Reflecting her preservation work across three African countries, the exhibition Modern West Africa: Recorded was recently unveiled by Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni and colleagues at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Through her architectural practice—Aziza Chaouni Projects (ACP)—Chaouni has been leading, with support from the Getty Foundation and the World Monuments Fund, the conservation and adaptive reuse of three publicly owned modernist buildings from West Africa’s post-independence era: The Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Station (Morocco, 1960–1965), La Maison du Peuple (Burkina Faso, 1965) and the Centre International du Commerce Extérieur du Sénégal (Senegal, 1974). 

Modern West Africa: Recorded explores these sites through oral histories and stakeholder testimonials in a short film and corresponding exhibition that invites viewers to understand the past and present of these spaces, in order to speculate on their futures.

“The complexity of each site necessitated a methodology based on listening and exchange, and a commitment to collaborative design with owners, operators and communities,” says Chaouni. “International conservation movements have decentered African modernism, with no works appearing on the UNESCO World Heritage List, leaving them unprotected and underfunded. Recognizing these histories is key at a moment when Africa faces change.”

This year’s biennale, curated by Lesley Lokko, focuses on the theme The Laboratory of the Future. “For the first time ever,” Lokko says in an exhibition statement, “the spotlight has fallen on Africa and the African Diaspora, that fluid and enmeshed culture of people of African descent that now straddles the globe.”

Led by Chaouni and Dana Salama, an associate at ACP, Modern West Africa: Recorded is included in Guests from the Future, a special project within the Biennale showcasing work that “engages directly with the twin themes of this exhibition, decolonization and decarbonization, providing a snapshot, a glimpse of future practices and ways of seeing and being in the world.”

The 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture is open from May 20 to November 26. Learn more about the sites and watch the short film at modernwestafrica.org.

Banner images: 1-2: Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Station (Morocco, 1960–1965), doublespace photography; 3-4: Modern West Africa: Recorded exhibition at the Venice Biennale courtesy Aziza Chaouni.

The Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent will be open for self-guided tours as part of the 2023 Doors Open Toronto program this weekend.

More than 140 buildings and sites are on the roster of this year’s instalment of the popular annual event, which sees normally inaccessible local landmarks throw their doors open to the public.

The Daniels Building will be open to visitors from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on both Saturday, May 27 and Sunday, May 28. Last admittance on each day is at 4:30 p.m.

In addition to taking in the architectural splendours of the revitalized 1 Spadina hub, participants have three on-site exhibitions to check out—Recent Work by Marina Tabassum Architects in the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery, Resolutions for the Antarctic: International Stations & the Antarctic Data Space in the lower-level Architecture & Design Gallery and the annual End of Year Show highlighting student work from across the Faculty’s disciplines—as well as the art installation on the north facade of the Building by Indigenous artist Que Rock. 

Admission to the Building and to all Doors Open venues is free. A dedicated brochure with map of the Daniels Building has been produced to hand out to visitors.

To view the Daniels Building’s Doors Open page, click here. To see the full list of Doors Open Buildings and Sites, click here. 

The biggest U of T alumni gathering of the year takes place across campus and online May 30–June 4. Check out what the Daniels Faculty has lined up for Alumni Reunion 2023.

Campus Tree Walk

Friday, June 2, 10:00-12:00, Huron Street and Willcocks Street

Join alumni for a guided walk around campus exploring different tree species. This tour runs rain or shine. This walk will be led by Jack Radecki (Registered Consultant Arborist, U of T B.Sc. Forestry alumni) and Eric Davies (Managed Forest Plan Approver, U of T Ph.D. Candidate in Forest Ecology). 

Building in a Forest 

Friday, June 2, 12:30-1:30 pm, Main Hall 
Free and open to the public

Join Assistant Professor Jay Pooley and Adam Gorgolewski of Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Preserve for a lecture on the Daniels Faculty Design Build Studio, a cornerstone of experiential learning at U of T. Uniquely powerful as the primary mode of hands-on building instruction, it offers lasting engagement opportunities and reflection within the design degrees.

Every summer, this Design Build Studio, which is now in its fifth year, hosts a group of undergraduate students at Bone Lake Research Camp at the Haliburton Forest, where they work to design and build a small piece of infrastructural architecture. The students engage faculty, community members, and Forestry staff to build with local materials while engaging in multiple aspects of design, construction, and forestry management.

Register for the in-person event.

Jay Pooley is a Toronto-based architect, art director and journeyman carpenter. His work demonstrates expertise in the design and rapid realization of technically complex set constructions, installations and special effects for film production on a global scale. Pooley is currently an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, where he coordinates the first-year undergraduate design studios How to Design Almost Anything, a collaborative design studio with the Faculty of Applied Science: Design + Engineering I, and the fourth-year Design-Build Research Opportunity Program. 

Adam Gorgolewski is the Research Coordinator at Haliburton Forest and Wild Life Reserve. He established and runs Haliburton Forest Research Institute, and is in charge of facilitating and coordinating internal and external research projects at Haliburton Forest. He is an active member of the forest management team, and also runs Haliburton Forest’s maple syrup operation. He holds a Ph.D. in forestry from the University of Toronto, and is a registered professional forester in training.

How are forests managed and grown?

Friday, June 2, 6:00-7:00 pm, New College

What do you know about sustainable forest management and forestry? Come hear a forester talk about how they sustainably manage and grow forests! This lecture will be given by Catherine Edwards (Registered Professional Forester, and U of T Master of Forest Conservation alumna).

How will multiplexes address the growing housing crisis in Toronto? How can “citizen developers”   leverage changing housing policy? 

ReHousing—a research collaboration between Tuf Lab, led by Assistant Professor Michael Piper, and LGA Architectural Partners—contributed to policy change this week as Toronto City Council moved to approve multiplexes (see an excerpt from the commissioned report).

The project hopes to address the issue of housing affordability by offering 50 open-source architectural design templates to reconfigure the 13 most standard Toronto home types into multi-unit dwellings.

To empower citizens to take advantage of these new policy changes, ReHousing is working with non-profit housing creators and development advisors to create a guide for citizen developers, enabling non-professionals to take on these kinds of multiplex projects. 

Explore the Housing Catalogue.

Banner image and renderings courtesy ReHousing.

The colonial fishing villages and maritime infrastructure along the shoreline of early modern Newfoundland are the foci of an article by Assistant Professor Jason Nguyen in the international quarterly Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes.

Nguyen’s essay, titled “Encountering the Shoreline: Ecology and Infrastructure on the Early Modern Newfoundland Coast,” is part of a special issue, “Port Cities and Landscapes of the Sea,” edited by Kathleen John-Adler and Stephen H. Whiteman.

The issue also includes articles by Christy Anderson from the University of Toronto, Edward Eigen of Harvard University and Jeremy Foster of Cornell University. 

An historian of architecture, landscape and urban planning in the early modern world, Nguyen (pictured below) contends in his essay that, during the 17th and 18th centuries, the establishment of settlements and construction of seagoing vessels, preservation stations and other logistical sites at and across the littoral line supported the commercialization of the global cod market while fundamentally altering the coastal ecologies of North Atlantic waters. 

The Grand Banks of Newfoundland—the underwater plateaus that provided shallow feeding conditions for underwater life—made the sea shelf one of the richest fishing regions in the world. 

On a global scale, the commercial extraction and preservation of cod supported the expanding diet and political economy of the early modern imperial state. 

On a local scale, the construction of buildings along the shoreline intruded on the littoral ecosystem and impelled the relocation of the native Beothuk inhabitants to the island’s interior, thereby highlighting the genocidal ramifications of European coastal development. 

How, Nguyen’s article asks, might one conceptualize the logistical architecture of the Newfoundland fisheries as both a spatial node within a global network of trade as well as a material intrusion into the ecology of the North Atlantic coastline?

To read the article, click here. Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes is an open-access journal.

Banner image: Matthäus Merian’s “Richard Whitbourne and the Mermaid of St. John’s Harbour,” in Theodor de Bry’s Dreyzehender Theil Americae, 1628. The etching and engraving is in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

Miles Gertler (Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream) is among this year’s winners of the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers, handed out annually by The Architectural League of New York.

The League Prize, open to North American-based architects and designers who are 10 years or less out of a bachelor’s or master’s degree program, is one of the continent’s most prestigious awards for young practitioners.

Established in 1981 as the Young Architects’ Forum, the prize is awarded on the basis of a portfolio competition and decided by a hand-picked jury.  

The 2023 competition theme, Uncomfortable, called on entrants to examine their discomforts.  “From climate change to labor practices,” the mandate noted, “the sources of our discomfort demand both critical reflection and collective imagination. Are you restless within the discipline’s status quo? How do you respond to discomfort? Whose comfort matters?”

Under the requirements of the prize, winners must both deliver a lecture and create an installation representative of their work. This year’s lecture series will be held online on Thursday evenings starting June 15 (the night that Gertler is slated to speak) on Zoom. Each lecture will feature presentations from two of the winners followed by a moderated discussion and q&a session.

The installations, meanwhile, will be presented either in the respective home bases of each winner or in entirely digital formats, all of which will be presented in an online exhibition on archleague.org.

In addition to Gertler (pictured below), this year’s League Prize recipients include Katie MacDonald and Kyle Schumann of After Architecture in Virginia, Joseph Altshuler and Zack Morrison of Could Be Design in Illinois, Daisy Ames of Studio Ames in New York City, Sean Canty of Studio Sean Canty in Boston, and Sarah Aziz and Lindsey Krug of Albuquerque, Chicago and Milwaukee.

Co-directed with Igor Bragado, Gertler’s design studio, Common Accounts, is based in Toronto and Madrid. The practice is an experimental one predicated on the idea that most design intelligence active in the world operates below the radar of the design disciplines. Their work is therefore concerned with expanding architecture’s scope to learn from the ingenuity embedded in the immediate present.

“Our practice is unique in the sense that inquiry itself becomes intervention,” Gertler and Bragado say. “The basis of our work, then, is to question, reorganize and intensify established realities which require re-thinking for the improvement of daily life.”

In 2021, the Common Accounts installation Parade of All the Feels was presented at Greater Toronto Art 2021, the Museum of Contemporary Art’s inaugural triennial exhibition.

Their work has also been showcased at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Milan Triennale and the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

Banner and homepage image: The Common Accounts installation Closer Each Day: The Architecture of Everyday Death (2022) is “a speculative work of architectural inquiry” initiated at Princeton University and further developed through a drawing commissioned by the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Photo by the Canadian Centre for Architecture

Portrait of Miles Gertler by Kirk Lisaj

The annual Thesis Booklet showcasing the final thesis projects of Master of Architecture (MARC), Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA), Master of Urban Design (MUD) and Master of Visual Studies (MVS) students at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is now available for viewing.

Thesis booklets are a Daniels Faculty tradition, printed for and distributed to graduate thesis students, as well as thesis advisors, external reviewers and guests.

The booklet contains images and brief statements by students who are presenting thesis projects for the semester(s) listed at the culmination of their studies.

Flip through the latest booklet below or download a PDF here.

Black City Builders in Canada, Daniels Faculty sessional lecturer Kaari Kitawi’s new video series profiling some of the country’s leading Black design professionals, has launched.

The four-part series—for which Kitawi (pictured below) received a grant from the Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation (LACF) last year to produce—will be shown on her existing YouTube channel, called Careers Unboxed with Kaari.

That channel features interviews with Black professionals from around the world and a variety of fields about their respective career journeys. Black City Builders in Canada, by contrast, hones in on the experiences and perspectives of architecture and design professionals working in this country.

“It is important for us to tell our stories in order to change the narrative,” Kitawi said when she received the LACF grant, referring to the need for BIPOC students to see themselves reflected among those already making their mark in disciplines such as architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and planning.

Both her YouTube channel and the new series expand on the in-person outreach that she has also conducted, such as giving career talks to BIPOC high-schoolers in her Toronto neighbourhood and elsewhere.

The first, 50-minute instalment of Black City Builders in Canada, featuring Nigerian-Canadian landscape architect Emeka Nnadi, is currently available for viewing, as is a trailer offering sneak peeks of future subjects.

Among those who’ll be profiled in upcoming segments are architect and Daniels Faculty assistant professor Anne-Marie Armstrong, urban designer Eldon Theodore and landscape architect Kellie Spence.

To view the trailer for Black City Builders in Canada, click here. To watch the first episode of the series, click here.

Architect and alumnus Irving Grossman, well-known for his socially conscious design work, is the namesake of a new Fund aimed at inspiring innovation in an area challenging Toronto and other major cities around the world right now: housing affordability. 

The Irving Grossman Fund in Affordable Housing, named for the award-winning Toronto modernist who acquired his Bachelor of Architecture degree from U of T in 1950, will recognize and support Daniels Faculty students, professors and community partners tackling the urgent issue of how to make housing more accessible to all. 

Grossman, who also taught at U of T’s School of Architecture for many years, designed a wide range of buildings throughout his 45-year career, from single-family homes to synagogues to the Administration Building at Expo 67, but he was especially noted for his social and mixed-income projects, including such milestone Toronto housing developments as Flemingdon Park, Edgeley Village and the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood. 

“My working-class background, together with my interest in art, led to architecture being a natural creative outlet for me, especially social housing,” he once said. 

Irving and Helena Grossman’s son, Jonas Grossman, established the Irving Grossman Fund in Affordable Housing to honour his father’s legacy and to inspire a new generation of architects and urbanists to make a contribution in the field, a prominent area of teaching and research at the Faculty. 

Over the past several years, more and more students across disciplines have been exploring affordability issues, which are especially resonant in Toronto, a city increasingly marked by income and housing disparities. New faculty with expertise in the subject are being appointed, while exhibitions such as the recent Housing Multitudes show highlight ongoing Faculty research on the topic. 

“The Irving Grossman Fund in Affordable Housing will further enable our Faculty to advance and disseminate novel knowledge on housing with an emphasis on social equity, urban affordability and design innovation,” says Dean Juan Du. “It’s a fitting tribute to Irving Grossman, who made significant contributions in these areas, especially through his projects here in Toronto. We appreciate the Grossman family’s continued contributions to the city and the Faculty.” 

The new Fund, which takes effect in 2023-2024, is the second initiative to bear Irving Grossman’s name at the Faculty.  

In 2002, Helena Grossman led family and friends in the establishment of the Irving Grossman Prize, which is awarded annually to two Master of Architecture students demonstrating excellence and innovation in their final design theses on the subjects of multiple-unit housing or the adaptive reuse of buildings for housing purposes. 

To date, more than three dozen students with demonstrated professional promise have been awarded the Irving Grossman Prize. 

For their sustained contributions to the University of Toronto, both Irving and Helena Grossman received Arbor Awards, the highest honour bestowed on volunteers by U of T.   

In 2018, Helena Grossman (here flanked by U of T President Meric Gertler and U of T Chancellor Rose M. Patten) received an Arbor Award for her significant volunteer contributions to the Daniels Faculty. 

As a student, Irving Grossman was already garnering accolades, winning the Ontario Association of Architects Scholarship, the Architectural Guild Medal and the prestigious Pilkington Glass Fellowship. Among his professional awards were the Massey Medal for Architecture and a Canadian Centennial Medal. He was also a fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. 

In 1995, the year of Grossman’s death, he and fellow architect Jerome Markson, a good friend, were honoured by the Toronto Society of Architects with a fellowship award in recognition of their “exceptional contribution to the profession of architecture and the cultural life of Toronto.” 

More than a decade later, Irving Grossman was awarded his very last prize: a posthumous Landmark Award from the OAA for his role in the design of the still-vibrant St. Lawrence Neighbourhood, regarded by many as a paragon of mixed-income development and, as The Globe and Mail described it in 2013, “a template for urban housing.” 

Banner image: Architect Irving Grossman surveys the burgeoning St. Lawrence Neighbourhood in 1979. Graham Bezant photo courtesy Toronto Star Photograph Archives

9 a.m., Tuesday, April 11 to 6 p.m., Friday, April 28
Daniels Faculty Building,
1 Spadina Crescent, Toronto, Ontario

Throughout April, students in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and forestry will present final projects to their instructors. Students of the Daniels Faculty will also present to guest critics from both academia and the professional community in attendance.

Follow the Daniels Faculty @UofTDaniels on Twitter and Instagram, and join the conversation using the hashtag #DanielsReviews.

Tuesday, April 11 | Undergraduate

Design Studio I
JAV101H1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Jay Pooley (Coordinator), Anamarija Korolj, Batoul Faour, Phat Le, Jeffrey Garcia, Katy Chey, Kara Verbeek, Kearon Roy Taylor, Samantha Eby, Jennifer Kudlats, Brian Boigon, Monifa Charles-Dedier, Mariano Martellacci, Jamie Lipson, Mohammed Soroor

Rooms: 215, 230, 240, 315, 330, Main Hall

Wednesday, April 12 | Undergraduate

Design Studio II
ARC201H1
9 a.m.–1 p.m. ET

Instructors: Fiona Lim Tung (Coordinator), Dan Briker, Quan Thai, Carol Moukheiber, Shane Williamson, Nova Tayona, David Verbeek, Anne Ma, Tomg Ngo, Gonzalo Munoz Vera, Francesco Martire

Rooms: 209, 215, 230, 240, 315, 340, Main Hall

Landscape Architecture Studio IV
ARC364Y1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructor: Pete North

Room: 330

Thursday, April 13 | Undergraduate

Architecture Studio IV
ARC362Y1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Mauricio Quiros Pacheco (Coordinator), Chloe Town, Jon Cummings

Rooms: 215, 230, 240, 330

Technology Studio IV
ARC381Y1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Andrew Bako (Coordinator), Timothy Boll

Room: Main Hall

Friday, April 14 | Graduate & Undergraduate

Design Studio 2
LAN1012Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Elise Shelley (Coordinator), Terence Radford, Agata Mrozowski

Room: 330

Urban Design Studio Options
URD1012Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructor: Simon Rabyniuk

Room: 230

Design + Engineering I
ARC112H1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Jay Pooley (Coordinator), Jennifer Davis, Clinton Langevin

Rooms: 200

Drawing and Representation I
ARC200H1
9 a.m.–1 p.m. ET

Instructors: Roberto Damiani (Coordinator), Jon Cummings, Francesco Valente-Gorjup, Otto Ojo, Scott Norsworthy

Rooms: 215, 240, 315, 340

Monday, April 17 | Graduate

Design Studio 2
ARC1012Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Adrian Phiffer (Coordinator), James Bird, Chloe Town, Anne-Marie Armstrong, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Behnaz Assadi, Julia DiCastri

Room: Main Hall

Tuesday, April 18 | Graduate

Design Studio 4
ARC2014Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Samuel Dufaux (Coordinator), Brigitte Shim, Steven Fong, Chris Cornecelli, James Macgillivray, Carol Moukheiber, Carol Phillips, Francesco Martire

Rooms: 230, 330, Main Hall

Wednesday, April 19 | Graduate

Design Studio 4
ARC2014Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Samuel Dufaux (Coordinator), Brigitte Shim, Steven Fong, Chris Cornecelli, James Macgillivray, Carol Moukheiber, Carol Phillips, Francesco Martire

Rooms: 230, 215, Main Hall

Design Studio 4
LAN2014Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Alissa North, Todd Douglas

Room: 330

Thursday, April 20 | Graduate & Undergraduate

Design Studio Thesis
LAN3017Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Fadi Masoud (Coordinator), Elise Shelley, Behnaz Assadi, Pete North, Alissa North, Jane Wolff, Francesco Martire, Matthew Perotto, Megan Esopenko

Rooms: 209, 230, 242, 330

Senior Seminar in Design (Thesis)
ARC462Y1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructor: Laura Miller

Room: Main Hall A

Senior Seminar in Technology (Thesis)
ARC487Y1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructor: Nicholas Hoban

Rooms: Main Hall B & C

Friday, April 21 | Graduate & Undergraduate

Design Studio Thesis
LAN3017Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Fadi Masoud (Coordinator), Elise Shelley, Behnaz Assadi, Pete North, Alissa North, Jane Wolff, Francesco Martire, Matthew Perotto, Megan Esopenko

Rooms: 209, 230, 242, 330

Urban Design Studio Thesis
URD2015Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Michael Piper, Otto Ojo

Rooms: 315, 340

Senior Seminar in Design (Thesis)
ARC462Y1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructor: Laura Miller

Room: Main Hall A

Senior Seminar in Technology (Thesis)
ARC487Y1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructor: Nicholas Hoban

Rooms: Main Hall B & C

Monday, April 24 | Graduate

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2
ARC3021Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Brian Boigon, Lukas Pauer, Laura Miller, Zachary Mollica, Petros Babasikas

Rooms: 215, 230, 240, 330, Main Hall

Tuesday, April 25 | Graduate

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2
ARC3021Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Jeannie Kim, Laura Miller, Petros Babasikas, Zachary Mollica, John Shnier

Rooms: 209, 215, 230, 240, 242, 330, Main Hall, 1st Floor Hallway

Wednesday, April 26 | Graduate

Architectural Design Studio: Research 2
ARC3021Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructors: Jeannie Kim, Shane Williamson, Marc McQuade, Marina Tabassum, John Shnier

Rooms: 209, 215, 230, 240, 242, 330, Main Hall, 1st Floor Hallway

Thursday, April 27 | Graduate & Undergraduate

Thesis 2
ALA4022Y
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructor: Mason White (Coordinator)

Rooms: 215, 240

Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Thesis)
ARC457Y1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructor: Simon Rabyniuk

Room: Main Hall

Friday, April 28 | Undergraduate

Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Thesis)
ARC457Y1
9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET

Instructor: Simon Rabyniuk

Room: Main Hall