In the winter 2020 session of Visual Communication 2 (LAN1022), first-year Master of Landscape Architecture students were tasked with developing their visualization skills by studying either an Indigenous burial mound (known as a tumulus) or a colonial earthwork fortification. Each student first drew the topography of their assigned fort or tumulus, then created drawings that developed a historical or fictional narrative about the site.

Now, anyone interested in perusing the course's impressive visual output can do so easily, because all of it has been collected in a book. Forts & Tumuli, a lavishly illustrated volume assembled by assistant professor Fadi Masoud, can be read in its entirety online or purchased for $48.99 from Blurb.ca.

(Last year's edition is also available.)

Here are a few projects from the book.

Stefan Herda

Stefan's study area was the Pirámide del Sol, an archaeological site located on the outskirts of Mexico City. The pyramid is the largest structure in Teotihuacan, an ancient city that was already a ruin by the time of the Aztecs. Stefan obtained spatial data from researchers at Arizona State University, which he used as the basis of a series of illustrations that attempt to reconstruct what the Aztecs would have seen and experienced as they stumbled upon the empty city for the first time. "I articulated a walk from the mountaintops down into the site," Stefan says. "Each drawing is a step along this journey of discovery."

Elva Hu

Elva studied Fort Warren, in Boston, Massachusetts. She chose to focus her illustrations on a Civil War legend about "the lady in black" — a woman who supposedly attempted to free her confederate solider husband from the fort, was caught and executed, and now haunts the premises as a ghost. Elva's dark colour palette is intended to highlight the fort's gloomy aspects.

Agata Mrozowski

Agata took on the Cahokia Mounds, the remains of a Native American city believed to have been abandoned around the year 1300. After studying the layout of the mounds, Agata became intrigued by the way the city's layout mirrored certain stellar constellations. Through her drawings, she attempted to convey the way the mounds relate to the sky. "All of my drawings have circles and curvatures," she says. "They're really trying to emphasize that temporal circular relationship between the cycles of life and this land."

Nadia Chan

Nadia studied Fort Jay, a post-Revolutionary War stronghold located on Governor's Island, in New York City. She chose to focus her drawings on the time of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, when, according to her research, the fort was used as a field hospital. (She settled on her topic a few weeks pre-COVID. She had no idea how relevant her choice of focus was about to become.) She juxtaposed images of hospital tents with images of a spring lawn party, once an annual occurrence at the fort. "These drawings evolved into a fictional retelling of history, but also a kind of commentary on our current pandemic situation," Nadia says.

Read Forts & Tumuli now

Jonathan Dionne, a Master of Forest Conservation student at the Daniels Faculty, is spending the summer interning with the Long Branch Neighbourhood Association as a tree stewardship program lead. Jonathan has been involved in advancing the neighbourhood association's partnership with Neighbourwoods, a community tree stewardship program developed by associate professor Danijela Puric-Mladenovic and lecturer Andy Kenney. He recently wrote an op-ed about his work for Toronto.com.

Jonathan writes:

The City of Toronto has been planting new trees to raise the average canopy cover of Toronto from 27 per cent to 40 per cent. Planting trees in your own yard helps contribute to this goal; however, most canopy coverage comes from older trees. These older trees have massive canopies that filter pollutants from the air and soil as well as reduce storm water run-off and provide shading and cooling for the community.

Unfortunately, once the tree is planted, the resources aren’t always available to look after them for the remainder of their lives. This is why we need your help as tree stewards.

Read the full article on Toronto.com

Oscar Alfonso, Simon Fuh, Matt Nish-Lapidus, and Sophia Oppel — all of them current Master of Visual Studies students at the Daniels Faculty — aren't letting this summer's COVID-19 lockdown prevent them from making and displaying art.

The four students, in collaboration with Hearth, a Toronto artist-run space, have just launched "view recent changes," an online art exhibition that borrows the tools and aesthetics of Wikipedia and uses them for radically different purposes. The exhibition is part of Vector Festival 2020, and is presented with financial support from Joe Lobko and Karen Powers, via the Benjamin Hart Lobko Memorial Travel Award.

The students write:

This exhibition presents an assemblage that considers the ways in which the human, digital, linguistic, machinic, vegetal and animal correlate. Hosted as a wiki, a platform that allows for communal contribution, the project's focus on lateral hyperlinking reflects on the possibility of a digital commons. This project considers how to circumvent the individualizing, commodifying qualities of online spaces to explore positive forms of relationality and intimacy.

Visit "view recent changes" now

Every year, the Daniels Faculty gives awards to graduating students who have completed outstanding academic work or demonstrated exceptional leadership during their time at the school. Here's this year's list of recipients:

Undergraduate Awards

Academic Merit Award

Breanne Sara Bornstein
Ryan Cheng
Yan Ting Chow
Andrew Cameron Henry De Carlo
Peter Dowhaniuk
Pablo Espinal Henao
Michelle Gao
Evan Guan
Kian Hosseinnia
Seo Yoon Jeong
Raphael Moshe Kay
Haadiah Khan
Saige Michel
Kevin Samir Ghislain Nitiema
Christopher Alexander Schaefer
Sam Shahsavani
Jennifer Ann Zezilia Smitten
Caleb Yohannes
Rui Zhang

Daniels Undergraduate Community Leadership Award

Cezzane Ilagan
Umair Jamal Malik

Daniels Undergraduate Comprehensive Stream Award

Christopher Alexander Schaefer

Daniels Undergraduate Design Award

Yan Ting Chow

Daniels Undergraduate History / Theory Award

Joyce Angela Sandoval

Daniels Undergraduate Studio Art Award

Jennifer Ann Zezilia Smitten
Xiaoyan Zhang

Daniels Undergraduate Technology Award

Kevin Samir Ghislain Nitiema

Governor General's Silver Medal nominee

Raphael Moshe Kay

University of Toronto Student Leadership Award

Cezzane Ilagan
Kevin Samir Ghislain Nitiema
Kian Hosseinnia

Graduate Awards

Academic Honours Certificate

Mario Robert Arnone
Hillary Jane DeWildt
Taylor Gould
Niloufar Jalal-Zadeh
Yuan Li
Avraham Odenheimer
Michael Allen Wideman

AIA Henry Adams Medal and Certificate

Graham Oglend

Alpha Rho Chi Medal

Jessica Misak

American Society of Landscape Architects Certificate of Honor

Hillary Jane DeWildt
Alexandra Frances Marie Walker

American Society of Landscape Architects Certificate of Merit

Alexandre Ribeiro Dos Santos
Francis Edward Marchant

ARCC / King Student Medal

Isabel Elaine Amos

Faculty Design Prize

Ahmed Saad Ibrahim AL-Jirjees
Paulina Maribel Aviles Parra
Tara Castator
Maria Paula Cortes Herrera
Jonathan David Miura
Isaac Neufeld
Rosa Newman
Graham Oglend
Ambika Pharma
Melissa Katherine Poon
Kiefer Dylan Savage
Michael Allen Wideman
Briana-Nicole Zitella

Heather M. Reisman Gold Medal in Design

Ambika Pharma

Irving Grossman Prize

Siri Hermanski

Kuwabara-Jackman Architecture Thesis Gold Medal

Graham Oglend

Ontario Association of Architects Architectural Guild Medal

Isaac Neufeld

Ontario Association of Landscape Architects Certificate of Merit

Avery Clarke

Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Honour Roll

Bobbi Bortolussi
Rosa Newman
Briana-Nicole Zitella

Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Honour Roll and Student Medal

Jonathan David Miura

Toronto Society of Architects Scholarship

Avraham Odenheimer

University of Toronto Student Leadership Award

Yasmin Al-Samarrai
Emilie Elspeth Holland

The north facade of the Daniels Building is seen by thousands of people — drivers, TTC riders, and pedestrians — every single day. What if it were decorated with a billboard-sized awareness-raising message, or call to action?

The Daniels Art Directive, a student-run art collective, is trying to do just that. The group has issued an open call for north-facade mural designs that respond to architectural or social issues of relevance to the Daniels Faculty. The Daniels community will vote on the design, and then, subject to approval by the dean, it will be installed on the north facade in late summer or early fall.

Students, staff, faculty, and alumni — individually or in teams — are invited to make design submissions by Monday, July 13, using this web form. Each individual or team can make as many as two submissions.

Each design proposal must include the following elements:

• A 50-word statement
• A 17''x17'' line drawing

The final mural will be made up of "pixels" — individual pieces of artwork that, when arranged in a precise way, will form a larger image. (Sort of like when people in a sports arena hold up coloured sheets of paper to spell out a giant word.) Design proposals must also include estimates of the quantity of pixels required, and suggestions for pixel sizes and themes.

Anyone interested in making a design proposal is welcome to join the Daniels Art Directive on Saturday, July 11 for a design workshop, where participants will be able to receive feedback on their designs or form design teams. The workshop will take place on Zoom. For login details, or for Rhino and Illustrator templates or other information, send an email to danielsartdirective@utoronto.ca.

An inflatable emergency tent, a music video, an email newsletter: these are just a few of the projects that Daniels Faculty students will be producing this summer with funding from the U of T COVID-19 Student Engagement Award.

The award, for which only University of Toronto students were eligible to apply, consists of a grant of up to $3,000. To qualify for the money, students had to make a project proposal that related, in some way, to building global community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A total of 14 Daniels students, as members of seven different project groups, made successful proposals and received the award. They'll have until early September to deliver their final work.

Here's a brief look at what they're doing.

Inflatable tents

Yi Zhang and Siqi Wang, a pair of Master of Architecture students, are using their award to develop an inflatable tent for use in pandemics and other emergency situations. By eschewing metal components, they were able to design a shelter so compact and lightweight that it can be transported in a backpack, with room to spare for the requisite air pump.

The pair plan to spend the next few months refining their design. By mid-August, they hope to be at a point where they can enlist the help of a factory in China (where Yi will be spending the next semester) in producing a full-scale, functional prototype.

Collapsible tents

Mina Yip and Meimenat Cheng graduated from the Daniels Faculty's undergraduate architecture program earlier this year. This summer, as they get ready to return to Daniels in the fall to begin their Master of Architecture studies, they'll be using their COVID-19 Student Engagement Award to develop a design for a portable emergency shelter. Their project, titled "Stitch," will consist of a dome-shaped tent that collapses down into a portable package.

"We researched previous pandemics, such as SARS," Meimenat says. "We found out that accessible housing isn't really available to people. Shelters tend to close down because they can't provide social distancing measures. We wanted to help people who are in need."

A collection of student drawings

MArch students Jana Nitschke and Valerie Marshall have come up with a generous use for their Student Engagement Award money: they're giving some of it to other Daniels students, in the form of payments for contributions to Interiors of Isolation, a digital book of reflections on the experience of living through social distancing as a design student.

Jana and Valerie have already issued a call for submissions on their project's Instagram account. They're asking Daniels students who are interested in contributing to the book to submit drawings of their home workspaces and one-paragraph explanations of how they've been using those workspaces during the pandemic. Each student whose submission is used in the book will receive a payment of $40, and Jana and Valerie will also be giving a $100 prize to the creator of whichever submission they deem "most exceptional."

An artistic "notebook"

Undergraduate architecture student Sherry Liu is collaborating with Shihan Yang, a first-year psychology student, on a project titled "We Are Together 2020." The pair will soon put out a global call for contributions — both visual art and written pieces — that reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic in an uplifting way. They plan to compile the best submissions into a printed "notebook," which they'll then sell online. They'll donate the proceeds to COVID-19 research.

"If we can create a platform for people to share their stories, then that would be a source of collective memory for the entire global community," Sherry says.

A music video

Sadi Wali, an undergraduate architecture student, is working with Isfandyar Virani, a machine learning and data mining student, on an art project that they say will help people "improve their lives by leaving unhealthy behaviours and inequities behind in quarantine when they move forward to the new world."

Working with SExT, a theatre-based sex-education organization founded by Shira Taylor, an alumna of the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, they'll develop a series of graphics and an educational music video.

A newsletter

Undergraduate architecture student Samiha Tahsin is part of an ambitious effort to launch an online publication that will provide reliable COVID-19 news updates in a magazine-like format. The newsletter is still in development — but the project group has begun posting updates on an Instagram account.

A total of 10 different students from various disciplines are working on different aspects of the project, and the group is receiving advice and mentorship from two physicians: Jeremy Kamil, of Louisiana State University, and Roizar Rozales, of Toronto's University Health Network. (Samiha will be working on the newsletter's design.)

A mystery design intervention

Five Daniels students — Aisling Beers, Declan Roberts, Gemma Robinson, Jay Potts, and Sheetza McGarry, as well as an engineering student, Savanna Blade — have formed a group they call Studio Babble. Using their award money, they're going to spend the summer developing a yet-to-be-determined design intervention that will ameliorate some of the effects of the pandemic on the Toronto community.

Their project will include a "creatively distanced" community gathering. And the group effort will culminate in the creation of a digital publication, with diagrams and findings.

Top image: A rendering of Yi Zhang and Siqi Wang's inflatable shelter design.

Today is convocation, and the entire Daniels Faculty community will be celebrating from home. To help make this socially distanced graduation ceremony feel special, the Architecture and Visual Studies Student Union (AVSSU) has put together a short video with farewell messages from students, faculty, and staff. It's embedded above.

If you're graduating today, be sure to give the video a watch to get yourself in a party mood ahead of this afternoon's virtual convocation viewing party, which begins at 12 p.m. on Zoom. Register for the party here.

This year's Daniels Faculty graduating class had an extraordinary final semester. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic a few weeks before final reviews and critiques, many final-year students had to rearrange their lives just as their studies were at their most intense. Despite all of this, they still managed to excel.

Ahead of today's virtual convocation ceremony, we caught up with five new Daniels graduates who were among the recipients of this year's Gordon Cressy Student Leadership Awards, which recognize students who demonstrate exemplary service and commitment to the university. We spoke with them about their favourite Daniels memories, the impact of the virus, and what they're planning to do next.

Yasmin Al-Samarrai (MArch 2020)

What's your favourite Daniels memory?

The community ​at Daniels really makes it what it is. I have many fond memories of time with friends. When I was a part of GALDSU (the graduate student union), we organized an end-of-year party at Hart House. We all dressed up to the nines, and we had an open bar, ​which is always fun. It was a really wonderful and collective experience — one that gave us the opportunity to celebrate our accomplishments in style.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your last semester?

I'm very lucky, because I actually defended my thesis in December, so I was able to avoid the ways in which COVID altered the experience at Daniels. The pandemic has affected our commencement ceremony, though, which is very disappointing. But we've adapted by going virtual, and hopefully we will have a chance to celebrate once things ease up a little.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I was an intern last summer at RAW Design, here in Toronto. I was lucky enough to get offered a position over the winter, while I was still finishing up my last semester. I travelled in January, before the world collapsed, and started a full-time job as soon as I returned. For now, my adult plans are to pay off my student debt. With that said, we live in a pretty precarious time where architecture and design are crucial tools for change, so I would love to do what I can to be better and effect positive change for our communities.

What advice would you give a starting Daniels student?

My advice would be to not be afraid to approach students of different cohorts, especially in the upper years. We all have experienced the struggles and stress of being first-year students at Daniels. It's important to chat with others, to not feel alone.

Also, really prioritize mental health. Go out with your friends. Sleep. School is important, and obviously we all put our lives on hold for the program — but in order to really make it worthwhile you have got to enjoy yourself, so you're not completely burnt out by the time you graduate.

Kevin Nitiema (BA 2020)

What's your favourite Daniels memory?

One of the best memories that I had at Daniels would have been this year, when the whole undergraduate thesis class visited Chicago during the reading week break. We all got to share a 10-hour-long bus ride. It was really, really great to bond with peers outside of an academic setting. We were able to socialize, but also hold academic conversations around what our thesis work would involve. It was an opportunity for us to get closer, but also to experience life in another city that I had never been to.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your last semester?

I was raised in South Africa, so my family is there right now. And a lot of borders are closed, so that's affecting me. My plan was to stay and work in Toronto. I'm adapting those plans on a weekly basis.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I'm taking online courses on topics that are interesting to me. I've also been conducting my own personal research for a couple years now. That has been affected by the global pandemic, but I'm trying to adapt. And I expect to do my master's in maybe a year or two, but probably not in Canada.

What advice would you give a starting Daniels student?

I would really encourage incoming students to not only be involved at Daniels, but also to seek opportunities outside of Daniels. I evolved my own passion for design and technology by connecting with a lot of engineering students throughout my undergrad studies. I worked with them on different projects, both academic and personal. And I've been a don at an Arts and Science residence, and that really helped me reshape my experience as an undergraduate. It really exposed me to different worlds.

Cezzane Ilagan (BA 2020)

What's your favourite Daniels memory?

One of the earliest Daniels memories that I find special was my experience as an orientation leader in second year. That was the same year when we finally moved into One Spadina, and that's when it really felt like Daniels was becoming our second home. I really bonded with a few of the students in my group. And I'm excited to say that some of them have been elected to executive positions on AVSSU for the next school year. It feels like I really had an impact on them and their experience at Daniels.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your last semester?

For my thesis, I was originally supposed to create a series of these small-scale models. I couldn't produce those models, so I presented my research, instead. And I also did a small set of collages. They were inspired by Mies van der Rohe and his style of rendering.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I'll be coming back to Daniels for my Master of Architecture. I'm excited to return to my second home and see all the familiar faces that I've missed these last few weeks.

What advice would you give a starting Daniels student?

Get involved in clubs. I think it's a really great way to meet new people and to enrich your university experience. Also, I've found volunteering at Cafe 059 to be a really fun experience. It's a great way to meet and chat with new people, and it's also a great way to get a break from studying.

Elspeth Holland (MLA 2020)

What's your favourite Daniels memory?

It might be controversial, but I had an excellent Superstudio experience. I had an amazing group. I was working with three architects, which for me is the biggest strength of the faculty: the cross-disciplinary exposure in courses. We each played our own role in this massive master plan project we were working on. And we became wonderful friends, too.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your last semester?

I've been very impressed with how the landscape architecture department has dealt with COVID. Having my thesis reviews during that time was challenging, but I had a fantastic panel of people who were able to tune in. Some of them were from far away, and I don't know if they would have been able to attend our reviews before COVID, so them being there was a positive result from all this. Also, I saw all kinds of interesting new ways of approaching graphics that were sometimes really beneficial to people's workflows.

What are your post-graduation plans?

This is the challenge of COVID. It's really difficult to answer, because I'm uncertain. I do have a contract with a firm in New York. I'm really excited and hopeful, but of course I may not be looking to go and visit New York for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, I'm still working with Justine Holzman, doing research. I'm part of a team of four other students at Daniels who are doing some work with her this summer.

What advice would you give a starting Daniels student?

One of the things that has helped me, not only at Daniels but just in general, is taking opportunities and getting involved. I think the best thing about Daniels for me was that exposure. The more you can get to know people who have different skills than you, the better off you are.

Kian Hosseinnia (BA 2020)

What's your favourite Daniels memory?

I have really good memories of being a TA, especially for Peter Sealy's JAV101 section last year. The experience of working with students — especially first-year students — and trying to communicate some of the things that I have learned, was really nice.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect your last semester?

One thing that changed was the scholar-in-residence program that I was involved in. It was supposed to be an experience where students from all over campus would gather and live together for a month and do research, but it ended up being more of an online program through Zoom. The experience ended up being wonderful.

And I had to adjust my work as a TA as a result of the pandemic. Instead of desk crits and pinups, we had to provide feedback to students on Quercus, by looking at their PDF submissions every week. The final review was also very different. Students had to submit a video or audio of them presenting their work and we (Peter Sealy, a guest critic, and myself) had to record our comments and feedback to be sent to students. Overall, I think the shift was successful.

What are your post-graduation plans?

I'm starting graduate school in the fall, at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

What advice would you give a starting Daniels student?

One of the things that helped me a lot was getting involved as much as I could in different ways. I did club work, and student union work. I was in AVSSU for a while. I also worked for the Faculty for a while. All of that really helped me get to know the community. And I'd add that it's valuable for students to get to know their profs. Making the effort to connect with professors will enrich their academic lives at Daniels.

Isha Dinesh Sharma, an incoming first-year Daniels Faculty undergraduate architecture student, has been named a recipient of one of 2020's Lester B. Pearson International Scholarships. The Pearson scholarships are among the most prestigious — and most generous — financial awards given to University of Toronto undergraduates.

Pearson scholarships are awarded to international undergraduate students who have demonstrated exceptional academic achievement and creativity, and who are recognized as leaders at their high schools. The scholarships cover tuition, books, incidental fees, and residence fees for four years. The University of Toronto awards Pearson scholarships to approximately 37 students each year.

Isha, now 18 years old, was born in Mumbai, India. Her family spent slightly more than four years in Singapore, and then, three years ago, moved to Pune, an Indian city located about 150 kilometres southeast of Mumbai. It was there that Isha completed her International Baccalaureate studies. Her mother is a fashion designer and nutritionist, and her father is an engineer.

Isha's interest in architecture stems from a deep desire to help improve conditions in the developing world. "As an architect," she says, "I want to dissolve the massive development disparities that exist today, making sustainability a possibility in developing countries."

Over the course of her high school career, Isha took advantage of multiple opportunities to learn the fundamentals of the trade. She attended a winter program at the National University of Singapore, where she familiarized herself with AutoCAD and Fusion360, software tools frequently used in architectural design. She took online courses in design and urbanism at ETH Zurich and the Delft University of Technology.

At her high school, the Symbiosis International School in Pune, she often took leadership roles in class trips and projects. With her classmates, under the auspices of a government-organized sanitation program, she travelled to a remote Indian village and helped build a toilet for villagers to use. For her class's graduation celebration, she designed and built a full-sized photo booth.

When she was considering universities, she was drawn to U of T's prestige and long history, and also to its location in Toronto, Canada's financial hub, where job opportunities are never in short supply. Had she not received the Pearson scholarship, the intercontinental move might not have been feasible. "The scholarship makes a huge difference," Isha says. "It is a huge honour. Without the scholarship, my education in Toronto would not have been possible. The total expenses would not have worked out for me. This award motivates me and inspires me to work harder and do better."

Isha will begin her studies at the Daniels Faculty in fall 2020.

Welcome to our new cohort of undergraduate students coming this fall. The Daniels Faculty has a long and distinguished 125-plus year history. There have been other times when we have had to cope with unpredictable circumstances. Our past and our present are replete with stories of our students, faculty, and staff rallying together for the greater good. Together with our faculty, undergraduate students in our Architectural Studies program have assembled some of those moments in the video above. You will also see previews of some of the exciting things you will be engaged in as a Daniels student.

We look forward to meeting everyone soon.

Jeannie Kim, Undergraduate Director, HBA Architectural Studies