James Bird, a Daniels Faculty Master of Architecture student, is a residential school survivor. In 2017, he partnered with Heidi Bohaker and Laurie Bertram, a pair of University of Toronto history professors, to create "Canada by Treaty," a travelling exhibition that explains Canada's history of treaty-making with Indigenous peoples.

Canada by Treaty, which originally took the form of a series of printed display boards, has been exhibited throughout the three University of Toronto campuses and in other prominent Toronto locations. Now, with the pandemic making it impossible for physical exhibitions to happen, the Daniels Faculty has helped transform Canada by Treaty's display panels into a website.

The exhibition explains some of the ways Canada has historically failed to live up to the spirit of its treaty obligations — particularly through its residential school policy.

"On the one hand, the government was signing treaties, but at the same time it was apprehending children and putting them into residential schools," James says. "We have this history of two stories being told: one of agreeing to land settlements, and the other of taking away Indigenous language and culture. It's a story of giving with one hand and taking with the other."

Visit the Canada by Treaty exhibition now

The opening reception and book launch for A QUITE INDIVIDUAL COURSE: Jerome Markson, Architect will take place Wednesday, January 29, 2020 from 5:30pm to 8:00pm. Remarks at 6:00 pm in the Heritage Hall.

Registration will be required for this event. Reserve your ticket on the registration page.

Exhibition opening begins at 5:30pm. Ticket holders must arrive no later than 5:45pm (with their printed or mobile ticket) to enter. There will be a rush line for those who arrive late or without tickets. Guests without tickets will be admitted on a first-come, first-serve basis depending on capacity.
 
About the Book and Exhibition
Jerome Markson’s diverse body of work is inextricably linked with – and contributed to – Toronto’s postwar emergence as a cosmopolitan city that is open to many ways of living. His nearly six-decade-long architectural practice began in a time of profound transformation in Canadian society. As his practice evolved, Markson’s architecture moved past late-Modernism's formal rigidity in favour of an increasingly pluralistic formal, spatial, and material language, reflecting his pursuit of a more open and inclusive expression of modernity. His buildings and urban works were harbingers of important shifts in sociopolitical attitudes, urban policies, and modes of architectural production.

The exhibition A Quite Individual Course: Jerome Markson, Architect will focus upon selected works from Markson’s significant body of work on housing. The exhibition celebrates and accompanies the publication of Toronto’s Inclusive Modernity | The Architecture of Jerome Markson, written by Associate Professor Laura Miller, who also designed and curated the exhibition. From speculative homes in nascent suburbs, to bespoke private houses in established neighborhoods, to social housing in downtown Toronto, to luxury landmarks like the Market Square condominiums, Markson’s housing works were an essential part of his practice, reflecting his lifelong search for forms of inclusiveness in Canadian society. His architectural designs for multi-family housing were as attentive to the quality of the city that was being formed as they were to providing dwellings with a variety of layouts and living possibilities. His lively, sophisticated private houses created for a diverse array of clients reflect his experimentation with the format of the single-family house, materials, and architectural syntax.
 
Laura J. Miller is trained as an architect. She has had a diverse career as a designer, educator, and scholar. She was a member of the architecture faculty at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for over a decade, and was the American Fellow in Architectural Design at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. Currently, she is Associate Professor of Architecture at the John H. Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto, and directs the Faculty’s exhibition programs.

Signed copies of the book will be available for purchase (limited quantities).

Architecture is an instrument, and through the manipulation of geometry and surface, architects create spatial and experiential sonic effects. While the consideration of sound gives opportunity for invention, architects currently lack the explorative and representational techniques necessary to design acoustic architecture and experience. Dr. Brady Peters develops new methods for the exploration of innovative acoustically-informed architectures, and the surfaces and structures shown in this exhibition were developed using advanced computational simulation, geometric generation, and robotic fabrication techniques. While challenges remain, this research points to a future where buildings sound better, and architects can easily and intuitively design for sound.

OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, November 22, 2019
6:00PM - 8:00PM
Daniels Building, 1 Spadina
Student Commons
University of Toronto
FREE

NOTE: The opening of this exhibition has been postponed until further notice.

An exhibition of photographs of the winners of the 2019 Aga Khan Award for Architecture — an internationally juried prize that rewards projects that address the needs and aspirations of Muslim communities around the world.

About the Book and Exhibition

Jerome Markson’s nearly six-decade-long architectural practice began in a time of profound transformation during the post-war period. His buildings were harbingers of important shifts in sociopolitical attitudes, urban policies, and modes of architectural production. His architecture reflects his pursuit of a more open and inclusive expression of modernity, one that moved past late-Modernism's formal legibility in favour of an increasingly idiosyncratic formal, spatial, and material expression.

Drawn from the forthcoming book by Associate Professor Laura Miller, Toronto’s Inclusive Modernity | The Architecture of Jerome Markson, the Daniels Faculty exhibition A Quite Individual Course: Jerome Markson, Architect, designed and curated by Miller, will focus upon Markson’s significant body of work on housing. From speculative homes in fledgling suburbs, to bespoke private houses, to social housing in downtown Toronto, to luxury landmarks like the Market Square condominiums, Markson’s work on housing was an essential part of his practice. He created livable, lively, and dignified housing and private houses for a diverse array of clients, reflecting his lifelong concern for inclusiveness within Canadian society.

Laura J. Miller is trained as an architect. She has had a diverse career as a designer, educator, and scholar. She was a member of the architecture faculty at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design for over a decade, and was the American Fellow in Architectural Design at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. Currently, she is Associate Professor of Architecture at the John H. Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

A Quite Individual Course: Jerome Markson, Architect, an exhibition curated and designed by Miller, opens in Winter 2020.

New Circadia will be closed on the following days:

• March 11 (until 12 p.m.)
• March 12 (from 5 p.m. onward)
• March 13 (from 1 p.m. onward)
• April 1

New Circadia (adventures in mental spelunking) inaugurates the new Architecture and Design Gallery at the Daniels Faculty by transforming it into a cave-like atmosphere — a soft utopia.

Curated by Professor Richard Sommer and New York-based designers Pillow Culture, the immersive installation prompts participants to ask: Have our tech-infused lives caused us to forget the benefits and pleasures of losing ourselves in states of repose and reverie? What would happen if we disconnected from standard time and external stimuli within a dream-like space specifically designed for relaxation, reflection, and repose?

This immersive installation was inspired by Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman’s 1938 Mammoth Cave experiment (the first instance of a scientific research laboratory for studying natural human cycles of sleep and wakefulness). New Circadia will engage the city, our students, and the entire University of Toronto community in a variety of experiences — including happenings, multidisciplinary performances, dialogues, film screenings, and nocturnes — to probe and conjure notions of geological, mythical, mechanical, and biological time.

Exhibition support is provided through the Lorne M. Gertner Fund.

How it works

The interactive installation is made up of three zones. Beginning at the east entrance of the Daniels Building, visitors enter a subterranean space through a Transitory Zone or “mouth of the cave,” illuminated with Axis Coelux technology, which recreates the look and feel of a blue sky. Here, visitors store their belongings and choose from a variety of body wearables or “spelunking gear.”

Then, moving though a felt envelope, participants enter the main cave space, an uncanny Dark Zone, with a large yet soft rock-like lounge-scape, animated with responsive sound and light. Oneiroi, a curtained-off area on the upper tier of the cave, invites visitors to anonymously record their dreams and listen to those recorded by others.

Throughout the installation, visitors are invited to make use of the cave’s soft infrastructure, including its felted floors and walls, to engage in self-directed rest and meditation.

Children must be supervised at all times.

Going Underground

To go underground is to suspend a sense of time, to exit the everyday world, and to evade authority. To descend into a cave is to return to a lithic past enhanced by mythical, cultural, and historical associations with underworlds, oracles, magic, ritual, sanctuary, and seclusion. New Circadia offers a paradisiacal retreat in the pursuit of circadian reverie.

Why New Circadia?

Is it time to put architecture to sleep? The biology that undergirds our well-being presumes being at rest during at least one-third of our lives. Nevertheless, the mechanization of life has evolved to an extent that we can be “plugged-in” at all hours. A central feature of this pursuit of an optimized state of productivity is a reciprocity between architecture and technology. The late-19th-century standardization of time that came with railroads and telegraphs; the 20th-century appearance of tall, electrified cities; and the 21st-century primacy of the World Wide Web, which has enabled the spread of a globalized gig economy that crosses time zones — all are part of this temporal “architecture” of modernity.
 
Because architecture today is inextricably bound up in the urbanization of the planet, it needs to pay as much attention to the marking of time as it historically has to the manipulation of space. And yet, the very culture of architecture has been built upon a fascination with adopting mindsets and accelerating technologies that facilitate long work hours and sleeplessness. How can architects counter the over-mechanization of everyday life?

And how can architects convey the idea that idling — whether by sleeping, dreaming, napping, or meditating — is not lost, unproductive time, but rather an essential state of mind and body? By creating a dreamlike space where individuals and collectives can incubate states of rest, reflection, and reverie, New Circadia will test how architecture and landscapes can play a role in nurturing a greater interior life.

New Circadia in the press

The Globe and Mail - "At the University of Toronto's New Circadia exhibition, architects imagine a world with room to rest"

CBC Spark - "Walden, revisited"

Toronto Life - "Inside New Circadia, a nap-friendly felt cave at U of T"

Archinect - "A 'soft utopia' takes shape in University of Toronto's experimental gallery"

The Spaces - "The University of Toronto’s new gallery lets you do a ‘digital detox’ on your lunch break"

About Oneroi

Oneiroi (from Greek mythology: the gods and personification of dreams in physical form) is a participatory project by architect and Assistant Professor Petros Babasikas and artist Chrissou Voulgari. Oneiroi (pronounced own-ner-ree) invites visitors to anonymously record their dreams — and listen to those recorded by others — in curtained-off stations located in the upper tier of the cave. Audio and text of the recorded dreams will be made accessible and mapped by subject in an online atlas, creating a network of the unconscious that offers a surreal break from reality. Together, the audio-visual environments (Stations), narratives (Logs), and cartography (Atlas) make private stories public, giving our dreams locus and agency.

About the Architecture and Design Gallery

The Architecture and Design Gallery at 1 Spadina is dedicated to showcasing and advocating for the important ways that design shapes our cities, landscapes, and daily lives. Its unique exhibitions and installations will explore and promote experimental and prescient forms of contemporary architecture and urbanism — in all their artistic, scientific, and cultural dimensions. Located on a landmark site in Toronto, at the nexus of one of the world's leading research universities and a thriving downtown creative sector, this flexible 7,500-square-foot facility — the only one of its kind in Toronto — will harness a rich network of local and international collaborators. The Gallery will also draw on the talents of the Daniels Faculty and U of T’s remarkable community of scholars, urbanists, and design professionals to test ideas, provoke needed debate, and foster a deeper understanding of the role that design plays in imagining and building a better world.

Capital support of the Architecture and Design Gallery has been provided by the Estate of James Drewry Stewart.

This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada.
Ce projet a été rendu possible en partie grâce au gouvernement du Canada.

About Pillow Culture

Pillow Culture — designers Natalie Fizer and Emily Stevenson — explores current material technologies to prototype and develop pillows, and pillow-like constructs that contribute to human comfort, beauty, and well-being. Working in collaboration with designers, scientists, and engineers, their mission is to increase an awareness of the history and culture of the pillow, and broaden attitudes towards the place of pillows in our lives. Projects include: a set of giant upholstered boulders, a 20-foot dayglow pink inflatable, an elaborate sex cushion for the post-menopausal woman, and a soft public bench for the City of Boston. They are currently involved in a radical rethinking of the sleep aid.

New Circadia (adventures in mental spelunking)

Curators / Creative Directors
Richard Sommer, Daniels Faculty
Natalie Fizer, Pillow Culture
Emily Stevenson, Pillow Culture
Laura Miller, Daniels Exhibition Director

Contributing Artists
Sound: Mitchell Akiyama, Daniels Faculty
Oneiroi: Petros Babasikas, Daniels Faculty; Chrissou Voulgari, Toronto

Designers
Lighting: Conor Sampson, CSDesign, Montreal
Graphic Design and Wayfinding: Glen Cummings MTWTF, NYC

Design and Fabrication Team
Anton Skorishchenko- Lead Fabricator / Installation Manager, Daniels
Sutton Murray- Lead Designer, Pillow Culture
Robert Lee- Lead Installation Fabricator, Daniels
Zainab Al-Rawi- Exhibition Research and Design, Daniels

Daniels Staff Leads
Bohden Tymchuk, Supervisor; Workshops, Facilities, and Special Projects
Nene Brode, Manager, External Relations and Outreach
Sarah Whitehouse, Facilities Coordinator

Special Thanks
Lighting supplied by Axis featuring CoeLux sky technologies

Photographs by Bob Gundu.

The Resilient TO exhibition supports the launch of the City of Toronto's first Resilience Strategy, a vision to help Toronto survive, adapt, and thrive in the face of any challenge — particularly climate change and growing inequities.

Curated by Fadi Masoud (MLA 2010), Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism, with Lead Designer, Sessional Lecturer Emilia Hurd (MLA 2014), the exhibition and launch of the Resilience Strategy is a celebration of Toronto's resilience and the Strategy's initiation.

The exhibition reflects the Resilience Strategy's three focus areas — Resilient People and Neighbourhoods, Resilient Design and Infrastructure, and Leading a Resilient City — and traces political, cultural, and physical manifestations of resilience, design, and infrastructure across Toronto. A particular focus is given to contemporary resilient design and urbanism work, with precedents from around the world.

The exhibition features the work of students and faculty from across Daniels as well as the University of Toronto's School of Cities network.

Based on engagement with over 8,000 Torontonians, Toronto’s Resilience Strategy was created to help shape future plans, and drive action within the City of Toronto, and among business, academic, and non-profit organizations, and residents. The goal: to build a city where everyone can thrive.

With the development of the first ever Resilience Strategy, Toronto joins cities spanning the globe that are putting resilience at the centre of their efforts to plan for the physical, social, and economic challenges of the 21st century.

Learn more about the City of Toronto's Resilience Strategy at www.resilienttoronto.ca.

Click here to read the full strategy released June 4, 2019.

The Resilient TO exhibition is sponsored by:

•     Canadian Urban Institute and ResilientTO
•     School of Cities
•     John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design
•     Faculty of Forestry
•     University of Toronto
•     Autodesk
•    Jay Pooley Design Practice

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, presented in partnership with ScotiaBank CONTACT Photography Festival

Curated by Laura Miller

Reception: May 9, 6:00pm

In this exhibition, Toronto-based photographer Geoffrey James traces the work of the brilliant, but little-known architect Jože Plečnik (1875-1957), focusing on sites Plečnik transformed within the city of Ljubljana, the Slovenian capital. Over nearly three decades in the mid-twentieth century, Plečnik created of a series of remarkable civic settings, infrastructural projects, and buildings in that city. His various works manifest an idiosyncratic architectural expression in that combined – among many things – the incorporation of Roman ruins, mannerist classical elements, hybrid building typologies, the formal preoccupations of early modernism via the Vienna Secessionists, a proto-cubistic spatial sensibility, and vernacular building forms, all executed with a high degree of craft and material presence. The site of his creative production in Ljubljana, Plečnik’s austere private working and living spaces could not be more dissimilar to the lively, often crowded civic and cultural spaces he created in the city, yet his home and studio reveal the precision and modesty that were essential to Plečnik’s character and approach to architecture.    

James’ images, made with a hand-held camera, avoid the rigid conventions of architectural photography. Taken at both day and night, and through the seasons, they convey both the intimate details of Plečnik’s studio and the wide range of his urban-scale achievements. In the exhibition, animated photographs on multiple digital screens show the everyday use of the architect’s hugely successful social spaces. “There is a combination of the social and the spiritual in Plečnik’s work that is not evident in most of the architectural photographs I have seen,” James says. “I am trying to do justice to a complex subject and at the same time make images that are worthy as photographs.”

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Artist Biography: 
Geoffrey James is Toronto’s first Photo Laureate. He is the author or subject of more than a dozen books and monographs dealing with aspects of the built environment.

April 3-7, Daniels Faculty graduate students in Victoria Taylor's LAN2203 elective "Landscape Architecture Topics: Prototyping for Placemaking" will exhibit 5 site-specific activations along the West Toronto Railpath, where the path connects to the proposed railpath extension.

Collectively, the works draw attention to the ecologies and industrial character of this dynamic linear landscape and invite the public to consider new ways to understand and experience this public space.

How do our needs for light, rest, shade, privacy, social interaction, and beauty translate into an artistic experience of place. How might elements designed for public use blur the lines between landscape design, public infrastructure, community engagement, and public art? Five projects explore materiality, process and form to bring new energy to an unused space along the path.

Projects include:

Amplified, by Hillary DeWildt, Likun Liu, and Bonnie Tung
The WTR has always offered opportunities to encounter strangers, yet while we may occupy a common space, our experiences often remain solitary. The need for shared physical experiences on the railbapth is paramount and Amplified offers a means to take part in these experiences. We encourage people to engage with the piece and experience the heightened sounds of the railpath and of one another.

Loopy, by Diana Franco Camacho, Hakima Hoseni, and Isaac Neufeld
The continuous series of loops speak about the past, present, and the future of the WTR. The use of rebar connects the user to the site's industrial past while the form acts as bike infrastructure, a planting structure, and a gateway signifying a portal to the future.

Spring Rhythm, by Cornel Campbell, Sarvin Khosravi, and Neda Nassiri Toosi
Spring Rhythm is an interpretation of seasonal change. There is a rhythm in the way Winter dissolves into Spring, and snow into blooms (monochrome into colour). A rhythm interpreted as the quiet winter awakens to the season of growth and change.

Gradient and interweave, by Ruoyu (Krystina) Li and Shuje (Gloria) Zhang
The idea comes from how water and plants are "folded" in different seasons and how the public participates in public art. By controlling different variables, including the width of stands, the density of threads, the size and spatial relationship aong keys becomes a metaphor for the gradual change of melting ice an ddiverse layers of vegetation. Visitors are welcome to attach their keys to the installation.

Inflorescence by Ressha Morar and Neil Philips
The inspiration behind inflorescence is two-fold. Inspired by both native grasses rooted adjacent to the site and by the site's dark night time conditions, Inflorescence strives to capture and emulate the movement and profile of the grasses while also creating a subtle illumination the draws attention to the understated site.