Anyone searching for King William Street, a major dining and entertainment strip in Hamilton, Ontario, will soon have a new landmark to navigate by. Make Studio — a design-build practice led by sessional lecturer Dina Sarhane, Daniels alumnus Mani Mani (MArch 2010), and Tom Svilans, a designer and researcher at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen — has won a competition to build a tall, functional piece of public art at the street's eastern terminus.

Make Studio was announced as the winner of Hamilton's King William Street Beacon and Gate Public Art Project competition on October 16. The studio's winning design, titled "Wood Gate," consists of a series of custom wood glulam arms, arranged to resemble a tall tree that has been splintered, as if by lightning. ("Glulam" is short for glued laminated timber, a durable engineered wood product.) The design is intended to complement the surrounding urban streetscape while symbolizing Hamilton's transition from a manufacturing town to an arts and hospitality hub.

The eight-metre-tall structure satisfies the "beacon" part of the city's design brief, and it also acts as concealment for a utilitarian element: an internal pulley system allows one of the glulam arms to be lowered to street level, so it can serve as a barricade to vehicle traffic during pedestrian-focused public events. (That's the "gate.")

Make Studio's proposal was one of six to make the city's shortlist. The competition jury, in its public report, praised Wood Gate for the way its design "creates a welcome connection to nature, speaks to evolution and growth and brings a unique warmth to the street."

Wood Gate is scheduled to be installed during summer 2021. "We are thrilled that municipalities are welcoming the use of wood in our public spaces," Sarhane says. "We are advocates for the use of wood in the public realm because we see the material choice as sustainable, local and inviting. It is a humble and tactile material that is readily available in our country. With advances in digital fabrication, it can be transformed into infinite possibilities."

The Wood Gate design includes a number of innovative touches, starting with the wood itself. Make Studio will be using yellow cedar to create a custom, free-form glulam material designed to resist weather and wear. Recessed within the glulam arms will be strips of high-intensity LED lights. The lights will serve a dual purpose: they'll illuminate the beacon with white light and also serve as a warning system, by flashing red when the barricade is being lowered.

The design also includes a public bench, which will be installed on the other side of King William Street, opposite the beacon. The bench will double as a locking mechanism for the barricade, and will also conceal a storage area for the barricade's pulley handle and "road closure" sign.

Designing and building public works projects out of engineered wood is a specialty of Make Studio, which was founded by Sarhane and Mani in 2016. (Sarhane is also the founder of DS Studio, a separate architecture and urban design practice.) The studio's other recent projects include "Turtle Tower," a beacon-like wooden public sculpture that resembles an elongated turtle shell, now under construction in Kelowna, British Columbia. And Make is currently at work on developing a system of wooden playground equipment for public use.

On Friday, October 2, the Urban Land Institute — in collaboration with the city of Brampton, the city of Helsinki, Greenberg Consultants, and the University of Toronto's School of Cities — will be hosting an online workshop about the ongoing effort to transform Brampton's uptown Hurontario-Steeles area into a transit-centric, mixed-use community.

The event will take place on Zoom, and pre-registration is required. Anyone who wants an invite should email Yvonne Yeung, manager of urban design at the city of Brampton. The day's programming begins at 9 a.m. More details, including an agenda, are available on the Urban Land Institute Toronto website.

The impetus for the workshop is Metrolinx's new Hurontario LRT, an 18-kilometre light-rail transit line that is scheduled for completion in 2024. The new LRT will terminate in Brampton's Hurontario-Steeles area, instantly transforming the neighbourhood into a major public transportation hub. Currently, much of the neighbourhood's land is occupied by Shoppers World, a suburban-style shopping mall.

Friday's event will be an opportunity for a variety of the Hurontario-Steeles area's key stakeholders (including major developers, public agencies, planners, and city departments) to talk and think about how that community, as well as other parts of Brampton, might be transformed in response to the introduction of rapid transit.

The day will begin with a presentation by Yvonne Yeung. She'll be speaking alongside famed urban planner Ken Greenberg, who is currently advising the city of Brampton, and School of Cities interim director Matti Siemiatycki.

After the presentation, the event will move into a series of panels and breakout sessions focused on the issues involved in transforming Brampton — currently a car-dependent city where the dominant mode of housing is single-family detached — into a transit-oriented, mixed-use community, as envisioned by the city's Brampton 2040 initiative. The frame for the discussion will be Brampton's efforts to transform itself into a "city by design," where design excellence is led by city hall, abetted by developers and community groups, and used as a problem-solving and consensus tool.

In the day's final session, the workshop will generate a series of questions about Brampton's future development. Those questions will form the basis of a second event, a virtual "town hall," which will be held on Thursday, October 8.

The town hall event will be held on Zoom, and will be open for anyone to join. For details on how to participate in that event, watch the ULI Toronto website.

A new design competition is asking students across Canada to propose alternative futures for Ontario Place, a former recreational complex located on Toronto's western waterfront whose future has been cast into doubt by a recent redevelopment push.

The student competition, titled "Ontario Place: A Call for Counterproposals" is an initiative of The Future of Ontario Place, a collective of architects and designers, brought together by a partnership between the World Monuments Fund, the Daniels Faculty, and Architectural Conservancy Ontario. The group's goal is to prevent Ontario Place's unique modernist structures and landscapes, designed in the late 1960s by Eberhard Zeidler and Michael Hough, from being altered or demolished in the name of redevelopment. And that isn't a far-fetched scenario: the Ontario government is actively considering a number of redevelopment proposals from private companies. One of the leading contenders is said to be an Austrian company known for building large indoor thermal spas.

Students who participate in Ontario Place: A Call for Counterproposals will be required to submit alternative designs for Ontario Place that work to preserve and supplement — rather than erase or replace — the site's existing architectural heritage.

Ontario Place first opened to the public in 1971. The complex, owned and developed by the government of Ontario, was originally an exhibition ground, intended to act a summer retreat for Ontario families who didn't own cottages. Among the park's Zeidler-designed structures is the now-iconic Cinesphere, a dome-like enclosure built to house the world's first permament IMAX theatre. Near the Cinesphere is another daring piece of architecture: five large "pods" that are anchored, with columns, directly into Lake Ontario. (The pods were originally used to house public exhibitions, but were later retrofitted into private event facilities.)

Top: Ontario Place's pods. Bottom: A view of the Cinesphere.

Ontario Place's family-fun days came to abrupt end in 2012, when the Ontario government shuttered the site, citing declining revenues. Ever since, the park has remained in planning limbo, with successive provincial governments promising revitalization but failing to deliver detailed plans. The current provincial government, led by premier Doug Ford, accelerated the redevelopment process in 2019 with a new request for proposals. Amid the push to determine a future for the area, the fate of Zeidler and Hough's designs remains uncertain.

The competition's design brief divides Ontario Place into three distinct zones. Zone one — the "core heritage zone," where most of Ontario's Place's existing structures are located — is to be preserved as-is. Zone two is a "buffer zone," where only small-scale additions are permitted. Zone three, an area that includes an 1990s-era performance venue and a few parking lots, is set aside for larger-scale interventions.

The competition brief asks student entrants not only to preserve Ontario Place in their designs, but also to do some thinking about the site's future as a public attraction. Entrants are forbidden from including private uses, like condominiums or big-box stores, in their designs. Instead, the brief calls on students to consider the needs of diverse public stakeholders. Entrants can also score points for developing program strategies that integrate Ontario Place with surrounding communities, for finding ways to preserve nearby ecological systems, and for developing public outreach strategies to raise awareness of the site's heritage value.

The competition is open to undergraduate and graduate students at Canadian schools who are studying architecture, urban planning, urban design, business, or related disciplines. Students who graduated after January 1, 2017 are also eligible to enter.

All entires will be judged by a jury of a respected architects, designers, and urbanists, including urban designer Ken Greenberg, OMA partner Jason Long, and Shim-Sutcliffe Architects principal Brigitte Shim.

Students interested in entering the competition must register by October 12. For more details, key dates, or to download the detailed design brief, visit the Future of Ontario Place website.

Take me to the Future of Ontario Place website

The Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto is excited to announce our Fall 2020 Talks & Lectures schedule featuring speakers and themes that simultaneously address the urgency of our contemporary challenges, and the opportunities of our diverse programs — architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, visual studies, and forestry.

The Fall 2020 Talks, a series of thematic discussions titled Resolutions and Agencies, explore design’s capacity to respond to activism, resilience, decolonization, density, narrative, and justice, among other topics.

Lectures provide an in-depth view on a topic by one speaker, while talks allow for thematic discussion with a diverse group of featured speakers. All programs are free, online, and open to the public. 

Find more details and register in advance at daniels.utoronto.ca/events.

Fall 2020 Talks: Resolutions and Agencies 

September 16, 4pm
Takes Action - Session I
Chris Roach (California College of the Arts)
Azadeh Zaferani (The Bartlett)
Lindsay Harkema (City College of New York)
Kees Lokman (University of British Columbia)
Moderated by Neeraj Bhatia (California College of the Arts) and Mason White (Daniels Faculty)
Hosted by California College of the Arts and the Daniels Faculty

September 24, 6:30pm   
Strange Primitivism and Other Things
Tei Carpenter (Daniels Faculty)  
Adrian Phiffer (Daniels Faculty)  
Moderated by Hans Ibelings (Daniels Faculty)  
  
October 1, 6:30pm   
The Great Indoors: Environmental Quality, Health and Wellbeing in a Quarantining Society
Kellie Chin (Workshop Architecture)  
Simon Coulombe (Wilfrid Laurier University)  
Steven Lockley (Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Harvard Medical School)  
Alejandra Menchaca (Thornton Tomasetti)  
Lidia Morawska (Queensland University of Technology)   
Manuel Riemer (Wilfrid Laurier University)  
Moderated by Bomani Khemet (Daniels Faculty) and Alstan Jakubiec (Daniels Faculty)  
 
October 7, 4:00pm  
Takes Action - Session II  
Lori Brown (Syracuse University)  
Samaa Elimam (Harvard University)  
Cesar Lopez (University of New Mexico)  
Albert Pope (Rice University)  
Moderated by Neeraj Bhatia (California College of the Arts) and Mason White (Daniels Faculty)  
Hosted by California College of the Arts and Daniels Faculty  

October 15, 6:30 pm   
Distancing Density  
Daniel D’Oca (Harvard University)  
Jay Pitter (Author & Placemaker)  
Moderated by Fadi Masoud (Daniels Faculty) and Michael Piper (Daniels Faculty)  
 
October 22, 5:00pm 
Future Forests: Renaturalizing Urban and Peri Urban Landscapes for People, Biodiversity and Resilience  
Simone Borelli (Forestry Division, United Nations)  
Liz O’Brien (Forest Research, UK Government)  
Fabiano Lemes de Oliveira (Politecnico di Milano)  
Jana VanderGoot (University of Maryland)  
Moderated by Danijela Puric-Mladenovic (Daniels Faculty)  

November 5, 6:30pm 
The Architect and the Public: On George Baird's Contribution to Architecture 
Andrew Choptiany (Carmody Groarke)
Roberto Damiani (Daniels Faculty)
Hans Ibelings (Daniels Faculty)
Michael Piper (Daniels Faculty)
Brigitte Shim (Daniels Faculty)
Richard Sommer (Daniels Faculty)

November 11, 4:00pm 
Takes Action - Session III  
Jill Desimini (Harvard University)  
Ersela Kripa & Stephen Mueller (Texas Tech University)  
David Moon (Columbia University)  
Lucía Jalón Oyarzun (Escuela SUR)  
Moderated by Neeraj Bhatia (California College of the Arts) and Mason White (Daniels Faculty)  
Hosted by California College of the Arts and Daniels Faculty 

November 12, 5:30 pm 
For Her Record: Notes on the Work of Blanche Lemco van Ginkel  
Phyllis Lambert (Canadian Centre for Architecture)  
Mary McLeod (Columbia University)   
Ipek Mehmetoglu (McGill University)  
Moderated by Brigitte Shim (Daniels Faculty)  

November 19, 12:30pm 
Architecture in Dialogue: 14th cycle of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture  
Aziza Chaouni (Daniels Faculty)  
Farrokh Derakhshani (Aga Khan Award for Architecture)  
Andres Lepik (Architekturmuseum München)  
Nondita Correa Mehrotra (RMA Architects)  
Moderated by Brigitte Shim (Daniels Faculty) 

Fall 2020 Lectures

September 22, 5:30pm 
Chris Lee (Pratt Institute)
MVS Proseminar  

October 5, 12:00pm 
Sheila Boudreau (Spruce Lab)

October 16, 1:00pm  
Elisa Silva (Enlace Arquitectura)  

October 19, 12:00pm 
Aisling O'Carroll (The Bartlett)  

October 27, 12:00pm
Arthur Adeya  (Kounkuey Design Initiative)

October 30, 1:00pm 
Kelly Doran (MASS Design Group)  
Jeffrey Cook Memorial Lecture   

November 6, 1:00pm 
Jason Nguyen (Daniels Faculty)  
 
November 9, 1:00pm 
Luis Callejas (LCLA Office)  

November 20, 1:00pm  
Gilles Saucier (Saucier + Perrotte)   
 
November 23, 12:00pm  
Teresa Galí-Izard (ETH)   
Michael Hough/Ontario Association of Landscape Architects Visiting Critic  

November 25, 1:00pm
Jia Gu (Spinagu / M&A)

November 27, 1:00pm  
Elise Hunchuck (Royal College of Art & The Bartlett)  

November 30, 1:00pm  
Sergio Lopez-Pineiro (Harvard University) 

We are pleased to announce Douglas Cardinal OC, FRAIC, as the 2020-21 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design (details forthcoming). 

When Master of Urban Design students Celine Li, Stella Ti, and Cindy Hu found out about Urban Design Challenge 2020, a student competition sponsored by the National Capital Commission, they were intrigued. The design brief, which called for new design proposals for the Sussex Courtyards, a series of historic plazas in in the ByWard Market area of downtown Ottawa, was a more detail-oriented design challenge than any of them had attempted to tackle before.

In China, where all three students had lived and studied before coming to Toronto, the urban design competitions in which they participated tended to operate on areas much larger than a few courtyards. "In China, it was basically the scale of an entire village," Celine says. "The scale in Canada is extremely different from what I was doing before. Doing this competition adjusted my sense of scale."

Their efforts to work on a smaller canvas paid off: their joint design proposal, titled "Byward Catalyst," won first place in its category. Celine, Stella, and Cindy will receive a cash prize of $750, as well as an all-expenses-paid trip to Ottawa, where — pandemic permitting — they'll present their design at an awards presentation session of the National Capital Commission's Urbanism Lab.

Celine Li, Stella Ti, and Cindy Hu.

The backbone of Celine, Stella, and Cindy's design proposal for the Sussex Courtyards is a new walking path, constructed from a variety of different materials selected specifically to blend with the facades of the surrounding heritage buildings. The path would gently guide visitors through the interconnected courtyards. A built-in lighting system would illuminate the walking route at night.

Within each of the five plazas that comprise the Sussex Courtyards, Celine, Stella, and Cindy designed small-scale interventions intended to make the area more lively and comfortable for visitors. In Jeanne d'Arc Court, for instance, the group proposed a new in-ground fountain that could be made to rotate, like a turntable. When not in use, the fountain would serve as a spot for street performances and other types of group activities:

In York Court, the group proposed the addition of a new pavilion ornamented with a canopy of book-shaped sculptures. The pavilion would both add visual appeal and provide some weather protection for the courtyard's periodic antiques markets:

And here's a look at their master plan:

Celine presented her thesis project this past winter and has since graduated. Stella and Cindy will enter the second year of their urban design 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

Lateral Office, an experimental design practice co-founded by Daniels Faculty associate professor Mason White, created Impulse in 2016. The public art installation consists of a series of see-saws, which light up and make sounds when they're used by passersby.

Impulse was a hit when it debuted in Montreal's Quartier des Spectacles, and the installation has since toured the world and won several prestigious design awards, including the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada's Urban Design Award. Impulse's lighting was done by CS Design, and its sound designer was Mitchell Akiyama, an assistant professor at the Daniels Faculty.

The piece is currently on loan to the Garment District Alliance, a New York non-profit, who have installed it on Broadway, in midtown Manhattan. There, the eye-catching teeter-totters attracted the attention of the New York Times.

The Times writes:

Sandra Lindum and Deirdre Amendolaro said they each brought their children to the art exhibit so the young ones could experience a piece of New York that’s become increasingly hard to find.

“I remember when we could just run outside and jump on one of these old rusty things,” said Ms. Lindum, who grew up in Queens. “Now they’re art. It’s the new New York, I guess,” she added with a giggle.

Arianna Rosario, 26, said she was walking along Broadway with her friends Nikita Nelson and Stephanie Centeno when she spotted the dazzling lights of the seesaws — and the ecstatic sounds of riders. “It’s fun to be that high up. It brings you back to your childhood,” Ms. Rosario said.

Impulse will remain on display in New York until February 1. Read the rest of the New York Times article here.

Photograph: Impulse in Manhattan. By Alexandre Ayer/Diversity Pictures LLC.

Earlier this week, a group of graduate students from the Daniels Faculty's architecture and urban design programs gathered in the main hall at One Spadina for the Faculty's annual Student-Professionals Networking Event.

Through a series of "speed networking" sessions, students were able to make connections with established design professionals, who may one day be their employers or colleagues.

Representatives from 24 local architecture and design firms were in attendance. They engaged students in conversation about the realities of transitioning from school into professional life.

Dean Richard Sommer and Shane Williamson, director of the Master of Architecture program, welcomed participants:

Students gathered around tables for group conversations with guest professionals:

The two-hour event was followed by an informal reception with light refreshments and snacks:

The event was made possible through the generous support of the Ontario Association of Architects, represented by VP Regulatory Mélisa Audet. The OAA’s mandate is to develop and uphold standards of skill, knowledge, qualification, practice, and professional ethics among architects, and to promote the appreciation of architecture in broader society. We thank the OAA for its continued support of the Daniels Faculty. And we also thank the design professionals who committed their time in support of our students in the architecture and urban design programs.

The firms represented at the 2019 Student-Professionals Networking Event were:

• Adamson Associates
• architectsAlliance
• Bousfields Inc.
• Brook McIlroy Inc.
• Concord Adex Inc.
• CS&P Architects Inc
• DesignAgency
• dkstudio
• DTAH
• Dubbeldam Architecture + Design
• exp
• Forrec Ltd
• Giannone Petricone Associates
• Hariri Pontarini Architects
• IBI Group Inc.
• KPMB Architects
• Moriyama Teshima Architects
• SvN
• Stantec Architecture Ltd.
• superkül
• The Daniels Corporation
• Williamson Williamson Inc.
• WZMH Architects
• Wonder Inc.

Scarborough's Dragon Centre mall, located near Sheppard Avenue East and Midland Avenue, was the first indoor mall in North America to cater specifically to Chinese merchants and shoppers. When it opened in 1984, it instantly became a hub of activity for Chinese newcomers to the Greater Toronto Area—many of them ex-Hong Kongers who had relocated ahead of that city's return to Chinese rule in 1997.

Dragon Centre's shops and food stalls have faithfully served Toronto's Chinese-Canadian community for 35 years. Now, with the mall on the verge of being demolished to make way for condos, a group of local urbanists, artists, and curators is commemorating the building with an exhibition, which will take place at Dragon Centre on October 5, starting at 1:30 p.m.

Daniels Faculty assistant professor Erica Allen-Kim helped analyze the mall's history and its place in Scarborough's urban fabric, with assistance from Daniels Faculty MArch students Phat Le and Marienka Bishop Kovacs. Daniels Faculty lecturer Morris Lum shot photographs. The exhibition is presented by ThinkFresh Group, with support from Camille Begin, ERA Architects, Myseum of Toronto, Shiu Pong Group, and the Daniels Faculty.

Photograph from the Multicultural Historical Society of Ontario.

The event will include tours of the mall and the sharing of stories from people who had meaningful experiences there over the years. For more information, visit dragoncentrestories.ca.