By Josie Northern Harrison, Co-Editor-in-Chief, Shift Magazine

Shift Magazine — the Daniels Faculty’s Architecture and Visual Studies undergraduate publication — is excited to announce the launch of its fourth issue: SHIFT 04. This edition of Shift Magazine focuses on activism in art, architecture, and urban design — how the three fields can impose political ideologies, and how they can act as a representation of voices that are often undermined by powerful organizations. SHIFT 04 is a departure from the previous editions of the magazine, which acted as more of a scrapbook of undergraduate student work. Instead, this edition was heavily curated to emphasize that there are Daniels undergraduate students who think deeply about very real political issues.

The printing method used for SHIFT 04 is also very different from the last edition, which used a heavy 80lb paper with a perfect bind. As Co-Editors in Chief, Phat Le and I wanted to use the magazine object itself as an opportunity to express a statement about the institution of architectural student work. We chose cheap printing methods to destroy the preciousness of the architectural object. To achieve this, we utilized the risograph printing process on a lightweight 40lb newsprint paper with a saddle-stitched bind. Risograph reduces the cost of printing by only printing with one colour at a time instead of the CMYK and similar processes which combine colours to achieve a specific hue. For Shift, almost all of the images and text are either red or blue; for one image, we combined the two colours to create purple. By creating this lo-fi aesthetic, the magazine takes architectural work out of its typical white walled, pristine environment into an imperfect context that feels more accessible because it doesn’t try to look lavish.

SHIFT 04 is comprised of mostly essays with some photos and illustrations. Phat Le interviewed Syrus Marcus Ware about his work with Black Lives Matter, and the importance of the arts for activism and acceptance. Najia Fatima interviewed Elle Flanders and Tamira Sawatzky of Public Studio about attempts to separate politics from art, and their artwork that addresses the settler and colonial relationship in Palestine. Other essays in SHIFT 04 discuss the use of architecture as oppression in Palestine, the 2013 protests at Taksim Gezi Park in Turkey, and the TD Centre in Toronto as a proposed site of protest.

The launch for SHIFT 04 will take place from 6PM to 9PM on Friday, January 13 at 665 Spadina Avenue. Free copies of Shift will be available, and the editorial team will be present to discuss the work of the magazine. Visit the event page for the SHIFT 04 launch on Facebook for more details.

Place-Holder, a graduate student-run publication, has been awarded a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The third edition of the journal, edited by Michael Abel (MArch 2016) and Mina Hanna (MArch 2014), includes work by contributors Patrick Pregesbauer, Maarten Lambrechts, Daniel Tudor Munteanu, Nancy Webb, Zoé Renaud-Drouin (MArch 2014), Elliott Sturtevant (MArch 2014), Max Powell (MArch 2015), and many more.

Place-Holder was started in 2012 as “an active catalogue of design, for contemporary use and future reference, a repository and mediator of ideas that are floating in our (corporeal and digital) memories.”

From the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts website:

This student-run journal addresses the unspoken aspects of architectural pedagogy and reveals the relics of the architecture design process, which form an archive of unseen products, set-aside ideas, and scrapped technologies. Whether they are temporary trends or resilient values, these, too, are part of the public discourse on design and cities and should be part of the conversation. Place-Holder creates a home for that which is otherwise lost—off-hand musings, abandoned models, interviews with practitioners—as well as the residual effects of the making of architecture. It is active catalogue of design, for contemporary use and future reference, a repository and mediator of ideas that are floating in our (corporeal and digital) memories. Place-Holder is an open conversation.

Last year, Place-Holder’s interview with Greg Lynn — conducted by Roya Mottahedeh (MArch 2014), Mark Ross (MArch 2014), and Paul Harrison (MArch 2014) — was featured in Archinect’s Screen/Print series.

“The so-called Issue 1/2 takes a look at the things that may seem out of architecture’s wheelhouse, but in the end prove themselves as major influencers,” writes Archinect in its introduction to the interview, “in short, the life around architecture always bleeds back in.”

The third edition of Place-Holder will be released soon. This most recent edition will focus on the influence of the network in the public domain and the implications it has on architecture’s autonomy as a discipline. For more information, visit www.place-holder.net

The work of Assistant Professor Ed Pien has been included in the upcoming exhibition titled On Your Mark II at the Varley Art Gallery, in Markham. The exhibition is a study of the products and processes of mark making. From both a historic and contemporary perspective, the exhibition explores how artists use marks as both a means to an end, and as ends in themselves. Other artists included in the exhibition are F.H. Varley and Kate Wilson.

On Sunday, May 29th at 1 PM, Ed Pien will give an artist talk about the On Your Mark II exhibition at the Varley Art Gallery. The talk will be followed by an opening reception. For more information, visit www.markham.ca/VarleyArtGallery/UpcomingExhibitions

Ed Pien is also featured in CAFKA.16, a biennial exhibition of contemporary art in the public spaces of the City of Kitchener and across the Region of Waterloo. Ed Pien's work will be among installations, interventions, performances and projections by Acapulco, Jaime Angelopolous, Claire Ashley, Lisa Birke, Paul Chartrand, DodoLab, Meghan Harder, David Jensenius, Scenocosme, Jimmy Limit, Mary Ma, MAW Collective, and Jamelie Hassan. The exhibition opens Saturday, May 28 at 7 PM with a reception at Kitchener City Hall. For more information, visit www.cafka.org

Ed Pien is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from York University in Toronto and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario. Ed Pien has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Drawing Centre, New York; La Biennale de Montreal 2000 and 2002; W139, Amsterdam; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Middlesbrough Art Gallery, the UK; Centro Nacional e las Artes, Mexico City; The Contemporary Art Museum in Monterrey, Mexico; the Goethe Institute, Berlin; Bluecoat, Liverpool; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; as well as the National Art Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Instructor and MVS Alumnus Joshua Thorpe (MVS 2009) recently released a book titled The Unexpected with Emily Smit-Dicks. The book was published by the Swimmers Group, a Toronto-based, international, cross-disciplinary, art and literature publication studio.

From the Swimmers Group publication release:

“By turns humorous and delicate, nostalgic and blunt, The Unexpected turns away from the clamour of current affairs to tell a story of love in a hundred pages of slowly unfolding scenes in melancholy and joy.

Somewhere between flash fiction, poetry, and picture book, The Unexpected is short and descriptive, rhythmic and melodic, and visits topics as diverse as rain and wind, sumac and pine… and birds that ‘make dirt on men and women’s heads.’

The images, some quickly scrawled in ink, others more carefully daubed in wash, show us foxes, feet, and streetlights at night. Scenes, it almost seems, from some storyboard of dreams, dreamt at the edge of sleep.“

This is not the duo’s first project together. Last year Thorpe and Smit-Dicks created an installment for the Howard Park Institute located in Toronto. For the month of February, their poem was displayed on the “Howard Park Institute Window”.

The Unexpected officially launches Thursday, March 10 at the G Gallery in Toronto. Visitors should enter on Foxley Pl., just north of Argyle Street. The event runs from 7 pm to 9 pm. There will be a $15 cover charge.

Places Journal, an Academic Partner of the Daniels Faculty, recently published the first volume of the Places Books series, titled Where Are the Women Architects? by Despina Stratigakos. This short paperback grew out of two articles written for Places: “Unforgetting Women Architects” and “What I Learned from Architect Barbie.”

From Princeton University Press:

For a century and a half, women have been proving their passion and talent for building and, in recent decades, their enrollment in architecture schools has soared. Yet the number of women working as architects remains stubbornly low, and the higher one looks in the profession, the scarcer women become. Law and medicine, two equally demanding and traditionally male professions, have been much more successful in retaining and integrating women. So why do women still struggle to keep a toehold in architecture? Where Are the Women Architects? tells the story of women's stagnating numbers in a profession that remains a male citadel, and explores how a new generation of activists is fighting back, grabbing headlines, and building coalitions that promise to bring about change.

Despina Stratigakos, the author of Where Are the Women Architects?, is an architectural historian and the interim chair of the architecture department at the University of Buffalo. She has previously published five articles on Places Journal, and has published extensively on the history of women in architecture.

Places Journal is “a leading journal of contemporary architecture, landscape, and urbanism” that publishes “essays, criticism, photography, and narrative journalism, as well as peer-reviewed scholarship that deserves a wide audience.” Places Books is a recent project undertaken by Places Journal in collaboration with Princeton University Press. The series offers readers accessible paperbacks and e-books of writing that developed from Places articles.

The work of alumni Jasmeen Bains (MLA 2013), Matthew Blunderfield (MArch 2014), Javid Alibhai (MArch 2014), Robin Heathcote (MLA 2013), and Benjamin Matthews (MLA 2013) was recently featured in an article written for the Journal of Architectural Education. The article, titled “Grounding Diaspora”, was based on work done for a Fall 2012 option studio taught by Alison Hirsch, Aroussiak Gabrielian, and Andrea Mantin.

Students were asked to reconsider concepts of democracy, justice, citizenship, and multiculturalism (multi-ethnic, multi-racial) in city planning and urban & public space design. Instructors Hirsch and Gabrielian used the student concepts and designs to write an article focusing on the method of instruction used in the course, the global dynamics of migration and settlement, and the cultural practices of ritual and everyday expression in Queens, New York.

From the abstract:

“The term 'diaspora' connotes a dynamic social formation—a process of settlement and a tenuous sense of belonging based on the negotiation between the collective memory of home and responsive adaptations to host locales. While a global phenomenon, the local impact of shifting patterns of settlement in the multicultural city transforms urban spaces through the varied and overlapping inscriptions of new and adapted rituals. Using a Landscape Architecture studio conducted at the University of Toronto as the experimental means through which to investigate diasporic and transnational urban settlement and its implications for design, this paper focuses on final proposals for the case study site—a particular area of contestation in Queens, New York—as well as the pedagogical methodology used to generate them.” 

To view the full article, visit the Journal of Architectural Education.

Join Shift Magazine in celebrating the launch of this year's publication. SHIFT16 showcases student work created by Architecture and Visual Studies undergraduates. The third issue focuses on reactions: emotional responses and physical impulses generated from images/representations/symbols have been combined to create the collection of student work featured in the magazine. 

The official launch will be held Saturday, April 16th in the lobby of the Daniels Faculty building (230 College Street) from 3PM to 5PM. Refreshments and free copies of SHIFT16 will be provided. An afterparty will also be held at 10PM in Kensington Market. The exact location will be announced on the Facebook event page closer to the date: https://www.facebook.com/events/1722101428070055/

Shift Magazine is the annual undergraduate publication of the John H. Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, & Design at the University of Toronto.

List of Contributors to SHIFT16:
Lindsay Wu
Tawny Stoiber
Josh Silver
Rupa Morzaria
Valerie Marshall
Abby Yu 
Bo Zhang 
Kathy Zhong
Danni Zhang
Alexandra Kalman
Charlene Lo
Aisha Ali
Sebastian Lopez
Tala Alatassi
Megan Tan
Marienka Bishop-Kovac
Jessie Ji Huang
Lindsay Wu
Vincent Yung
Andrew Keung
Sunny Kim

Editorial Team:
Alexia Hovis, Editor In Chief
Najia Fatima, Editor
Emily Suchy, Editor
Valerie Marshall, Architecture Editor
Phat Le, Editor
Ashita Parekh, Editor
Abby Yu, Layout Designer
Josie Northern, Layout Designer
Isaac Seah, Website Designer
Jayvee Doroteo, Website Designer
Monique Lizardo, Communications Rep.
Gianina Ramos, Communications Rep.

Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture program Alissa North served as a guest editor of the most recent edition of Landscapes|Paysages magazine – the publication of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects. The issue focused on the teaching and the practice of landscape architecture, and featured articles by several members and alumni of the Daniels Faculty.

“In this issue, we are particularly interested in those areas where knowledge is flourishing, and especially the exciting and productive interstices between academia and practice,” writes North.

Shelley Long (MLA 2015) wrote an article about “hybrid practices” — a strategy used by some practitioners that combines teaching with practice as a way to incorporate theory into their built work and practicality to their theory. The recent graduate, who is now working as a Landscape Designer at Hapa Collaborative in Vancouver, highlighted North Design Office — the firm of Professors Pete North and Alissa North — as an example of a innovative teaching-based practice.

“Whether the project is a residential garden or international competition, Alissa and Peter North of North Design Office seek out such opportunities to further their investigations into regenerative and performative landscape,” writes Long. "Both professors at the University of Toronto, the Norths’ temporary public art installations experiment with new materials and technologies in a temporary situation for two-to-four years, testing and monitoring them with the intention to apply the principles in future larger public space projects.

Long also described Claude Cormier (BLA 1986) as a designer dedicated to educating clients about good practice, writing, “this type of design leadership through risk-taking is a prevailing attitude at Claude Cormier + Associés (CC+A) in Montreal, where a strong conviction to do only public work and to do something new on every project brings with it the ongoing challenges of getting inventive designs built in low-bid and risk-averse public environments.”

In the article titled "Entangled with the Real World," Jordan Lypkie (MLA 2016) profiled the participation of Daniels Faculty Master of Landscape Architecture students in a design charrette at the Evergreen Brickworks.

“For second and third year students from the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto, an Evergreen Brickworks design charrette provided a platform for students to make connections with notable practitioners, including many local landscape architects and national and international icons,” writes Lypkie. The article explored other design/build opportunities for students, including an elective course taught by Professor Pete North on phytoremediation technologies and regenerative landscapes.

In "Gleaning an Ephemeral Wilderness," MLA candidate Kamila Grigo argued for a closer collaboration between native plant nursery staff and landscape architects.

From the article: 

“Form in native nursery landscapes is typically considered aesthetically irrelevant: people and machines must produce crops as efficiently as possible. Nonetheless, within this industrial farming lies potential for closer collaboration between native nursery professionals and landscape architects, not necessarily to aestheticize, but to uncover new typologies. Our practices can be optimized, not only to jump-start succession at sites further afield, but also to magnify a key characteristic of these nurseries not iterated often enough: namely, that they create habitats for local species."

Assistant Professor Elise Shelley wrote the featured article, "Designing Play," on the nuances of playground design in light of stringent Canadian Standards Association standards that have transformed the playing field since their introduction in the 1980s. “In this context, custom designed play spaces which take advantage of unique site characteristics are unaffordable luxuries,” writes Shelley. “Nature is ignored in favour of the tabula rasa, out-of-the catalogue method of playground design.”

Michael Good (MLA 2015) was one of four authors – along with Leila Marie Farah, Mark Gorgolewski, and John Han – of the article "Vivarium: A Sky Condo," which describes the team’s submission to the NYC Sky Condo idea competition. “The Vivarium proposal, our submission to the NYC Sky Condo competition, demonstrates how humans and bugs can coexist and how the latter can be a source of income, ecological regeneration, beauty and protein.”

An article by Robert McIntosh (MLA 2015) and Joanne Proft, explored three university landscapes in various design stages, including the University of Toronto’s St. George Campus, the subject of the Landscape of Landmark Quality competition that was launched in 2015. “The proposal [by KPMB Architect, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA), and Urban Strategies] makes simple, bold moves that unveil the landscape’s hidden potential, by creating new gathering spaces connected by wide, granite-paced pedestrian walkways, and respecting and building on the rich history throughout the campus,” writes McIntosh and Proft. “By opening the door to new ideas, it has shifted the focus back onto engaging landscape and design.”

Assistant Professor Alissa North has published a new book entitled Operative Landscapes: Building Communities Through Public Space.

Operative Landscapes looks at the "interaction between landscape projects, building development, and urban planning, resulting in neighborhoods and city quarters that offer a higher quality of life." Two hundred pages and beautifully designed, the book showcases projects from around the world, from those in the conceptual and planning stages, to those that have been constructed and are continuing to evolve.

"Urban open space is an ideal medium for positive community transformation, in its ability to be continually remolded and shaped to suit community needs," writes North in the introduction.

Operative Landscapes can now be purchase through Amazon here.

On Wednesday, January 25, Daniels Associate Professor Pina Petricone is launching her new book Concrete Ideas: Material to Shape a City. To celebrate, she is hosting an evening of wine, cheese, and book signing at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

Date: Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Time: 6:00 - 8:00 PM
Location: Larry Wayne Richards Gallery, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, 230 College Street

Concrete Ideas: Material to Shape a City is about possibilities in concrete architecture. It visually speculates, through a series of montages, drawings and photographs, about concrete architecture’s capacity as an urban catalyst, its potential for defining cities and for virtuosity in urban renewal. It asks; given the now mainstream nanotechnologies that transform the performance of materials at the molecular level without fundamentally changing the material aesthetic, can we anticipate and provoke a change in its inherent authority, perception and aesthetic culture? It represents a series of recognizable brutalist examples from around the world to be read alongside contemporary ‘new concrete’ constructions, to ultimately render their ‘generation’ undistinguishable. The work uses the case of Toronto with its predominant 60s and 70s brutalist stock, and unique minus 30° to plus 30° Canadian climate, to test these speculations with building projects that challenge the limits of concrete performance. With contributions from architects and thinkers such as Mark West, George Baird, Will Bruder, and Charles Waldheim, among others, Concrete Ideas offers a seductive argument for the reconsideration of this age-old building material as supple, light, and instrumental in the re-presentation of existing concrete ‘citizens’.