The Daniels Faculty’s Adrian Phiffer (Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream) has been awarded a 2023 Architectural Education Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). 

The award, in the category of Creative Achievement, recognizes Design Studio 2: Site, Matter, Ecology, and Indigenous Storywork, the second studio in the Faculty’s Master of Architecture core studios sequence. 

Developed in partnership with a team of Indigenous advisers, including the citizens of the Ho:dinösöni/Six Nations of the Grand River, Design Studio 2 encompasses two interconnected design projects interwoven with workshops illuminating Indigenous ways of being, ways of knowledge and traditional design practises.

The first project tasks students with imagining a new Haudenosaunee Centre of Excellence where the modest building currently housing the Woodland Cultural Centre sits in Brantford, while the second “advances the explorations from Project 1 at the scale of a building via the design of a Seedbank at Kayanase, on the Six Nations of the Grand River land.”

The syllabus was developed in collaboration with alumnus and co-instructor James Bird (Knowledge Keeper of the Dënesųlįné and Nêhiyawak Nations and a residential school survivor), the late Alfred Keye (Lead Faith Keeper at the Seneca Longhouse), Amos Key Jr. (Faith Keeper of the Longhouse at Six Nations of Grand River Territory and a member of the Daniels Faculty’s First Peoples Leadership Advisory Group), Janis Monture (Executive Director of the Woodland Cultural Centre) and Patricia Deadman (Curator at the Woodland Cultural Centre).

Other contributors to the course include Carole Smith (Administrative Team Lead, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Kerdo Deer (Cultural Coordinator, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Nina Hunt (Junior Botanist, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Erin Monture (CEO, Grand River Employment and Training Inc.) and Matthew Hickey (Partner at Two Row Architect).

In addition, Phiffer cites the “incredible support” offered by Wei-Han Vivian Lee, Director of the Faculty’s Master of Architecture program.

A “concrete response” to Answering the Call: Wecheehetowin, the University of Toronto’s follow-up to the report by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Design Studio 2 specifically addresses Call to Action No. 17, which proposes the integration of “significant Indigenous curriculum content” in all of U of T’s divisions by 2025.

Among the stated course objectives are engaging with Indigenous worldviews, exploring the concept of relational accountability, and understanding the meaning of contextualizing and re-contextualizing.

“The final studio projects are developed in response to real site, program and cultural demands,” a course précis notes. “The results make an impact in the life of the community.”

Based in Washington, D.C., ACSA was founded in 1912 by 10 charter members and now represents more than 200 schools in the United States and Canada. 

Its Architectural Education Awards, handed out annually, are bestowed in a range of categories, with the Creative Achievement Awards recognizing specific initiatives in teaching, design, scholarship, research or service that advance architectural education.

Images 1 and 2: Design Studio 2 students conduct a site visit at Kayanase, on the Six Nations of the Grand River land, as part of their two-project coursework. The second project in the studio involved designing a seedbank for the site.

A tree planting and additions to Forestry’s commemorative Woodwall were on the program when the Daniels Faculty community gathered at the Earth Sciences Centre on November 24 to celebrate past and present forestry achievements. 

The ironwood tree (Ostrya virginiana) was planted in the Carolinian Forest Courtyard in honour of former professor Erik Jorgensen, who founded the University of Toronto’s Shade Tree Research Laboratory in the 1960s and is considered the father of urban forestry, a previously unexplored branch of forestry studies that he largely defined and promoted. 

Born in Denmark in 1921, Jorgensen and his colleagues at the Shade Tree Lab were especially instrumental in the study and control of Dutch Elm Disease (DED). Jorgensen passed away in 2012. 

Others honourees on the 24th included a dozen new additions to Forestry’s commemorative Woodwall, located inside the Earth Sciences Centre. Initiated in 2007, when Forestry at U of T celebrated its 100th birthday, the Woodwall recognizes illustrious alumni, faculty and staff on an artfully hung array of individual square wood plaques. 

The installation of the 12 new plaques — an initiative supported by Forestry’s Class of 1966 and led by alumnus Derek Coleman, who acquired his Bachelor of Science degree in Forestry that year — completes the current display.  

“Our increasing awareness that forestry reserves are key to mitigating climate change,” says Dean Juan Du, who attended both events and addressed attendees afterward, “makes forestry knowledge more important than ever. The research and instruction done in forestry at the University of Toronto has been vital in contributing to regional and national practices and policies. Now that our various forestry programs share a home with our programs in architecture, landscape architecture, visual studies and urban design, we have an opportunity to refine our educational and research approaches with a more comprehensive understanding of one environment, the natural alongside the built.” 

This perspective resonated with many in attendance, says Forestry Director Sandy Smith, who describes attendees as “a very receptive crowd of urban foresters who have been waiting for this opportunity to build on the beginnings of urban forestry at U o T.” 

“It was great to get together in person and to celebrate past achievements in urban forestry,” she adds. “Everyone who participated was excited by the new vision for forestry at Daniels shared by the Dean.” 

Among those on hand for the planting in the Carolinian Forest Courtyard, a studiously maintained space studded with native trees and shrubs, was Erik Jorgensen’s granddaughter, Stoney Baker.  

The names completing the Woodwall include Dr. Smith, Dr. Coleman, Dr. Shashi Kant, Dr. Sally Krigstin, Dr. Jay Malcolm, Deborah Paes, Fred Pinto, Dr. Danijela Puric-Mladenovic, Dr. Mohini Sain, Dr. Sean Thomas, Tony Ung and Amalia Veneziano. 

Image slideshow: 1. Attendees gather in the Earth Sciences Centre after the November 24 tree planting honouring former professor Erik Jorgensen, a pioneer of urban forestry. 2. Forestry Director Sandy Smith and alumnus Derek Coleman (Class of ’66) unveil the newest honourees on Forestry’s Woodwall, which recognizes illustrious alumni, faculty and staff both past and present. 3. Daniels Faculty Dean Juan Du addresses the gathering after both ceremonies. (Photos by Evan Donohue and George Wang)

Banner image: Erik Jorgensen’s granddaughter, Stoney Baker (holding shovel), joined Dean Du (third from right), Forestry Director Smith (second from right) and others for the tree planting ceremony in honour of her grandfather. Jorgensen founded the Shade Tree Research Laboratory at U of T in the 1960s. (Photo by Evan Donohue)

Housing Multitudes, the exhibition conceived and co-curated by Daniels Faculty professors Richard Sommer and Michael Piper, has been reviewed in the November 22 edition of The Globe and Mail.

Subtitled Reimagining the Landscapes of Suburbia, the exhibition uses Toronto as a laboratory to create a composite big picture of how the postwar suburban templates that characterize many North American cities can be transformed into denser, more thoughtfully designed versions better suited for new realities.

In his review of the show, Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic notes that, in its exploration of “this vast territory,” it “asks a good question: Can we find a better way to build?”

The co-curators, Bozikovic writes, “present an incisive analysis of what’s happening across the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area and offer solutions — some utopian and some very practical — for the next century.”

The exhibition, which conveys its themes and scenarios through films, models, graphic-novel-like stories and monumental panoramas, has been on view in the Daniels Building’s Architecture and Design Gallery since October 20, when it was kicked off with a well-attended opening reception.

Early in 2023, a symposium centred around the themes raised by the show will be hosted at the Faculty by Professors Sommer and Piper. Topics and participants are still being organized and will be announced closer to the date.

In the meantime, Housing Multitudes will be on view in the A and D Gallery until February 17. The gallery is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. Admittance is free and open to all.

To view a PDF of the Globe and Mail review, click here.

The fiery red leaves of the giant sugar maple on the southeast edge of Spadina Circle have prompted many a passerby to stop and gawk over the last several weeks. Even amid other colourful specimens, the blazing scarlet display stands out, although it’s hardly an outlier in the autumn splendour department either on campus or across Toronto right now.

Are this year’s fall hues unusually spectacular? Yes, says Sean Thomas, professor of forestry at the Daniels Faculty and a longtime associate editor at the journal Tree Physiology. This season, he notes, a perfect storm of climatic conditions have coalesced to produce especially vibrant leaf tones. He broke down the whys and hows.

Why do leaves change colour? What’s the science behind it?

There is a common misconception that autumnal leaf-colour change is due entirely to degradation of chlorophyll that “unmasks” other pigments that are already there. This is true basically with yellow colouration, which is mainly due to carotenoid pigments. However, red colours in fall foliage are due to newly produced anthocyanin pigments, which raises an intriguing functional biology question: What is the adaptive value in leaves producing new pigments just before the leaves are to be shed?

There are a couple of hypotheses, but the explanation that I think has received the most support is that anthocyanin pigments are playing a role as a “sunscreen” that better enables trees to recover nutrients from senescing leaves. It turns out that the breakdown products of chlorophyll are highly reactive, particularly under high UV exposure and low temperatures. Without the protection offered by anthocyanins, free radicals are generated from the breakdown products of chlorophyll that disrupt the process of nutrient recovery. Some anthocyanins also are antioxidants and scavenge the free radicals, so there are likely two aspects to their protective function during leaf senescence.

This “nutrient recovery hypothesis” predicts that anthocyanin production should be greatest when temperatures are low (but still above freezing, since frost events kill leaves) and light levels are high. This pattern is widely supported. Demonstrating that anthocyanin production actually increases nutrient recovery itself is more difficult to demonstrate, but there is some evidence for this as well.

So the colours are more vivid this year? 

Compared to last year, yes. Consistent with the theory, last fall was a relatively warm one in the GTA, without near-frost events until well into November — and also relatively cloudy conditions. This year had the right combination [for brighter colour] of cold weather events, lack of drought or a hard frost, and relatively sunny conditions.

Why do people react so strongly to red tones, as we’ve seen with the single sugar maple on Spadina Circle?

I think the accepted psychological theory is that red provokes strong emotional reactions because it is a danger cue. But what happens when the entire landscape is red, or the colour is rendered on such a large scale? To speculate wildly outside of my area of expertise, a red forest landscape may initially provoke a kind of alarm reaction, to which viewers then acclimate, and this acclimation is pleasantly stimulating. Perhaps this is a bit like spicy food: “Hot” flavours are due to pain receptors, and the relaxation of the pain response releases endorphins.

Banner image by Zheren Zheng

The Daniels Faculty’s Centre for Landscape Research, led by Assistant Professor Fadi Masoud, will host the first post-pandemic gathering of the Great Lakes Higher Education Consortium this week during a three-day invite-only conference dedicated to the health and resilience of the vast Great Lakes Basin.

From Thursday to Saturday (September 29 to October 1), more than 30 designers, policy experts, planners, engineers and ecologists from around the Great Lakes region will meet in Toronto for a workshop on the critical role that blue-green infrastructure will play in the future adaptation of the basin to climate change. The majority of discussions and panels will take place in the Daniels Building on Friday and Saturday. This workshop will be preceded by a tour on Thursday of important aquatic sites in the Greater Toronto Area, including the Lower Don Lands on downtown Toronto’s waterfront and the Jim Tovey Lakeview Conservation Area and Bayview Village Site in Mississauga.

“This workshop,” say conference co-organizers Masoud and James Wasley of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, “aims to chart a clear path for the practice of integrative blue-green infrastructure design in service of a more climate-ready and resilient Great Lakes Basin.”

Launched in 2020, the Great Lakes Higher Education Consortium was co-founded by the Council of the Great Lakes Region (CGLR), the University of Toronto and the University of Illinois System to address the most pressing socio-economic and environmental challenges facing the region by promoting regular and impactful collaborations among academics, industry and governments. In 2021, four other major universities joined the Consortium. It is currently being administered by the CGLR.

This week’s conference, entitled Reimagining Water and sponsored by the CGLR, will look at blue-green infrastructure design through the lenses of just about every relevant field, including architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, civil and environmental engineering and the related sciences and public policy arenas.

Among the specific topics to be covered during the workshop, which Dean Juan Du will kick off with welcoming remarks on Friday morning, include conservation governance, emerging obstacles to design and governance innovation, keeping up with the changing science, and projective future models and partners.

“Synthesizing these diverse fields of knowledge,” say Masoud and Wasley, “is the daily work of design professionals in this field. Our goal is to better connect academic research to the cutting edge of the profession.”

For more information on the workshop and its mandate, contact Assistant Professor Masoud.

The Daniels Faculty’s Jane Wolff, Professor in Landscape Architecture, has been awarded this year’s Margolese National Design for Living Prize.

Awarded annually by the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, the honour recognizes a Canadian designer whose work and advocacy in the built environment addresses the pressing human and environmental challenges of our time, improving lives and communities in the process.

In its citation, the 2022 jury noted how Wolff’s “work on landscape literacy has had a significant impact on our collective understanding of critical environmental issues. Her human-centric tools of writing, hand drawing and public engagement reach a wide audience without compromising the complexity of the subject matter.”

“I am thrilled and honoured to be recognized by an organization focused on design as a means of addressing urgent, complicated questions about the places we live and the way we live in them,” says Wolff.

“The prize makes it possible to begin working right now in even more public, more collaborative ways — and that’s a chance to bring more people into the conversation.”

For Wolff, the past 12 months have been a banner year professionally. In addition to the Margolese Prize win, her recent book BAY LEXICON was awarded a 2022 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize, established by the Foundation for Landscape Studies and now administered by the University of Virginia’s Center for Cultural Landscapes.

This past spring, moreover, her Toronto Landscape Observatory, an interactive installation co-curated with Susan Schwartzenberg, was a highlight of this year’s Toronto Biennial of Art.

On October 3, Wolff will officially accept her Margolese Prize at a presentation and panel discussion in Vancouver. The ceremony will be held at the Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre on the UBC campus.

The Daniels Faculty is pleased to announce that Dhaka-based architect Marina Tabassum is the 2022-2023 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design. 

Since establishing her practice, MTA, in 2005, Tabassum has built a growing body of work acclaimed for its sustainability, ultra-locality and thoughtful material choices.  

In 2016, she was awarded the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for what is perhaps her best-known project to date: the Bait ur Rouf Jame Mosque in the Bangladeshi capital. Last year, she received the prestigious Soane Medal, which recognizes the work of architects, educators or critics who have furthered the public’s understanding of architecture. Tabassum has taught at architecture schools in Bangladesh, Europe and the United States, and has lectured around the world. 

“We are thrilled that Marina will be serving as the Daniels Faculty’s Gehry Chair this year,” says Dean Juan Du. “Her work uniquely addresses the social and ecological challenges of today through architectural design. With all of her projects, Marina consistently engages local culture and environmental context sensitively and innovatively to create meaningful, enduring architecture for and with communities.” 

MTA's Bait ur Rouf Jame Mosque in Dhaka won the 2016 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

During her appointment as Gehry Chair, Tabassum will lead a year-long research studio for third-year Master of Architecture students at the Faculty. She will kick off her time here with a public lecture in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building on September 15 at 6:30 p.m.  

“I am looking forward to my time at the University of Toronto,” says Tabassum. “The Gehry Chair is a research-based studio. In the era of the Anthropocene, we need to reassess the agendas of architecture and explore the new roles architects can adopt as agents for change. The studio will explore current exemplary models being tried out by architects around the world in order to formulate their own ideas.” 

In particular, Tabassum adds, “my studio will focus on Architecture of Transition. We will study various forms of mass displacement of people due to war, conflict and climate-related crises, among others, and seek out various responses by architects and other professionals. We will also address the issues of permanence and temporality in architecture and the roles materials and construction play in it.”   

“Marina’s practice,” says Wei-Han Vivian Lee, director of the Faculty’s Master of Architecture program, “is unique in its devotion to the planning of sustainable communities. Her projects address humanitarian issues through thoughtful design, a celebration of vernacular craft, and experimentation with material use. So many of our faculty and students are interested in these issues, and we are honoured that she will be here to share her expertise with the Daniels Faculty community.” 

Named in honour of Frank O. Gehry, the Toronto-born designer of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Gehry Chair brings an international architect to the Faculty every year to deliver a public lecture and enrich the student learning experience. The endowed role was established in November 2000 by Indigo Books and Music founder Heather Reisman and 45 other donors; they contributed $1 million, which was matched by U of T.  

Over the years, past Gehry Chairs have included Daniel Libeskind (2002-2003), Preston Scott Cohen (2003-2004), Merrill Elam (2004-2005), Diane Lewis (2005-2006), Will Bruder (2006-2007), Jürgen Mayer H (2007-2008), Wes Jones (2008-2009), Mitchell Joachim (2009-2010), Nader Tehrani (2010-2011), Hrvoje Njiric (2011-2012), Josemaría de Churtichaga (2013-2014), Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee (2016-2017), Amale Andraos and Dan Wood (2017-2018), Aljoša Dekleva and Tina Gregorič (2019-2020), Douglas Cardinal (2020-2021) and Lina Ghotmeh (2021-2022). 

For more information on Tabassum and MTA, click here. 

It has turned out to be an exciting summer for a pair of Daniels Faculty MVS students, each of whom have earned rare opportunities both in Canada and abroad to hone their talents and skills.  

To name just one of her accomplishments this season, Omolola Ajao, a Master of Visual Studies candidate in Studio Art, has been taking part in the Doc Accelerator program, a “bespoke private lab” run by the documentary-film organization HotDocs to foster the careers of emerging filmmakers. “Her films,” HotDocs says of Ajao, a Nigerian-Canadian who is one of 14 2022 fellows there, “waver and work within documentary and narrative, [revolving] around consciousness, temporality and spatiality.” 

The Doc Accelerator program will allow Ajao to undertake in-depth career workshops and engage with industry experts, promoting real-world skill development in the process. Her past documentary work has already been screened internationally and even garnered a Canadian Screen Award. She was also a 2021/22 fellow at TIFF. 

But that’s not all: In addition to participating in this year’s Doc Accelerator program, Ajao is the Daniels Faculty’s first-ever Flaherty Film Seminar Fellow. An intensive week-long “process of screening and exchange” that attracts some of documentary film’s best artists, curators and programmers, Flaherty describes itself as the world’s leading seminar for experimental moving image practice. This year — the fellowships’ 67th — the seminar was held from June 24 to July 1 both online and in person at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. Ajao’s fellowship was supported by the Flaherty Film Seminar and the Canada Council for the Arts.  

And there’s more: Ajao’s itinerary this summer also includes a Hambige Center Artists’ Residency in Rabun Gap, Georgia, some 186 kilometres northeast of Atlanta. One of the first artist communities in the U.S., the Center was established by artist’s-model-turned-weaver Mary Hambidge in 1934 and has a distinguished history of supporting creative thinkers of all kinds through self-directed residency programs. Current residencies, which provide successful applicants with private studios, living spaces and meals, range from two to four weeks. Ajao is using hers to conduct research and production work on her forthcoming thesis project. 

Meanwhile, fellow Visual Studies student Atif Khan, MVS candidate in Curatorial Studies, is also venturing abroad. Through a biannual international-travel award administered by the Art Museum at the University of Toronto and Hart House, he’ll be taking in the 2022 Venice Biennale, which opened this year in April and closes in November, as well as a couple of Germany’s leading cultural events.  

Established by Reesa Greenberg, an internationally renowned scholar on museums and exhibition studies, the award bestowed on Khan recognizes academic excellence among Curatorial Studies students at the end of their first semester by supporting travel to Europe for study and research at the Venice Biennale.

In addition to visiting Venice, Khan is slated to attend both the 15th edition of contemporary-art exhibition documenta in Kassel and the 2022 Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art.

As part of his VIS1004 MVS internship requirements, he will also be conducting preparatory work on his 2023 thesis exhibition through a two-week research program with the National Archeif, the National Archives of the Netherlands.

Banner images: Master of Visual Studies students Omolola Ajao (left) and Atif Khan (right) are broadening their academic horizons this summer through artistic residencies and work-study trips.

Nicollo Abe, a fourth-year architecture student, has been recognized by the University of Toronto Libraries for his innovative research project on mobility and architecture, called “Architecture on Modern European Banknotes: In Search of Stability through Abstract Circulation.” 

Each year, U of T Libraries recognizes undergraduate students from various faculties with the Patricia and Peter Shannon Wilson Undergraduate Research Prize. This prize provides students writing a research essay or assignment with an opportunity to reflect on their information-seeking experience while showcasing their research skills beyond the classroom. Abe’s effective and innovative use of various university libraries’ information sources led to his recognition.  

Completed as part of the ARC451H: Mobility and Architecture course at the Daniels Faculty, Abe’s essay explores the cultural impact of currency imagery on architecture by focusing on the Euro banknotes of 1996. He considers how architecture performs as a vehicle of symbolic power and is utilized as a cultural technique that shapes national identities while maintaining global imaginaries. Figures and photographs guide readers as they go through 12 pages of content, concluding with a question concerning architecture’s role in the digital age. 
 
“What I learned throughout this information-seeking process,” Abe says, “was the value of images and photos [in both] the Eberhard Zeidler Library and U of T Libraries’ online database. Whether my primary or secondary sources were printed or digital, there were many times when I relied upon the images that are embedded in them. Perhaps this was due to the nature and scope of the research, but I found that photographs and illustrations are essential components in knowledge-making and research.”  

Abe’s sponsoring faculty member was Daniels Faculty Sessional Lecturer Ipek Mehmetoğlu, who worked closely with him throughout his research process. Abe was able to critically reflect, says Mehmetoğlu, “on the contribution of his sources to the development of his topic on European banknotes and architectural abstraction and mobility. His research proves his curiosity for innovation, self-reliability and good understanding and effective use of secondary and primary sources.”

As an undergraduate student, Abe was able to use the knowledge he acquired in his architecture program to contribute to an international discussion on imagery and architecture. His research can now be found on TSpace, U of T’s research repository, here.  

With files from a U of T News story by Larysa Woloszansky

Banner image: Daniels Faculty architecture student Nicollo Abe, winner of a 2022 Patricia and Peter Shannon Wilson Undergraduate Research Prize, is pictured second from left. The prize is given out by U of T Libraries annually to undergraduate essay writers who demonstrate superlative research skills.

Newly minted BAAS grad Jessie Pan’s research into the use of trees in building simulation has come full circle in a little over a year.

It started in May of 2021 when she won the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award to study how better tree modelling could improve building designs. Flash forward 12 months and she will be presenting the fruits of her research, which include a framework for the creation of more dynamic tree models than typically used by designers, at the e-Sim conference in Ottawa on June 22.

“I am excited about the presentation,” says Pan, who received her Honours Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies degree on June 15. “It is a great honour to be presenting my first paper at my first conference.”

Titled Simulating the Impact of Deciduous Trees on Energy, Daylight and Visual Comfort: Impact Analysis and a Practical Framework for Implementation, the peer-reviewed paper that Pan will be presenting at eSim encompasses the research she undertook with Assistant Professor Alstan Jakubiec over the past year.

The current practice in building simulation, she notes, tends to use solid or simplified trees, disregarding their complex and fluctuating effects, especially when it comes deciduous varieties. 

“Deciduous trees are sophisticated due to tree phenology and leaf senescence that impact their foliage density and colour throughout the year,” Pan explains. “We created a framework for developing dynamic tree models that integrate temporal schedules of colour change, leaf drop and regrowth, as well as physical measurements of gap fractions.”

What she and Jakubiec discovered was that, “when compared to our detailed tree models,” there are “significant differences in lighting, heating and cooling loads when using simplified models…or no trees at all.”

More sophisticated tree modelling, in short, can quantifiably lead to better, more energy-efficient buildings.

The eSim Building Simulation Conference — organized by Carleton University, National Research Council Canada and Natural Resources Canada — is slated to be held at Carleton on June 22 and 23. The theme this year — the conference’s 12th — is Simulating Buildings for the New Normal, with a focus on “using building performance simulation to model and research indoor air quality and other strategies for mitigating risks related to transmission of infectious disease.”

Typically, some 200 delegates attend each conference, with more than 75 peer-reviewed papers presented. Pan is scheduled to present hers on the first day of the event.

In addition to receiving the NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award, Pan also won the 2021 Project StaSIO Summer Challenge, which was focused on the subjects of daylight and glare, for her graphics illustrating her findings.

She created the graphics using Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Excel, Grasshopper/Rhino and Python. The tools used in the simulation analysis were ClimateStudio, Radiance and Python.

The entire project was “my first exposure to academic research and I am very grateful for this experience with Professor Jakubiec,” Pan says. “This opportunity has jumpstarted my research interest, skillset and background, and I look forward to applying it all during my future graduate studies.”

Banner image: BAAS student Jessie Pan poses for a portrait after receiving an Academic Merit Award during the Daniels Faculty’s Graduation and Awards Celebration at 1 Spadina Crescent on June 14. (Photo by Sara Elhawash)