On August 15, Bachelor of Architecture alumni from the class of 1988 held a reunion to celebrate their 30th anniversary. Organized by Ivan Franko and Robert Boraks, the group met for lunch at the Free Times Cafe (a neighbourhood institution around since their time as students) before visiting the Daniels Building at One Spadina for a tour of the Faculty's new home. For most of the alumni, it was the first time they had seen each other in 30 years

Pictured above, from left to right: Colin Beaton, Bin Lin, Fran Piccaluga, Ivan Franko, Elizabeth Zdansky, Michael Yuen, Rolfe Kaartinen, Jacqueline Rhee, Scot Baran, and Emilia Floro.

Of those who attended, all are still practicing in the field, many within Toronto, but others as far away as Dubai.

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If you are a member of our alumni community organizing a reunion and would like to visit the faculty, please email John Cowling.
 
Looking for other ways to stay engaged in the school? Visit our Alumni page to update your address, find information about our public lectures and exhibitions, read alumni news, and learn about other opportunities to participate in the Daniels Faculty.

In Toronto, the waiting list for subsidized housing has surpassed 90,000. On this front, Canada's largest city is not unique — building new affordable homes is a challenge faced by municipalities around the world.

How can cities to create affordable housing that avoids many of the pitfalls of that past? Writer John Lorinc interviewed professionals in the field — including the Director of our Master of Urban Design program Mark Sterling and alumnus Drew Sinclair (March 2007) — to identify "six key design principles that should be considered if the next generation of social housing is to be successful." The article can be found in the September issue of Azure.

A principal at Acronym Urban Design and Planning, Sterling is an advisor on the Lawrence Heights project in Toronto. The 40.5 hectare complex operated by the Toronto Community Housing Corporation is one of the largest mixed-income projects in Canada. Plans include both subsidized and market units, which, Lorinc writes, will help prevent the type of isolation common to social housing built in the past. Visit KPMB's website to view its designs, with Page + Steele IBI Group, for the first phase of the project. KPMB is the firm of Bruce Kuwabara, BArch 1972; Marianne McKenna; and Shirley Blumberg, BArch 1976.

Flexibility is also a key to the success of new affordable housing projects. "Many traditional affordable-housing complexes were highly inflexible, both in terms of design and with the restrictions imposed on the uses of open space at their bases," writes Lorinc. He points to a proposed project in Hamilton by OFFICEArchitecture with SvN Architects and Planners aims to change that.
 

Drew Sinclair SvN's managing principal, says the idea is to allow owners to purchase "lots" or "bays" and assemble apartments of varying sizes (studio to three-bedroom) rather than limit residents to a series of pre-configured floor plans. In addition, the building will be constructed with modular walls and concrete columns instead of sheer walls, enabling owners to add to or subdivide their units as their life circumstances change. The modularity gives households making as little as $25,000 a year the opportunity to buy in.
 

Pick up the most recent copy of Azure to read the full article. Its September issue focuses on urbanism and asks "what makes a city livable and inclusive for all?"

Image, top: Lawrence Heights redevelopment project rendering by KPMB, the firm of Bruce Kuwabara, BArch 1972; Marianne McKenna; and Shirley Blumberg, BArch 1976.

In the fall of 1956, Fred Thompson, a young architecture student at the University of Toronto, found himself stranded in Sweden, unable to get back to Toronto in time for the start of school. How did he find himself in this predicament? Below is Thompson's letter to Professor Eric Arthur that recounts his adventures crossing the ocean in search of work, what he learned from this expierience, and why he wouldn't be able to make it to "New York in time to hitch-hike up to Dorset for sketch camp."

Thompson is a professor emeritus from the University of Waterloo, where he "made extensive study of the relationship between ritual and space, partcularly in Japanese culture." After graduating from U of T in 1958, he worked "in the office of Kyonori Kikutake from 1961-1964 and in the office of Professor Aarno Ruusuvuori from 1965-1968." He started teaching at the University of Waterloo in 1969. We are sharing this letter with his permission.

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Goteborg, Sweden
September 19, 1956

Dear Professor Arthur,

I am writing you a letter from Sweden to try and explain why I will be late for university once more. I hope you will make allowance for my missing sketch camp and for being late for the opening of university this fall.

As you are probably aware, sir, I have very little money, and have only managed to put myself through college with the aid of bursaries. The result is that, when I decided to take you up on the idea of travelling, I had to do it in exactly the same manner as the student who went to Australia with limited cash. I remember your lecture to us in first year when you told us of the chap leaving Canada with only a few dollars in his pocket and working his way to Australia. Last year, I set out from the university with ten dollars in my pockets. I spent three weeks walking the docks in Montreal and constantly being told "NO" in various tones of voice. However, at long last, I got a job as a galley boy on a small Norwegian freighter and thus over to Germany. I landed in Germany with one dollar and twenty-five cents and set out for Sweden on one of the local trains. Needless to say, my finances were exhausted by the train trip to Goteborg. Then came the problem of food. Eventually, while looking for a place to sleep in one of the parks in Hamburg i came across a wishing well into which many well wishing Germans had thrown D marks. I removed my shoes and socks in a nearby bush and proceeded to re-imburse myself. From there on, I hitch-hiked to Goteborg, Sweden, where I had the good fortune to make friends quite rapidly. Unfortunately, there was no job to be had in Goteborg so upon reading of an American architect wanted in Stockholm, I took off with three sandwiches and a can of caviar which my friends had given me. In Stockholm, I was forced to walk four miles out to the architect's office because of lack of finances to use the tunelbana, and when the architect asked where he could phone me up in a couple of days, I was unable to give a precise answer. My place of living was Stockholm Central Station, or, to be more correct, the bench behind the hotel Centralen. Finally, however I managed to land the job and for the next four months I slept in my sleeping bag on the floor of the office. At the end of the summer, I returned to Goteborg to look for a job on a boat, and, after three weeks of walking the docks my friends were able to get me a job on S A L's Kungsholm as a first-class dishwasher. So back to university.

This year I set out again, only this time I was relatively wealthy. I had twenty-five dollars in my pocket. Again I walked the docks of Montreal, and, finally, after two and a half weeks, got a job as a galley boy on a small 2000 ton freighter. I landed in Rotterdam and then hiked up to Sweden to visit my friends. Then back down to where I lived on twenty cents a day until I was able to find a job working for architect Vigano for eight dollars a week. This afforded me two small meals a day with the exception of Saturday and Sunday when I was able only to buy one meal a day. Of course, I had no money left to send a letter home, until, finally, my friends in Sweden sent me some international postage coupons. It was a hard experience but one for which I am glad. Now it has come time to challenge the ocean once again in an effort to reach the other side. I tried to get on the September 19th sailing of the "Kungsholm" so that I could be in New York in time to hitch-hike up to Dorset for sketch camp. The attempt failed.

As you probably know, the sister ship of the "Kungsholm", the "Stockholm", collided with the "Adrea Doria" this summer with the result that the "Stockholm" has been in dry dock in New York. Now they are hoping to sail the "Stockholm" on October the 2nd, so that any available space on the "Kungsholm" was being used to take help over for the sailing of the "Stockholm". Thus it was impossible for me to go over with her on this voyage. Now I must wait here until either the 25th or the 28th when I hope to get a job on a freighter. This means that once again I will be late for sketch camp.

I do hope that I have not over done what you suggested in your lecture in first year, for, to be quite frank with you, I don't think that one can travel too much or know too much of how others live.

I do not do my travelling so much to "see" as to stop and live with other people, to adopt their ways of life and to work in their vernacular. It is so very different from reading a book and trying to adopt the beneficial things from other ways of life to our own way of life. I would much rather live the lives of these other people in their own way and become aware of why they have the way of living they have. For this reason I am inclined to think that Kidder Smith in both of his books Sweden Builds and Italy Builds looked at the conditions with too much of an American eye, and too little understanding for what the people themselves were used to and really felt was right. For example, I believe that in his book Italy Builds he complains of the fact that in some housing for the poor there are no elevators, and thus mother has to climb six stories with the groceries. I will agree that from the point of view it is a long way to go, but the poorer class of Italians don't seem to mind, and the groceries are usually raised to the flat by a little basket lowered over the balcony on a long rope.

I must admit that this has led to a great deal of confusion on my part. Yet the satisfaction of awareness of these things rather than of the published word is what makes me search for what is true for our country. I am still young an immature in all these things but searching, and, for that reason, I would never give up these last two summers of travelling.

As you see sir, in my wanderings and searchings, I have managed to err twice in that I will be late for the opening of university once again. I do hope that because of my financial insecurity I will be able to receive some consideration for my lateness.

Fred Thompson

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Professor Eric Arthur later published this letter in Architecture Canada, writing "I publish it partly for its interest, and, partly as a public penance for my own sins. My guilt is apparent, but I am glad to report that Mr. Thompson is alive and in, apparently, robust health."

Photos, top: 1) Fred Thompson in more recent years, 2) image of a ship from a similar adventure. Courtesy of Fred Thompson

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.

Hotel Giudecca 2028, a design project by Daniels Postdoctoral Fellow Roberto Damiani in collaboration with Emma Dunn (MArch 2015), Mina Hanna (MArch 2015), and Zoé Renaud (MArch 2015), will be featured in the 2018 Unfolding Pavilion: Giudecca Social Housing / Little Italy, curated by Davide Tommaso Ferrando, Daniel Tudor Munteanu, and Sara Favargiotti on the Giudecca island in Venice.

Sited between the social housing complex designed by the Italian architect Gino Valle and the southern shore of the island, Hotel Giudecca 2028 is a design proposal for an open-framework hotel to provide the adjacent social housing complex with economic support and new amenities, and to promote more conscious modes of tourism.

The 2018 Unfolding Pavilion: Giudecca Social Housing / Little Italy opened on May 25th in Venice, with the opening of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale.

For more details on the 2018 Unfolding Pavilion http://unfoldingpavilion.com

2012 Daniels Faculty graduate Mohamed Serour will have his Master of Architecture thesis published as part of the Egyptian national pavilion's exhibition at the 2018 Venice Biennale, May 26 to November 25.

Curated by architects Islam El Mashtooly and Mouaz Abouzaid, with architecture professor Cristiano Luchetti, art director and producer Giuseppe Moscatello, and art director Karim Moussa, the Egyptian Pavilion will focus on "Roba becciah: The informal city."

"Having grown up in Cairo, I have always found informal settlements very interesting in terms of the socio-economic and political space they inhabit and, more importantly, the opportunities that informality has created to re-shape these settlements’ social and urban landscapes," says Serour.

For his thesis project, Serour examined the role that architecture could play in increasing the autonomy and self-sufficiency of informal settlements, though an exploration of Ezbet El-Nasr, an informal settlement in Cairo.

His research involved developing an understanding residents' most pressing needs and reviewing the existing technologies they rely on to provide basic services, such as the use of low-tech solar heating systems to provide hot water. His proposal for new, decentralized infrastructural systems in the form of towers builds on opportunities that already exist within the dense neighbourhoods and aims to bring the informal settlement communities back from the margins.

Serour grew up in Cairo and moved to Toronto in 2002 to attend the University of Toronto. He is currently an architect at the Toronto-based firm Superkül.

For more information on Egypt's pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, visit: www.robabecciah.com

For more information on the Venice Biennale, visit: http://www.labiennale.org

Faculty, students, and alumni among the winners of the "Everyone is King" design competition

This week, people will have even more of a reason to visit King Street in Toronto's downtown core. The busy street is now home to a series of temporary "parklets" thanks to the "Everyone is King" design competition.

Among the many installations is Woggle Jungle, by Assistant Professor Victor Perez-Amado (of VPA Studio) with Daniels students Anton Skorishchenko and Michael De Luca, in collaboration with MAKE Studio's Dina Sarhane (MArch 2013) and Mani Mani (MArch 2012). Located where King Street intersects with Ed Mirvish Way, by Metro Hall, Woggle Jungle is made up of hundreds of colourful foam pool noodles that emerge from a wooden platform, where visitors may meander, sit, or rest.

"This parklet takes advantage of the flexibility of pool noodles and its modular elements which allow for different engaging configurations and expansion," says the Woggle Jungle design team.  "As the project title suggests, 400 foam buoyancy aids are bundled to create a multi-colored forest and seating destination that stretches across King Street."

The project and other winning entries will remain on King Street until October 1, 2018. The "Everyone is King" competition is part of the King Street Transit Pilot, which the City of Toronto launched in November 2017, to explore a new configuration for King Street that would improve transit service on the busiest streetcar route in the city.

For more information on the King Street Transit Pilot, visit the City of Toronto's website, where you will also find a list of the other winning entries.

Photos by Yasmin Al-Samarrai

How would you describe your dream home?

Architect, designer, and artist Em Cheng (MArch 2011) posed this question to kids and then "visually rendered their ideas with the seriousness and earnestness afforded to any adult-conceived design proposal."

The Toronto Public Library's Bloor/Gladstone branch is hosting a solo exhibition of Cheng's work, titled My House, May 4 to 31, as well as an artist talk, during which she will discuss her career and current show, on May 17.

As Cheng writes on her website, the images created for My House "combined with their corresponding children-authored captions, aim to expand how we typically view the house by enabling marginalized voices to contribute their thoughts on domesticity."

Based in Toronto, Cheng's work has been exhibited in Toronto, Calgary, and Melbourne. She has worked for Giannone Petricone Associates, Daniels Faculty Associate professors An Te Liu and Jane Wolff, Bartlett  & Associates, HLW New York,  IBI, and George Robb Architect.

For more information on Cheng and her work, visit: http://www.emcheng.com/

Dear Friends,

This past academic year, we realized a long-standing and ambitious vision for our Faculty: the transition to our new home, the Daniels Building at One Spadina Crescent.

On November 17 of last year, we commemorated the official opening of the Daniels Building with a ribbon-cutting ceremony during the day and a party in the evening for our alumni and students — close to 1,000 people were able to attend. After more than six years of working on this project, and sharing with you the progress and promise of what was to come, celebrating with so many who have been a part of the Faculty’s 128-year history could not have been more rewarding.

Having finally moved into our new home, it is now time to look to the future. With that in mind, I would like to provide you with an overview of how we are making the most of our new Daniels Building — from the research and innovative studios now taking place to the events we have planned in the months ahead. Most importantly, I want to let you know how you can be involved.

Growing our research
From the beginning, the Daniels Building was conceived as a platform to better equip our students and faculty to pursue interdisciplinary research and model new modes of practice in the fields of architecture, art, landscape architecture, and urban design.

The Faculty’s Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory (GRIT Lab) is a prime example how the Daniels Building and its surrounding landscape was designed with research in mind. The construction of our new home has allowed us to build a second site for this award-winning laboratory on the roof of One Spadina, along with a cistern to collect rainwater underground. Here, the GRIT Lab will expand its interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and teaching to study the use of rainwater harvesting to irrigate the roof’s plants. Led by Associate Professor Liat Margolis, the GRIT Lab’s new research, commencing this spring, will ultimately inform the City of Toronto’s green roof bylaw as well as the green roof industry, both of which have supported this work.

Our new building has also allowed us to expand our Fabrication Lab, and with it the research that our faculty and students are able to conduct. Boasting a double-height ceiling and large bi-fold door to the exterior, the lab will enable the construction of architectural prototypes. This winter, thanks to grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and others, we installed a KR150 Quantec 7-axis robotic arm in this space, a key feature of our newly established Robotic Prototyping Laboratory, giving our professors and students the ability to research the potential of robotic fabrication and performance-driven design.

Chief among those who will be making use of the new robotic arm is Assistant Professor Brady Peters, whose work on computational design and acoustics has been profiled in The Globe and Mail and at the University of Toronto’s “Future Environments: Art & Architecture in Action” event, held at Convocation Hall last spring. Peters recently received additional grants to further his research and has been sharing his expertise with students this semester through a course on acoustic architecture, which focuses on the quality of sound in buildings as an agenda for architectural design.

This past fall, Assistant Professor Mitchell Akiyama, who teaches in our Visual Studies programs, partnered with Peters on an installation for the Making Models exhibition at U of T’s Art Museum. Their interdisciplinary collaboration was fitting: a composer and artist, Akiyama’s work explores, among other things, sound art, perception, and the alchemies of sensory experience. Together, he and Peters created a model dubbed the Spatial Sonic Network. Among the most popular installations at the exhibition, the interactive installation created acoustic effects by focusing sound waves between two structures.

This spring, we are leveraging our expansive new studio, fabrication, and event spaces to host Smart Geometry (May 7-12), a biannual workshop and conference that brings together innovators and pioneers in the fields of architecture, design, and engineering. (Brady Peters is one of the directors of this global community.) This year, the workshop will explore the emerging relationship between artificial intelligence and architectural design.

From future design tools to the future of our cities: Assistant Professor Michael Piper, founder of the Daniels Faculty’s Project Suburb Research Group, has teamed up with the Tower Renewal Partnership (TRP) to help further its research on modern-era housing towers, over 1,000 of which are based in Toronto’s inner suburbs and are home to many of the city’s low income residents.

Building on his work to illustrate how the economics of real estate development influence the form of our cities, Piper is leading a research studio this semester that is challenging students to develop new typologies for Toronto’s tower sites. This will include producing a set of code-based design tools that could guide the redevelopment of tower sites in order to grow the city’s stock of affordable housing; improve linkages to transit; and increase sustainability, access to green space, and other social amenities. The studio’s work builds on research that originated at the Daniels Faculty (through Graeme Stewart, MArch 2007 and Professor Emeritus George Baird). This research — which includes interdisciplinary collaboration with students and professors in U of T’s Department of Geography & Planning — is just one example of how Daniels Faculty students and professors engage with the broader city on design solutions vital to its success.

The Daniels Faculty and the University of Toronto have also teamed up with Ryerson, OCAD, and York University to address the need for affordable housing via the initiative #StudentDwellTO. As one of U of T’s faculty leads on the project, Assistant Professor Mauricio Quirós Pacheco has been working with others across the University to develop a stronger understanding of students’ housing needs and the challenges that they face. In the fall, he will lead a class of undergraduate students who will build on the collected data and case studies to develop new design ideas for affordable student homes.

We often refer to the surrounding city as our laboratory, but of course Daniels Faculty research and creative practice extends well beyond Toronto. For example, Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni together with a group of architecture students recently partnered with the Moroccan Ministry of Tourism to determine how a sustainable tourism industry in the country’s Guelmim Province could support conservation of the region’s sensitive ecology and prevent farmers and craftspeople from fleeing their land due to drought. Conducted under Chaouni’s Designing Ecological Tourism (DET) research platform, the group has designed a smart phone app that will act both as a guide for tourists and a master plan for future development.

Last semester, Assistant Professor Fadi Masoud led an option studio that built on his research on coastal urbanism and the role of planning in communities under threat of flooding due to climate change. Students developed ideas for how Broward County in southern Florida could tackle rising water levels through design, engaging planning officials and other political actors from the region in this work. This year, Masoud presented lectures in both Canada and the U.S. on the role that new visualization technologies can play in shaping our cities, and on his work with MIT’s Urban Risk Lab to help municipalities better engage the public and make informed planning decisions in the wake of climate change.

Expanding our outreach
With key spaces in the Daniels Building — such as the Principal Hall and the Architecture & Design Gallery — nearly complete, it will soon be easier to share the work and ideas of our faculty, students, and alumni with the broader public, and engage in partnerships with individuals and organizations, both local and international.

Located in the centre of the building, our new Principal Hall is designed to serve as a multi-dimensional public platform for the Faculty and a premier venue for discussing the vital role the design arts play in reinventing neighbourhoods, communities, and cities for the 21st century.

Our first official event in this exciting new space will be held April 27 and 28: a symposium entitled “What is a school? (of architecture, landscape, art, and urbanism)”. This event will bring together a rich array of practitioners, educators, theorists, and historians to discuss the changing nature of the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, art, and urbanism and their evolving pedagogical approaches. Featured speakers for the keynote event, “The Architecture of the School,” will include Nader Tehrani, designer of One Spadina; Shohei Shigematsu of OMA, the lead architect on Cornell’s recent architecture building, Milstein Hall; and Sara Diamond, President of OCAD University. The closing event, “Designs on the University”, will address the changing role of design schools within Universities and will feature Mark Jarzombek of MIT and Joan Ockman of PennDesign, noted scholars of architectural history and pedagogy.

On Wednesday May 16 at 6:30pm, we will host the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize public lecture, featuring this year’s Laureate, the legendary architect Balkrishna Doshi of India. And on May 31 at 6:30pm, as part of U of T’s Alumni Reunion, landscape architect Claude Cormier (BLA 1986) will present the Michael Hough / Ontario Association of Landscape Architects Visiting Critic public lecture.

In May, we will launch our 2nd annual exhibition of work by students across all Daniels Faculty programs. Held in the grand hallways and common areas throughout the Daniels Building, these exhibitions are meant to provide an opportunity for alumni and members of the general public to view the incredible work coming out of our graduate and undergraduate studios. The student exhibition coincides with Doors Open, an annual, Toronto-wide event that encourages people to explore buildings throughout the city. Last year’s Doors Open event saw over 8,000 people visit our building, allowing us to connect with a larger and broader community than ever before. This year during Doors Open, we will host a panel discussion organized by the Toronto Society of Architects on architecture and film, and a lecture on Toronto’s architecture by The Globe and Mail’s architecture critic Alex Bozikovic.

During the Doors Open weekend, on Saturday, May 26 between 11:00 and 3:00 pm, our alumni are invited to drop by the Faculty Lounge (Room 131). The lounge is reserved exclusively for Daniels alumni on this day so that you may reconnect with former classmates and enjoy some light refreshments in a relaxing setting. Let us know in advance if you plan to attend by calling 416-978-4340, or provide your name and degree year at the door to the lounge when you arrive. We look forward to seeing you and hearing more about what you have been up to since we last met.

Our new 8,000-square-foot Architecture & Design Gallery, together with the Principal Hall, will help us elevate public understanding of and engagement with the design arts and their impact on our lives. This exhibition space — the only one of its kind in Toronto dedicated to presenting professionally curated exhibitions of international significance on architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and their allied practices — is being made possible in part thanks to a generous donation from the Estate of James Drewry Stewart. Among other opportunities, the new gallery space will allow us to expand on our collaborations with the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, which has been mounting some of the most original and sophisticated exhibitions in the world on architecture, cities, and the built environment.

Reaching our campaign goals
The transition to our new home at One Spadina and the glowing reviews that the building has already seen would not have been possible without your help. In 2012, we launched the capital campaign with an ambitious private fundraising goal of $36 million, and — at $32.3 million and counting — by all accounts, we are defying expectations.

A total of 971 people have donated to our campaign thus far. Our capital project has received strong support from alumni and members of Toronto’s architecture and design community, with 21 firms pledging their support. Your contributions are a testament to the incredible potential that our alumni and professionals in the field see in our new home and its capacity to enhance education, research, and outreach in the fields of architecture, art, landscape architecture, and urban design. A growing list of those making gifts to our building campaign, is now available on our website.

With $4 million left for us to raise, there is still an opportunity to contribute to the building campaign. These gifts are considered to be part of the Faculty’s participation in the wider University of Toronto $2.4 billion Boundless campaign, with recognition extended to donors. To learn more about the building campaign and opportunities to make a difference, please reach out to Director of Advancement Jacqueline Raaflaub at 416-978-1473  or jacqueline.raaflaub@daniels.utoronto.ca.

Thank you
As always, I hope you will take opportunities that arise to visit the Faculty in the year ahead. In addition to the upcoming events, mentioned above, friends and alumni are encouraged to drop by and observe our student work and projects during our final reviews, April 9 - 20.

Please know that you may reach out to us to arrange a visit anytime. I look forward to meeting and re-connecting with many of you at our events, our reviews, our exhibitions, or during a scheduled visit in the year ahead.

Thank you again for your part in making our new home a reality. It is important to note that we wouldn’t be where we are today without your incredible support. As you can see, our new building is incredible not just because it is a stunning work of architecture, but because of what we can and will do with it. The Daniels Building provides us with an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen our programs, research, and community outreach — the benefits of which will extend far beyond the circle on Spadina to generations of students, faculty, and citizenry.

Our new home is just the start:
We must now focus on delivering on the investment that’s been made in us.

Yours truly,

Richard M. Sommer
Dean
Professor of Architecture and Urbanism
John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design
University of Toronto

Congratulations to Daniels Faculty alumna Elisa Julia Gilmour (MVS 2016) on winning the 2018 New Generation Photography Award sponsored by Scotiabank. Meryl McMaster and Deanna Pizzitelli also received the award, which was given in recognition and support of young artists in Canada “to help them reach their infinite potential.”

As stated in the press release:
 

Elisa Julia Gilmour is an emerging Canadian artist producing still and moving images. Her work engages with the notion of ephemerality through gestural storytelling. Her most recent project, Éperdument (Madly) (2016), which included a three-channel video installation and a publication of short stories, investigates how a Corsican mythological figure has enlivened a contemporary sense of identity. She has exhibited at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the Ryerson Image Centre and the Art Gallery of Mississauga.
 

The prize was awarded to “exhibited artists working in lens-based art.” A jury consisting of “Canadian and international photography experts, artists, and leaders in the community” selected the winners from a longlist that was announced in February.
 
The winners, in addition to being awarded a cash prize of $10,000 each, will be featured in two exhibitions: a group exhibition at the Canadian Photography Institute PhotoLab in Ottawa (April 13-August 19), followed by a second exhibition at OCAD’s Onsite Gallery during Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto (May 5 -June 17). 

OCAD University will also be hosting a New Generation Photography Award Panel Talk with the three award recipients. For event details, visit their website.

For more information about the New Generation Photography Award and other prizes and events by the Canadian Photography Institute and Scotiabank, head over to their website: www.scotiabank.com/arts

Photos above from Elisa Julia Gilmour's Master of Visual Studies thesis Éperdument (Madly) - film stills and installation view from the thesis exhibition at U of T's Art Museum.