The Potato Plan Collection, a new book edited by Mirjam Züger and Kees Christiaanse, both celebrates Patrick Abercrombie's 1943 colourful diagram of London's many districts and explores its "potential as an analytical tool for contemporary metropolitan territories."  Mark Sterling, director of the Daniels Faculty's Master of Urban Design program, contributed an essay to the book as well as drawings, including a "Potato Plan" of Toronto, which he prepared collaboratively with Sabrina Yuen (HBA, Architectural Studies, 2016).

From the Potato Plan Collection's press release:

Originally drawn in 1943 as part of the County of London Plan, Abercrombie’s ‘Social and Functional Analysis’ poetically illustrates the city as an agglomeration of distinct communities, clusters, and centralities. The Potato Plan Collection comprises 40 Potato Plans from all around the globe, each being a reinterpretation of the original by local architects, urban designers and scholars. As a whole, the collection offers a new perspective on the structure of regional configurations in the urban age.

The recent publication is one of a number of projects that has kept Sterling busy lately. In May, he hosted a delegation of 19 planning and urban design officials from Helsinki, Finland for a talk on the history and current state of urban design and planning policy in the City of Toronto. The group included the Deputy Mayor of Helsinki, 12 members of the Finnish Parliament, and a number of members of the Helsinki City Executive Office. He also participated in a conference held in Milan in which he spoke via Skype about the Greater Toronto Area.

A Principal of Acronym Urban Design and Planning, Sterling is an award-winning architect, urban designer and professional planner. He is a leading thinker on new approaches to compact urban form and an innovator in exploring intelligent development scenarios through a variety of approaches to digital visualization. Visit the Daniels Faculty's 'people' page to learn more about Mark's professional activities and research.

New infrastructure has the power to transform the nation. That's the inspiration behind the CanInfra Ideas Contest, which challenges university students, academics, professionals, think tanks, and others to develop new infrastructure ideas for the 21st century.

The winners of this year's competition were announced on May 30th, and a team that included recent Daniels Faculty HBA, Architectural Studies graduates Ji Song Sun and Hasnain Raza Akbar took third place, with an award of $10,000.

The team's submission, "Taking the High Road," proposes highway lanes that can wirelessly charge the batteries of electric vehicles while they are driving. This new infrastructure would help encourage the uptake of zero-emission vehicles on Canadian roads — one of the Government of Canada's goals. The team's design also includes rotating solar panels and wind turbines that would generate electricity from the sun and from wind turbulence created by the traffic.

"As an architectural designer, it was my great pleasure and honor to serve the team for the past several months by helping them visualize the ideas through 3D rhino models, renderings, diagrams, and physical models," said Sun, who participated in a number of architectural competitions throughout his undergraduate career will be joining the University of Calgary's Master of Architecture (Environmental Design) program this fall.

Akbar helped the team create cohesive visuals and focused on design elements of the highways as well as the over all infrastructure.

Other team members include, from U of T: Project Manager Jing Guo, who is currently pursuing a masters degree in applied science; Economic Consultant Benjamin Couillard, who holds a BA and MA in economics from the U of T; industrial engineering masters student Pavel Shmatnik, who led the group's research team, and life sciences graduate Thenvin Giridhar, who created animations. Aliyah Mohamed, a graduate of McMaster University, was the finance and feasibility lead; and Tashi Nanglo, who graduated from the University of Guelph, was the video director for the project.

Above: Team members for the project "Taking the High Road" pictured with Canada's Minister of Finance Bill Morneau

The CanInfra Ideas Contest was presented by The Boston Consulting Group in Canada and sponsored by Brookfield Asset Management, RBC, CIBC, Deloitte, Torys LLP, and media partner The Globe and Mail.

The winning team, "IceGrid: A Renewable Energy Microgrid for Nunavut," from Memorial University in St John's, proposed building "solar- and wind-powered micro power grids to replace dirty fuel-burning systems in rural communities. The IceGrid plan starts with a site in Iqaluit, Nunavut, and would scale to other rural communities across Canada's north."

For more information on the winning teams, visit the CanInfra Ideas Contest website.

What was the most memorable part of your Master of Urban Design degree?
Constantly being exposed to guest speakers and guest critiques provided great opportunities to hear varying experiences, receive advice, and get exposure to diverse perspectives. Becoming acquainted with these guests, who brought real-life experiences and projects, grounded the studio experience and brought extra realism to each project. This made learning and the design process collaborative, which was incredibly rewarding. 

What inspired your thesis topic?
My thesis was inspired by my life experiences and what I have learned as my time as a student and designer. I grew up in the area where my thesis is located and shopped at the very mall in which my project focuses on. Suburban developments, which are characterized by large areas of singular uses and personal vehicles, are no longer sustainable for the environment, or for the people who reside there. The prioritization of certain land uses and transportation modes has propagated this suburban sprawl. Refocusing suburban futures is necessary, and can be achieved by the intensification of existing community nodes, and synthesizing mixed densities, uses, and public transportation. These changes will encourage the suburbs to evolve to better address contemporary ideologies and quality of life. A suburban mall — in this case Markville Mall — has the capacity to become the connective tissue between transportation services and modes of mobility. By increasing the permeability of this site, and adapting it to better suite daily needs and activities, the suburban mall can evolve into a successful and thriving community node.

What advice would you give to a new student?
I would encourage new students to approach their studies with an eagerness to learn and an open mind to take advantage of every experience studying at Daniels will offer. There is something very inspiring about learning and exploring in an environment with peers and instructors with similar interests and goals. The opportunity to grow as a professional is limitless.

What are your plans after graduation?
I am very much looking forward to starting my career as an Urban Designer at IBI Group in Toronto.

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Convocation for #UofTDaniels students was 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!

The University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design in partnership with The Pritzker Architecture Prize is honoured to welcome Professor Balkrishna Doshi, the 2018 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, to present the public lecture "Paths Uncharted" on Wednesday, May 16, 2018.

While registration is full for this event, there will be a rush line for non-ticket holders, and any unclaimed seats will be made available on a first-come, first served basis. Overflow spaces with some visibility into the hall will also be available. If you are a ticket holder, remember to arrive 10 minutes before the start of the event to claim your seat!

Professor Doshi’s lecture will also be recorded and streamed live on Facebook and Instagram via @UofTDaniels. Following the event, the recording will be made available on the Daniels Faculty’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/UofTDaniels.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Pritzker Prize, and the first time that the international award will be presented in Canada. Its purpose is to honor annually a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built environment through the art of architecture.

An architect, urban planner, and educator, for the past 70 years Doshi has been instrumental in shaping the discourse of architecture throughout India and internationally. Influenced by masters of 20th century architecture, including Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, and Louis Kahn, Doshi has been able to interpret architecture and transform it into built works that respect eastern culture while enhancing the quality of living in India. His ethical and personal approach to architecture has touched lives of every socio-economic class across a broad spectrum of genres since the 1950s.

Doshi's architecture explores the relationships between fundamental needs of human life, connectivity to self and culture, and understanding of social traditions, within the context of a place and its environment, and through a response to Modernism. Childhood recollections, from the rhythms of the weather to the ringing of temple bells, inform his designs. He describes architecture as an extension of the body, and his ability to attentively address function while regarding climate, landscape, and urbanization is demonstrated through his choice of materials, overlapping spaces, and utilization of natural and harmonizing elements.

Image, top: Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (photo courtesy of VSF)

A recent article by CityLab highlights the expansive, detailed, and beautifully illustrated research in the book Third Coast Atlas: A Prelude to a Plan by Clare Lyster, Charles Waldheim, Daniel Ibañez, and  Daniels Faculty Associate Professor Mason White.

Filled with maps, plans, diagrams, timelines, photographs, and essays, the large, hardcover book offers a multi-layered description of the process of urbanization throughout the Great Lakes region: North America’s “Third Coast.”

CityLab provides "The Story of the Great Lakes in 8 Maps," referencing illustrations from the book.

Writes Zach Mortice:

The Great Lakes were where the skyscraper and the shopping mall were invented. The urban street grid was perfected here, and the field of urban planning took some of its earliest steps here toward becoming a formalized profession. Its ports and shipping distribution districts were trendsetters. And all manner of Modernist campus and quasi-megastructure experiments took root in the humble middle of North America. Think of Mies van der Rohe’s campus at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology and his Lafayette Park neighborhood in Detroit; Bertrand Goldberg’s city-within-two-towers Marina City, also in Chicago; and Moshe Safdie’s influential Habitat 67 in Montreal.

It is a vast legacy, matched by the physical dimensions of the Great Lakes themselves.

Visit CityLab to read the full article.

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!

The transformation of the West Don Lands in Toronto into a sustainable, mixed-use community has been recognized with a 2017-2018 Global Award for Excellence from the Urban Land Institute (ULI). The award-winning pedestrian-friendly community — a 79-acre site nestled between the Don Valley and Gardiner Expressway, near the Distillery District — was designed with the help of a number of faculty and alumni from the Daniels — including the Director of the Faculty’s Master of Urban Design program Mark Sterling.

Sterling was the Urban Design Lead for the Public Realm Master Plan led by David Leinster (BLA 1985) of The Planning Partnership.

Writes Batel Yona for the ULI’s website:

Innovative and high-quality parks and public realm are among the area’s hallmarks, each incorporating robust biodiversity and natural landscapes. Corktown Common is positioned atop a flood-protection land form that protects 519 acres (210 ha) of downtown Toronto and unlocks the area’s development potential. Underpass Park transformed an unused area into a family-friendly recreational community space. The Front Street Promenade, a linear park that constitutes the spine of the new neighborhood, is programmed with curated public art installations and linked to the district’s secondary network of mews, courtyards, and pathways to create a healthy, walkable, integrated new community. Toronto’s first woonerf streets are also found here.

The team for the West Don Lands project includes:

Master developer: Waterfront Toronto; precinct plan: Urban Design Associates
Developers: Urban Capital (River City), DREAM Unlimited, Kilmer Group (Canary District), Toronto Community Housing
Public realm and urban designers: the Planning Partnership with PFS Studio plus &Co., Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc.
Landscape designers: Claude Cormier & Associates, NAK Design Strategies Architectural design: (River City) Saucier & Perrotte, ZAS Architects; (Canary District) architects Alliance, KPMB Architects, Page + Steele/IBI Group Architects, Daoust Lestage, MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects, (Shade Pavillion) Maryann Thompson Architects
Design/builder: (Canary District) EllisDon Inc., Ledcor Group
Retail designer: Live Work Learn Play

For more information, visit the ULI website.

What kind of city do we want Toronto to be? As part of Edit: Expo for Design, Innovation & Technology, PARTISANS partnered with New York’s Storefront for Art and Architecture to bring its Letters to the Mayor series to Toronto. The installation, which was on display September 28 to October 8, displayed letters written by Toronto architects to Mayor John Tory, who visited the expo to view them on opening night.

Dean Richard Sommer drew inspiration from the Daniels Faculty’s own installation at the Edit expo: a large, detailed 25-foot-long “fun-house mirror” of a future Toronto looking south to the lake from Steeles Avenue (a portion of which is displayed above). For those who missed it, we’ve pasted his letter below.

Dear Mayor Tory:

For those who envision the future of Toronto, what is the picture that they hold in their minds eye? 

For the city’s official planners, the picture might be akin to a paint-by-number kit — one colour for the established residential areas, another for the main corridors where intensification is allowed, another for former industrial lands now subject to unfettered development, and hatching for heritage and other zoning overlays. The development industry has a different picture: a mashed-up monopoly board of dots and spots of investment opportunities metastasized across the city, with a successful ruling from the Ontario Municipal Board as the ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card. Yet, how are the consequences of these ways of guiding the city’s future seen and understood? And what might better capture the experience and vision of Toronto’s heterogeneous citizenry? Is it a graphic novel of a day in the life of a short order cook who travels several hours daily across the city by TTC? Or is it a still from the TV drama “Suits,” filmed in a camouflaged version of downtown Toronto glossed up as a glamorous stage for aspiring professionals?

A great city, like a great book, painting, or piece of music must first be imagined — and one must start by creating some engaging big pictures of what we hope to build. In a society aspiring to democracy, there should be competing pictures of our urban future to inspire and focus debate. Which pictures might help people understand something beyond the specific lens of their experience, or self-interest?

Powerful, civically-minded people often tell me “Toronto is a city of neighborhoods,” and “Toronto is built incrementally, deal by deal,” and how in this system there is “no way to think more holistically, or conceive and pursue ways of building the city beyond single projects,” as if these are incontrovertible truths or political circumstances somehow unique to Toronto. They are neither. Incrementalism in the absence of vision replicates the status quo and breeds mediocrity. A great and growing metropolis like Toronto must see itself as more than just an amalgamation of neighborhoods and districts. Even for those fortunate enough to rent or own a home in a well-established neighborhood, where they work or play inevitably takes them to other places, and this everyday reality makes them citizens of something much greater.

Here, at Canada’s oldest and largest school of Architecture, Landscape and Design, the John H. Daniels Faculty, now perched at the head of Spadina Avenue, we consider — and draw — the city from many angles. I would like to invite you to join us in this messy art of building a real vision for our city. Together, we need to ask whether more of the same will do and, if not, what is missing.

Respectfully,

Richard Sommer, Dean

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design

Photo, top: Graduate students in Superstudio create "big pictures" of Toronto based on the Faculty's Edit installation. Photo by: Harry Choi
Image, middle: a section of the Faculty's Edit installation: "Where is the big picture, Toronto?"

Last week, Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Landscape Research Robert Wright was part of a panel discussion that highlighted U of T’s expertise and different perspectives on smart cities. The panelists brought research from a workshop in India, and also weighed in on Sidewalk Lab’s recent announcement to create a new, technologically connected neighbourhood for Toronto’s waterfront. Moderated by Janice Stein, Wright was joined by U of T experts Judy Farvolden, V. Kumar Murty, Patricia O’Campo, Enid Slack, and David Wolfe.

“Panelists agreed that smart cities cannot take a one-size-fits-all approach – all cities and towns are built differently with different wants and needs,” wrote Romi Levine for U of T News.

The event comes after a workshop in India led by U of T earlier this year at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay Centre Centre for Urban Science and Engineering (IIT-B) on the future of smart cities. Presenters from U of T and IIT-B approached the definition of smart cities from a broad perspective, considering physical and social infrastructural needs as well as the role of management and services required for the sustainable operation, inclusive development, and growth of metropolitan areas. Presentations connected leading-edge research and knowledge together with strategies and recommendations for approaching India’s next decade of smart cities development.

To view the presentations from the workshop, visit the Cities@UofT Cities Blog.

Photo, top: Modal Cities Theatre and Lab at One Spadina. Rendering by NADAAA. The Model Cities Theatre and Lab will draw on comparative data and insights from the Global Cities Indicators Facility for use in conjunction with emerging 3D and other visualization techniques in order to test and project new ideas in urban design. The theatre and lab will facilitate research on designing cities holistically, and offer a public forum for creating new decision frameworks, design options, policy alternatives, and industry solutions.