This year’s Building Black Success through Design (BBSD) Showcase—a presentation of the work of Black high-school-aged design mentees—will be held in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building on Saturday, April 15.

Now in its second year, BBSD is a 12-week mentorship program offered through the Daniels Faculty for Black high-school students who are interested in architecture and design. The goal of the program is to inspire Black students to pursue excellence and innovation within design industries and academia, thereby enhancing diversity within the fields and building Black success through design.

The BBSD Showcase, held last year at Collision Gallery in Toronto’s Commerce Court (pictured below and on the homepage), exhibits the final projects of participating students. The 2023 Showcase on April 15 will take place from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at 1 Spadina Crescent.

The event is free and open to all. Attendees are invited to register for tickets here.

This year, 18 students from high schools across the Greater Toronto Area and as far away as Sudbury will be completing the program, the theme of which is Design for Belonging. Grades 9 to 12 were represented; 10 of the students undertook the program in person, while eight participated online.

To guide the students, eight mentors were hired—four for the online cohort and four for the in-person group. All of the mentors were either Black current students or Black alumni.

Serving as Faculty advisors were Assistant Professor Bomani Khemet, Assistant Professor Petros Babasikas and Dr. Jewel Amoah, Assistant Dean, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. The program was administered by a coordinating team of six, including program supervisors Clara James and Rayah Flash, program facilitators Renée Powell-Hines and Mariam Abdelrahman, outreach and recruitment coordinator Julien Todd, and graphic designer Angelica Blake.

Although the two students cohorts each received initial instruction in the fundamentals of the design process, from tools to techniques, the focus of their designs ultimately diverged. The in-person group was tasked with making Toronto’s David Pecault Square, characterized by its hardscaping and location in the city core, more welcoming and inclusive, while the online cohort looked at achieving similar results for two lakeside parks near Ontario Place.

By many accounts, the exercises and outcomes were well received.

“My favourite part of the program,” one mentee wrote in a recent survey, “is learning how to rethink spaces to account for the people near them.”

“I like that this is a space to grow and develop your talents while feeling supported and encouraged,” said another.

In addition to the Showcase on the 15th, the drawings, models and other design work produced by the mentees may also be used by those who want to pursue further education “in an admissions portfolio to various post-secondary programs,” a key goal of the program.

For a sneak peek at the students’ process and work so far, link to the BBSD feed on Instagram by clicking here.

The Daniels Faculty is in the process of creating a new Academic Plan (2024-2029) to articulate our vision and define our priorities for the coming years. An integral part of this process is the consultation phase, a period for our community to share ideas and priorities regarding the future of our school. To that end, the Faculty is canvassing faculty, students, staff and alumni for their input on this important project over the coming weeks. 

There will be a number of ways for all to participate.

*For students, a dedicated Townhall will be held from noon to 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 30 in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building. To register to attend, click here. 

*For faculty and staff, a Townhall Workshop will take place from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, March 31 in the Main Hall of the Daniels Building (a calendar invite will be issued). Those who are unable to make this in-person event may attend an Online Workshop on Tuesday, April 4 (a calendar invite will be issued).

Furthermore, all members of the Daniels Faculty community will be able to participate through: 

*A Pop-up Studio, for drop-in conversations and feedback throughout the day. It will be operating daily, from Monday, March 27 to Thursday, April 6, in the Graduate Student Lounge (DA165) off the Student Commons at 1 Spadina Crescent.

*A Digital Survey, available from Wednesday, March 29 to Monday, April 10; fill it out by clicking here. 

The ideas and input of the Daniels Faculty community are vital as we map out the future of our school, and everyone is encouraged to contribute to this important vision plan. Thank you in advance for your feedback!

The relationship between power and space. The ongoing reality of imperial-colonial expansion in a city such as Montreal. A planned exhibition decoding how one Eastern European nation uses built objects to dominate its neighbours. These are just a few of the topics and projects that Lukas Pauer has been pursuing since joining the Daniels Faculty this fall as an inaugural 2022-2024 Emerging Architect Fellow.

The two-year Emerging Architect Fellowship Award, a non-tenure appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor, was established by the Faculty to offer early-career architects an opportunity to teach in a supportive environment as well as the resources to develop focused research. 

In the case of Pauer, an architect and urbanist whose Vertical Geopolitics Lab, which he founded, is now based at the Faculty, that research is underpinned by a desire to expose how the built environment denies or entrenches power, giving people more political agency in the process.

Recently, the graduate of Harvard University and ETH Zurich and onetime employee of Herzog & de Meuron spoke about the specific nature of his research work, his interdisciplinary approach to it, and his experiences at the Faculty—both inside and outside of the classroom—since arriving. 

What area of research will you be exploring over the duration of your Emerging Architect Fellowship?

The focus of my work is on exposing how material objects and imaginaries of power interrelate and co-construct each other in the built environment. In my recent academic practice, I have critically examined built objects as evidence of the projection of power, authority and influence of politically organized communities. Specifically, my doctoral dissertation, entitled Staging Facts on the Ground, has critically studied how imperial-colonial expansion has been performed architecturally throughout history. There is a lack of general understanding of imperial-colonial violence as a pervasive and ongoing reality around the world. To not recognize the workings of this violence around us is a risk.

Although recent scholarship alludes to a relationship between space and power, as well as the various ways in which power has configured space, many people seeking to participate in the political life of their community still lack the vocabulary to describe how authority over people and land is manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday.

A lack of understanding how any object may be instrumentalized for political purposes limits people's ability and responsibility to contribute to political decisions about the built environment. Throughout my career, I have maintained a mindset and aptitude for working within an interdisciplinary framework. This approach has allowed me to research beyond my immediate field of training and to teach across disciplines.

The fellowships also involve teaching both undergraduate and graduate students. What courses have you been teaching and what has the experience been like?

I have specialized in research-based teaching, which is in part why this fellowship opportunity made a lot of sense to me. As part of my appointment here at Daniels, I am teaching three courses. One of them is more analytical in the history/theory of the built environment. The other two form a year-long course sequence that is more projective in the design of the built environment.

In our undergraduate architectural studies program, I teach a near-300-student core lecture course in which the understanding of public space as “public” only to those who are politically represented and organized is central to it. In our graduate architecture program, I supervise a group of final-year students in a year-long thesis research studio course sequence supporting investigations on space and power in an effort to expose, challenge and reconstitute the pervasive and ongoing reality of imperial-colonial expansion.

What have been some of the highlights of your time at the Faculty to date?

I have been pursuing a career of highly integrated professional practice, research and teaching. Since my arrival here, it has been a pleasure to see the Faculty appreciate the value this integration can add to a school of architecture and beyond. Having somewhat grown out of or you could say “spinned off” from my fellowship project, I have been very excited about an educational development project I am currently working on together with Jeannie Kim and Jewel Amoah. This project seeks to establish a working group to identify and further develop didactic-pedagogical approaches to reading and writing—or seeing and drawing—power in the built environment.

Then in the context of my lecture course and in line with the overarching hypothesis of this course, which is that public space is not actually “public” for everyone, I just organized a self-guided field trip around Toronto that will help my students see and gain a better understanding of how particular people or individuals have often not been considered enough in the making of a city and its public spaces.

Also, in the context of my studio course, and in partnership with local contacts including staff at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, I just organized a travel seminar to Montreal, where my students will be able to critically engage with the pervasive and ongoing reality of imperial-colonial expansion in the case of Montreal. These are just a few examples of moments that I have been excited about. There would be many to list.

Your fellowship project will ultimately be exhibited and disseminated within and beyond Daniels. Any hints on what it might look like or involve?

I am currently working on a research-based exhibition project that seeks to decode and deconstruct a compendium of built objects that an Eastern European country has instrumentalized in recent history, and still today, to project power over its so-called Near Abroad. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a digital/online platform for sovereignty dispute visualization. The underlying hypothesis is that built objects of the everyday can be instrumentalized to convey subversive messages of power.

Still, the prevailing conception is that geopolitics and international relations are shaped by and conducted either through diplomatic missions and military forces on the ground or through written policy documents and cartographic drawings. Through the paradigmatic case of how this Eastern European country is presently projecting power, this exhibition project seeks to recentre the study of how sovereignty is acquired and disputed as a practice-based matter of space and power in the built environment. Stay tuned.

Aeolian Soundscape, a large-scale interactive “harp” conceived and erected by a team from the Daniels Faculty, is among the 16 installations currently animating Toronto’s lakeside Trillium Park as part of Ontario Place’s Lumière: The Art of Light.

The wavy timber-frame structure, which takes on cool neon tones at night, was designed by John Nguyen and Nicholas Hoban, who oversee the Acoustics Research Group, Robotics Lab and Digital Fabrication Facilities at the Faculty with Brady Peters.

Nguyen, Hoban, Peters and Rahul Sehijpaul served as the installation’s project leads.

“Our exhibit,” says the team, “leverages the windy landscape of Ontario Place to create an interactive musical harp that approaches the concept of an aeolian harp from a renewed perspective through the use of a reciprocal frame structure.”

The aeolian harp—which gets its name from the Greek god of the wind, Aeolus, as only the wind can play the instrument—produces a harmonious sound similar to that of chanting. It is believed that the aeolian harp dates back at least to the sixth century BC. The earliest written reference to aeolian harps appeared in Phonurgia nova, which was published by Athanasius Kircher in 1673. By the Romantic Era, they were commonplace in households.

To create Aeolian Soundscape, the Daniels Faculty team employed a lamella structure—a spatial system consisting of segments called lamellae. “By arranging members in a grid pattern,” the members note, “long freeform spans can be achieved from relatively short members, and complex forms from geometrically simple components. This approach is extremely economical as it contains many uniform elements, leading to a structure that is less wasteful and easily assembled.”

In addition, a number of lamellae members were painted with UV paint and adorned with fluorescent nylon strings, then outfitted with black LED lighting “to accentuate the nighttime experience.”

Visitors of all ages, the team members say, “can engage with our installation from a visual perspective,” taking in the “technical expertise in geometrical fabrication [on display],” as well as one in which the “auditory senses are activated through winds and breezes that highlight the local soundscape of Ontario Place.”

The fabrication and assembly team for Aeolian Soundscape included Nermine Hassanin, Cameron Manore, Renee Powell-Hines, Meera Thomas, Liam Cassano, Selina Al Madanat, Elham Khataei, Zhenxiao Yang, Zachary Mollica and Paul Kozak.

The project was supported by the Daniels Faculty and by the Mass Timber Institute at the University of Toronto.

Formerly the Winter Light Exhibition, Lumière: The Art of Light runs until May 7. Newly relocated to Trillium Park at Ontario Place, the free outdoor light exhibition is open seven days a week, from dusk to 11:00 p.m., with a bonfire on Fridays and Saturdays.

Watch a video about the installation’s fabrication and installation below:

Photos and video by Liam Cassano of 6IX Films

Associate Professor Pina Petricone’s Design Research Internship Program (DRIP) has received a LEAF Impact Grant from the University of Toronto’s Office of the Vice-Provost for Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching.

Unique across Canada, the Daniels Faculty’s undergraduate Architectural Studies program is rooted in a liberal-arts model that affords its students a depth and range uncommon among pre-professional undergrad programs. Recognizing the particular skillset for research, ideation and representation of the Faculty’s BAAS students was the first step in establishing DRIP as a new experiential learning course that partners with design professionals to offer a unique academic internship unburdened by practical requirements.

Images from left: At gh3*, DRIP Internship student Orly Sacke aided in the research and compilation of a “Concept Design Report” for the City of Edmonton; Hariri Pontarini DRIP Internship student Luca Patrick developed axonometric diagrams as a new standard for comparative dynamic drawings of several key HPA projects.

Launched by Petricone last summer, DRIP is designed to provide students with a critical educational experience outside the classroom/studio while undertaking design research projects enriched by the realities of professional practice. It exposes BAAS students to architectural design as a form of scholarly research and in turn exposes the rich community of professional design practitioners to the uniquely skilled students at U of T.

The initial DRIP undertaken last summer involved 13 local practitioners and 15 student interns. Key to the DRIP model is the definition of design research projects by host offices in advance of the internship, as well as a weekly seminar delivered by Petricone that both presents models of design research to students and allows interns to position their work in a larger disciplinary context.

Images from left: Denegri Bessai DRIP Internship student Giacomo D’Andrea developed prototype models to test spatial proportion for active studio projects; at KPMB, DRIP Internship student SongYuan Wang researched and documented performative wall assemblies based on Passive House Standards.

Images from left: LAMAS DRIP Internship student Nur Nuri catalogued available market siding components to then create customized facade configurations with standardized methods; Wayne Swadron Studios DRIP Internship student Joshua Frew analyzed and critically documented a collection of archived projects along parallel threads of architecture, interior design and landscape architecture.

DRIP’s first iteration saw internships that ranged broadly across research models. They included the research and design of Farrow Partners’ new publication, Constructing Health; analytical tracings and documentation such as those for KPMB, Teeple Architects and LGA/TUF LAB; modeling and diagramming research of the kind for Hariri Pontarini, Denegri Bessai and WZMH; creative and critical cataloguing projects such as those for LAMAS, ZAS Architects and Wayne Swadron Studios; and “proof of concept” re-presentation projects such as those for gh3*, ERA Architects and SvN Architects + Planners.

Images from left: Teeple Architects DRIP Internship student Priscilla Barker critically analyzed the changing status of the artifact and librarian in the 21st-century academic library; at SvN Architects + Planners, DRIP Internship student Gong Xingtian analyzed three structural scenarios for their comparative rates of carbon emissions.

The LEAF Impact Grant will fund the development and advancement of DRIP to allow this unique experiential learning opportunity to go from being available to only a dozen or so top students to being available to a large component of the Architectural Studies program. It will in turn instigate a critical enrichment of the undergraduate curriculum overall, setting a new model for design internships that takes full advantage of the wealth of design practitioners in the city of Toronto and eventually in other parts of the world.

Any practitioners interested in participating in DRIP this coming summer should contact Petricone at p.petricone@daniels.utoronto.ca. Students wishing to apply for the Summer 2023 program may do so before 11:59 p.m. on Monday, March 20 by clicking here.

Images from left: ERA Architects DRIP Internship student Sarah Janelle used QGIS software to identify and document sites of interest for potential intensification; ZAS Architects DRIP Internship student John Wu developed and documented 45 student-centred learning spaces that promote communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity.

Images from left: Farrow Partners DRIP Internship students Negar Mashoof and Najwan Farag developed research and graphic standards for the firm’s Constructing Health publication; for LGA Architects with TUF LAB, DRIP Internship student Callum Gauthier analyzed and documented typical yellowbelt typologies to define addition and renovation opportunities and techniques for Accessory Dwelling Units.

Banner image: DRIP Internship students Du Jiachen and Melody Ekbatani collaborated at WZMH on SPEEDSTAC, a new prefabricated “building block” for residential integral units that are spliced into place, graft new apartments onto old ones and save whole buildings from demolition. An early concept model of SPEEDSTAC is pictured on the homepage. Images courtesy of WZMH

The Daniels Faculty’s Adrian Phiffer (Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream) has been awarded a 2023 Architectural Education Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). 

The award, in the category of Creative Achievement, recognizes Design Studio 2: Site, Matter, Ecology, and Indigenous Storywork, the second studio in the Faculty’s Master of Architecture core studios sequence. 

Developed in partnership with a team of Indigenous advisers, including the citizens of the Ho:dinösöni/Six Nations of the Grand River, Design Studio 2 encompasses two interconnected design projects interwoven with workshops illuminating Indigenous ways of being, ways of knowledge and traditional design practises.

The first project tasks students with imagining a new Haudenosaunee Centre of Excellence where the modest building currently housing the Woodland Cultural Centre sits in Brantford, while the second “advances the explorations from Project 1 at the scale of a building via the design of a Seedbank at Kayanase, on the Six Nations of the Grand River land.”

The syllabus was developed in collaboration with alumnus and co-instructor James Bird (Knowledge Keeper of the Dënesųlįné and Nêhiyawak Nations and a residential school survivor), the late Alfred Keye (Lead Faith Keeper at the Seneca Longhouse), Amos Key Jr. (Faith Keeper of the Longhouse at Six Nations of Grand River Territory and a member of the Daniels Faculty’s First Peoples Leadership Advisory Group), Janis Monture (Executive Director of the Woodland Cultural Centre) and Patricia Deadman (Curator at the Woodland Cultural Centre).

Other contributors to the course include Carole Smith (Administrative Team Lead, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Kerdo Deer (Cultural Coordinator, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Nina Hunt (Junior Botanist, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Erin Monture (CEO, Grand River Employment and Training Inc.) and Matthew Hickey (Partner at Two Row Architect).

In addition, Phiffer cites the “incredible support” offered by Wei-Han Vivian Lee, Director of the Faculty’s Master of Architecture program.

A “concrete response” to Answering the Call: Wecheehetowin, the University of Toronto’s follow-up to the report by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Design Studio 2 specifically addresses Call to Action No. 17, which proposes the integration of “significant Indigenous curriculum content” in all of U of T’s divisions by 2025.

Among the stated course objectives are engaging with Indigenous worldviews, exploring the concept of relational accountability, and understanding the meaning of contextualizing and re-contextualizing.

“The final studio projects are developed in response to real site, program and cultural demands,” a course précis notes. “The results make an impact in the life of the community.”

Based in Washington, D.C., ACSA was founded in 1912 by 10 charter members and now represents more than 200 schools in the United States and Canada. 

Its Architectural Education Awards, handed out annually, are bestowed in a range of categories, with the Creative Achievement Awards recognizing specific initiatives in teaching, design, scholarship, research or service that advance architectural education.

Images 1 and 2: Design Studio 2 students conduct a site visit at Kayanase, on the Six Nations of the Grand River land, as part of their two-project coursework. The second project in the studio involved designing a seedbank for the site.

The following lectures, part of the Exploring Design Practices undergraduate course taught by Richard Sommer, are open to outside attendees. Registration is not required.

January 18, 12:30 p.m. ET
ENGAGEMENTS
Marshall Brown, Marshall Brown Projects
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

January 25, 12:30 p.m. ET
Freedom Schools for Accountable Architecture
Jae Shin and Damon Rich, HECTOR urban design
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

February 1, 12:30 p.m. ET
Breathing is Spatial
Michael Murphy, Michael Murphy Studio, Ventulett Chair at Georgia Tech
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

February 8, 2:30 p.m. ET
How I Got Here
Bruce Kuwabara, KPMB Architects
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

March 1, 12:30 p.m. ET
Building Resilience
Amy Whitesides, Design Critic in Landscape Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

March 8, 12:30 p.m. ET
Public Scholarship and Design Advocacy
Nancy Levinson, Editor and Executive Director of Places
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

March 17, 12:30 p.m. ET
ARCHITECTURES OF CARE: On Keeping and Shaping Our Places
Justin Garrett Moore, Inaugural Program Officer, Humanities in Place, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

March 24, 12:30 p.m. ET
FORMALIST ENDGAMES & THE DISCURSIVE SPACE OF PRACTICE
Michael Maltzan, Michael Maltzan Architecture
Main Hall, Daniels Building, 1 Spadina Crescent

Professor emeritus Peter Prangnell, chair of the University of Toronto’s Architecture Department from 1968 to 1976, has passed away. He died in Toronto on January 14 at the age of 92. 

Born in England in 1930, Prangnell came to U of T from Columbia University, where he had been co-running the first-year architecture studio since 1964. Prior to that, Prangnell had also taught at the Architectural Association School of Architecture and at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, two of his alma maters. He had also studied architecture at the Medway College of Art. 

When Prangnell arrived in Toronto as a full professor, he was tasked with redesigning the five-year architecture program. In 1968, he became acting chair of the Department, then full chair in 1969. 

During his tenure as head of the Department, Prangnell introduced what came to be known as the New Program, a teaching model that he had honed at Columbia and which emphasized experiential learning over rote methods.  

At Columbia, this involved having students “work with models from the outset so that they could benefit from the tactile experience of manipulating cardboard, string, clay, wire, wood, fabric and mesh, paying homage to the idea that buildings are built [and] drawn later,” as Prangnell later recalled. 

A similar methodology was instituted at U of T, where first-year students were asked to photograph human activities in surrounding neighbourhoods as a way to foment ideas, and those in later years were required to broaden their skills by taking elective courses in a host of complementary subjects, from writing to engineering. 

Prangnell’s approach, unique at the time, was heavily influenced by the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck, whom he had met when Prangnell was teaching at the GSD and van Eyck was a visitor to its Masters program. 

“I wanted to believe that buildings may be motivated by ‘stories’ just as stage designs may be motivated by plots and characters,” Prangnell wrote. “Through Van Eyck I learnt that designing a building was a more optimistic activity than I had ever imagined it to be.” 

After his terms as Department chair concluded, Prangnell remained a faculty member until the mid-1990s. From 1976 to 1995, he was also a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UC Berkeley, UT Austin, the ILAUD program in Siena, INDESEM at Delft, the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam and Washington University in St. Louis.  

Subsequent to his teaching career, Prangnell authored a number of monographs and books featuring his own photographs. He was also a regular contributor to Canadian Architect from 1968 to 1990 and to the journal Spazio e Societa/Space & Society from 1980 to 2000.  

In 2015, architects and alumni Peter Ortved and John van Nostrand—former students of Prangnell’s—spearheaded the effort to establish the Peter Prangnell Award in his honour. Every year, the endowed award provides travel funds to a Daniels Faculty student studying the way in which architecture, landscape architecture, urban design or some other aspect of the human-built environment shapes and/or is shaped by everyday life. (Donations to the award may be made by clicking here. For more information, contact Stacey Charles at 416-978-4340 or stacey.charles@daniels.utoronto.ca.) 

On March 14, a celebration of Prangnell’s life will be hosted by his friends and family at 5:30 p.m. in the Terrace Room at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Prangnell is survived by his life partner, architect and alumnus Tony Belcher. 

Banner image courtesy of the University of Toronto Archives

The Daniels Faculty is honouring Black History and Black Futures Month with a series of initiatives and events aimed at uplifting the ongoing movement for racial justice and celebrating the achievements and contributions of Black individuals. This year’s theme in Canada is “Ours to Tell,” emphasizing the importance of sharing stories of success, sacrifice and triumph in the Black community to inspire a more equitable society. 

As noted in the University Commitment in the Scarborough Charter, the work of Black flourishing and thriving should “be informed, shaped and co-created by communities” to be effective. The Daniels Faculty is committed to this principle, starting with the Designing Black Spaces with Community Accountability event on February 1, featuring Tura Cousins Wilson of SOCA, Jessica Kirk of the Wildseed Centre for Art and Activism, and Jessica Hines of Black Urbanism Toronto. The event will focus on accountability in design and Black community engagement. 

Other events in the series include the student-led Black Flourishing through Design gathering — part of the Daniels Faculty mentorship program Building Black Success through Design — on February 15. This event will provide young and upcoming designers with feedback on their projects and opportunities for dialogue on themes such as community, Black spaces and Black excellence. The design work is rooted in the shaping of the built environment, and the reviewers will include the Faculty’s Otto Ojo, Joshua Kirk, Bomani Khemet and Camille Michelle. It is bring coordinated by Jewel Amoah and Clara James. Stay tuned for further details. 

Toward the end of the month, the Community for Belonging Reading Group: Black Futures will take place on February 28, bringing together faculty, staff and students from Daniels and across the University of Toronto to discuss works by authors Sekou Cooke and Tina M. Campt. 

The month-long celebration concludes with the Blackness in Architectural Pedagogy and Practice workshop on March 1, aimed at designers and educators. 

For more information on Black History and Black Futures Month events at the Daniels Faculty, visit the events page here. Updates will be provided regularly. 

Community for Belonging, a new reading initiative “intended to raise awareness of the broad spectrum of identities within the Daniels Faculty community and provide a platform for engagement, interaction and discussion,” officially launches this week.

Over the coming calendar year, at least four individual Community for Belonging Reading Groups will meet to discuss titles that represent non-traditional and underrepresented perspectives in written work about architecture, design and the built and natural worlds.  

The first two meetings will take place during the Winter semester (on February 28 and March 28), with two more planned for the Fall term. There may also be a fifth meeting in June, depending on community interest. 

During each of the meetings, which are open only to faculty, staff, students and alumni from the Daniels Faculty and U of T communities, two titles will be discussed. 

While each of the texts on the reading list will be by, about or for communities that have been historically underrepresented in architecture, design, visual studies and forestry, they are not intended to reflect definitive resources on including or expanding voice. Rather, the titles chosen are meant to serve as springboards for intentional conversations about inclusion and belonging.  

Those who have signed up for the meetings will be asked to come prepared to discuss at least one of the two texts proposed for that meeting. Participants will be given a hard copy of the designated book(s) in advance, with digital versions provided if the hard copies run out.  

The four meetings scheduled will be held in person in the Reading Room of the Eberhard Zeidler Library, which will be transformed into a conversation space for the events. 

The two titles selected for the February 28 meeting — the theme of which is Black Futures Month — are Sekou Cooke’s 2021 anti-elitism manifesto Hip-Hop Architecture and Tina M. Campt’s survey from the same year of Black contemporary artists, A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See.

The theme of the March 28 discussion, meanwhile, is International Women’s Month and Transgender Identities; the titles selected for that meeting are Lucas Crawford’s Transgender Architectonics: The Shape of Change in Modernist Space (2020) and Jan Cigliano Hartman’s The Women Who Changed Architecture (2022).

Each of these two meetings will take place between 7:00 and 8:30 p.m. Members of the Daniels Faculty community who have neither ordered nor read the selected books may also attend the discussions.

The Community for Belonging reading-group project, which is being supported by Manulife and TD Insurance, will culminate on International Human Rights Day in December, reflecting its goals of building community, raising awareness of human rights, and celebrating identity. The University of Toronto has long-standing affinity relationships with Manulife and TD Insurance. These partnerships allow the University to provide beneficial, value-added financial and insurance products to alumni and students. See all affinity products.

To sign up for the first group discussion on February 28, click here.

Please refer any questions to:

Jewel Amoah
Assistant Dean, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
jewel.amoah@daniels.utoronto.ca

Cathryn Copper
Head Librarian
cathryn.copper@daniels.utoronto.ca.