On Tuesday, February 27, students in the Daniels Faculty's Master of Landscape Architecture program will come together with alumni working at some of the top landscape architecture firms in Toronto for the MLA Student-Professionals Networking Event. The annual event gives students the opportunity to ask questions of professionals and gather advice on what to expect after graduation. Sandra Cook (MLA 2017) participated in last year's event as a student, and now works for FORREC, one of the firms that was in attendance.  We asked her about her experience at the Networking event and making the transition to her role as Junior Designer with the firm.
 
Tell me about your experience at last year's Networking event.
The networking session was useful as a means of exposure to all the different directions a career in Landscape Architecture can go. Getting to ask questions to such a diverse spectrum of professional landscape architects was valuable to help plan my career path.
 
Do you remember some of the useful advice you received?
I received this advice was from an early career professional: She said, don’t lose the sense of curiosity and freedom in design that you have developed at school. When you start working, you’ll be bogged down by what’s buildable and affordable, and that’s reality, but keep researching and exposing yourself to cutting edge design and keep working on your passion projects outside of work.
 
Now that you have spent a year in the profession, what advice do you have for students who will soon graduate?
Do your research on the type of work new graduates are doing at the firms you apply to. Since graduating, I’ve realized the work entrusted to new graduates varies widely from firm to firm. In my case, I wanted a job where I would be involved in a project from concept to construction. Gaining construction drawing and administration experience was my priority so I chose a firm that was building projects around southern Ontario.
 
What do you do now at FORREC?
I work as part of the Landscape Studio’s local project team. My first big project at FORREC was helping to project manage FORREC’s entry into the Pier 8 Park competition in Hamilton. During the competition, I got to participate in brainstorming and design pin-ups with senior designers from Landscape, Architecture, Creative and Graphics. We won the competition, and now I’m part of the team working on the construction drawings and administration. I’m really excited to see the park built, although I’ve gotten a sneak-peek using VR thanks to our Creative department— so, so cool!

Image, top, by Sandra Cook for her 2017 MLA Thesis project Wet Land

The Daniels Faculty would like to congratulate Master of Visual Studies student Sam Cotter & alumna Elisa Julia Gilmour (MVS 2016). Both have been longlisted for the inaugural New Generation Photography Award, presented by the Canadian Photography Institute of the National Gallery of Canada and Scotiabank.

Artists on the longlist for the photography award were selected by a panel of 15 nominators comprised of photography experts from arts universities and colleges across Canada.

Three winners will be selected from the longlist and announced in March 2018. Each will receive a cash prize of $10,000 and be featured in a group exhibition at the Canadian Photography Institute PhotoLab located at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa in April 2018 as well as an exhibition at OCAD's Onsite Gallery during the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in May 2018.

Cotter and Gilmour are both Toronto-based artists. Cotter regularly employs photography, film, and installation to examine issues of visual representation and artifice, while Gilmour works with still and moving images that explore cultural, familial and gender identities.

For more information on the inaugural New Generation Photography Award longlist, visit the Scotiabank website.

Photos above from Elisa Julia Gilmour's Master of Visual Studies thesis Éperdument (Madly) - film stills and installation view from the thesis exhibition at U of T's Art Museum.

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

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

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

From the article:

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

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

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

Visit U of T News to read the full story.

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

Master of Landscape Architecture student Vincent Javet published a Q & A with Pierre Bélanger (BLA 1996) and Lucy Lippard in the Winter 2017 issue of Ground, the magazine of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects.

The discussion considered the roles that globalization, colonialism, and increasing urbanization play in the field of landscape architecture, and explored how landscape architects can work to challenge the exploitation and degradation of the land on which we depend.

"Our ongoing rapid urbanization and the commodification of the world at large has resulted in complex and multilayered socio-economic and environmental issues for the landscape architecture profession to address," writes Javet. "The profession must begin to question its role in the unmaking, formalization, privatization, and sterilization of land at scales ranging from the city to the territory."

Visit Ground magazine's website to read the full Q & A and other articles from the Winter 2017 issue.

Bélanger was the Daniels Faculty's 2016-2017 Michael Hough/OALA Visiting Critic. In January 2016, he presented a public lecture with Jessica F. Green. Titled "What is the Geography of Energy?" the talk explored how landscapes of energy govern the planet, and influence how we conceptualize relationships between human intervention and the natural environment. The full lecture is available on the Daniels Faculty's YouTube channel.

Photo, top: Diavik Diamond Mine, which opened in 2003 in the Northwest Territories excabates deep into the sub-Arctic tundra landscape, via Ground magazine.

On November 17, the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design celebrated the official opening of its new home — the Daniels Building — at historic One Spadina Crescent.

During the day, University of Toronto President, Professor Meric Gertler; Dean of the Daniels Faculty, Professor Richard Sommer; and Chair of the Governing Council at the University of Toronto, Claire Kennedy welcomed donors, alumni, faculty, students, and other esteemed guests to commemorate the Daniels Faculty’s new home.

In the evening, all students and alumni were invited to a party to celebrate. Photographer Harry Choi captured the event, which included dancing, eating, and tours of the new building. Thanks to all who joined us to mark this milestone in our Faculty's history.

More photos are available on the Daniels Faculty's Flickr page.

On December 18, 2017, undergraduate students in the Daniels Faculty’s Visual Studies program showcased their work as part of the annual Eyeball exhibition and party. The event was held in the North and South Borden Buildings, across the street from One Spadina. View the photos above to see the range of work from our students.

The Daniels Faculty’s Visual Studies program focuses on studio practice in combination with critical discourse. All aspects of contemporary visual culture are explored, and students are encouraged to explore other scholarly interests within the University of Toronto. These interdisciplinary studies ultimately inform and strengthen their work, allowing ideas and modes of thought that might be rooted in more conventional forms of making art to be openly refined and challenged.

With a prominent address along Spadina Crescent, the North and South Borden buildings house the Daniels Faculty’s Visual Studies programs, which include Master of Visual Studies degrees in studio or curatorial studies.

For more on the Daniels Faculty's programs, visit the Programs page of our website. 

To view more photos from Eyeball, visit the Daniels Faculty’s Flickr page.

By Noreen Ahmed-Ullah, U of T News

A group of architecture students at the University of Toronto tapped into their creativity, planning and design skills to reimagine new ways southern Florida can tackle climate change-related flooding, rising water levels and salt water entering canals and corroding existing infrastructure.

Their ideas include plans for communities under threat of flooding to relocate behind a giant arc-like sea wall that could double as a civic monument, a network of complex canals built in public rights-of-way with specialized plants to treat water pollutants in agricultural areas, and a series of fresh water catchment basins in a neighbourhood where salt water is intruding into the groundwater aquifers.

On a recent Thursday, the master's students who are specializing in architecture, landscape architecture and urban design at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design presented nine proposals to a team of local planning and architecture experts and officials from Florida's Broward County. The southeast Florida region, just north of Miami, has been struggling with rising water levels – a recent report showed sea levels rising six times faster than average – as well as an onslaught of hurricanes and ongoing development in flood-prone areas.

Click here to read the full article on U of T News.

First year Master of Architecture student Pedram Karimi was among the contributors to the exhibition Black Spaces Matter, now on at the Boston Architectural College's McCormick Gallery. Running until January 29, 2018,  the exhibit explores the "form and function of interracial neighbourhoods"  through an in-depth study of the abolitionist community new New Bedford Whaling national Historical Park in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

"In recent years we have seen a growing body of literature on race and architecture; however, this scholarship has focused mostly on the negative side of such built environments," explains the event listing. "This exhibit celebrates the aesthetics and architectonics of a neighborhood where many former slaves lived side-by-side with the rest of the population and engaged multiple aspects of the city's interracial architecture."

Karimi's contribution — which included help making a large-scale digitally fabricated urban model and diagram of the so-called Abolitionist Row of New Bedford  — stemmed from year-long research in New Bedford. Karimi also created several architectural drawings and panels, as well as visualizations of several architectural and landscape projects.

The exhibition was a collaborative project that involved filmmakes, VR specialists, architectural historians and community stakeholders.  Local New Bedford experts partnered with students and faculty from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Boston Architectural College to highlight "a lesser-known progressive interracial neighbourhood in the United States."

From the event listing:

Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, more than 80 years before the Thirteenth Amendment; however, federal law supporting slave owners superseded this law and there were cases of slaves being "reclaimed" from Massachusetts in the years that followed. A strong network of abolitionists, both black and white, gave New Bedford its claim to fame that no slave was ever forcibly "reclaimed" from it.

New Bedford's architecture reflects a period of relative racial equality and tolerance in "the city that lit the world" during its whaling boom. This neighborhood includes a mixture of Gothic Revival, Federal, Greek Revival, and early Italianate homes, as well as modest cottages. Important historical figures, such as Fredrick Douglass and Lewis Temple, resided in these homes.
 

For more information, visit the UMass Dartmnouth website.

On December 5, as Toronto City Council voted in favour of moving forward with planning for Rail Deck Park, Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture, and Master of Urban Design students presented design ideas for this new public space, which would be built over the rail corridor that cuts through the southern edge of the downtown core.

"Toronto city council voted 36-4 in favour of pushing ahead with planning work for the park, which is now estimated to cost some $1.665 billion although only five per cent of the design is complete," reported CBC News. "If built, the park would span the rail corridor from Blue Jays Way to Bathurst Street, creating more than eight hectares (21 acres) of green space in the middle of the city."

Above are photos of some of the projects that were presented on December 5.

Congratulations to all Superstudio students on completing your final review!

On November 17, the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design celebrated the official opening of its new home — the Daniels Building — at historic One Spadina Crescent.

Located on the western edge of the University of Toronto’s St. George campus just north of College Street, the iconic neo-gothic building and stunning contemporary addition, currently nearing completion, is now poised to become an international focal point for education, research, and outreach on architecture, art, and the future of cities.

University of Toronto President, Professor Meric Gertler; Dean of the Daniels Faculty, Professor Richard Sommer; and Chair of the Governing Council at the University of Toronto, Claire Kennedy welcomed donors, alumni, faculty, students, and other esteemed guests to commemorate the Daniels Faculty’s new home — which the Globe and Mail’s architecture critic has called “one of the best buildings in Canada of the past decade” — with an official ribbon cutting ceremony and reception.

Above is a slideshow of images from the opening ceremony.

Click here to read the full press release.