Every year, graduating students in the Daniels Faculty's Master of Visual Studies program's studio stream work together on a final exhibition, for which each student creates an original art project. This year, with COVID restrictions making it impossible for the public to visit art galleries, the exhibition has moved online.

Four graduating studio students — Matt Nish-Lapidus, Oscar Alfonso, Sophia Oppel, and Simon Fuh — contributed work to this year's MVS Studio Program Graduating Exhibition. With the exception of Oscar's project, which didn't require physical space, all the works were temporarily installed in the Daniels Building. They were documented by a photographer before being taken down.

All those photos and videos are now on public display on the exhibition's website, visualstudies.net. There will be an online exhibition reception on May 27, starting at 5 p.m. For details, visit the exhibition's event page.

Read on for some information on the four student projects. Or visit the virtual exhibition by clicking the link below.

Take me to the virtual exhibition

Matt Nish-Lapidus

Matt's project, titled A Path, is the embodiment of his thinking about the relationships between computers, language, and mysticism. "The Kabbalah, specifically the kind of language mysticism that comes from it, was part of my research and was a big inspiration for where this work went," he says. "What I was trying to explore with these pieces was a way of thinking about computers — specifically their relationship to language, and language as a kind of poetic act of creation."

DO WHILE TRUE. Photograph by Toni Hafkenscheid.

The components of Matt's installation showcase the ways computers can turn words and language into a creative force. One of his works, titled DO WHILE TRUE, consists of a small, black-and-white computer display connected to a tiny computer. Using Logo, a computer programming language that allows users to draw vector graphics with relative ease, he made the display show a looping animation of 10 concentric circles. It's a reference to Ein Sof, a Kabbalah concept related to God's infinite nature.

Halted Moment, Executable. Photograph by Toni Hafkenscheid.

Another work, Halted Moment, Executable, is an LED matrix — another type of computer display — embedded in the surface of a table made to resemble the tiled floor of a server room. A few words at a time, the matrix tries to display the complete text of The Secret Miracle, a short story by Jorge Luis Borges. In the story, the titular "miracle" is that a playwright, sentenced to death by the Nazis during World War II, is granted a mystical yearlong stay of execution so that he can finish writing a play.

Like the story's main character, Halted Moment, Executable needs plenty of time to complete its important work. The display is programmed to scramble the story's lines and paragraphs, making them unintelligible. Only once per year, in a seemingly miraculous (but actually preprogrammed and fully automated) occurrence, do all the words appear in the correct order.

Oscar Alfonso

The idea for Oscar's project, No estoy seguro en nuestros nombres / I’m not sure I remember all of our names, sprung from a literal seed — an avocado seed.

"At the beginning of the pandemic, I started growing plants again, which is what I've done habitually, without realizing it, everywhere I've moved," Oscar says. "As I was growing these avocado trees, I started thinking about everybody that I was no longer close to — that I hadn't spoken to in a while, or that I was physically not close to."

Oscar's avocado plants.

Oscar began reaching out to people he knows, or used to know, including close family members, friends, old coworkers, and former lovers. "I wanted to consider relations as being more than the obvious close friends and family," he says.

He sent out a total of 210 messages, each one inviting the recipient to share a story, or a bit of knowledge, with the avocado trees. He asked that the responses be somehow related to one of five avocado-appropriate themes: obsolescence, travel, diaspora, expectation, or stationariness. In return, he received about 85 responses, mostly letters addressed directly to the avocado plants. Some of the responses were less straightforward — for instance, the one from Oscar's five-year-old cousin in Mexico. "He decided to read a children's book that I had gifted him," Oscar says. "But he can't read English, so he's reading this English-language book from memory, in Spanish. He's got the story, but bits are missing."

Left: An avocado plant and children's toys. Right: A portrait of Oscar as a child.

Oscar compiled all the responses into a book. He will complete his project with a live, online reading of that book, at 1 p.m. on June 5. The avocado trees will be present to receive the collected wisdom.

For details on how to join the reading, visit the exhibition's event page.

Sophia Oppel

Sophia was interested in the way surveillance capitalism controls and documents human bodies, rendering them legible. Her project, being both opened up and flattened, makes this type of surveillance visible and literal by borrowing some of the visual and auditory elements of an airport security checkpoint.

The two-way mirror assembly. Photograph by Toni Hafkenscheid.

At the centre of her installation is a six-foot-by-six-foot metal frame with two-way mirrors mounted in it — the same kinds of mirrors security officials would use to observe suspects without being observed themselves. Mounted to the mirrors are a series of silicone casts of various objects, arranged as if unloaded into airport security bins. A pair of rear projectors cause the casts to light up in sync with a voiceover, coming from a set of speakers. The disembodied voice makes cheerful-sounding, elliptical comments about surveillance culture ("a transparent body is a disciplined body") and commands the visitor to move around the space. The area is illuminated with Verilux HappyLights, a type of light fixture marketed as a treatment for seasonal affective disorder.

A silicone cast. Photograph by Toni Hafkenscheid.

"Sites of capitalist consumption are increasingly equipped with surveillance technologies," Sophia says. "My work is a critique of these things, but it's a complicit critique. The notion of being rendered legible is disturbing, but there's also, at least for me, a desire to be perform legibility and transparency in sites like the airport and in digital networking, where you exchange transparency for access."

"Desire is woven through this. The desire to be transparent is this very insidious thing that many people internalize."

Simon Fuh

"I used to throw parties in my hometown, Regina, Saskatchewan," Simon says. "When I moved to Toronto, I found myself totally immersed in my graduate studies, but also really missing that social aspect. Throwing parties really gave me meaning at that time in my life." For his installation, Memory Theatre, he created an immersive environment intended to give a visitor the somewhat paradoxical feeling of simultaneously being at a party in the present, and recalling a party that happened in the past.

A visitor would see this upon entering the exhibition space. Photograph by Toni Hafkenscheid.

The experience begins when a visitor enters a darkened room. (Simon's installation space was the Daniels Building's main hall.) The sounds of rain and footsteps emanate from speakers in the ceiling.

Inside the darkened room is a sculpture — a square, 12-foot-by-12-foot box with a faint greyish light spilling out from one side. On closer inspection, the visitor discovers that the light is coming from an open door in the side of the sculpture.

Inside the sculpture. Photograph by Toni Hafkenscheid.

Within the sculpture, the aural landscape changes. The visitor hears a murmured phone conversation between two friends. One friend is telling the other friend, in almost too much detail, how to get to an after-hours club called Checkmate. As the audio recording progresses, a soft, low-register bumping, like the bass from distant dance music, begins to rattle the sculpture's walls. Meanwhile, the description of Checkmate gets more and more specific. A voice describes the bouncer, the music, the mood of the room. The party always remains just out of reach, on the cusp of perception.

For Simon, the work is at least partly a response to the pandemic, which has made the very idea of an after-hours party something of a distant memory — the type of memory one might have to fumble around in the dark to locate. "It's totally a nostalgic project," he says. "But it places the nostalgia in the present tense. We're activating memories from the past as though they're happening right now. That way of enacting memory is a really interesting way of thinking about memory's potential for reinvigorating a future event."

The pandemic-era shift to remote learning forced many Daniels Faculty students to get extra creative with their thesis projects. Milan Nikic, who presented his thesis in fall 2020, was no exception.

He had originally planned to display models for his thesis presentation, but the lack of a physical presentation space made him rethink the way he'd present that work. Instead, he ended up creating a 15-minute short film, titled Raft Islands.

Now, that film has gained Milan some international recognition. It was accepted by the International Architecture Film Festival Barcelona, where it will make its international debut as part of a short-film program on May 13.

"New and creative ways of representing architecture have emerged as a result of this pandemic," Milan says. "I never really explored storytelling and film as a medium before my thesis, but I found it to be a powerful tool to communicate the experience and atmosphere of the built environment. There is a lot you can show with just a simple pan of a camera."

The inspiration for Milan's short film came from a trip he took with his thesis advisor, assistant professor Adrian Phiffer, and the other members of Phiffer's thesis-prep studio. The group visited Tofino, British Columbia and made a stop at Freedom Cove, a giant floating home located off the shore of Vancouver Island.

The home — which is so sprawling and complex that it could be considered more of an artificial island — is an agglomeration of 12 floating platforms, cobbled together from salvaged materials. On top of those platforms is an off-the-grid homestead, complete with a cottage, gardens, dance floor, and artificial beach. The owners, Wayne Adams and Catherine King, are a pair of artists who began building the Freedom Cove complex in 1991. They welcomed the students and showed them around.

"I found it really fascinating to see how these two individuals lived in their environment, and how they managed to be self-sufficient atop this piece of floating infrastructure," Milan says.

He decided to use Freedom Cove as a jumping-off point for an imaginative exercise. His thesis project used film to weave a narrative about a future world where entire communities live on floating barges that are tailored to the needs of inhabitants. "I wanted to tell a story about a fictional future community that was inspired by Freedom Cove," Milan says. "As I was building physical models, a specific architecture evolved out of the necessity for them to actually float on water. I was quite interested in telling a story about how collective life was negotiated amongst individuals. Imagining a community on a floating island was a way to amplify that negotiation."

His film is an impressionistic mixture of water imagery and shots of his scale models. "I wanted the designs to feel like they were attainable to almost everybody, in the spirit of Freedom Cove," he says.

The Raft Islands trailer is embedded above. The International Film Festival Barcelona is not open to viewers outside of Spain, but Milan plans to make his full film available online at the conclusion of the festival.

Victoria Cardoso, Erman Akyol, and Eugenia Wong, all first-year students in the Daniels Faculty's Master of Architecture program, jointly created a design project that has been named one of five honourees in this year's SHIFT Challenge, a biennial competition, hosted by the Ontario Association of Architects, that invites students and architects to address social challenges through design.

Their winning project is a proposal for a community-oriented redesign of Ontario Place, the disused public amusement park located on a small chain of artificial islands off Toronto's western shoreline. They originally created the design for a fall semester course at Daniels, professor Ted Kesik's Building Science 1 (ARC1041).

Victoria Cardoso, Erman Akyol, and Eugenia Wong.

Cardoso, Akyol, and Wong, along with the four other groups whose designs were selected by the 2021 SHIFT jury, will present their work during the OAA's Virtual Conference. The online SHIFT event will begin at 4:30 p.m. on May 20, and will be viewable online on the OAA's YouTube channel.

"This was really an opportunity for us to open ourselves up to the field," Eugenia says. "We'll get to present our project not just to teachers and our colleagues, but also to architects, landscape designers, and urban designers. We're hoping to get our proposal out to decision makers and important stakeholders for the site."

The group's project, titled "Ontario Place: On-to-our Next Adventure," is a master plan for the revitalization of Ontario Place, a publicly owned piece of land that operated as an amusement park and exhibition ground from 1971 until 2012, when it was shuttered by Ontario's provincial government.

Although Ontario Place has fallen into disuse, it still has a number of architecturally significant buildings and landscapes designed by architects Eberhard Zeidler and Michael Hough.

Victoria, Erman, and Eugenia's master plan would attempt to draw diverse groups of users back into the site by adding a variety of new amenities, but without destroying or disfiguring any of the existing historic structures. They approached the problem by splitting the Ontario Place site into five different zones, each tailored to a different group of users.

A rendering of the group's proposed sports facility.

In the "play" zone, there would be indoor and outdoor public recreational spaces, including beaches and boardwalks. The "exhibit" zone would preserve two of Ontario Place's most important existing structures, Zeidler's iconic Cinesphere (a ball-shaped Imax theatre) and his "pods," large diamond-shaped structures that hover above Lake Ontario's waters on sets of stilts. Each of the five pods would get a modest interior retrofit for a different type of programming. (For instance, one pod would be an exhibition hall, and another would be a digital arts museum.)

The plan also calls for the addition of new sports facilities and the preservation of the Budweiser Stage, an existing concert venue on Ontario Place's central island.

A rendering of the group's proposed research campus.

But the most radical change proposed in Victoria, Erman, and Eugenia's plan is in the "innovation" zone, where they would add a university research campus to the southern edge of Ontario Place's east island. The campus would include student residences, which would give Ontario Place a permanent population, transforming it from a tourist destination into a neighbourhood.

"For Ontario Place to be sustainable financially, there's no point to just introducing new programming," Eugenia says. "The innovation hub can provide a source of economic activity that can sustain the island without casual visitors. So when casual visitors come there will be restaurants and other amenities available to them."

Top image: A rendering of Ontario Place's pods and Cinesphere.

Batoul Faour, a student in the Daniels Faculty's post-professional architecture program, has been named the first-prize winner in the 2021 Avery Review Essay Prize competition. Her winning essay is a distillation of her Daniels Faculty thesis project, which critically examines the role of architectural glass in exacerbating the damage from last year's catastrophic port explosion in Beirut.

The essay, which won Batoul a $4,000 prize and top billing in the Avery Review's April issue, describes the way shattered window glass piled up in Beirut's streets after the blast. It traces the historical and contemporary uses of glass in Lebanon to reveal the politics behind the fragile material.

Batoul writes:

Desired for its transparency in a country that has none to offer its people, glass in Beirut is a valuable form of absence: it provides unobstructed views of the city beyond. Windows permit one to see without having to smell, hear, or touch the power structures at play beyond the transparent panels. As political and economic corruption flourishes and the outside world grows exponentially more inhospitable, glass proliferates across the city. Glass, in all its many iterations, was the last line of defense for a people attempting to make a life within and around the failures of the Lebanese state.

A material designed to uplift quality of life through light and views, glass has instead become a weapon wielded by a corrupt state. On August 4, it splintered and stabbed for miles across Beirut’s homes and streets — disfiguring, blinding, and murdering. Some victims, left with dozens of stitches, described how the glass hit them like “shooting guns.” Shattered and splintered glass was blamed for causing an overwhelming number of the recorded injuries and deaths.

The Avery Review is a monthly architecture journal published by the Office of Publications at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture. The April issue is readable online.

Read Batoul Faour's winning essay here

Top image: A pile of broken glass in Beirut, after the blast. Photograph by Batoul Faour.

Four graduating Daniels students were among the recipients of this year's University of Toronto Student Leadership Awards, which recognize exemplary service and commitment to the university. We asked them about their time at Daniels, their advice for new students, and what they're planning to do now that they've finished school. Their answers are below.

Kurtis Chen

Kurtis was this year's GALDSU president, and he's an executive member of the Toronto Society of Architects — the youngest one in the society's history. "I'm really interested in standing up for the profession in general, and also in creating a more equitable and inclusive environment at Daniels," he says. He'll be receiving his Master of Architecture this spring.

What was it like finishing your degree during the pandemic?

I gained a little weight. Biking down to work or to school was more a part of my life than I thought it was. But actually, in terms of my education, I think I was pretty lucky. I was in my third year, so I'd developed a network of peers and support that I could rely on.

This year being virtual wasn't ideal, but it has been better than I could have expected. But I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who's finishing the program, which is totally different from the perspective of someone who's new.

I think this year has shown has the role of technology in how we work is radically changing. I see remote work as opening up more opportunities for collaboration across borders.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I'm currently looking for work. And I'm continuing my work with the Toronto Society of Architects.

What advice would you give to a new Daniels student?

I think a strength of the Daniels program is that it accepts a diverse range of students. For instance, I came from film and advertising. So, what I'd say is: understand the value that you bring as someone coming from a non-architecture background. Leverage that as not only an important experience but as something you can bring to the table that's different from what everyone else is working on.

I kind of wish that in first year I didn't take the capital-A architecture part of it so seriously. Studying here is a really incredible opportunity to explore what you're interested in and why you decided to do your masters in architecture.

Do you have a favourite Daniels memory?

I guess my first year. Jumping into a professional Master of Architecture program coming from film was extremely challenging, but also extremely rewarding.

The Daniels Faculty is entering a period of rapid change, with the return to in-person learning and the arrival of a new dean. What do you hope will happen at the school?

Mass timber is the material of the future. Everyone is talking about mass timber, and everyone wants to build with mass timber. Here we are now, connected to the forestry program, where they're doing incredible research on mass timber and materials science. I think leveraging that opportunity and having more collaboration between design and cutting-edge forestry research could be really important. Daniels could become a hub for mass timber research globally.  

Yana Kaiser

Yana has been an active volunteer throughout her time at the Daniels Faculty. She served as GALDSU's social chair in 2019, organized several guest lectures, and co-created of Interiors of Isolation, a publication of student drawings related to the experience of living through the COVID-19 pandemic. She'll receive her Master of Architecture this spring.

What was it like finishing your degree during the pandemic?

It was definitely hard. So much happened during this time. In October, I moved back to Germany, to the middle of nowhere. I couldn't even get takeout food because I would have had to drive 20 minutes by car to get to the closest restaurant.

Doing thesis in almost complete isolation was definitely mentally challenging. I mean it was really hard, but we did it. And it was such an odd moment when it was done, because I really missed celebrating that milestone with my peers, and with my friends. I was happy that I had my parents with me, so I could celebrate with them. But I felt robbed of graduation, almost.

But a lot of good things happened, too. I'm still working on Interiors of Isolation. We just got funding from GALDSU to print a run of books. And in February I started an internship at Bjarke Ingels Group, in Copenhagen, so I've been working full time there and also teaching as a TA for undergraduates.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I'm planning on living in Copenhagen for the next few years and getting some experience in Europe. I also want to get registered in Canada, so I'm trying to get some of my international experience recognized for the license.

Do you have a favourite Daniels memory?

One of the highlights for me was definitely my option studio. We were able to go to Newfoundland and work with the community there. It was a very hands-on opportunity and it was the only opportunity I had to venture out a little bit into landscape architecture.

What advice would you give to a new Daniels student?

Try to get involved as much as possible. Either you're a part of GALDSU, or you're part of The Annual, or if the café is open you can do volunteering at the café. All of those things are extracurriculars that can really help you get to know people, and when you get to know people you get to know skills.

Those can sometimes be really practical skills, like figuring out a Rhino command. And you can also find out about opportunities. For instance a lot of people are afraid to travel because of the financial burden, but there are many opportunities at Daniels to receive funding.

Shalice Coutu

Shalice was the coordinator for the inaugural year of the Daniels Faculty's graduate mentorship program. She also served on GALDSU this year, as a third-year representative. She'll receive her Master of Architecture this spring.

What was it like finishing your degree during the pandemic?

I was actually fortunate. I struggle with ADHD, so I found online learning way more helpful than in-person learning, because it's very distracting to be in a classroom. Online everyone is muted and you just hear the prof.

The social side of things was definitely difficult. I live alone, so I tried to go on outdoor walks with friends as much as I could, keeping safety and safe distances in mind. Overall it was actually a way better year than I thought it would be.

Do you have a favourite Daniels memory?

I think it would probably be being in studio, late nights, and ordering huge platters of sushi with a bunch of friends. It was always the times in the studio when it was late at night and we were all kind of stressing over our reviews together.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I'm originally from Saskatchewan, but I think I'll stay in Toronto to work here and start to get my hours for getting licensed. I don't have any actual work lined up, but I'm going to start applying soon.

What advice would you give to a new Daniels student?

One thing I learned at Daniels is to never be shy about approaching upper-year students, especially when you're all in studio together. We have a really amazing community, and everyone is always so excited to help each other.

Also, take advantage of some of the programs that Daniels offers, including the mentorship programs. Just get involved where you can, because that three years is very short. The more time you spend in studio and meeting a bunch of people, the better memories you'll have when you walk out of there.

The Daniels Faculty is entering a period of rapid change, with the return to in-person learning and the arrival of a new dean. What do you hope will happen at the school?

I was a TA for this year's first-year MArch design studio, which was a First Nations project. That was an amazing change to see, that we're bringing First Nations into the core studio. I hope there are more electives that really focus on First Nations architecture, but also just First Nations culture itself and maybe ways of integrating that culture into design.

I'd also like to see us rethink this idea that we need to be in studio until five in the morning every day leading up to reviews. It's such a bad habit to expect that insane amount of work. It's tough on our bodies, and on our mental health.

Randa Omar

Randa was this year's AVSSU president. She was also a leader of the Student Equity Alliance, a group formed out of the Daniels Faculty's three student unions to address issues of diversity and equity at the Faculty. On top of all that, she was a co-founder of Making Difference, a student club that aims to empower women and nonbinary people in the design fields. She'll receive her Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies this spring.

What was it like finishing your degree during the pandemic?

It was challenging, but it also opened up a lot of opportunities that I don't think would have been opened up otherwise.

With remote learning, it can be more difficult to ask questions. It's just more difficult to learn when you're at home alone and you're not in a studio environment.

But I think the good thing about being online is that it was easier to organize the community. The shift to remote working made community discussions more accessible in many ways. I think that helped with new initiatives like the Student Equity Alliance and Making Difference. Because of the pandemic, people wanted new ways to build community.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I just heard last week that I’ve been fortunate enough to receive an NSERC award to do research under the supervision of Dr. Brady Peters. I've been wanting to work with him ever since I took ARC180 in first year. That class was my first introduction to parametric design, and it inspired me to go into the technology stream.

I'll also be taking the summer to work on my portfolio and to apply for jobs for the fall.

Do you have a favourite Daniels memory?

Peter Sealy's class, Close Readings in Architecture. That was a turning point for me. It made me feel like I had a place in architecture. I found a lot of my interests in the history courses.

Also, co-managing and volunteering at the café. That was always very joyful. Everyone likes coffee and muffins, so the café brought everyone together.

Some of my favourite memories are being at studio at three in the morning, working on models with my friends for ARC280. There’s something about bonding over cutting cardboard.

What advice would you give to a new Daniels student?

I would advise them to engage with the Daniels community and support their peers, especially their equity-seeking peers. And I'd tell them, if they don't feel like they have a community then they can just create their own, whether that's by volunteering at the café, or by being an orientation leader, or by creating their own clubs.

I would also say that they can reach out to professors throughout the university and express interest in their work or in speaking to them. It's a really great way to learn from people, and to learn outside of the classroom. That's something I wish I knew about earlier, because I asked questions in class but was always kind of shy about bothering professors outside of class.

Also, use the resources. My favourite one is the Writing Centre. The Writing Centre is absolutely amazing. The instructors can help with anything from brainstorming what to write, to revising, to figuring out how to cite. They can also help with more visual projects. I wouldn’t have made it to graduation without them.

The Daniels Faculty is entering a period of rapid change, with the return to in-person learning and the arrival of a new dean. What do you hope will happen at the school?

I'm looking forward to Dean Du coming in. I know her work in the urban design field deals with social issues. I really hope that kind of understanding, combined with her own experience working in Hong Kong, will bring new perspectives to the Faculty.

I just really hope that the Faculty becomes more diverse and prioritizes equity and being an inclusive learning and working environment. That's really all I want.

Alumni, future students, and members of the public are welcome to join us online for final reviews (April 15-23). Daniels Faculty students in architecture, landscape, and urban design will present their final projects to their instructors, as well as guest critics from the professional community and local and international academic institutions.

Daniels On Air is the Faculty’s online platform to navigate through final reviews. Here you’ll sign up, browse the schedule, and learn more about each studio. Daniels On Air will re-launch in time for reviews beginning on April 15. All reviews will take place over Zoom (create a free account here).

Current students do not need to sign up for Daniels On Air to access reviews. Check the Review and Examination Schedule for all dates and times.

Follow UofTDaniels on Twitter and Instagram and join the conversation using the hashtag #DanielsReviews. Reviews take place 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. unless otherwise stated. Please note that the times and dates may change, and there may be scheduled breaks in a Zoom throughout the day.

Undergraduate 

Thursday, April 15 

Design Studio I | JAV101 
Time: 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Instructors: Jay Pooley (Coordinator), Alex Josephson, Danielle Whitley, Peter Sealy, Jennifer Kudlats, Katy Chey, Luke Duross, Chloe Town, T. Jeffrey Garcia, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Nuria Montblanch, Scott Sorli, Anne Ma, Marcin Kedzior, Avi Odenheimer 

Friday, April 16 

Design Studio II | ARC201 
Time: 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. 
Instructors: Fiona Lim Tung (Coordinator), Daniel Briker, Carol Moukheiber, Tei Carpenter, Maria Denegri, Alex Josephson, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Andrew MacMillan 

Drawing and Representation II | ARC200 
Time: 2-6 p.m. 
Instructors: Michael Piper (Coordinator), Jon Cummings, David Verbeek, Reza Nik, Fiona Lim Tung 

Monday, April 19 

Architecture Studio IV | ARC362 
Instructors: Dina Sarhane (Coordinator), Chris Cornecelli, Sam Ghantous 

Landscape Architecture Studio IV | ARC364 
Time: 9:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. 
Instructor: Alissa North 

Technology Studio IV | ARC381 
Time: 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. 
Instructors: Tom Bessai (Coordinator), Tomasz Reslinski  

Thursday, April 22 and Friday, April 23 

Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Thesis) | ARC457 
Instructor: Jeannie Kim 

Senior Seminar in Design (Thesis) | ARC462 
Instructor: Jeannie Kim 

Senior Seminar in Technology (Thesis) | ARC487 
Instructor: Nicholas Hoban 

Graduate 

Monday, April 19 

Design Studio 2 | ARC1012 | MARCH 
Instructors: Adrian Phiffer (Coordinator), Tei Carpenter, Petros Babasikas, An Te Liu, Brigitte Shim, Tom Ngo, Aziza Chaouni, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco 

Design Studio 2 | LAN1012 | MLA  
Instructors: Liat Margolis (Coordinator), Elise Shelley, Terence Radford 

Urban Design Studio Options | URD1012 | MUD 
Instructors: Ken Greenberg, Simon Rabyniuk 

Tuesday, April, 20 

Design Studio 4 | ARC2014 | MARCH 
Instructors: Sam Dufaux (Coordinator), Carol Moukheiber, James Macgillivray, Chris Cornecelli, Aleris Rodgers, Maria Denegri, Anne-Marie Armstrong, Francesco Martire 

Design Studio 4 | LAN2014 | MLA 
Instructors: Behnaz Assadi (Coordinator), Todd Douglas 

Wednesday April 21 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2 | ARC3021 | MARCH 
Instructors: Adrian Phiffer, Vivian Lee, Mason White 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2 | ARC3039 | MARCH 
Instructors: Jesse LeCavalier, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2 | ARC4018 | MARCH 

(L9101) Redeployable Architecture for Health—Pop-up Hospitals for Covid-19 
Instructor: Stephen Verderber 

(L9109) Towards Half: Climate Positive Design in the GTHA 
Instructor: Kelly Doran 
 

Design Studio Thesis | LAN3017 | MLA 
Instructors: Liat Margolis (Coordinator), Behnaz Assadi, Fadi Masoud, Peter North, Alissa North, Jane Wolff, Elise Shelley, Matthew Perotto, Megan Esopenko, Aisling O’Carroll 

Urban Design Studio Thesis | URD2015 | MUD 
Instructor: Angus Laurie 

Thursday, April 22 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2 | ARC3021/ARC4018 | MARCH  

(L9103) STUFF  
Time: 1-6 p.m.
Instructor: Laura Miller 

(L9105) ARCHITECTURE ♥ MEDIA 
Instructors: Lara Lesmes, Fredrik Hellberg 

(L9106) Designing Buildings with Complex Programs on Constrained Urban Sites that include Heritage Structures 
Time: 1-6 p.m. 
Instructor: George Baird 

(L9107) What is Inclusive Architecture (Landscape Architecture, Urban Design)? 
Time: 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. 
Instructor: Elisa Silva 

(L9108) The Usual Suspects  
Time: 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. 
Instructors: Filipe Magalhaes, Ahmed Belkhodja, Ana Luisa Soares 

Design Studio Thesis | LAN3017 | MLA 
Instructors: Liat Margolis (Coordinator), Behnaz Assadi, Fadi Masoud, Peter North, Alissa North, Jane Wolff, Elise Shelley, Matthew Perotto, Megan Esopenko, Aisling O’Carroll 

Post-Professional Thesis 2 | ALA4022  
Time: 12-4 p.m. 
Instructors: Mason White (Coordinator), Adrian Phiffer, Maria Yablonina, Carol Moukheiber, Jesse LeCavalier, Paul Harrison 

Friday, April 23 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2 | ARC3021/ARC4018 | MARCH  

(L9110) Anthropocene and Herd 
Instructor: Gilles Saucier, Christian Joakim, Gregory Neudorf 

(L9103) STUFF  
Time: 1-6 p.m.
Instructor: Laura Miller 

Architectural Design Studio 7: Thesis | ARC4018 | MARCH 
Time: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. 
Advisors: Petros Babasikas, Michael Piper 

Architectural Design Studio 7: Thesis | ARC4018 | MARCH 
Time: 1-6 p.m. 
Advisors: John Shnier, Mauricio Quiros Pachecho, Carol Moukheiber, An Te Liu 

Design Studio Thesis | LAN3017 | MLA 
Instructors: Liat Margolis (Coordinator), Behnaz Assadi, Fadi Masoud, Peter North, Alissa North, Jane Wolff, Elise Shelley, Matthew Perotto, Megan Esopenko, Aisling O’Carroll 

Photo by Harry Choi.

Statement from the Dean’s Office

I hope that you have had a chance to read President Gertler’s update from last week regarding Fall 2021 at the University of Toronto. At the Daniels Faculty, we are actively planning for in-person learning and on-campus activity this September.

Part of what makes the experience at Daniels unique are the physical spaces and community environment in which we study, create, and work. I hope that you join in my excitement for the next steps that will bring us back to campus this September.

What will fall 2021 look like at the Daniels Faculty?

As vaccine rollout progresses over the coming months, students, faculty, and staff will make plans for a gradual return this fall. We will continue to follow public health guidelines and adhere to strict safety standards throughout this transition.

We are prioritizing Faculty activities that benefit the most from being in-person – like undergraduate and graduate studios, on-campus research activities, and student services and workshop access – while maintaining the best practices we have learned from virtual teaching.

This past year we have adapted time and time again from producing medical face shields in our own Digital Fabrication Lab during the early days of the pandemic, to student projects that explored design’s role during the time of COVID-19. Throughout it all, you have demonstrated great resilience and creativity.

We understand that there will be questions as we enter this next phase, and we’ll be here to answer them as plans progress. You can continue to find information about the University’s COVID-19 response at UTogether: A Road Map. And we will update the Daniels Faculty COVID-19 FAQs as more information becomes available.

Looking forward,
Robert Wright
Interim Dean

Have a question about fall 2021? Reach out to us at the contacts below.

Current students: registrar@daniels.utoronto.ca

Prospective students: undergraduate@daniels.utoronto.ca or graduate@daniels.toronto.ca

Faculty and staff should reach out their supervisors for more information on the gradual return to campus.

Each year, hundreds of student teams from across North America make submissions to the ULI Hines Student Competition, in which entrants are challenged to tackle a complex urban planning and design exercise. Only four teams advance to the competition's final round. This year, one of those teams includes two Daniels Faculty students: Ruotian Tan, a student in the Faculty's Master of Urban Design program, and Chenyi Xu, a Master of Architecture student.

Ruotian and Chenyi are working as part of a five-member, multidisciplinary crew. The other three students on the team are Frances-Grout Brown and Leorah Klein, both Ryerson University urban planning students, and Yanlin Zhou, a student in York University's Master of Real Estate and Infrastructure program. The group was supervised by Steven Webber and Victor Perez-Amado, both assistant professors at Ryerson's School of Urban and Regional Planning. Raymond Lee, a senior associate at Weston Williamson + Partners, and Christina Giannone, vice president of planning and development at Port Credit West Village Partners, acted as advisors.

The students will give their final presentation during a video call with the ULI Hines Student Competition jury on April 8. The competition's winning team receives a prize of $50,000. The three runner-up teams receive $10,000 each.

The competition is a rare opportunity for students to work with people in disciplines other than their own. "It was a great multidisciplinary learning experience for me," Ruotian says. "It was a very good chance for me to practice and get some good results before I actually go into a professional career."

The competition brief called for each student group to develop a detailed master plan for the East Village, a neighbourhood in Kansas City, Missouri. The East Village is a lightly developed 16.2-acre site located within the city's central business district. The student proposals had to take into account a wide variety of ambitious goals, including positive economic impact, sustainability, housing affordability, and easy access to transportation. In addition to redesigning the site, students had to produce implementation plans and financial pro formas that described exactly how their designs might be made into reality.

The Daniels Faculty/Ryerson/York team designed its master plan, titled "Fusion," around two central ideas: connectivity and resilience. Although the East Village is a relatively blank slate, with plenty of room for megaprojects, the group's plan doesn't contain any large tourist attractions, like stadiums or museums. "One thing that distinguished our proposal from the other finalists is that we wanted to create a community for people who are actually living there, rather than attracting tourists or visitors to the site," Ruotian says.

In the first phase of the group's three-step implementation plan, the city would build a new pedestrian promenade at the centre of the neighbourhood, then line it with the beginnings of a dense new urban neighbourhood. The plan calls for an initial 615 mixed-income rental units, a 107,000 square-foot community centre with some seniors housing inside, plus office space and ground-floor retail.

The group's site plan.

Over two subsequent phases of redevelopment, the neighbourhood would evolve into a continuous row of mixed-use housing, office, and retail structures. The community centre and an adjacent water-feature park would serve as gathering points not only for neighbourhood residents and workers, but also for other Kansas City residents, who would be channeled into the East Village by cross streets and bus routes parallel to the pedestrian promenade.

The "resilience" piece of the group's plan manifests in the form of a neighbourhood-wide network of green infrastructure aimed at allowing the site to gracefully accept rainwater. Permeable pavement would allow precipitation to seep into the ground. Street bioswales would collect rainwater for reuse. A series of rain gardens, community gardens, and green roofs would use stormwater for irrigation. And a vertical farming greenhouse would allow the neighbourhood to produce food at scale, in an environmentally friendly way.

The vertical farming greenhouse.

"Kansas City has a long history with agricultural industries," Leorah says. "We noticed to the east of the site, they have really strong community networks with urban agriculture, so we wanted to build on networks that were already existing and provide a place for them to build up their networks and build up their businesses. And COVID really showed the importance of a local food system."

Visit the ULI Americas website to learn more about this year's ULI Hines Student Competition finalists.

Dear students, faculty, and staff – 

A lot has happened at the Daniels Faculty since September, and I am thrilled to welcome two new leaders.  

First, if you have not had a chance to read the announcement, please join me in welcoming Juan Du to the Daniels Faculty. Professor Du, an internationally renowned architectural scholar whose work focuses on urban development and marginalized groups, will join us as dean effective July 1, 2021. Professor Du’s socially conscious outlook, and her demonstrated skill at research and administration, make her the ideal person to lead our school into the future. Read the announcement. 

As we start 2021, we also welcome Elder Whabagoon –– our inaugural First Peoples Leadership Advisor to the Dean. Elder Whabagoon will advise the Faculty on the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and evaluate our curriculum and programs through an Indigenous lens. As a Faculty, we have much to learn from the First Peoples and I'm honoured that Elder Whabagoon has agreed to guide us through that process. This new appointment is an important step in walking this path. Read the announcement.  

I can also share that we will complete the interview process for the Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in March. This critical new role will sit jointly between the Daniels Faculty and U of T’s Division of Human Resources and Equity. Please stay tuned for the announcement later this term.  

This update comes to you in February as we celebrate Black History Month across Canada. I encourage you to look through the calendar of upcoming programs from U of T’s Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office and read the update from the Daniels Faculty’s work-study students linked below, which includes a list of student clubs and initiatives. 

Although we have made progress, we have a lot more work ahead of us. Making essential changes in dealing with systemic racism will require a continuous and sustained effort. I thank everyone who has been helping to push us forward as a community. I will continue to provide updates on behalf of the Faculty and the Diversity and Equity Committee as we work toward a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture at the Daniels Faculty. 

Diversity and Equity Committee Meetings 

The committee will meet four times during the winter term: February 12; February 25; March 12; and March 26. The second meeting on February 25 will be a conversation with Elder Whabagoon. If you wish to join a committee meeting as a guest, please contact Harold Tan, harold.tan@daniels.utoronto.ca. (All meeting minutes are published online). 

Work-Study Research and Communications Progress 

The Diversity and Equity Committee created eight work-study positions during the fall term to provide paid opportunities for in-depth student participation in researching issues related to racism, and to help develop strategies to address those issues. A special thank you to our first cohort of work-study research and communications assistants for their hard work and insights. From course outline evaluations and communications audits, to an updated resource list and an equity-focused social media survey, take a closer look at the progress they’ve made over the past few months: read the newsletter here.

Trainings and Events 

In October 2020, the committee hired anti-Black racism consultants David Lewis-Peart and Nailah Tyrell. As the first step in their audit of the Daniels Faculty, Mr. Lewis-Peart and Ms. Tyrell are conducting a survey of faculty, staff members, and students. They will follow up with interviews and focus group conversations this winter in preparation for anti-Black racism training later in the term.  

In response to requests for further training, the committee organized an unconscious bias training workshop led by the Toronto Initiative for Diversity & Excellence (TIDE) on October 28, 2020. Indigenous cultural competency trainer John Croutch led the workshop “Reconciliation: Walking the Path of Indigenous Allyship,” on January 27, 2021. Both trainings were open to all faculty and staff members, student union representatives, and the committee’s work-study assistants. 

I hope that you were able to join us for the Daniels Faculty’s instalment in the Pan-Canada Lecture series on January 26. “In Conversation with BAIDA” (Black Architects and Interior Designers Association) invited six members to share their work within the organization, and their individual experiences leading up to and within the fields of architecture and interior design. If you were not able to make it live, you can watch the event recording on YouTube. Thank you to the BAIDA panelists and the student organizers from AVSSU and GALDSU for their thoughtful leadership. A second collaboration with BAIDA is being planned for fall 2021 to allow for a discussion of evolving questions around anti-Black racism work in the design professions. 

Jane Wolff, the Diversity and Equity Committee Chair, met with Karima Hashmani, U of T’s Executive Director, Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office, for her guidance on appropriate metrics and indices for assessing the diversity of our faculty complement. And as part of continuing efforts to make diversity, equity, and anti-racism integral subjects in our curricula, the committee met with MLA, MUD, MArch, and BAAS program directors to assess changes made in fall 2020. A follow-up meeting will be scheduled to debrief the winter 2021 term as well. Based on these debriefs, the committee will create a best practices document to assist in planning for the 2021/2022 academic year. 

As we mark the first months of 2021 off our calendars, I continue to be impressed, but not surprised, by the resilience of our community. I want to remind all of you that your physical and mental well-being remains our highest priority. You can find support and services at mentalhealth.utoronto.ca, and please ask for help should you need it. 

With gratitude, 

Robert Wright 
Interim Dean 

Each year, the Landscape Architecture Foundation funds a series of research grants for use in producing case studies of landscape projects. This year, the international group of 10 grant recipients includes a familiar name: Kanwal Aftab, who earned her Master of Landscape Architecture at the Daniels Faculty in 2018 and is now a student in the Faculty's PhD program.

Aftab will use her LAF grant to study the University of Toronto Scarborough's Valley Land Trail, a 500-metre public trail, designed by Schollen & Company, that connects the campus with the adjacent Highland Creek Valley. Aftab will conduct her research under the supervision of Jen Hill, the Daniels Faculty's assistant dean of academic planning and governance. “I’m delighted that the Landscape Architecture Foundation supports our interest in this wonderful, universal-design project on one of our own campuses," Hill says.

Kanwal Aftab

Aftab's final product will be a case study brief. It will be published online as part of the LAF's Landscape Performance Series, a collection of scholarly evaluations of the environmental and social performance of various works of landscape architecture in locations around the world.

"This case study will examine a combination of social and environmental factors," Aftab says. "We'll be seeing how the trail was built out and how it's being used."

The case study's analysis, Aftab hopes, will help illuminate the way the trail, which opened to the public in 2019, has transformed U of T Scarborough's relationship to the nearby ravine. "I'm interested in looking at the placement of the campus within the larger community of Scarborough," she says. "COVID has been an interesting turning point because it has forced people to find more outdoor public spaces, like this one."

When she's not studying the Valley Land Trail, Aftab will be working on her PhD thesis, a history of the integration of systems thinking into landscape architecture pedagogy in the 1960s and 1970s.

Top image: The Valley Land Trail. Photograph courtesy of Schollen & Company.