks will be made by the editorial team, accompanied by refreshments and a complimentary zine. No tickets are required, and all interested students, faculty and members of the public are invited to attend.

Focusing on the various methodologies of design research and visual inquiry used by students, scholars and practitioners, the first edition of Scaffold* includes the work of 21 contributors, as well as interviews with six emerging scholars and practitioners, plus visual contributions.

As noted in the call for submissions in December, the journal “intends to demystify the research process and present researchers with the opportunity to curiously and critically reflect upon their own creative and design processes.”

To that end, a diverse range of published works has been assembled, deconstructing methods from the use of interviews and ethnography in the design process to architectural reconstruction and speculative fabulation. Contributions include essays, drawings and mixed-media works spanning architecture, landscape architecture, visual studies and urban design, with projects and ideas from students at the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels.

Drawing on the legacy of the previous journal SHIFT* as a risograph publication, the collective will release an exclusive zine that reflects on the inspirations behind the new journal and its formation over the past months. Three commissions from undergraduate and graduate students also reflect on the process of “what it means to scaffold a project,” from the role of social media in curating precedence to self-scaffolding and the ongoing projects of SHIFT* team members.

In addition, the team has designed a small installation detailing the works behind the publication, displayed on the ground level of the Daniels Building (pictured at top).

The SHIFT* Collective “would like to express its immense gratitude for the ongoing support” of the Daniels Faculty and of the Office of the Dean, “both of which have been instrumental in the realization of this first publication.”

The journal’s faculty advisory board, which includes head operational advisor Lukas Pauer and internal advisor Jewel Amoah, “has also played a crucial role in the development and curation of the project.”

The digital publication can be accessed at theshiftcollective.net on May 31.

A full printed volume including the first and second editions will be released in the fall.

Ever wondered what's inside 1 Spadina Crescent? Curious about the history of the revitalized neo-Gothic building at its centre? Whether you have always wanted to wander the halls or simply haven’t visited in a while, there is something for everyone to discover during Doors Open Toronto 2024.

More than 150 buildings and sites are on the roster of this year’s instalment of the popular annual event, which sees local landmarks throw their doors open to the public. The Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent will be open for self-guided tours on Sunday, May 26 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Originally built as a prospect to the lake, the historic structure was the first site of Knox College in 1875, a military hospital during the First World War and the place where Connaught Laboratories manufactured insulin in the 1940s. Today it’s home to the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, which reimagined the complex for the 21st Century.

A striking contemporary addition, designed by NADAAA and completed in 2018, combines the Knox College structure with cutting-edge facilities, from versatile new studios to a digital fabrication lab. In addition to taking in the architectural splendours and storied history of the revitalized 1 Spadina hub, visitors will have plenty of current work to take in as well.

Here’s a glimpse at what will be on view:

End of Year Show 2023/2024 

A Daniels Faculty tradition encompassing a wide range of projects, this exhibition showcases student work from across the Faculty’s degree programs in Architecture, Forestry, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design and Visual Studies. Student work can be seen on all three floors of the Daniels Building. 

Outer Circle Road by Seth Fluker 

Outer Circle Road by Seth Fluker is a collection of Toronto photographs depicting a city’s energy in constant flux. On view in the first-floor Larry Wayne Richards Gallery and presented in partnership with CONTACT Photography Festival, the series reflects the dynamism of our urban context, a landscape of abundance, waste and regeneration.  

Robotics in Architecture and Design  

Throughout the building you will encounter robotic arms as well as a variety of installations and objects created with their help. Many of these were produced over the past week as a part of workshops run during ROB|ARCH 2024, an international conference centred on robotics in architecture and design. Outside, don’t miss Geosphere, a larger, immersive display by the faculty’s John Nguyen, Nicholas Hoban, Paul Kozak and Rahul Sehijpaul, that is installed at the south entrance.

Building Black Success through Design Showcase 

Head to room DA240 on the second floor for a celebration of the outstanding design achievements by the young designers who recently completed the Building Black Success Through Design (BBSD) program. BBSD is a free mentorship program at the Daniels Faculty for Black high-school students that inspires them to pursue excellence and innovation within design industries and academia, enhancing diversity in the fields. 

Eberhard Zeidler Library 

The library is open to the public, offering students, researchers, urban planners, design professionals, journalists and design aficionados access to art, architecture, landscape architecture and urban design collections unrivalled in Toronto.  

Admission to the Daniels Building and to all Doors Open venues is free. A dedicated brochure with map of the Daniels Building will be available for visitors.

Visit the Doors Open Toronto website for a full list of participating sites.

In March, the exhibition “How to Steal a Country” opened in the Daniels Faculty’s Larry Wayne Richards Gallery, transforming the display space at 1 Spadina Crescent into scenes from the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Using scale- and life-size dioramas, vignettes and tableaus, the immersive exhibition reflects some of the research conducted by 2022-2024 Emerging Architect Fellow Lukas Pauer into the role that architecture can play in asserting or suppressing national identity and sovereignty. 

As both the exhibition and his fellowship wind down, Pauer took the time to answer a few questions about the show and the work behind it. “How to Steal a Country” closes on May 14.

“How to Steal a Country,” your research-based exhibition on the role of architecture in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is part of the research and teaching you have undertaken as an Emerging Architect Fellow. Can you elaborate on how the exhibition reflects this work?

My work has been concerned with the histories of space and power in the built environment and their entanglements with the present. On arrival here at Daniels and building upon the findings of my doctoral dissertation, I started developing a series of teaching aids for my students in various formats to allow them to better understand imperial-colonial violence as a pervasive and ongoing reality around the world that is not a historic event but that continues to be manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices and built objects of the everyday.

For example, in a series of input lectures, I shared my theoretical framework and research on many case studies from different sites around the world in which countries presently instrumentalize buildings and infrastructure to project power, to claim authority over people and land. These cases were envisioned as exemplary vehicles for students to acquire and test unconventional skills that most students might not have acquired yet during their studies. In a series of skills workshops, I taught a range of techniques I have employed in my practice and research for students. Consequently, having spent a large part of my fellowship translating my practice and research into original teaching aids in the context of the courses I taught, it felt only natural to also conceive my fellowship exhibition as a teaching aid.

In terms of its medium/format, the aim behind the work remains a didactic-pedagogical one—how do we develop a vocabulary that allows us to visually, materially and spatially describe how authority over people and land is manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday?

The title of your exhibition is a provocative one. Is the Russian invasion of Ukraine a prototypical case of using built objects to project power and subvert sovereignty or an atypical one?

Many visitors of the exhibition would speak to me about the parallels they saw in the exhibition with what is part of the imperial-colonial history and ongoing present of what is presently known as Canada. For example, one section of the exhibition discusses the forced deportation and naturalization of Ukrainian children. By supposedly “evacuating” Ukrainian children into the supposed “care” of “foster parents” in Russia under the guise of supposed “reeducation” and “welfare services,” the Russian government has sought to make it difficult to preserve their independent post-Soviet Ukrainian identity. Not unlike what happened to many Indigenous local children in what is presently known as Canada, this has led to the assimilation of children, by invalidating their originally identity.

So in terms of its topic, the exhibition applies the aforementioned theoretical framework and analytical techniques for the role of architecture in sovereignty disputes to discuss a very specific context. However, part of the didactic-pedogagical intent of the exhibition is for the visitor to be able to make parallels to other contexts. This is not by chance. Over the past 10 years, I have critically studied how imperial-colonial expansion has been performed architecturally throughout history in ancient, medieval, modern and recent times, as well as still today.

This has led to a comparative theoretical framework and repository of case studies from different sites around the world in which countries presently instrumentalize buildings and infrastructure to project power. This includes but is not limited to the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is not necessarily an atypical case. So there will be subsequent exhibitions and associated publications applying the framework and techniques to other sovereignty disputes. Stay tuned.

What lessons might be learned from your research by either governments or their people about recognizing subversion and protecting sovereignty?

Although recent scholarship alludes to a relationship between space and power as well as the various ways in which power has configured space, many people seeking to participate in the political life of their community still lack the vocabulary to describe how authority over people and land is manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday.

We have come up with diplomatic doctrines to respond to soft power. We have military doctrines to deal with hard power. However, policy-makers lack appropriate tools and models that aid the recognition of more hybrid kinds of non-verbal visual, material and spatial interventions. These come above the line of what is commonly understood as diplomacy but below the line of warfare. Within this grey zone, recent practices have instrumentalized many different types of built objects. For example, in the case of the current exhibition on display, Russia has instrumentalized humanitarian aid operations, bank branches and Internet and telephone facilities, as well as child boarding and care facilities to project power.

Such objects capitalize on their ambiguity. They seem to be neither diplomatic nor military in function, which renders their instrumentalization plausibly deniable. A lack of understanding how any object may be instrumentalized for political purposes limits people’s ability and responsibility to contribute to political decisions about the built environment.

One of your conclusions is that “sovereignty is a performative concept dependent on an audience.” Can you elaborate on this idea?

Sovereignty has been a key term for my work. If we untangle the very definition of this concept, which refers to “authority over people and land” and then untangle the concept of authority itself, which refers to “recognized power,” or a power that is being seen, that is being recognized by individuals or a community as being legitimate.

So if power over people and land depends on being seen, on being recognized in order to become legitimate, by definition sovereignty depends on an audience. As such, the very definition of sovereignty is a theatrical, a performative concept. It depends on being seen by a domestic or foreign audience. The hinge that can anchor a claim to authority over people and land to the ground are sovereignty markers, the “facts on the ground.” You can plant a flag or construct a building as a marker of sovereignty, to make a claim in a very specific place, but if you do not document this flag or building in various media such as taking a photo or making a drawing of it, it may as well have never happened.

In the case of the current exhibition on display, these would be the buildings and infrastructure that Russia has instrumentalized to legitimize its claims to sovereignty—the humanitarian aid operations, bank branches and Internet and telephone facilities, as well as child boarding and care facilities. These four case types are each displayed in a niche of the gallery. Not by chance have they been displayed as theatrical prop-like objects to create an immersive experience. These techniques from theatrical set model-making in the design of the exhibition are a nod to the theatricality of claims to sovereignty.

All images, including Lukas Pauer at the opening of “How to Steal a Country” in March 2024, by Harry Choi