Matthew Jull, an assistant professor from the University of Virginia, has published a review of Many Norths, by Associate Professor Mason White and Lola Sheppard, in the most recent issue of the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE).

Given the dearth of books on architecture in the arctic, the 471 page volume, which "charts the unique spatial realities of Canada's Arctic region" is "a timely and critical contribution to design research on the Arctic," writes Jull. "As we seek to develop new ways of designing and adapting buildings and cities globally as a result of the impacts of climate change, the Arctic — and the research presented in Many Norths — will provide an important framework and reference."

White and Sheppard are co-founders of Lateral Office, which has been recognized for its extensive research in the north. In 2012 it won the Arctic Inspiration Prize. In 2014, Lateral Office represented Canada at the International Architecture Exhibition of Venice Biennale, and was honoured with a "Special "Mention" for "Its in-depth study of how modernity adapts to a unique climatic condition and a local minority culture."

Jull's review is available online via JAE's website: http://www.jaeonline.org/articles/reviews-books/many-norths-spatial-pra…

Photo, top: Iqaluit looking east, 2010. Photo by Ed Maruyama, courtesy of the City of Iqaluit.

Associate Professor Zeynep Çelik Alexander's book Kinaesthetic Knowing: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Modern Design "offers the first major intellectual history of kinaesthetic knowing and its influence on the formation of modern art and architecture and especially modern design education."
 

Is all knowledge the product of thought? Or can the physical interactions of the body with the world produce reliable knowledge? In late-nineteenth-century Europe, scientists, artists, and other intellectuals theorized the latter as a new way of knowing, which Zeynep Çelik Alexander here dubs “kinaesthetic knowing.”     

In this book, Alexander offers the first major intellectual history of kinaesthetic knowing and its influence on the formation of modern art and architecture and especially modern design education. Focusing in particular on Germany and tracing the story up to the start of World War II, Alexander reveals the tension between intellectual meditation and immediate experience to be at the heart of the modern discourse of aesthetics, playing a major part in the artistic and teaching practices of numerous key figures of the period, including Heinrich Wölfflin, Hermann Obrist, August Endell, László Moholy-Nagy, and many others. Ultimately, she shows, kinaesthetic knowing did not become the foundation of the human sciences, as some of its advocates had hoped, but it did lay the groundwork—at such institutions as the Bauhaus—for modern art and architecture in the twentieth century.
 

Published by University of Chicago Press, Kinaesthetic Knowing has received rave reviews.

"Zeynep Celik Alexander's stunningly original study of the intersection of emergent laboratory psychology, new pedagogical credos, and artistic practices in late nineteenth-century Germany, is a landmark analysis," said Barry Bergdoll of Columbia University.

Daniel M. Abramson of Boston University called the book extraordinary: "A critical history of design education, this book is exceedingly learned, smart, knowing, original, and, for all that, accessible and well-written. Its impact will be as broad and deep as the work itself."

The book can be purchased online, and is also available at the Daniels Faculty's Eberhard Zeidler Library.

Zeynep Çelik Alexander is an architectural historian whose work focuses on the history of architectural modernism since the Enlightenment. Her current research project explores architectures of bureaucracy from the Kew Herbarium to the Larkin Administration Building. Alexander is a member of Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative and an editor of the journal Grey Room.

Associate Professor Liat Margolis, director of the Daniels Faculty's Master of Landscape Architecture program and assistant dean of research, published an article in the most recent issue of Canadian Architect magazine on the Faculty's award-winning Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory.

Green roofs "are a favourite among designers, policymakers and citizens not only because of this ecological multi-tasking, but also because they transform a vast and underused layer of the city—the roof scape—into a thing of beauty," writes Margolis, but they also perform important functions, such as aid in stormwater management and thermal cooling, and provide a habitat for bees.

Toronto was the first city in North America to create a bylaw that requires the construction of green roofs on new developments. At present, buildings with a Gross Floor Area greater than 2,000 square metres must include a green roof. But as Margolis explains "there are so many different types of green roof products, materials, configurations and dimensions," and a plant's performance may vary based on the climate and conditions in which is it grown. So how do you determine which types of green roofs will reap the most benefits?

Research is ongoing, with a second site of the GRIT Lab now being constructed on the room of the Daniels Building at One Spadina Crescent, but the GRIT Lab's multidisciplinary team of researchers are already collecting results. Visit Canadian Architect's website to read about some of the conclusions and learn more about the GRIT Lab's work.

Launched last summer, StudentDwellTO is an 18-month-long joint-research project being conducted by the University of Toronto, Ryerson, OCAD, and York University to find solutions to one of the biggest issues facing post secondary students in the Greater Toronto Area: affordable housing.

As Romi Levine writes in U of T News, researchers — including Assistant Professors Mauricio Quirós Pacheco from the Daniels Faculty and Marcelo Vieta from OISE, U of T's faculty leads on the project — have developed a strong understanding of the challenges that students face and best practices from around the world.

"One of their early findings," writes Levine, "is that design greatly affects student experiences."

From the article:

The StudentDwellTO team is currently collecting census data with the help of faculty including David Hulchanski, professor at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, and will be conducting focus groups with students and stakeholders to get a clearer picture of the current landscape and future possibilities.

In addition, faculty members are incorporating the study of student housing into their curricula, says Vieta.
 

This fall, Daniels Faculty undergraduate students will use the data and case studies collected to explore ideas for the design of student housing.

Visit U of T News to read the full story.

Image, top by Scott Carncross (March 2017). Part of his Master of Architecture thesis A new Housing through Symbiotic Performance.

Masters of Landscape Architecture student Catherine Howell, along with Assistant Professor Jennifer Drake and Associate Professor Liat Margolis, recently published an article in The Conversation describing that — with the appropriate variables — green roofs can help maintain bee populations in cities. Unfortunately, current green roof practices favour the native bee's non-native relatives. As cities sprawl “into their surroundings, fragmenting animal habitats and replacing vegetation with hard surfaces such as concrete and asphalt,” declining bee populations are  an increasing concern.

As the article explains, it is becoming more understood that a green roof needs to be designed to maximize the benefits specific to its context, and the Daniels Faculty’s GRIT Lab is pioneering this research. Factors such as plant species, building height, and proximity to other habitat patches are important to consider when a green roof is designed with bee populations in mind. For example, bees will rarely visit green roofs over 8 storeys high. Additionally, while the plant species called “sedum” is currently the go-to green roof material, it only favours a small percentage of Toronto’s bee population.

“It’s important to note that roughly 92 per cent of Toronto’s bee species are native,” writes the article's authors. “So, favouring non-native plants [like sedum] can provide habitat for non-native bees over native bees, and could consequently lead to increased competition for those native bees.”

Under the supervision of Drake and Margolis, the article was a result of Howell’s summer work term as Student Lab Manager and Research Assistant at the GRIT Lab. 

Said Howell on the experience:

“I was surprised by how varied green roofs can be, and how the variables (planting type, depth, soil, irrigation type) can have different outcomes. I thought it would be pretty simple, like you can spread out a mat of Sedum and call it a day. But not all green roofs are created equal and you need to figure out the location, the size, and what you want your main objective to be to design one properly. Consciously designing green roofs is incredibly important for maximum effectiveness.”

Photo, top: A wild, non-native bee forages for pollen on the green roof of the University of Toronto’s GRIT Lab.

Assistant Professor Erica Allen-Kim contributed the chapter "Condos in the Mall: Suburban Transnational Typological Transformations in Markham, Ontario" to the book Making Cities Global: The Transnational Turn in Urban History, now available from University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Edited by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz and Nancy H. Kwak, Making Cities Global argues that "combining urban history with a transnational approach leads to a better understanding of our increasingly interconnected world. In order to achieve prosperity, peace, and sustainability in metropolitan areas in the present and into the future, we must understand their historical origins and development."

The publication was recently featured in The Metropole.

"One of the features of the Chinese-dominated ethnoburb in North America has been the densely configured shopping center, in many cases an enclosed plaza or minimall that serves as a social gathering space for a decentralized population," says Allen-Kim. "Condo malls, which were developed and marketed primarily to Asian and Hispanic immigrants in North America, have occupied an unusual position in that qualities of informality and looseness were cultivated rather than repressed by local and transnational developers, investors, and entrepreneurs."

Erica Allen-Kim is an historian of modern architecture and urban design. Her work on global cities and cultural landscapes focuses on issues of memory and citizenship. She is currently completing her first manuscript, Mini-malls and Memorials: Building Little Saigon in American Suburbs, and has published on Vietnamese-American war memorials and the transnational politics of Chinatown gates. Her current book project, Chinatown Modernism, situates the architectural and urban projects of American Chinatowns within the broader context of modern architecture and planning.

Images, top by Luke Duross (MArch 2016) as part of his thesis Retail Revisions: Ownership, Authorship and the Ethnic Mall: 1) Current Ground Floor Expansion, Pacific Mall 2) Original Ground Floor Expansion, Pacific Mall

On September 29, the University of Toronto published its inaugural report  by the newly formed President’s Advisory Committee on the Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainability, which includes contributions from committee member Associate Professor Liat Margolis.

The Committee — struck earlier this year, after it was proposed in the President’s report Beyond Divestment: Taking Decisive Action on Climate Change — was formed to identify ways U of T can meet the “challenges of climate change and sustainability, with a particular focus on research and innovation, teaching, and University operations.”

The Committee builds off and supports the implementation of several commitments made in the Beyond Divestment report that came before it, including

1. Launching a tri-campus clean-tech challenge to encourage environment and energy related entrepreneurship
2. Providing $750,000 to be distributed over three years for climate change related academic initiatives
3. Prioritizing climate change-related themes in selected programs and curricula 
4. Increasing the Utilities Reduction Revolving Fund by 50 per cent (from $5 million to $7.5 million) to encourage more extensive implementation of energy-saving retrofits in our buildings
5. Formally adopting substantially more rigorous energy efficiency standards for capital projects
6. Pursuing opportunities to use our campuses as ‘test beds’ for environmental and sustainability research and best practices
7. Investigating the potential for development of other renewable energy projects
 

By investing time and resources into sustainability targets, the Committee hopes to make sustainability part of the core identity of U of T. To read the full report, visit the Office of the President’s website.

Margolis’s research focuses on the knowledge transfer of multi-performance materials and technologies across disciplines, particularly understanding and articulating the emerging relevance of performative landscapes as urban infrastructure. She was central to the creation of the Green Roof Innovation Testing Lab (GRIT Lab) and serves as its Director. She is also Co-Director of the Centre for Landscape Research (CLR). Last month, Margolis was appointed as the Daniels Faculty’s Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture program and Associate Dean, Research.

Bordering Canada and the United States, North America's Great Lakes are well known as the world's largest body of freshwater, which has made the region an attractive area for urban growth. But what other characteristics — ecological, geological, cultural, and political — are common to the region, which spans two provinces and eight states? And how have they influenced urbanization? How might understanding the Great Lakes basin as one of the continent’s coastal zones help inform future development and design?

Third Coast Atlas: A Prelude to a Plan, by Daniels Faculty Associate Professor Mason White, together with Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, and Daniel Ibañez, provides a multi-layered description of the process of urbanization along North America’s “Third Coast.” The large, hardcover book, filled with maps, plans, diagrams, timelines, photographs, and essays, offers an in-depth description of the region, laying the foundation for future engagement and regional endeavors.

“In a continent that often looks to the powers on its east and west coasts, this book envisions a new international, mid-continent epicenter,” writes Keller Easterling in the Atlas’ Forward. “Third Coast Atlas allows us to imagine a time when serious politicians, planners, and developers would never dream of advocating for urban or regional enterprises without first considering the profound correlative intelligence of territorial design.”

Essays include “Cutting the Corporate Lawn,” an analysis the industry’s environmental imact in the region, by Daniels Faculty Associate Professor Alissa North; and “Good’s Gone, Fine’s just Perfect,” an overview of Toronto’s urban development by Dean Richard Sommer. Daniels Faculty Alumni Geoffrey Thün (MUD 2007), and Heather Braiden (MLA 2005) also contributed to the book.

The Atlas is already receiving critical acclaim: Metropolis Magazine listed it among its top 25 books for Fall.

The Toronto book launch will take place at the Daniels Building at One Spadina on October 24. Save the Date! Information will be posted on our Events page shortly.

Below is a discussion with Clare Lyster and Mason White recorded at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

In recent years, Broward County located in Southeast Florida hasn’t been able to rely on historical data when preparing their prevention measures against flooding; the weather patterns and sea levels have consistently deviated from expected standards. According to Associate Processor Fadi Masoud,"Nowhere in North America are the patterns of precarious coastal development more visible than in South Florida...Thirty-five miles of levees and 2,000 hydraulic pumping stations drain a metropolitan area of 6,137 square miles (15,890 km²), resulting in the ‘world’s largest wet subdivision’ with $152 billion worth of property projected to be below sea level by 2050." As sea levels rise, millions of Americans could be forced to leave their homes.

So how does a city or region plan in the face of such precariousness? Masoud explored an alternative approach to land-use planning in the article "Coding Flux: Redesigning the Migranting Coast," recently published in Scenario Journal. "The pressures of accelerating coastal change demand a new responsive and flexible zoning paradigm that introduces time, process, and potential into land use regulation," writes Masoud.

Working under a collaborative project between MIT's Urban Risk Lab and the University of Toronto's Daniels Faculty, Masoud — with a team that includes Lecturer Ultan Byrne, Mayank Ojha, Aditiya Barve, and Kelly Leilani Main — has been researching and developing a new method of planning for future weather events for Broward County. They call it “flux code zoning” because of its ability to represent a range of projected future conditions.

Four ecological paradigms have had a direct impact on public policy in North America. Image by Fadi Masoud.

“Normative or traditional zoning has historically relied on two conditions: on the regulation of land and the regulation of use,” writes Masoud. “We posit a third condition, a layer of the zoning envelope that introduces time, process, and scenario-driven flexibility into land use regulation.”

Visit Scenario Journal to read the full article.

Photo, top: South Florida’s urban fabric surrounded by water on three sides. Image by Fadi Masoud.

On Wednesday, May 3, 2017, five speakers from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design presented their research at the University of Toronto's event Future Environments: Art and Architecture in Action. The audience learned how architecture defines our environment, be it external environments, such as the green roofs dotting our cities skylines, or internal environments of our buildings.

Dean Richard Sommer and U of T President Meric Gertler provided opening remarks and Nora Young, from CBC’s hit radio show, Spark, moderated the evening.

The event featured presentations by:

• Emerging Canadian designer and researcher Brady Peters presenting Architecture, Atmosphere, Computation;
• Toronto-based scholar, composer and artist, Mitchell Akiyama presenting Matter and Metaphor;
• Director of the Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory, Liat Margolis presenting Green Roofs: Interdisciplinary by Nature;
• Founding partner at the design practice Lateral Office, Mason White presenting Micro-environments;
• Director of Visual Studies, Charles Stankievech presenting The Rare Earth Age of the Canadian Arctic.

“Architecture and art are as much a way of finding the world, as of forming it, and have surprising and often misunderstood historical and contemporary relationships with scientific inquiry,” said Richard Sommer, Dean and Professor of Urbanism at the Daniels Faculty. “This event will present members of the Daniels Faculty whose research moves beyond traditional text and mathematical modes of ideation to explore intersections between design, the environment, and visual culture.”

Barbara Fischer, Executive Director of U of T's Art Museum and Associate Professor in the Daniels Faculty's Visual Studies program, closed out the evening. The audience was invited to view the exhibition It's All Happening So Fast at the Art Museum which focused on the history of the Canadian landscape and the future impact of extraction industries on our perceived national identity.

Watch the talks on the Daniels Faculty Youtube Channel.

This event was brought to you by: Science & Engineering Engagement at the University of Toronto & the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto

Photo, top: Courtesty of Brady Peters - Project Distortion, Distortion Music Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2010 | Photo by Anders Ingvartsen