The Daniels Faculty is participating in the opening night of the U of T Celebration of the Arts in the event Artists: UofT’s Best Kept Secret.

Described as "speed dating the arts," this event, part of U of T’s second annual Celebration of the Arts, takes guests through a series of studios where artists, poets, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and theatre directors demonstrate their work as both creators and professors. The event intends to reveal what art insiders already know – U of T is a hub where Canada's leaders in the arts impart their expertise to students and the wider community.

Once the event gets under way, a musical fanfare will prompt the visitors every 10 minutes to move on to the next studio. The evening winds down with a reception and a chance to chat with all the artists.

Daniels is represented by the following artists:

Toronto’s Urban Unconscious - Faculty: Adrian Blackwell; Students: Tina Chung, Andrea Gaus, Davide Gianforcaro, Kim Ligers, Andrea Macecek, Graeme Stewart, and Geoffrey Thun.

This 2008 design research studio focused on Toronto's Western Rail triangle, an area of urban fabric that suffers from both social and physical isolation from the rest of the city. We argue that this territory acts as Toronto's urban unconscious, divided from other spaces by ravines, railways, highways, and industrial fabric. These twelve architecture and urban design projects make use of the area's existing potential to imagine useful and pleasurable spaces for daily life.

The Mount Dennis Mobile Community Kitchen - Faculty: Adrian Blackwell; Students: Pamela Choo, Nicholas Elliott, Jesse Jackson, Scott Keyes, James Lennox, Larry Mac, Giampaolo C. Mancuso, Eugene Mastrangeli, Cara McKibbin, Graham McNally, Luke Stern, Hui Teng, Pamela Tung.

Presented by Jesse Colin Jackson and Luke Stern

The Mount Dennis Mobile community kitchen was a collaboration between Master of Architecture students at University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design  and the Mount Dennis Community Kitchen. The students met with the community every Friday evening, cooking and eating meals while presenting an evolving set of architectural ideas. The final design consisted of three bike trailers, each with a complementary function: a cart for distributing and collecting, which accommodates three large garbage cans, a cart for preparing and cooking, with a large barbeque and a sink that unpacks to double its area, and an eating and distributing cart that can function as a very large table or market surface.

Terrain Vague / Psychotope / Architecture - Gene Mastrangeli

Gene Mastrangeli is a Toronto multi-media artist and a recent graduate of the Master of Architecture program at the U of T. His work is located between concerns of art and architecture and his recent works in video are site specific experiments that have acted as catalysts for his design proposals for post-industrial urban spaces along part of Toronto’s rail corridor. The videos are non-narrative and deal with simple variables of camera movements and the operational mechanisms within the camera. This work is concerned with one’s perception in relation to these operations. They are spatial interpretations produced in a mechanized, yet performative manner.

Immigrants do not simply settle - Bindya Lad

Bindya Lad is a recent graduate of the Master of Architecture program at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design. Lad holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies in Urban Planning from the University of Waterloo. Her research interests range from issues in everyday urbanism, through to increasing the accessibility of architecture, to more recently the regeneration of postwar suburban municipalities in the Greater Toronto Area through a reinvention of their strategic frameworks. She actively participates on the Executive of the Toronto Society of Architects (TSA), whose mandate includes ensuring that architecture and design are key considerations in public discussions and in processes that have an impact on our environment. Previously, Bindya was an urban designer at the City of Mississauga where she was responsible for preparing design policies to guide the physical development of the City.

Night Equals Day - Adrian Blackwell

Adrian Blackwell is a visual artist, and urbanist whose work focuses on the forces of uneven development produced by Postfordist urbanization.  His work has been exhibited at artist run centres and museums across Canada, in the US and China. In 2005 Blackwell co-edited Unboxed: Engagements in Social Space with Jen Budney. In 2007 Blackwell won the Nathan Phillips Square design competition in collaboration with PLANT Architect Inc.. Shore Tilbe Iriwn and Partners and Peter Lindsay Schaudt Landscape Architecture. In 2008 he had a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Mississauga and his film Night equals day premiered at the Cinematheque Ontario in a program entitled Cinema and Disjunction. This year he is designing a Garden for the International Garden Festival at the Reford Gardens in Metis, in collaboration with Jane Hutton.

New Orleans - Jane Wolff

Jane Wolff is an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design at Washington University in Saint Louis. She studied landscape architecture and documentary filmmaking at Harvard. Before she began her academic career, she worked as a designer in the San Francisco Bay Area; her project experience ranged from private gardens to urban design guidelines for the Main Post of the Presidio of San Francisco. She has taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts and at Ohio State University's Knowlton School of Architecture, and in 2006 she was the Beatrix Farrand Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, University of California, Berkeley. Ms. Wolff is the author of Delta Primer: a field guide to the California Delta, a book and deck of cards designed to educate diverse audiences about the contested landscape of the California Delta.