The lineup for the University of Toronto’s 2024 Alumni Reunion has been revealed—and it includes an intrigiung lecture at the Daniels Faculty.

On Friday, May 31, the Faculty will host “Constructing Health: How the Built Environment Enhances Your Mind’s Health,” a lecture and book talk by alumnus Tye Farrow, whose new volume of the same name will be published next month by University of Toronto Press.

A globally recognized expert in how the intentional shaping of our environment can support our physical and neurological well-being, Farrow acquired his Bachelor of Architecture degree at U of T in 1987 and was the first Canadian architect to earn a Master of Neuroscience Applied to Architecture (University of Venice IUAV), and has a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University.

He is a currently a senior partner at Toronto-based Farrow Partners Inc., a full-service architecture and master planning firm known internationally for “creating architecture that lifts the human spirit.”

Among the firm’s projects is the SZMC Helmsley Cancer Center in Jerusalem, Israel’s flagship facility for cancer treatment. Realized in partnership with Rubinstein Ofer, the 7,500-square-metre complex (pictured above and on the cover of Farrow’s new book) provides physical, psychological, social and spiritual care services in addition to patient assessment and treatment.

Farrow’s lecture, which will explore how recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and neuroscience can help form “health-giving person-to-place relationships that are similar to healthy and meaningful person-to-person relationships,” will take place from 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent.

To register for this free event, click here.

Copies of Farrow’s book will be available for purchase at the University of Toronto Bookstore (at 214 College Street on the St. George Campus) as well as at the lecture, where the author will be available for signings.

For the full roster of 2024 Alumni Reunion events, click here.

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, the exhibition on view in the Architecture and Design Gallery until March 22, 2024, has been reviewed by The Globe and Mail. 

The newspaper’s architecture critic, Alex Bozikovic, calls the show, which was organized by and first presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, an “exceptionally rare thing: an Indigenous-led exhibition on architecture.”

Co-curated by Joar Nango (a Norway-based Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art - Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA), the exhibition showcases installations by Indigenous designers and artists, reflecting on how Arctic Indigenous communities relate to land and create empowered, self-determined spaces of home and belonging. 

“The exhibition’s approach to architecture is loose—inevitably so. It explores the expansive ways in which Northern Indigenous people define, and strive for, a sense of home,” Bozikovic notes. He adds that “expansive ideas about place spill through the exhibition, in which the artists pose some broad questions about domesticity. That idea is inevitably complex for individuals and peoples whose homes and lives have been profoundly disrupted by the rippling effects of colonization.”

Read the full review in The Globe and Mail or view the print version here.

Banner image: Harry Choi Photography 

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is excited to present its Winter 2024 Public Program. 

Our program this semester addresses a range of pertinent issues concerning the natural and built environments, continuing the Faculty’s tradition of fostering dialogue and exchanging knowledge through a curated series of exhibitions, lectures, book talks, panel discussions and symposia. 

Through these events, we aim to engage our local and international communities on the important social, political and environmental challenges confronting our disciplines and the world today. Topics addressed include design and ecology, space and social justice, urbanization and housing, art and biopolitics, and architecture land sovereignty. 

All of the events in our program are free and open to the public. Register in advance through Eventbrite and consult the calendar for up-to-date details at daniels.utoronto.ca/events. 

January 23, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Jeffrey Cook Memorial Lecture: HEALING
Featuring Võ Trọng Nghĩa (VTN Architects)

RSVP

February 1, 6:30 p.m. ET
I heard you were looking for me
Featuring Germane Barnes (School of Architecture, University of Miami)

RSVP

February 8, 6:30 p.m. ET
Michael Hough/OALA Visiting Critic in Landscape Architecture Lecture: Design and the Just Public Realm
Featuring Chelina Odbert (Kounkuey Design Initiative) 

RSVP

February 15, 6:30 p.m. ET
Black Diasporas Tkaronto-Toronto
Featuring Kholisile Dhliwayo (afrOURban Inc.)

RSVP

February 27, 6:30 p.m. ET
MVS Proseminar: In Ekstase
Featuring P. Staff (visual and performance artist)

RSVP

February 29, 6:30 p.m. ET
Architecture’s 21st-Century Promise: Spatial Justice Practices
Featuring Dana Cuff (UCLA Architecture and Urban Design) 

RSVP

March 7, 6:30 p.m. ET
Designing Delivery: An Examination of the Intersection of Design and Birth
Featuring Kim Holden (School of Architecture, Yale University) 

RSVP

March 21, 6:30 p.m. ET 
Architecture and the Right to Housing
Generously Supported by the Irving Grossman Fund in Affordable Housing
Featuring Leilani Farha (The Shift) and  Paul Karakusevic (Karakusevic Carson Architects) with Karen Kubey (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)

RSVP

March 28, 6:30 p.m. ET 
CANCELLED: Cabin as Tactic and Strategy
Featuring John Bass (School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia) and Snxakila Clyde Michael Tallio (Cultural Director, Nuxalk First Nation)

Events will be livestreamed and available to view on the Daniels Faculty’s YouTube channel. 

EXHIBITIONS ON VIEW

October 25, 2023-March 22, 2024
ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home
Organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture with the Daniels Faculty

December 11, 2023-February 26, 2024
USING TREES AS THEY ARE
Curated by Zachary Mollica (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto) 
Public Lecture: USING TREES AS THEY ARE, February 26, 6:00 p.m. ET 

RSVP

March 6-May 14, 2024
How to Steal a Country
Curated by Lukas Pauer (Daniels Faculty, University of Toronto)
Exhibition Opening: March 6, 5:30 p.m. ET

RSVP

Public Lecture: Recognizing Facts on the Ground: Deconstructing Power in the Built Environment, March 14, 6:30 p.m. ET 

RSVP

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.

Featuring works by nearly two dozen students, the yearly survey will be on display in the Daniels Building's Larry Wayne Richards Gallery until December 1.

Students represented this year include Jacob Muller, Megan Croft, Samahdi Alvarado Orozco, Denise Akman, Elly Yoo, Rory Marks, Jared Rishikof, Fatima Tahir, Nara Wrigglesworth, Cathy Zhou, Jasmine Mohan Zhu, Gillian Stam, Evan Bulloch, Veeshva Rana, Dorsa Sarvi, Prasham Shah, Massimo Giannone, Hanna Kamehiro, Sophie Woelfling, Mandy Chiu and Jinyan Zhao.

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

A closing celebration will be held in the LWR Gallery from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Friday, December 1. All artists, supporters, Visual Studies faculty and Daniels Faculty staff are invited to attend. Light refreshments will be provided.

Celebrated architect Douglas Cardinal will be giving a lunchtime lecture at the Daniels Faculty on Thursday, November 16.

Entitled “Indigenous Principles for Architecture,” the talk will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Room 200 of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent.

To register for the lecture, at which lunch will be provided, click here. The talk is free and open to all Daniels Faculty students and instructors.

In addition to designing such iconic buildings as the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau (pictured above) and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., Dr. Cardinal has been a long-time advocate for the dignity and advancement of Indigenous peoples and last year joined the Daniels Faculty as Decanal Advisor on Indigenous Knowledge.

In his talk on November 16, he will outline how adopting an Indigenous worldview can guide architects and planners in the creation of sustainable built environments that harmonize with nature for at least “seven generations,” the traditional Indigenous benchmark for decision-making and stewardship. Among his key focuses will be planning.

“The planning that cities and communities are conducting presently,” he says, “is not only not sustainable, but destructive to all life, including our own. Indigenous principles offer an innovative way [of building] that is rooted in their traditions [and] accounts for all life-givers that the land hosts, so plants, animals and humans may have a future together.”

One of the projects that Dr. Cardinal will cite in his talk is the 2017 planning work he conducted for the Ojibway community of Stony Point in Ontario. Previously, the land in question had been occupied by Canada’s Department of National Defense as a military training base. “I will show the multifaceted analysis and holistic integration necessary to reach a sustainable community,” he says of his work, which at Stony Point “integrated all my life experience” in terms of both process and result.

Prior to signing on as Decanal Advisor on Indigenous Knowledge, Dr. Cardinal was the Faculty’s 2020-2021 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Toronto in June of 2022.

On view at the Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) until next June, the exhibition Mnemonic silences, disappearing acts grapples with the absences, erasures and censorships that pervade queer and trans histories, offering alternative forms of documentation, storytelling and memory-keeping that respond to archival gaps and propose strategies for future archiving.

On Tuesday, November 14, exhibition curator Dallas Fellini, who is currently pursuing a Master of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies at the Daniels Faculty, will provide a guided tour of the show, which features works by artists Jordan King, Kasra Jalilipour, Hazel Meyer and Cait McKinney, Kama La Mackerel and Lan “Florence” Yee.

Following the tour, attendees will be invited to walk over to the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent, where curator Fellini and artist King will lead a discussion about their work and its role in trans memory-keeping and resistance.

All are welcome to join both the tour and the talk. The hour-long JHI tour will begin at noon on the 10th floor of 170 St. George Street. The talk, at which lunch will be provided, will commence at 1:30 p.m. in Room 230 of the Daniels Building. Attendees may register here.

Situated at the intersection of trans studies and archival studies, Fellini’s research interrogates the compromised conditions under which trans histories have been recorded and considers representational and archival alternatives to trans hyper-visibility. 

King is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and writer whose practice is rooted in performance, archival research and intergenerational dialogue. She is currently a Curatorial Practice MFA student at OCAD University, where her focus is on documentary film and multimedia documentation of underground queer performance. 

The JHI tour and Daniels Faculty talk will take place during Trans Awareness Week, established to encourage awareness of and advocacy around trans rights and inclusion and to affirm trans lives and experiences in all their complexity. Trans Awareness Week will be observed this year from November 13 to 17.

The week will be followed by Trans Day of Remembrance and Resilience (TDoRR) on November 20. TDoRR is observed annually to honour the memory of the trans people who have lost their lives as a result of transphobic violence.

U of T will mark both Trans Awareness Week and TDoRR with a range of events and gatherings. For the full programming list, click here.

Exhibition images: Among the works on view in the exhibition Mnemonic silences, disappearing acts are Untitled by Jordan King (top) and Leaving Space by Lan “Florence” Yee (bottom). On Tuesday, November 14, curator Dallas Fellini will lead a tour of the show at the Jackman Humanities Institute before joining artist King for a discussion at the Daniels Faculty. Lunch will be provided. King photo courtesy of the artist, Yee photo by Alexis Bellavance.

The University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is an unparalleled centre for learning and research, offering graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, forestry, urban design and visual studies, as well as unique undergraduate programs that use architecture and art as lenses through which students may pursue a broader education.   

Situated in the heart of Toronto—a hub for creative practice and home to many of Canada’s leading architects, landscape architects, urban designers, foresters, artists and curators—the Faculty focuses on interdisciplinary training and research in architecture, art and their allied practices, with a mission to educate students, prepare professionals and cultivate scholars who will play a leading role in creating more culturally engaged, ecologically sustainable environments.

U of T, which year after year ranks among the top universities in the world, provides a framework of knowledge and expertise on which all Faculty members may draw. Additionally, the environment in which our students learn and congregate is as unique as our program offerings.

The Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent is a bold work of architecture and landscape on a prominent urban site between U of T’s St. George campus and the vibrant centre of Toronto. Across Spadina Crescent, the North and South Borden buildings (home to our visual studies programs) and the Earth Sciences Centre (HQ for forestry studies) complete the Faculty’s trifecta of sites. 

To learn first-hand how you can study at the Daniels Faculty, visit our campus throughout November for the following information-gathering events.

November 7 and 8: Graduate Open House

Stop by the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent or connect via Zoom on Tuesday the 7th and Wednesday the 8th to learn about the Faculty’s graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and forest conservation, as well as our research stream programs: our PhD in Architecture, Landscape, and Design, our Master of Science in Forestry, and our PhD in Forestry.

Learn, too, how to prepare for the application process, and pick up information on funding, financial aid and awards.  

Four tours of the Daniels Building will also be offered on Tuesday, November 7. 

To register in advance for this Graduate Open House and the individual tours, click here.

November 16: MFC Program Open House

Learn about the Faculty’s Master of Forest Conservation program—either in-person or online—by joining Assistant Professor Sally Krigstin, MFC Program Coordinator, for a presentation on the subject. The in-person session will take place at 3:00 p.m. in Room ES 1016B of the Earth Sciences Centre. For further Zoom, dial-in or other access, contact Laura Lapchinski, Program Administrator, at laura.lapchinski@daniels.utoronto.ca.

If you can’t make it on the 16th, recordings of the sessions will be made available. For more information, please visit the Daniels Forestry website.

November 23: U of T Fall Campus Day 2023 

U of T’s annual fall event for future undergrads, Fall Campus Day provides the opportunity for prospective students, as well as their parents, families and friends, to visit the downtown St. George campus and get details about our programs, colleges, residences, student life and more. Campus and residence tours, mini-lectures and presentations from the different faculties will be running throughout the day.

At the Daniels Faculty, tours and information sessions will take place at 1 Spadina Crescent from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Join us then to learn more about our undergraduate programs in Architectural Studies and Visual Studies, meet with faculty and students, tour Daniels Faculty facilities and more. 

Click here to register for the in-person FCD!

For more information on all three days, check out the Events page on the Daniels Faculty website.

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is proud to announce that ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, an Indigenous-led exhibition organized by and first presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, will be on view in the Architecture and Design Gallery at 1 Spadina Crescent from October 25, 2023 – March 22, 2024.

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home was co-curated by Joar Nango (a Norway-based Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art - Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA). The exhibition showcases installations by Indigenous designers and artists, reflecting on how Arctic Indigenous communities relate to land and create empowered, self-determined spaces of home and belonging.

Through the exhibition, as well as its accompanying publication and programming, ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home aims to have long-term impact, opening new forms of dialogues and ways of thinking about Northern Indigenous practices of designing and building that are not normally considered in the canons of architecture.

“Towards Home recognizes that architectural design in this country has been generally insensitive to Indigenous peoples’ traditions and cultures,” says Jeannie Kim, Associate Professor at the Daniels Faculty and organizer of the Toronto exhibition. “Participating in this project, our Faculty hopes to broaden understandings, and to support our shared efforts towards fostering practices of land-based design.”

Work on view will include Taqralik Partridge and Tiffany Shaw’s The Porch, a transitional space unique to Northern living that welcomes Indigenous visitors into an institutional setting that has historically excluded them. Geronimo Inutiq’s I’m Calling Home presents a commissioned radio broadcast that recalls the central role that radio plays in both connecting Inuit communities and expediting colonialism. Nuna, an installation by asinnajaq (in conversation with Tiffany Shaw), is a tent-like structure that invites both sharing and reflection while evoking the four elements. Offernat (Votive Night) by Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson is an altar featuring a birch burl that evokes the burning of Sámi drums during Christianization in the 1700s.

The exhibition also facilitated the Futurecasting: Indigenous-led Architecture and Design in the Arctic workshop (co-curated Ella den Elzen and Nicole Luke) that brought together nine emerging architectural designers and duojars (craftpeope) to convene across Sapmi and Turtle Island to discuss what the future of design on Indigenous lands might become.

The full list of contributors includes: asinnajaq, Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson, Geronimo Inutiq, Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory. The original exhibition design was by Tiffany Shaw, Edmonton, with graphic design by FEED, Montreal.

The Exhibition Opening will take place on Wednesday, October 25. Additional updates and related programming will be announced soon.

Land Acknowledgement 

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. The land of 1 Spadina Crescent has been the home and an important trail of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Spadina is synonymous with Ishpadinaa, meaning “a place on a hill” in Anishinaabe. 

Also, we are acutely aware as architects, that unjust settler strategies and logics denigrated Indigenous land and architecture, particularly harming Indigenous people’s ability to create safe places to call home. Today, many of the ways these lands are used conflict with Indigenous values, practices, and histories. The acknowledgement of past wrongs and current realities are only the beginning of redressing and improving conditions, and creating a more just built environment. 

Image captions: 1) Nuna, asinnajaq in conversation with Tiffany Shaw. qulliq, asinnajaq in conversation with Ludovic Boney and Tiffany Shaw. 2) J'appelle chez nous / I'm calling home / Uvatinni Uqallajunga, Geronimo Inutiq. 3) All images credit ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home exhibition view, 2022. Photos Mathieu Gagnon © CCA. 

Architect and academic Ludovico Centis is scheduled to speak at the Daniels Faculty on Friday, September 15. 

Based in Northern Italy, Centis is Assistant Professor in Urbanism at the University of Trieste and founder of the Verona-based architecture and planning office The Empire.

From 2010 to 2019, he also edited the architecture magazine San Rocco, of which he was a co-founder.

The title of Centis’s Friday lecture at Daniels, which will take place between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. in Room 330 of the Daniels Building, is “On the art of reshaping lagoons.” His talk is part of this semester’s Integrated Urbanism Studio, but attendance is open to all.

In 2013-14, Centis was the Peter Reyner Banham Fellow at the University at Buffalo, and his research focuses on the ways in which individuals and institutions, as well as desires and power, shape cities and landscapes.

Recent books include 2022’s The Lake of Venice: A Scenario for Venice and its Lagoon (co-authored with Lorenzo Fabian), They Must Have Enjoyed Building Here: Reyner Banham and Buffalo (2021) and A Parallel of Ruins and Landscapes (2019).

The Integrated Urbanism Studio, in which the Faculty’s architecture, landscape architecture and urban design students collaborate on shared projects, explores design’s agency in dealing with subjects such as the climate crisis, housing, spatial justice, decarbonization and other urban infrastructures.

Centis is the first of several speakers who will be addressing the Studio this term.

The Daniels Faculty is playing host this month to Architecture of Health: The Annual Zeidler-Evans Lecture. The yearly public address, administered by McMaster University and delivered by a researcher with expertise and interest in the connections between architecture, physical space and health, will take place on Monday, October 23. 

This year’s lecture, entitled A City That Can Save Us, will be given by Dr. Robin Mazumder (pictured below). A post-doctoral research fellow at the Technical University of Berlin, Mazumder acquired his PhD in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo and is an outspoken advocate for healthy urban design.

His talk, which will be moderated by journalist Nahlah Ayed of CBC Radio’s IDEAS, will focus on innovative approaches to health education, research and care through the design, use and analysis of physical space.

The lecture will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. and a reception will follow.

Attendees are requested to RSVP via email by October 18 at FHSevents5@mcmaster.ca or by phone at 905-525-9140 (Ext. 20250).

Established in 2022, when the inaugural talk was given by author and academic Annmarie Adams, the Zeidler-Evans Lecture is sponsored by the family of John Evans, the first dean of McMaster University’s School of Medicine, to honour renowned architect Eberhard Zeidler, who passed away last year at age 95.

Between 1967 and 1972, Zeidler and Evans collaborated closely on the creation of McMaster’s Health Sciences Centre, the design for which combined a tertiary hospital and a university facility to teach healthcare professionals, thereby transforming how hospitals are created, built and used.

The German-born architect, who also designed such iconic buildings as the Eaton Centre in Toronto, had a long and sustained relationship with the Daniels Faculty, serving as an adjunct professor at the school from 1983 to 1995 and establishing the Eberhard Zeidler Scholarship with his wife Jane in 1999.

He is also the namesake of the Eberhard Zeidler Library, a 37,000-volume facility in the revitalized Daniels Building, to which he and Jane generously contributed.

Banner image: John Evans (left) and Eberhard Zeidler, after whom the annual Zeidler-Evans Lecture is named, collaborated closely on the creation and building of the McMaster University Health Sciences Centre.