This past July, students in the Daniels Faculty's Master of Architecture program completed a two-week research workshop in Jordan with Assistant Professor Aziza Chaouni. Sponsored by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, the study took students to the Shoubak region north of Petra where they worked on an ecotourism scheme for the High Trail on the Shoubak mountain ridge.

Their work was part of Designing Ecological Tourism (DET), a research platform let by Chaouni that has brought together faculty from the University of Toronto and Ryerson University — as well as international experts, local stakeholders, government officials and graduate students — to investigate and develop design solutions to address challenges faced by ecotourism in the developing world.

DET aims to develop and disseminate transferable tools, strategies and visions for low impact forms of tourism that safeguard fragile environments and invigorate local economies. On top of introducing graduate students to work in the context of the developing world, DET nurtures collaborative research environments that combine architecture, landscape architecture, and planning with ecology, economics and sociology.

Pictured above are Daniels Faculty students Nicolas Roland and Mani Tabrizi.