Degree: Honours Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies and Visual Studies

What was the most enjoyable part of your Honours Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies and Visual Studies degree?
Most enjoyable for me has been the friendships I've made with my brilliant and inspiring colleagues. Students often describe Daniels as "tight-knit community", and I wholeheartedly agree; the sense of camaraderie found in the 'studio culture' of both Architecture and Visual Studies has been a memorable and gratifying aspect of my time at U of T. Supporting each other on in-school and extracurricular projects and learning from our collective experiences in fields outside architecture allows for a broader and more rewarding education, not to mention making lifelong friends along the way.

Want to Play Cars? | VIS204 Installation with Ed Pien, Dec 2017
This work explores the idea of play. As kids, we project our imaginations onto the world around us; anything can become a castle, or a road, or a bridge, or a parking lot. 'Playing cars' with friends was a big part of my childhood, so this was a lot of fun to revisit. The pipes in the installation room made for a fantastic, untapped world to explore, and I added an aerial video projection of a real city for context. So, want to play cars?

What advice would you give to a new student?
Consider all of your courses as one giant course. Although every student has different subjects that they study (or different classes within architecture), avoid artificially siloing them: each can bring something new and unique to another, and taken as a whole your education will be far more fulfilling than if they are kept in isolation. Always be thinking about how you can use what you've learned in one class to influence your work in another!

Tension Tower | ARC280 Modelling and Fabrication in Design with Nicholas Hoban, April 2018
Modelling proves a tricky means of exploring a project's physical strength. While often highly delicate, they represent towers that are designed to be strong and resilient. This project was a study in structure, where two non-parallel cores serve to anchor and self-align each floor plate. The final model was built without the use of glue, supporting itself exclusively through tension.

What are your plans after graduation? How has this degree prepared you for the future?
I currently work in the Woodworking and Fabrication lab at Daniels and plan to pursue my Master's degree in the future. As the program encourages students to pull knowledge and experience from courses outside the faculty, such as Environmental Studies, Physics, and Gender Studies, I feel that the breadth of education that Daniels provides has allowed me to broaden my sense of what art and architecture can be and how those practices can influence one another. I'm planning to pursue a career in design/build with an ecological and artistic focus.

Den | VIS431 Thesis with Joanne Tod and John Massey, April 2018 | Photo: Harry Choi
Where does architecture end, and furniture begin? Den explores the architecture of play at furniture scale. Invoking the magic of creative, anarchic, childlike freedom, Den is a playful take on the spatial spectrum and inspired by the unprogrammed primitive shelters of animals.

Illustrations in slideshow, top:
Smaller Than Life | VIS308 Advanced Drawing with Ed Pien, Feb 2017 | Pencil on Paper
This work compares reality and perception. Four stills of my model train set are composed as though they are actual photos of a landscape, and rendered in a traditionally realistic way. However, each still includes a nod to the truth of their existence, such as a leaning paintbrush, unhooked train track, or the rafters of my basement. As such, it is a series of drawings (abstractions) of photographs (direct depictions) of a model (abstraction) of reality, where the abstractions are meant to increase the true reality relative to the perceived and expected idea of what is being shown. The work is scaled to the relative size of the train set, self-reflecting on the idea of the constructed image.

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Convocation for #UofTDaniels students is on June 14. This month we are featuring our graduates, including their work, their memories, and their advice for new students. Follow #DanielsGrad18 for more!

What was the most enjoyable or memorable part of your Master of Urban Design degree?
The one thing that I would always look forward to in our lectures were presentations from guest speakers who were invited in almost every course I took. More often than not, these presentations would focus on particular topics or geographies and completely make me rethink how we view and design urban relationships. I will certainly miss the supportive and extremely knowledgeable professors who have put me on a path to constantly widen my horizon.

What inspired your #thesis?
My thesis topic, Co-Creating the Urban Future, was inspired by an article that I came across while researching on my initial thesis topic of redeveloping the Mumbai Eastern Waterfront. The article discussed the plight of ~14,000 informal inhabitants staying on the waterfront without access to basic amenities and soon to be relocated (read: homeless). In the midst of my vacillation, I realized that informality is a global issue which has failed to garner as much attention as some of other #design challenges. The site in #India provided me the opportunity to delve deeper into the issue and possibly, propose a template which could be modified to local cultures and needs and used in other similar scenarios. I believe the final thesis is reflective of my learning at Daniels as it extensively explores the relationship of urban design to people, culture, and society.

What advice would you give to a new student?
I would recommend that they come with an open mind and actively engage and interact with and their peers and professors. This will provide an immense opportunity to appreciate and learn from different perspectives, thereby widening one’s own horizon. Daniels provides unique opportunities for learning that extends beyond regular classroom teaching.

What are your plans after graduation?
I am looking forward to working as an urban designer in Toronto and contributing to the growth of this beautiful city and Canada as a whole.

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Convocation for #UofTDaniels students is on June 14. This month we are featuring our graduates, including their work, their memories, and their advice for new students. Follow #DanielsGrad18 for more!

A team of students from the University of Toronto — including Master of Architecture students Stephanie Tung and Lori Chan, Master of Science in Planning students Sarah Qi-Ying Chan and Lucy Cui, and Master of Business Administration student Krizia Napolitano — received an Honorable Mention in the Urban Land Institute (ULI) Hines Student Competition.

The competition challenged students to "devise a comprehensive design and development scheme for an actual, large-scale site in an urban area."

Titled "The Seam," the students' project focused on a piece of land south of Eastern Avenue, east of the Don River, and north of the Port Lands.

Write the students in their design narrative for the competition:

The Seam is a master-plan strategy that revitalizes Toronto’s formerly industrial east Donlands area by creating a vibrant mixed-use district. Punctuated by cutting-edge architecture and creative public art, the site will leverage existing proximity to major employment centers, transit infrastructure and natural assets to create a new development area that will be instrumental to Toronto’s wider city-building strategy.

A seam is a line along which two pieces of fabric are sewn together; it joins, links and connects.

Owing to its unique geographic location, The Seam is a connection between zones of new development and existing communities. Broadway Avenue will be extended north through the site and connect it to East Harbour and Sidewalk Labs to the south, while the new pedestrian bridge across the Don River will link the site to Corktown Commons and the larger West Donlands area. Thus, the site becomes the final piece to creating a new major corridor. Pedestrian walkways and bicycle lanes will be dispersed throughout to improve connectivity and walkability. Residential units will move from stacked townhouses on the north side to condominium towers on the south side, creating an accompanying gradient of density linking together existing residential to the north and commercial to the south.
 

Congratulations to all involved! For more information about the competition, including a full list of the winning submissions, visit the ULI website.

The Toronto Ravine Maps Exhibit — opening Friday, May 11 — explores Toronto’s unique network of ravines through a collection of maps that illustrate the increasing environmental challenges that they face.

Curated by Associate Professor Alissa North and Master of Landscape Architecture student Neil Phillips in association with Evergreen Brick Works, the maps were created by Daniels Faculty students as part of a studio project that encouraged the class to represent the ravines in novel ways.

From exhibition listing:
 

Toronto’s ravines are the multiple rivers and valleys that cut into the city’s otherwise mostly flat landscape. The city’s early developers buried its smaller rivers and creeks, filling in wetlands to allow the grid layout of the city to prevail. Toronto’s river systems were too large for such treatment, and the results are the interesting anomalies and fractures in the grid that we see on maps today.

Currently, there is little undeveloped land around the ravines, and the remaining areas face increasingly challenging environmental pressures.

With the overriding idea that rivers are dynamic systems, participants were asked to imagine and represent the pressing issues within the ravine and waterfront in new and novel ways, always thinking about balancing the need for preservation, restoration and change.

See the exhibit at Evergreen Brick Works throughout the month of May, and celebrate Toronto's ravines at our Spring Into Summer Ravine Celebration on Sunday, May 13
 

This exhibit will be open to the public from May 11- May 24, 2018, during Everygreen Brickworks' Young Welcome Centre hours of operation (9:00am - 5:00pm, Monday to Saturday; 10:00am - 5:00pm Sundays & holidays).

For more information, visit the Evergreen Brickworks website.

This weekend, urban enthusiasts around the world will be leading free walking tours of their neighbourhoods as part of Jane’s Walk. Started in Toronto, this annual festival was created to help people explore their cities through the eyes of local residents. The global event was inspired by urban activist Jane Jacobs, who championed community-based city building.

Daniels student Farah Michel is leading two walks this year, one on Saturday, May 5 and one of Sunday, May 7. See below for more details!

Little Italy: Exploring Natural and Built Heritage
Led by Farah Michel
Saturday, 4:00 – 5:30 pm | Meet at the Johnny Lombardi Piazza (College and Grace Street) – I’ll be holding a Jane’s Walk sign!

This Walk explores one of Toronto’s most historically significant sites; a place of remarkable natural and built heritage. By walking through the site and calling attention to noteworthy landmarks (or where noteworthy landmarks used to stand), this Walk will acknowledge the site’s history as a prominent centre of immigration and humble beginnings starting from the late 19th century, and will trace its development into a vibrant, demographically diverse neighbourhood whose cultural authenticity may be at risk of getting lost amidst developers’ plans for its commercial growth. This Walk will end at Trinity Bellwoods Park.

Walk and Chalk
Led by Farah Michel
Sunday 2:00 – 3:30pm | Meet at 255 Queens Quay West, across the We Brew Cafe. I’ll be holding a Jane’s Walk sign!

Use chalk as your brushes and the pavement as your canvas on this Chalk Walk! We will sit in the middle of a street and create art together. Anyone can take part in the fun, no matter what their artistic skills might be.

We tend to think of art as special, which in fact marginalises it; but art is a social activity, and art in public is part of the extraordinary ever-changing complexity of the public spaces we occupy. Whether a space can be considered public or not is not predicated on whether people are permitted open access to it, but on the extent to which they actively engage with one another when there. Public space only genuinely exists when social interaction goes beyond the passive and becomes active, and when individuals have to negotiate their social differences in order to actively engage with one another. When consumers of the city become producers of it, we get to experience the power of temporary use, and in using the sidewalk as our canvas, we can explore the role of the citizen as artist in making that public space, and in being actively involved in producing the environment we live in.

As art does not require an expensive canvas, the sharing of ideas does not require a specific platform. Sometimes art and conversation are as simple as an idea expressed with a grainy stick of coloured chalk and pavement. Materials and Fancy Frank’s hotdogs will be provided, you need only bring your kneepads/cushions/blankets, and your enthusiasm! “If only we remember to play, rediscover, and sense our surroundings, the invisible qualities of our cities can be uncovered”.

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For a list and descriptions of more tours taking place in Toronto this weekend, visit the Jane's Walk website.

Faculty, students, and alumni among the winners of the "Everyone is King" design competition

This week, people will have even more of a reason to visit King Street in Toronto's downtown core. The busy street is now home to a series of temporary "parklets" thanks to the "Everyone is King" design competition.

Among the many installations is Woggle Jungle, by Assistant Professor Victor Perez-Amado (of VPA Studio) with Daniels students Anton Skorishchenko and Michael De Luca, in collaboration with MAKE Studio's Dina Sarhane (MArch 2013) and Mani Mani (MArch 2012). Located where King Street intersects with Ed Mirvish Way, by Metro Hall, Woggle Jungle is made up of hundreds of colourful foam pool noodles that emerge from a wooden platform, where visitors may meander, sit, or rest.

"This parklet takes advantage of the flexibility of pool noodles and its modular elements which allow for different engaging configurations and expansion," says the Woggle Jungle design team.  "As the project title suggests, 400 foam buoyancy aids are bundled to create a multi-colored forest and seating destination that stretches across King Street."

The project and other winning entries will remain on King Street until October 1, 2018. The "Everyone is King" competition is part of the King Street Transit Pilot, which the City of Toronto launched in November 2017, to explore a new configuration for King Street that would improve transit service on the busiest streetcar route in the city.

For more information on the King Street Transit Pilot, visit the City of Toronto's website, where you will also find a list of the other winning entries.

Photos by Yasmin Al-Samarrai

First year Master of Architecture student Pedram Karimi and fourth year Master of Architecture student Parham Karimi (who happen to be brothers) received an honourable mention for their submission to BOUN: International Urban Furniture Design Competition.

The 2018 competition sought design for furniture that would enrich the built environment and improve the quality of the urban landscapes marked by "ever-increasing skyscrapers" that tend to overpower smaller elements.

The duo's proposal, titled GATHERING-TIME, is a series of modular urban furniture that encourages the discovery of interstitial spaces within urban university campuses.

Writes Pedram, "The design proposal intends to redefine the campus bench from a repeatable object into a distinct, expressive space that can attract and delight people, inviting them to gather in small and large groups."

Congratulations to Pedram and Parham on their successful competition entry!

What would happen if an iconic Housing Project from the 20th Century were to land, today, in downtown Toronto?

This semester 15 teams of undergraduate students have been working on 15 different design fictions — and their results were shared this week on instagram, using the hashtags #WhatIfToronto and​ #HistoryofHousing.

Each team constructed its own story using images from a seminal housing project as well as new drawings and short texts announcing its launching in downtown Toronto. The work was completed for the course History of Housing: Crisis, Visions, Commonplace (ARC354), taught by Assistant professor Petros Babasikas.

The housing projects the students drew from include: M. Brinkman's Justus Van Effen Complex (Rotterdam, 1921), M. Ginzburg's & I. Milinis' Narkomfin Building (Moscow, 1932), M. van der Rohe's Lake Shore Drive Apartments (Chicago, 1951), Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation (Marseille, 1952), M. Safdie's Habitat 67 (Montreal, 1967), K. Kurokawa's Nagakin Capsule Tower (Tokyo, 1972), A. & P. Smithson's Robin Hood Gardens and N. Brown's Alexandra Road Estate (London, 1975 and 78).

While remaining a design fiction, #WhatIfToronto sketches what might happen if global architectures were to land in Toronto in a 'non-Toronto way.' It also reflects on the city's real estate boom and on the contemporary housing crisis experienced by the students' generation. The project's alternate versions of 20th Century urban life — Modernist, Metabolist, Collective, Communal, Low- and Mid-Rise, High-Density — have been extremely influential in the history of architecture and in the making of cities.

In their ongoing research for History of Housing, students, using multidisciplinary sources and tools, have been discovering repeating patterns, building types, crises and visions of community, identity and public space realized by housing architecture over the past century. They now broadcast some of this work to a city that keeps changing, opening and closing, reinventing itself and asking questions about its global standing.

The posts, stories and collages of #WhatIfToronto #HistoryofHousing @uoftdaniels are meant to travel in the Cloud as public images of how we could live together.

To view the students' projects, search #WhatIfToronto​ #HistoryofHousing on instagram.

Congratulations to the Daniels Faculty undergraduate students Dimah Ghazal, Ous Abou Ras, and Adriana Sadun on winning the 2018 TEDxUofT design competition. The competition called for installations that addressed the theme of the conference: Deconstruct. 

As the team writes in their proposal:

"The design consists of two sculptural pieces made from solid and semi-transparent cubes. Each cube is arranged in a specific orientation that conveys a whole. However, this whole is formed of two intersecting ideas, an artistic visualization of form and a physical interpretation of the deconstruction of light. The idea of intersection comes from the letter X, a sign of two lines meeting one another at a singular point. At the intersection is where the two lines deconstruct and reconstruct to form a new meaning. It is where different disciplines meet to form new relationships."

This year's TEDxUofT Conference held a design competition, where they reached out to aspiring U of T designers to design an installation for the intermission space in the St. Lawrance Centre for the Performing Arts. "We want this design to engage with the guests in a way that is both intriguing and thought-provoking, captivating them outside the traditional speaker-audience setting", said the TEDxUofT organizers in the Design Contest Brief.

The winning team was chosen based on their creative efforts to communicate the theme of the conference and their ability to engage guests with their work.

For more information about TEDxUofT and their events, head over to their Website and YouTube Channel.

On February 27, students in the Daniels Faculty's Master of Landscape Architecture program met with professionals working in the field to learn more about life after graduation and gather tips on developing their future careers. This year's event, generously supported by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects (OALA), was well attended, with 15 professionals, many of them Daniels Faculty alumni, joining students at One Spadina. Students rotated from table to table to meet with everyone who generously donated their time to provide insight and advice.
 
So what did they learn? We surveyed some of the students afterwards and collected 8 tips for Master of Landscape Architecture students about to start their career.

1. Not all firms are alike
Every firm is different. As a result, each has different criteria for the type of people they're looking to hire. Niloufar Eesfarjani learned about the importance of determining what makes each firm unique, so that you can "tailor your cover letter or resume to address what they are looking for."
 
2. Your dream job is out there! Find the firm that's right for you
"One of the professionals told me: don't be afraid to quit if you aren't having fun at work," said Carlos Portillo. "There will be something that is right for you," so don't waste your time at a place that isn't a good fit.

 
3. Career paths can vary
"There were so many differences in what people had done beforehand," noted Blake Creamer after meeting with the professionals. "Landscape architecture is so varied that you can find what you are really interested in and go for that, which is really nice."
 
4. Highlight what will make you stand out in the crowd
Many of the students who attended the event sought advice on how to create an eye-catching portfolio. But, as Cornell Campbell learned, firms receive so many, they can't look at them all. One piece of advice he received is to "create info sheets about your work and projects — a couple pages that they can easily browse through to get a sense of you and your work." You can show them your full portfolio when they invite you in.
 
Reesha Morar was interested to learn how similar many portfolios can be, given that recent graduates often include student work stemming from the same assignments. "Diversity is very good; they want to see different styles," she said. "Someone said they want to see sketch models, which a lot of us find are very messy or rough. A lot of elements that we don't realize are valuable, they see as valuable."

5. It's not just the skills you have but how you use them
Most of us know how to use photoshop and other programs, said Irene Wong, so listing these skills on your resume is not going to set you apart. It's how you put those skills to use that matters. Like Morar, she learned that showing your creative process can be helpful: "A lot of the professionals said that the wanted to see hand drawings and rough models."
 
6. Being a good salesperson leads to more creative work
Working in a firm often means having to please a client who may value the bottom line above all else. Alyssa Lagana learned that "you have to convince people of the value of your designs." Once you are able to do this, you can begin to make small changes to the project that match your creative vision.
 
7. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want
"One thing I learned last year and this year is to be really forward. There are a ton of people here and you have to make yourself known in some way," said Emily McKenna, who landed a summer job last year thanks to a connection she made at this event. "Last year when I got my job, I just asked for it. I had a really lovely conversation with someone and felt really compelled by the work she was doing. So I just asked, and she happened to have a spot."

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Thanks to all the professionals who joined us for this event, including: Elyse Parker, City of Toronto; Claude Cormier, Claude Cormier + Associates; Bryce Miranda, DTAH; Doris Chee, Hydro One Networks Inc.; Caroline Cosco, Ontario Ministry of the Environment; Brett Hoornaert, The Planning Partnership; Scott A Torrance, Scott Torrance Landscape Architecture Inc; Shadi Gilani, Terraplan Landscape Architects; Lina Al-Dajani, The MBTW Group; Jane Welsh, City of Toronto Environmental Planning; Ken McGowan, Bioroof Systems; Darcie McIsaac, Terraplan Landscape Architects; Jana Joyce, The MBTW Group; Michael Cullen, Terraplan Landscape Architects; Kiran Chhiba, Dillon Consulting Limited.