Martin Yeung (MArch 4), Lila Yavari (MArch 4), and Lailee Soleimani (MArch 4) in collaboration with University of Toronto engineering students Stephen Perkins, Majella Anson-Cartwright, and Omair Ali have received an Honorable Mention in The Toronto Urban Design Awards in the Student Project category for their proposal of a seasonal outdoor performance space for music and dance on the Toronto Islands. The project was a further development of work originally completed for Professor David Lieberman’s YOLLES Collaborative Studio 2009 in association with Nebojsa Ojdrovic PhD P.Eng, and the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. 

Sessional Lecturer Meg Graham's firm, superkül inc | architect, won one of the four Toronto Urban Design Awards of Excellence awarded this year - for their 40R Laneway House project.

From the Jury Report: “The 2009 Toronto Urban Design Awards, the 6th since the City’s amalgamation, celebrate the best urban design in Toronto. Unlike other design awards programs that highlight individual projects, the Urban Design Awards honour the improvements to urban life made by designers who are focusing on context—the way their designs fit into the surrounding environment and contribute to the creation of great public spaces… This year’s competition drew… 117 entries in 7 categories.”

The Jury’s—Ian Chodikoff, Jack Diamond, Eha Naylor and Michael Van Valkenburgh—comments on the superkül project:

“Architecturally speaking, this is a wonderful residence and a real surprise upon discovery. The neighbouring houses are of an almost wildly different range of styles, and this house adds both a profound and playful complement. It is a clever piece of design and its presence debunks the myth that you cannot provide a single-family home in a dense urban space. Forget about making the streets wider. This project supports a rationale for simply making fire trucks smaller to fit within a denser urban fabric. The project also begs the question as to why we couldn’t develop central garbage pick-up locations to serve such tightly knit housing in the centre of the city.

Clad with rusted metal panels, the exterior of the building was clearly designed to exude a rough aesthetic befitting a laneway residence of this kind. It is somewhat ironic that the building’s material palette and formal gestures are anything but unrefined. This project is certainly a perfect piece of infill.”

A summary of the jury report, winners, and touring exhibit can be viewed at http://www.toronto.ca/tuda/index.htm.