Originally published June 9, 2021, as Honorary degree recipient Ken Greenberg chose Toronto as his home, then helped shape its development via U of T News by Scott Anderson. Ken Greenberg graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Architecture in 1970.

For more than 40 years, Ken Greenberg has helped make cities better places to live. As an architect and urban designer, he has focused on rejuvenating downtowns and on creating vibrant public spaces.

Although he has worked in many urban settings across Canada, the U.S. and Europe, he chose Toronto as his home; he has lived here for more than half a century – and has played an important role in shaping the city’s development.

Today, for his “outstanding service for the public good as a tireless advocate for restoring the vitality, relevance and sustainability of the public realm in urban life,” Greenberg received a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, from the University of Toronto – his alma mater.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944, Greenberg lived with his family in many cities across the U.S. and Europe before coming to Canada in 1968.  He arrived in Toronto the same year as Jane Jacobs, a fellow New Yorker whose views on urbanism would have a big impact on the city – and on Greenberg himself. He would later count her as a friend, colleague and mentor.

“My arrival at the University of Toronto coincided with my arrival in Toronto as a new immigrant,” Greenberg recalled in his speech to graduating students. “My classmates and my professors were extraordinarily welcoming.

“The university opened the door to a rich and diverse community of interest.”

Greenberg saw enormous potential in Toronto. Unlike many American cities, Toronto hadn’t given in to expressways and its residents hadn’t abandoned the downtown core. “I had this tremendous sense of a second chance,” he told Torontoist in 2011. “There was a lot of new consciousness about the city and the value of the old neighbourhoods.” Shortly after his arrival, the city killed plans for the Spadina Expressway (largely due to public opposition) and began reconsidering the idea – prevalent across North America – that cities should be designed for cars.

This spirit of renewal and possibility made the late 1960s an interesting time to be an architecture student at U of T.  Greenberg was learning the skills he would need for work, but also reflecting on the values he would carry into his career as an urban designer.

Take a tour of downtown Toronto today, and you will see evidence of one of these values in particular: the importance of creating places available to everyone. Greenberg, who earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture from U of T in 1970 and later served as the city’s director of urban design and architecture, was involved with the creation of the Martin Goodman Trail, an advocate for the redevelopment of Regent Park as a mixed-income community and had a role in revitalizing the St. Lawrence district.

More recently, he played a leading role in the development of the Bentway, a previously derelict space under the Gardiner Expressway that is now an urban park. And he was a member of a team that has won multiple awards for its plan to reconstruct the mouth of the Don River. In 2019, he was named a member of the Order of Canada “for leading large-scale projects in various cities across Canada as an urban designer, teacher, writer and environmental advocate.”

As Spacing magazine noted in a review of Greenberg’s book, Walking Home: The Life and Lessons of a City Builder, Greenberg prefers urban designers to show restraint, and to allow for neighbourhoods to evolve. “Less is often more,” he writes, noting that Kensington Market is a great example of a place that has been allowed to change organically over time.  “I began to grasp that building places where people lived was … a matter of creating ‘platforms,’ – open-ended frameworks that people could build upon as they wished, with the underlying design as enabler or inhibitor,” he says.

Of course, urban planning, like everything else, has changed over the decades. Greenberg describes the current era as an “extraordinary period of transition” away from unsustainable city-building practices that assumed unlimited supplies of cheap energy and a heavy reliance on automobiles. In recent years, urban design has become much more about “fundamental problem-solving” around topics such as mobility, energy conservation and waste management, he told U of T News.

Lately, Greenberg has been concerned about the effects of rising income inequality – and of what he describes as “attacks” on the public realm. Over the past several decades, Toronto has cultivated a reputation for integrating people from all over the world into a thriving social fabric. The city is one of the most diverse in the world and arguably the best at being diverse. But this “great experiment,” says Greenberg, is based on a vision of Toronto being a city for all. “If you make it difficult for people to have housing, health care and quality [public] education, then you’re pushing in the opposite direction,” he told an interviewer at the Toronto Public Library in 2019 while discussing his latest book, Toronto Reborn: Design Successes and Challenges. “I had to sound the alarm.”

Greenberg has operated his own consultancy since 2005 and writes frequently for newspapers and magazines. He currently serves as a strategic adviser to the city of Brampton, Ont., and volunteers for several Toronto-based city-building initiatives, such as Ontario Place for All. Over the years, he says, he has continued to “go back to the well” at U of T, collaborating with faculty members, working with the School of Cities and the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design – and describes teaching during the pandemic as “an inter-generational sharing of ideas and perspectives with 11 students across the globe, all in different time zones.”

In the early days of the pandemic, when most of us were hoarding groceries, Dee Dee Taylor Eustace (BArch 1987), a Daniels Faculty alumna and founder of Taylor Hannah Architect, was doing something a little different. She was designing a jacket.

Taylor Hannah Architect had already created a small clothing line before the pandemic started. "When all this happened, I thought, 'I have all the patterns and I have people working on it. So I'm going to keep people busy and employed," Eustace says. Her idea was to create a piece of outerwear that could act as a protective layer for an uncertain time. The design she and her staff came up with included pandemic-friendly features, like a built-in face mask and gloves.

The Jacket of Hope, as the jacket came to be called, is now available on the Taylor Hannah website. Only 500 are available. "Think of it as armour for superheroes and superwomen," Eustace says.

The firm is donating $50 of each sale to Artscape, a Toronto-based nonprofit that supports artists and provides studio and living space to them.

To find out more about the Jacket of Hope, or to place an order for one, visit the Taylor Hannah Architect website.

Top image: The Jacket of Hope. Photograph by Lexy Henderson.

Architectural mock-ups are usually not given much, if any, thought. They're full-scale replicas of building elements, constructed for the purpose of letting everyone involved in a project get a sense of how different wall or window systems will look when completed. They're usually erected in out-of-the-way locations on construction sites and later demolished when they outlive their usefulness, or when a building is nearing completion.

But, for David Ross (MArch 2003), a Daniels Faculty alumnus who is now a visual artist, these mock-ups are more than mere throwaways. When he looks at them, he sees fascinating sculptural artifacts of the complex social and economic dynamics that underlie every architectural project.

That's why he devoted nearly five years to the creation of his newly released book, Archetypes, in which he uses photography to (literally) cast architectural mock-ups in an entirely different light. In addition to David's photographs, the book contains four essays on architectural mock-ups, two of which were written by Daniels Faculty professors: one by assistant professor Peter Sealy and another by professor Ted Kesik.

The cover of David Ross's book, Archetypes.

"Mock-ups are the engagement ring of the architecture world," Ross says. "They're a physical representation of the relationship between the designer, the client, and the contractor. They're acts of insurance and assurance. Insurance because they provide a way for all the parties involved in a project to feel comfortable with the materials, the construction, and the methods by which a project is going to be executed. Assurance, because mock-ups are the first things that are made. They act almost as a kind of prenup for the relationship going forward."

The book, edited by Reto Geiser and published by Standpunkte and Park Books, collects 39 colour photos Ross took at construction sites throughout North America and Europe, with funding from the Graham Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Ross made arrangements with builders — many of them, he says, bemused by the idea that any artist would want anything to do with mock-ups — to visit construction sites at night. Using a flash and a special camera rig adapted for use on ladders, he photographed each mock-up in isolation from the typical construction site clutter, with only darkness in the background.

Left: Swiss Life Arena, Zurich. Caruso St. John Architects. Right: Andreasturm, Zurich. Gigon/Guyer.

The consistent nature of the photographic style makes it easy for a viewer to start imagining mock-ups as an architectural type, rather than as one-off misfits. "I photographed them all from the midpoint of the mock-up," Ross says. "There are funny things that happened with the scale. Because they're all framed in a similar way, it makes it difficult to tell not only where they are, but how big they are."

The essays from Sealy and Kesik, which appear at the back of the book, help contextualize the photography. Kesik's essay argues that mock-ups are (or at any rate should be) an essential step in the creation of any architecturally ambitious building. "Innovation in architecture that moves away from tried-and-true tectonic precedents necessarily relies on engineering and building science to fulfill its promise and performance," Kesik writes. "This is why the mock-up is an essential part of any robust design process that seeks innovative and original outcomes that do not just offer comparable quality to conventional approaches, but aspire to exceed all aspects of aesthetic delight and technical performance."

Left: Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. NADAA. Right: John P. Robarts Library, University of Toronto. Mathers & Haldenby.

Sealy's essay draws parallels between Ross's work documenting architectural mock-ups and the 19th-century practice of photographing plaster casts of decorative architectural elements. Sealy recounts the way French architect Hector Lefuel used plaster-model photography to aid the process of carving ornamental details for the mid-19th-century expansion of the Louvre. "The twenty-first-century mock-ups photographed by Ross occupy a similar quasi-contractual status," Sealy writes, "one that is recorded in endless smartphone photographs sent back and forth between architects', clients', and builders' offices."

The book isn't the only place Ross is showcasing his mock-up photos. Over the next few months he'll be exhibiting his work at BALTSprojects in Zurich (starting May 29), Architekturgalerie in Munich (starting in July), and the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel (starting August 27).

Archetypes can be purchased on Bookdepository.com, and will soon also be available at Indigo and Amazon.

Samantha Eby, who graduated from the Daniels Faculty's Master of Architecture program in 2019, has been named the recipient of the 2020 Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners, a prestigious $34,000 prize awarded annually by the Canada Council for the Arts to a recent architecture graduate who has demonstrated potential in contemporary architectural design.

This is the third year in a row that a Daniels Faculty alumnus has won the prize. The other two recent Daniels Faculty recipients were Kinan Hewitt, who graduated in 2018, and David Verbeek, who graduated in 2017.

Samantha Eby.

The Prix de Rome prize money can be used to finance travel to sites of architectural research interest. Once pandemic-related travel restrictions are lifted, Eby plans to use her new funding to make research trips to Australia, Germany, and Austria, so that she can visit and document examples of collective and non-profit housing developments. She hopes to gain a deeper understanding of the ownership models, financing practices, and planning policies that have made such developments possible.

Her interest in collective housing stems from her Daniels Faculty thesis project, for which she investigated new ways of adding affordable multi-unit housing to Toronto's single-detached neighbourhoods. "My research is looking for unrealized opportunities in Canada for new forms of housing that are outside the current practices of financing and site development," she says. "I'm looking at questions of how housing in Canada can be more than just a commodity, and how, by using communal financing and development practices, we can make multi-unit housing more accessible, sustainable, and desirable."

Images from Eby's Daniels Faculty thesis project.

"As an architect, Samantha balances a deep curiosity for the economies that contribute to architecture and urbanism with a provocative and tangible design sensibility," says Eby's thesis advisor, assistant professor Michael Piper. "Her thesis research about collective development models, the calculus of site selection, and the design of beautifully sensible housing demonstrates this unique combination of skills."

Eby says this fully funded travel opportunity will be a rare chance for her to elaborate upon some of the design concepts she studied during her time at Daniels. "I think, as architects, we often have very idealistic approaches, where we think we can change the world with our ideas — which is something that is amazing in school and often gets crushed when you get out into the real world," she says. "This is a really good opportunity for me to challenge myself to push back against those real-world constraints, and consider thoughtful and convincing ways to understand pro formas for development, how different ownership models actually work, and what the barriers are to these new architectural typologies."

Even as she has continued to pursue her research, Eby has been working in the architectural field. For the past two years, she has been an intern architect at Toronto-based Batay-Csorba Architects.

The Daniels Faculty delegation to the 2021 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism keeps growing.

GAMBJTS, an interdisciplinary collaboration between Daniels alumni and lecturers, will be exhibiting a joint project, titled "Beneath the City: Rivers," at the biennale.

This will make them one of at least two groups with Daniels connections at the event. Another project group, made up of Master of Architecture graduates from 2020, announced that its installation had been selected for the biennale in January.

GAMBJTS consists of Pooya Aledavood (MArch 2019), Nicolas Mayaux (MArch 2019), Brandon Bergem (MArch 2019), Vincent Javet (MLA 2018), Robbie Tarakji (MArch 2019), and Elly Selby (MArch 2019), who are all recent graduates of the Faculty, and Jeffrey Garcia, who isn't a Daniels alumnus. Javet and Garcia teach at Daniels as sessional lecturers.

A GAMBJTS group photo.

The Seoul Biennale, which takes place in the South Korean capital, is a major international showcase for architecture and design, with a competitive entry process. Teams submit proposals and are invited — or rejected — based on the merits of their designs and the applicability of them to the biennale's chosen areas of focus. The theme of this year's event is "building the resilient city."

Beneath the City: Rivers addresses resiliency in a unique way. Rather than propose definite solutions to environmental ills, the project engages in speculation: What if, it asks, Toronto "daylighted" some of its hidden water infrastructure, including the long-buried creeks that channel the city's stormwater? Could these hidden waterways be remade into sustainable leisure landscapes?

“Toronto’s seen and unseen natural systems can provide a framework for how we might think about resilient urbanism.” Javet says. "The idea is to expose these buried hydrological systems to promote resiliency through landscape as a means of infrastructure."

The group's installation at the biennale will consist of a large, 3D-printed model of downtown Toronto, suspended upside-down over a convex mirrored surface, with the buried creeks represented as translucent slashes across the city grid. The topsy-turvy presentation will encourage viewers to think about what lies beneath the city's streets.

Around the perimeter of the circular model will be renderings of a series of design exercises intended to show what the city might look like after its water infrastructure was thoroughly daylighted.

Each rendering shows a speculative city scene. In one, the familiar parkland in front of the Ontario Legislative Building is flooded with water. The legislature's statue of John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, is shown immersed in the flood, with only its head poking above the waterline. In this instance, water infrastructure isn't the only thing being revealed.

"This is an acknowledgement that the land does not belong to us," Garcia says. "It is a depiction of colonization, because the statue sits on territory taken from many nations, including First Nations and Indigenous peoples.”

Another rendering shows one of Toronto's Victorian neighbourhoods, its streets excavated to expose the ancient creeks that, in reality, flow through subterranean culverts. The area around the creeks is transformed into a public park.

The group took the opportunity to reinterpret one of the most sacred sites in Toronto architecture, Mies van der Rohe's modernist TD Centre Plaza. A rendering shows the plaza's sleek grey pavers replaced by a pool of water, with a tree growing proudly amid the monumental cluster of dark towers. The group was aware that this might create controversy. "It's quite telling that people have a visceral response to the excavation of this relatively recent cultural landscape," Javet says. "The plaza has occupied the land for a little over 50 years, where many of Toronto’s waterways were of ecological and cultural importance for thousands of years. It’s the same reaction.”

The group also gave its speculative treatment to one of the city's most laid-back leisure landscapes: the nude beach at Hanlan's Point, on the Toronto Islands. A rendering shows the beach transformed into a hybrid landscape, where leisure and infrastructure are practically indistinguishable. Nude bathers lounge in the mouths of large concrete drainage pipes.

The Seoul Biennale begins on September 16 and runs through the end of October. Its organizers are currently planning to hold the event in person, pandemic permitting. For more information, visit the biennale's website.

A group of three Daniels Faculty almuni have been named the winners of the Jury Prize in the "Ontario Place: A Call for Counterproposals" competition, which asked entrants to develop creative ways of preserving Ontario Place's architectural heritage.

Catherine Howell (MLA 2018), Ramsey Leung (MArch 2019), and Joseph Loreto (MArch 2019) jointly developed a proposal titled "Megalandscape Ontario" that charts out a future for Ontario Place as a lush recreational area for a nearby high-density residential community.

Their design was selected from a field of over 40 other entries by a jury of experts including urban designer Ken Greenberg and Daniels Faculty professor Brigitte Shim. The three teammates will receive a prize of $1,500 to split.

"This scheme's incremental approach with an emphasis on community engagement will ensure that Ontario Place responds to the city's future and evolving needs," Shim wrote in a statement.

The competition was an initiative of The Future of Ontario Place, a collective of architects and designers that formed in response to the Ontario government's ongoing efforts to redevelop Ontario Place. The organization is co-led by Daniels Faculty associate professor Aziza Chaouni; professor emeritus George Baird; Javier Ors Ausín, of the World Monuments Fund; and William Greaves, of Architectural Conservancy Ontario.

Ontario Place is former exhibition ground, located on a pair of islands on Toronto's western waterfront. It was the site of a publicly owned amusement park until 2012, when the Ontario government shut it down. Although Ontario Place hasn't been in daily use for nearly a decade, it still has an impressive architectural legacy, consisting of modernist structures and landscapes designed in the late 1960s by Eberhard Zeidler and Michael Hough. The Future of Ontario Place's goal is to ensure the preservation of those architectural features.

The "call for counterproposals" competition was open to students and recent graduates of Canadian architecture, urban planning, and urban design programs. The competition brief asked entrants to develop master plans for Ontario Place that would not only preserve Zeidler and Hough's designs, but that would also allow the site to continue to be used as a public amenity, without condos or other private development.

The plan's three phases. (Click here to see a larger version.)

Howell, Leung, and Loreto decided to create a plan with some intentional gaps. "We approached this master plan as a framework," Leung says. "We didn't want to design the whole site, but rather set up a system in which the community as a whole could design the site."

A key component of their strategy was the idea that not all of their proposed changes would happen quickly. "The important thing was the idea of slowness," Loreto says. "What we were trying to do was zoom out to a scale where we could look at the site and really understand its place in the city."

The pods would be transformed into a habitat for wildlife. (Click here to see a larger version.)

In the first phase of their plan, Lakeshore Boulevard would be re-graded to create smoother pedestrian connections between Ontario Place and the mainland to its immediate north. Ontario Place's "pods," a group of structures designed by Zeidler that protrude from the lake on sets of stilts, would become a habitat for wildlife. Native plants would be established on the pods' rooftops, and birds and other animals would be allowed to make homes there. "The pods haven't functioned in a long time as gallery spaces, which is what their original intent was," Howell says. "We wanted to re-imagine them as vessels of nature preservation, while rehabilitating the shoreline for more aquatic and amphibious life, and keeping the architecture as a monument."

At the same time, Ontario Place's islands would be enlarged with decontaminated landfill. The new landmass would allow the islands to be converted into a sprawling public park. To the north, on the mainland, a portion of Exhibition Place, Toronto's permanent fairgrounds, would be converted into an open mall — an unprogrammed area where various community events could take place.

A site plan showing Ontario Place at the conclusion of its transformation, with additional landmass from landfill and a residential community to the north. (Click here to see a larger version.)

In the final phase of the plan, parts of Exhibition Place would be redeveloped into a high-rise residential community, whose residents would then be able to use the revamped Ontario Place for leisure activities.

Howell, Leung, and Loreto hope their proposal helps nudge the Ontario Place redevelopment process in a more inclusive direction. "There are stakeholders that have not been consulted, to date," Leung says. "Marginalized groups that should be involved in the process of designing Ontario Place for the future."

Ontario Place: A Call for Counterproposals also gave out two other awards. Paul Arkilander, Tali Budman, Ryan Coates, and Connery Friesen, from Ryerson University and the University of Manitoba, won Special Mention. Blaike Allen, Michael Monaghan, and Kathryn Pierre, from the University of British Columbia, won the Public Vote prize.

Alumni, future students, and members of the public are welcome to join us online for final reviews (April 15-23). Daniels Faculty students in architecture, landscape, and urban design will present their final projects to their instructors, as well as guest critics from the professional community and local and international academic institutions.

Daniels On Air is the Faculty’s online platform to navigate through final reviews. Here you’ll sign up, browse the schedule, and learn more about each studio. Daniels On Air will re-launch in time for reviews beginning on April 15. All reviews will take place over Zoom (create a free account here).

Current students do not need to sign up for Daniels On Air to access reviews. Check the Review and Examination Schedule for all dates and times.

Follow UofTDaniels on Twitter and Instagram and join the conversation using the hashtag #DanielsReviews. Reviews take place 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. unless otherwise stated. Please note that the times and dates may change, and there may be scheduled breaks in a Zoom throughout the day.

Undergraduate 

Thursday, April 15 

Design Studio I | JAV101 
Time: 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Instructors: Jay Pooley (Coordinator), Alex Josephson, Danielle Whitley, Peter Sealy, Jennifer Kudlats, Katy Chey, Luke Duross, Chloe Town, T. Jeffrey Garcia, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Nuria Montblanch, Scott Sorli, Anne Ma, Marcin Kedzior, Avi Odenheimer 

Friday, April 16 

Design Studio II | ARC201 
Time: 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. 
Instructors: Fiona Lim Tung (Coordinator), Daniel Briker, Carol Moukheiber, Tei Carpenter, Maria Denegri, Alex Josephson, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Andrew MacMillan 

Drawing and Representation II | ARC200 
Time: 2-6 p.m. 
Instructors: Michael Piper (Coordinator), Jon Cummings, David Verbeek, Reza Nik, Fiona Lim Tung 

Monday, April 19 

Architecture Studio IV | ARC362 
Instructors: Dina Sarhane (Coordinator), Chris Cornecelli, Sam Ghantous 

Landscape Architecture Studio IV | ARC364 
Time: 9:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. 
Instructor: Alissa North 

Technology Studio IV | ARC381 
Time: 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. 
Instructors: Tom Bessai (Coordinator), Tomasz Reslinski  

Thursday, April 22 and Friday, April 23 

Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Thesis) | ARC457 
Instructor: Jeannie Kim 

Senior Seminar in Design (Thesis) | ARC462 
Instructor: Jeannie Kim 

Senior Seminar in Technology (Thesis) | ARC487 
Instructor: Nicholas Hoban 

Graduate 

Monday, April 19 

Design Studio 2 | ARC1012 | MARCH 
Instructors: Adrian Phiffer (Coordinator), Tei Carpenter, Petros Babasikas, An Te Liu, Brigitte Shim, Tom Ngo, Aziza Chaouni, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco 

Design Studio 2 | LAN1012 | MLA  
Instructors: Liat Margolis (Coordinator), Elise Shelley, Terence Radford 

Urban Design Studio Options | URD1012 | MUD 
Instructors: Ken Greenberg, Simon Rabyniuk 

Tuesday, April, 20 

Design Studio 4 | ARC2014 | MARCH 
Instructors: Sam Dufaux (Coordinator), Carol Moukheiber, James Macgillivray, Chris Cornecelli, Aleris Rodgers, Maria Denegri, Anne-Marie Armstrong, Francesco Martire 

Design Studio 4 | LAN2014 | MLA 
Instructors: Behnaz Assadi (Coordinator), Todd Douglas 

Wednesday April 21 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2 | ARC3021 | MARCH 
Instructors: Adrian Phiffer, Vivian Lee, Mason White 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2 | ARC3039 | MARCH 
Instructors: Jesse LeCavalier, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2 | ARC4018 | MARCH 

(L9101) Redeployable Architecture for Health—Pop-up Hospitals for Covid-19 
Instructor: Stephen Verderber 

(L9109) Towards Half: Climate Positive Design in the GTHA 
Instructor: Kelly Doran 
 

Design Studio Thesis | LAN3017 | MLA 
Instructors: Liat Margolis (Coordinator), Behnaz Assadi, Fadi Masoud, Peter North, Alissa North, Jane Wolff, Elise Shelley, Matthew Perotto, Megan Esopenko, Aisling O’Carroll 

Urban Design Studio Thesis | URD2015 | MUD 
Instructor: Angus Laurie 

Thursday, April 22 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2 | ARC3021/ARC4018 | MARCH  

(L9103) STUFF  
Time: 1-6 p.m.
Instructor: Laura Miller 

(L9105) ARCHITECTURE ♥ MEDIA 
Instructors: Lara Lesmes, Fredrik Hellberg 

(L9106) Designing Buildings with Complex Programs on Constrained Urban Sites that include Heritage Structures 
Time: 1-6 p.m. 
Instructor: George Baird 

(L9107) What is Inclusive Architecture (Landscape Architecture, Urban Design)? 
Time: 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. 
Instructor: Elisa Silva 

(L9108) The Usual Suspects  
Time: 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. 
Instructors: Filipe Magalhaes, Ahmed Belkhodja, Ana Luisa Soares 

Design Studio Thesis | LAN3017 | MLA 
Instructors: Liat Margolis (Coordinator), Behnaz Assadi, Fadi Masoud, Peter North, Alissa North, Jane Wolff, Elise Shelley, Matthew Perotto, Megan Esopenko, Aisling O’Carroll 

Post-Professional Thesis 2 | ALA4022  
Time: 12-4 p.m. 
Instructors: Mason White (Coordinator), Adrian Phiffer, Maria Yablonina, Carol Moukheiber, Jesse LeCavalier, Paul Harrison 

Friday, April 23 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2 | ARC3021/ARC4018 | MARCH  

(L9110) Anthropocene and Herd 
Instructor: Gilles Saucier, Christian Joakim, Gregory Neudorf 

(L9103) STUFF  
Time: 1-6 p.m.
Instructor: Laura Miller 

Architectural Design Studio 7: Thesis | ARC4018 | MARCH 
Time: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. 
Advisors: Petros Babasikas, Michael Piper 

Architectural Design Studio 7: Thesis | ARC4018 | MARCH 
Time: 1-6 p.m. 
Advisors: John Shnier, Mauricio Quiros Pachecho, Carol Moukheiber, An Te Liu 

Design Studio Thesis | LAN3017 | MLA 
Instructors: Liat Margolis (Coordinator), Behnaz Assadi, Fadi Masoud, Peter North, Alissa North, Jane Wolff, Elise Shelley, Matthew Perotto, Megan Esopenko, Aisling O’Carroll 

Photo by Harry Choi.

Dear students, faculty, and staff – 

A lot has happened at the Daniels Faculty since September, and I am thrilled to welcome two new leaders.  

First, if you have not had a chance to read the announcement, please join me in welcoming Juan Du to the Daniels Faculty. Professor Du, an internationally renowned architectural scholar whose work focuses on urban development and marginalized groups, will join us as dean effective July 1, 2021. Professor Du’s socially conscious outlook, and her demonstrated skill at research and administration, make her the ideal person to lead our school into the future. Read the announcement. 

As we start 2021, we also welcome Elder Whabagoon –– our inaugural First Peoples Leadership Advisor to the Dean. Elder Whabagoon will advise the Faculty on the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and evaluate our curriculum and programs through an Indigenous lens. As a Faculty, we have much to learn from the First Peoples and I'm honoured that Elder Whabagoon has agreed to guide us through that process. This new appointment is an important step in walking this path. Read the announcement.  

I can also share that we will complete the interview process for the Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in March. This critical new role will sit jointly between the Daniels Faculty and U of T’s Division of Human Resources and Equity. Please stay tuned for the announcement later this term.  

This update comes to you in February as we celebrate Black History Month across Canada. I encourage you to look through the calendar of upcoming programs from U of T’s Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office and read the update from the Daniels Faculty’s work-study students linked below, which includes a list of student clubs and initiatives. 

Although we have made progress, we have a lot more work ahead of us. Making essential changes in dealing with systemic racism will require a continuous and sustained effort. I thank everyone who has been helping to push us forward as a community. I will continue to provide updates on behalf of the Faculty and the Diversity and Equity Committee as we work toward a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture at the Daniels Faculty. 

Diversity and Equity Committee Meetings 

The committee will meet four times during the winter term: February 12; February 25; March 12; and March 26. The second meeting on February 25 will be a conversation with Elder Whabagoon. If you wish to join a committee meeting as a guest, please contact Harold Tan, harold.tan@daniels.utoronto.ca. (All meeting minutes are published online). 

Work-Study Research and Communications Progress 

The Diversity and Equity Committee created eight work-study positions during the fall term to provide paid opportunities for in-depth student participation in researching issues related to racism, and to help develop strategies to address those issues. A special thank you to our first cohort of work-study research and communications assistants for their hard work and insights. From course outline evaluations and communications audits, to an updated resource list and an equity-focused social media survey, take a closer look at the progress they’ve made over the past few months: read the newsletter here.

Trainings and Events 

In October 2020, the committee hired anti-Black racism consultants David Lewis-Peart and Nailah Tyrell. As the first step in their audit of the Daniels Faculty, Mr. Lewis-Peart and Ms. Tyrell are conducting a survey of faculty, staff members, and students. They will follow up with interviews and focus group conversations this winter in preparation for anti-Black racism training later in the term.  

In response to requests for further training, the committee organized an unconscious bias training workshop led by the Toronto Initiative for Diversity & Excellence (TIDE) on October 28, 2020. Indigenous cultural competency trainer John Croutch led the workshop “Reconciliation: Walking the Path of Indigenous Allyship,” on January 27, 2021. Both trainings were open to all faculty and staff members, student union representatives, and the committee’s work-study assistants. 

I hope that you were able to join us for the Daniels Faculty’s instalment in the Pan-Canada Lecture series on January 26. “In Conversation with BAIDA” (Black Architects and Interior Designers Association) invited six members to share their work within the organization, and their individual experiences leading up to and within the fields of architecture and interior design. If you were not able to make it live, you can watch the event recording on YouTube. Thank you to the BAIDA panelists and the student organizers from AVSSU and GALDSU for their thoughtful leadership. A second collaboration with BAIDA is being planned for fall 2021 to allow for a discussion of evolving questions around anti-Black racism work in the design professions. 

Jane Wolff, the Diversity and Equity Committee Chair, met with Karima Hashmani, U of T’s Executive Director, Anti-Racism and Cultural Diversity Office, for her guidance on appropriate metrics and indices for assessing the diversity of our faculty complement. And as part of continuing efforts to make diversity, equity, and anti-racism integral subjects in our curricula, the committee met with MLA, MUD, MArch, and BAAS program directors to assess changes made in fall 2020. A follow-up meeting will be scheduled to debrief the winter 2021 term as well. Based on these debriefs, the committee will create a best practices document to assist in planning for the 2021/2022 academic year. 

As we mark the first months of 2021 off our calendars, I continue to be impressed, but not surprised, by the resilience of our community. I want to remind all of you that your physical and mental well-being remains our highest priority. You can find support and services at mentalhealth.utoronto.ca, and please ask for help should you need it. 

With gratitude, 

Robert Wright 
Interim Dean 

Alexandra Farkas, a 2021 graduate of the Daniels Faculty's Master of Forest Conservation program, has been named a recipient of a White Pine Award, a prize given by Forests Ontario at its annual conference. The award recognizes student contributions to forest education and awareness.

This year's Forests Ontario conference was held online, and so Alexandra received her award remotely. She was one of two recipients. The other, Alexandra Lalande, is a graduate of Fleming College's forestry technician program. In a press release, Forests Ontario commended both women for their help with the organization's promotion and outreach efforts.

Forests Ontario is a not-for-profit organization that supports tree planting, forest restoration, forest stewardship, and forest education throughout the province. Their forestry conference is the largest of its kind in Ontario. To find out more about their programs, visit the Forests Ontario website.

John Hampton. Photograph by Don Hall.

John Hampton, a 2014 graduate of the Daniels Faculty's Master of Visual Studies program, has just been appointed executive director and CEO of the Mackenzie Art Gallery, the oldest public art gallery in Saskatchewan. In the process, he has become the first Indigenous person ever to land a job as chief executive of a major public art institution in Canada.

Hampton first joined the MacKenzie in 2018 as director of programs. He was appointed interim CEO in June, before being made permanent in the role earlier this month.

He is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, a Native American nation based in southern Oklahoma. "'First Indigenous CEO' is a strange title for me to wear," he says. "Although I grew up in Regina and I've been adopted into this community, I am still a guest here. I look forward to a future where Indigenous voices are leading the cultural dialogue in our own territories and are active participants in the broader art world."

Hampton thinks the benefits of demographic change at the top of the Canadian art world go far beyond diversity. "When the vision and leadership of your cultural institutions have no input from the voices or the cultures that have been here since time immemorial, that's more than a blind spot," he says.

In his time at the MacKenzie, Hampton has already implemented a number of initiatives designed to broaden the gallery's horizons. He helped create a partnership with Mitacs and the University of Regina to offer internships in Indigenous and new curatorial practices, restructured the gallery's Indigenous Advisory Circle, and appointed the gallery's first elder in residence.

He intends to use his new influence to push for more inclusion at the MacKenzie. The gallery is currently in the process of performing a demographic audit of its collections, and is also reexamining its artist payment policies and hiring practices from an equity perspective.

"The MacKenzie has a long history of championing Indigenous art, and the collection reflects that," Hampton says. "But the story of Saskatchewan is more than just settlers and Indigenous people. There are many communities with their own vibrant cultures, artistic practices, and world views. We can't tell the story of Saskatchewan art just through a settler and Indigenous lens."

Hampton is still deeply involved with the University of Toronto art community. He remains an adjunct curator at the University of Toronto Art Museum. Starting in 2022, the MacKenzie and the Art Museum will be co-presenting an exhibition on the history, mythology, and impact of the concept of a "white race."

Now, reflecting on his time as a student in the Daniels Faculty MVS program, Hampton says the learning experience was foundational to his career in the Canadian art world. "When I came to U of T is when I really started connecting with the broader art community," he says. "The MVS Curatorial Studies program is unique in this country."