For Fernanda de Carvalho Nunes, an architect and urban planner who recently completed the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the Daniels Faculty, city building today falls short unless it also encompasses sustainability, resilience and inclusivity. 

The new alumna’s education and designs, consequently, focus as much on fostering social justice and ecological balance as they do on planning problems. 

Her MLA thesis project—which was recognized with the Faculty’s John E. (Jack) Irving Prize, established by the Isles Foundation to support thesis projects that achieve integration between the fields of landscape architecture and ecology—addresses the preservation and expansion of climate-resilient mangroves in Florianópolis, Brazil, an island city grappling with, as de Carvalho Nunes puts it, “the tension between development and environmental conservation.”

In this struggle, she has written, “mangroves [in Brazil] often fall victim to private interests,” despite “their immense cultural and ecological value.”

This trend, she points out, “mirrors a global decline; between 1990 and 2020, mangrove areas shrank by 1.04 million hectares.”

By advocating for a paradigm shift—i.e., the integration of ecological preservation into urban planning as a rule—de Carvalho Nunes (pictured below) prioritizes the long-term health of natural landscapes over profit-driven development, going beyond the conservation of mangroves to create a blueprint for sustainable urbanization that can be replicated in other regions facing similar challenges. 

The strategic interventions she proposes, such as stormwater management and cultural preservation, aim to maximize ecological potential while fostering a harmonious relationship between urbanization and the natural environment.

Her work is also a testament to what can be achieved when passionate individuals are supported by those who have faith in their potential. 

“I believe that progress signifies the continuous journey toward a more just world,” de Carvalho Nunes says.

“For me, that means embarking on a career shaping inclusive urban environments that prioritize social equity and environmental stewardship.”  

Banner image: Recent Master of Landscape Architecture graduate Fernanda de Carvalho Nunes’s research into mangrove expansion in Brazil focuses on a specific infill site spontaneously colonized by mangrove species in the city of Florianópolis.

From reimagining suburbia in Ontario to rekindling heritage in Punjab, rethinking symbiosis in Outer Space to recollecting coastal villages in rural China, the creative work of thesis students in the Honours Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies (BAAS) program is a richly diverse array spanning issues and geographies.

A new website showcases a sampling of these projects, done by 2023-2024 students in the program’s three Specialist Streams: Design, Technology, and History and Theory: academic.daniels.utoronto.ca/architectural-studies-thesis-2024

Thesis is a year-long endeavour at the Daniels Faculty. At the end of the third year in the undergraduate program, students in the Specialist Streams are eligible to apply for thesis, which takes place during the fourth and final year of the program. Once selected, all BAAS thesis students take a Senior Research Seminar led by one of three Daniels Faculty members who continue as advisors throughout the year. This year's advisors were Petros Babasikas, Nicholas Hoban and Laura Miller.

During the fall term, students work to develop individual thesis proposals, pursuing their research through reading, writing, design, fabrication and case study analysis as well as discussion and debate. Then in the winter term’s Senior Thesis Design Studio, students further develop their research, extending into design projects. Final Thesis Reviews, the culmination of a year’s work, are held at the end of April.

View the thesis projects online and learn more about the BAAS program.

Student work featured in banner image:

1. Shirin Al Asmi
2. Ariel Clipperton
3. Cameron Manore
4. Adrian Yu
5. Jana Rumjanceva
6. Tej Dhillon

The Daniels Faculty is pleased to announce that Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu of the New York City-based practice SO-IL are the 2024-2025 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chairs in Architectural Design. 

Established in 2008, SO-IL explores “how the creation of environments and objects inspires lasting positive intellectual and societal engagement,” whether that involves working with existing structures or building from the ground up.

“Our interventions are both respectful of their pasts and adaptable to a dynamic future,” says the pair, whose awards have ranged from the MoMA PS1 Young Architects Prize in 2010 to this year’s ArchDaily Building of the Year Award in the housing category.

The ArchDaily award was given for 450 Warren, a multi-unit housing project in the formerly industrial Gowanus neighbourhood of Brooklyn (pictured below). 

Other residential projects by SO-IL include the Las Americas Social Housing prototype in Leon, Mexico (developed in 2016 and realized in 2021) and in-progress 9 Chapel Street (a multi-unit Brooklyn complex that “conceives of outdoor spaces as extensions of living areas”). 

A rendering of 9 Chapel, which is located at the corner of Chapel and Jay Streets in downtown Brooklyn, is pictured below.

“We feel extremely fortunate to have these visionary designers with us and look forward to the fresh perspectives they will bring to our program,” says Associate Professor Wei-Han Vivian Lee, director of the Faculty’s Master of Architecture (MARC) program.

“Their forward-thinking approach to housing design—reimagining domestic habits, community interactions and creative solutions in building materials and massing strategies—promises to offer our students exceptional insights.”

During their time at the Faculty, Idenburg and Liu will be teaching a studio, called Big Little Village, on the mixing of old and new in the context of domestic architecture.

In addition, the pair will deliver, on September 12, the first lecture of the Faculty’s 2024-2025 Public Programming series. The talk is called Urban Domesticity, an allusion to the title of their upcoming book, In Depth: Urban Domesticities Today. 

A corresponding exhibition, also opening September 12, will be held in the Faculty’s Larry Wayne Richards Gallery at 1 Spadina Crescent.

Named in honour of Frank O. Gehry, the Toronto-born designer of such iconic buildings as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Gehry Chair brings an international architect to the Faculty every year to deliver a public lecture and enrich the student learning experience. 

The endowed role was established in November 2000 by Indigo Books and Music founder Heather Reisman and 45 other donors; they contributed $1 million, which was matched by U of T.  

In recent years, previous Gehry Chairs have included Aljoša Dekleva and Tina Gregorič (2019-2020), Douglas Cardinal (2020-2021), Lina Ghotmeh (2021-2022) and Marina Tabassum (2022-2023).

For more information on SO-IL, click here.

A design team headed by JA Architecture Studio, the practice co-led by Assistant Professor Behnaz Assadi and alumnus and former lecturer Nima Javidi, has been selected by the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) to transform the grounds of its Toronto headquarters into “a more sustainable, accessible, artful and welcoming space.”

Called The Grounding Meadow, the winning design (pictured in slideshow above) was chosen anonymously by a five-person jury.

The design team, which also includes landscape architect and sessional lecturer Todd Douglas of Janet Rosenberg & Studio and civil engineer Kayam Ramsewak of MTE Consultants, receives a $20,000 prize and the job of refashioning the OAA property, which is located at 111 Moatfield Drive near the Don River. 

Praised for its “embrace of natural systems that allow the landscape to evolve as a biodiverse ecosystem with minimal intervention, as well as its thoughtful integration of public art and innovative stormwater-management strategies,” the winning proposal addresses the site both ecologically and culturally.

“It allows water to freely run underneath the wild meadow, bringing a more natural ecology to the site and welcoming stormwater to support and sustain the habitat,” says the OAA. “The project also pays homage to Indigenous communities by including plants of cultural significance, including a diversity of perennials and grasses that will also attract pollinators, wildlife and birds.”

“Our project,” explains Javidi, “tries to address the two core themes of the competition—climate change and Reconciliation—through one legible protagonist: the ground. We aimed to translate our awareness of the importance of land, its history and ecology into a spatial and experiential one.”

Assistant Professor Assadi adds: “By recalibrating the contours of the site, we converged the flow of water, people and plants into an ecological threshold where the overlay between the act of entering, the collection of water and the changing landscape will make the visitors physically aware of the interrelationship between architecture, access and ecology—an awareness long embedded into the Indigenous way of coexistence with nature.”

Launched in March, the OAA’s Landscape Design Competition challenged competitors to reimagine the terrain of the OAA headquarters as a symbol of design innovation, environmental sustainability and active community involvement, “creating an inviting space that respected environmental principles and celebrated the natural beauty of the Don River ravine.”

Among the eligibility requirements was that each team include a full member of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects (OALA) and a civil engineer. Membership in the OAA was not a requirement, although Javidi is an OAA architect.

In addition to the jury, a technical advisory team comprising a landscape architect, a civil engineer and a cost consultant, as well as senior OAA staff and members of its Building Committee, offered feedback on all submissions. The 19 interdisciplinary teams that submitted proposals were kept confidential from the jury and OAA.

For a full list of participating teams, visit the OAA website. Construction on the exterior overhaul is anticipated to begin in the spring of 2025. 

In addition to securing the OAA redesign, JA Architecture has also received an Honourable Mention in the international competition to design the Museum of History and the Future in Finland's oldest city, Turku.

Called Dot, Dot, Dot, Dot, JA’s design for the facility, on the tip of the Turku Peninsula, comprised a linear cluster of two-and-a-half-storey architectural volumes (one of which is shown below) that would maximize water views but be open at ground level to the city.

More than 400 proposals from around the world were accepted for evaluation.

The winning design, announced at Turku Castle on June 17, was submitted by Finnish firm Sigge Architects Ltd.

Jason Nguyen, Assistant Professor in the history and theory of architecture, is the 2024 beneficiary of the Mayflower Research Fund, the research endowment established by a generous donor in 2018 to encourage and stimulate study in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, allowing for collaboration with other areas of the University where appropriate.

Nguyen’s awarded research project, “Crafting Contracts: Law and the Architecture of Commemoration in Old Regime France,” looks at building practice and the regulatory bodies that structured it during the 17th and early 18th centuries in France. The project considers how reforms in contract and cost management contributed to a reframing of the architect as a civil and commercial figure at the dawn of the modern age.

Beyond its scholarly impact, the research is significant because it provides an historical instance in which debates on labour and project financing helped establish the scientific and institutional grounds on which the profession of architecture first came and continues to be practiced.

“The award means quite a lot, and is a testament to the work that I have been undertaking since my doctoral dissertation,” says Nguyen. “[The award] will help advance the project through one of the last stages of research, which considers how the streamlining of contract documentation abetted the professionalization of the architectural trade during a period of momentous social and intellectual change.”

In particular, this facet of the project examines how the architect and theorist Pierre Bullet (1639-1716) streamlined the drafting, notarizing and filing of legal contracts into professional architectural practice, taking a lawsuit that he and sculptor Philippe Magnier filed in November 1698 against the estate of Jean Coiffier de Ruzé, the Abbot of Effiat, as a starting point.

In that injunction, Bullet and Magnier sought compensation for drawings and models they had completed for the abbot, who had hired the pair to design and build a sumptuously decorated family mausoleum in Paris. When the abbot died unexpectedly in October 1698, he left a mountain of unpaid bills and, ultimately, insufficient direction and funding to see the mausoleum finished. The French court’s eventual decision, which privileged the architect’s contract, stands as a legal precedent in the professionalization of architectural practice.

Remarkably, Bullet had warned of labour and fee disputes in his treatise Architecture pratique (1691). The book included sample contracts as guides for architects to measure decoration and draft expedient legal documents. This move helped to formalize the architect’s civil function as a coordinator of labour and arbiter of taste in an increasingly commercial society. That Bullet’s study unfolded alongside contemporaneous theorizations of the social contract by the philosopher John Locke and habits and customs by the jurist Montesquieu testifies to the period’s broader concerns for legal order and the structures of modern governance.

“Contemporary conversations in Canada about labour rights and the politics of project financing and development have parallels in this formative moment in architectural history,” says Nguyen, who plans to apply his Mayflower funding to research-related travel, publishing, and student training.

“The training will include primary and secondary source documentation, mapping and digital reconstruction of since-lost buildings,” he says.

Nguyen’s broader project, of which this research is a part, is titled Bodies of Expertise: Architecture, Labour, and Law in Old Regime France. 

“Ultimately,” he says, “Bodies of Expertise will argue that the effort to establish a legal category of expertise, rooted in the labour and law of building practice, directly contributed to the professionalization of architectural practice as well as the crystallization of public and commercial culture at the dawn of the modern age.”

Aspects of this research have to date been published in a variety of journals, including Grey Room, Livraisons d’histoire de l’architecture and Oxford Art Journal.

Drawing image: An anonymous drawing, likely after Pierre Bullet, depicts the Mausoleum for Antoine Coiffier de Ruzé, marquis d’Effiat, at the convent of the Filles de la Croix in Paris (c. 1698). The drawing is housed in the Nationalmuseum Stockholm in Sweden.

Congratulations on your admission to the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design—an unparalleled centre for learning and research offering graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, forestry, urban design and visual studies, as well as unique undergraduate programs that use architecture and design as bases for pursuing a broader education.     

When you choose to join us at Daniels, you’ll be a part of and have access to:  

•   The No. 1 university in Canada, the most sustainable university in the world, plus the fourth-best public university in North America and 12th worldwide 
• A dynamic downtown campus in the heart of Canada’s largest and most diverse city 
• Unparalleled extracurricular opportunities, including varsity athletics, clubs, international exchange programs and leadership/mentorship  
• Canada’s No. 1 university for graduate employability and top 20 globally 
• The highest scholarship and financial funding amongst all Canadian universities 

At the Daniels Faculty, the environment in which our students learn and congregate is as unique as our program offerings. Our hub at 1 Spadina Crescent—the Daniels Building—is a bold work of architecture and landscape on a prominent urban site between U of T’s St. George campus and the vibrant centre of Toronto. Across Spadina Crescent, the North and South Borden buildings (home to our visual studies programs) and the Earth Sciences Centre (HQ for forestry studies) complete the Faculty’s trifecta of sites. 

Whether you’re travelling to Canada to begin your studies, navigating a move to Toronto, or choosing our Faculty to continue your academic journey—we’re here to support you in all the steps ahead.   

So, what comes next?

Visit the Newly Admitted Students section of the Daniels website for resources, key contacts and important dates. 

• New Undergraduate Students (BAAS, BAVS) 
• New Graduate Students (MARC, MLA, MFC, MUD, MVS) 
• New Research Stream Students (MScF and PhD programs)

Have a question? Get in touch with us!

Please feel free to contact the Office of the Registrar and Student Services.

• undergraduate@daniels.utoronto.ca
• graduate@daniels.utoronto.ca
• researchstream@daniels.utoronto.ca

Renowned Toronto-based architect and distinguished U of T alumnus Bruce Kuwabara was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree during the Daniels Faculty’s 2024 Convocation ceremony on Thursday, July 20.

One of Canada’s most acclaimed practitioners, Kuwabara has designed some of the country’s finest structures, including Kitchener’s award-winning City Hall, the National Ballet School in Toronto and the Remai Modern in Saskatoon. He has also been a valued campus-builder at his alma mater, helping to shape the development of U of T’s physical space over the years and contributing to the success of the Daniels Faculty in various capacities.

Born in 1949 in Hamilton, Kuwabara earned his degree in architecture from U of T in 1972. After graduating, he joined the teaching studio of architect George Baird, whose interest in public spaces and city building influenced how Kuwabara thought about his work. (Decades later, Baird would serve as Dean of the Daniels Faculty.)

Following the apprenticeship with Baird, Kuwabara joined Barton Myers Associates, where he worked for 12 years. When Myers left Canada in 1987, he handed over his Toronto practice to Kuwabara and three of his fellow associates at the firm—Tom Payne, Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg. Together, they created the new firm KPMB. (Payne ventured out on his own in 2013, but the remaining principals retained the “P” in the practice’s name.)

In 2006, former Daniels Faculty Dean Larry Wayne Richards wrote in Canadian Architect that “Kuwabara’s agenda is not just about making objects and places of great beauty, but something more active, more profound. Something that is simultaneously both culturally stabilizing and transforming.”

Before he received his honorary doctorate at the Convocation ceremony in Convocation Hall, Kuwabara was introduced by Acting Dean Robert Levit.

“Bruce Kuwabara has played a leading role in successive fundraising campaigns at the University, including serving as Co-Chair of the Daniels Faculty’s Design the Future campaign, during which he led the establishment of the Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design,” Acting Dean Levit noted. “He has served on Provostial Advisory Committees for the appointment of the Dean of the Daniels Faculty and is a valued contributor to accreditation reviews and academic plans. He is also an industry leader in design governance, sitting as the inaugural Chair of Waterfront Toronto’s Design Review Panel and serving as Co-Chair and Appointed Member of the University’s Design Review Committee.”

In 2006, Kuwabara was awarded the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Gold Medal, the country’s highest honour for architects. In 2012, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for “shaping our built landscape in lasting ways.”

For the full U of T News story on the granting of Kuwabara’s honorary degree, click here.

Currently on display across all three floors of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent, the 2023/24 End of Year Show spotlights student work from each of the degree programs at the Daniels Faculty, including graduate and undergraduate studies in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Forestry, Urban Design and Visual Studies.

On view until the end of June, the annual exhibition this year encompasses “three-dimensional, two-dimensional, audio and digital projects,” say Brandon Bergem and Jeffrey Garcia, co-curators of the 2023/24 Show.

Both are sessional lecturers at the Faculty as well as the co-founders of the interdisciplinary design practice Office In Search Of (OISO).

“Our best approximation,” they say, “is that 300-plus students are represented [in the show], with contributions ranging from…a four-foot-by-four-foot orthographic drawing [and] a collection of gifs on a monitor [to] a three-foot-long section drawing and a handcrafted wooden lounge chair.”

According to the curators, the selection and organization of the vast body of student submissions was based largely on two guiding principles.

“The first was how to celebrate the immense collective creative output produced by students at the Faculty and not focus on individual students or prioritize any course or program. The second was how to best represent the projects optimally without compromising the integrity of the work.”

For example, they say, “students in the Forestry program produce exceptional research, and Visual Studies students often display work in formats that require different consideration than what we are accustomed to in studio reviews.”

As a whole, the exhibition offers a comprehensive and revealing survey of the wide-ranging yet synergistic study taking place at the school right now.

Still, say Bergem and Garcia, how to exhibit the breadth of this work presented no small challenge.

“The layout of an entire exhibition catalogue was spread across every pin-up panel in the main-floor hallway. In the second-floor hallway, each pin-up panel was dedicated to specific drawing types (site plans, sections, elevations, etc.), then covered in a wallpaper of black and white drawings from students’ projects, assembled like puzzle pieces. 

“On the second floor, we devised a continuous 16-foot strip composed of collages and renderings that were mounted on the walls in one of the rooms that projected into the space by wrapping around the columns. In another, tree-based objects like mallets, chairs and a memorial sculpture were staged like a tableau in the centre of the room, with research graphics attached to the walls.

“In a room on the third floor, most of the 2D material was suspended rather than pinned to the walls and the 3D objects were placed on a clustered field of plinths and light tables.”

Through these various entry points, visitors are consequently invited “to discern the themes based on commonalities and differences—for example, how can design be used as a method to advocate for biodiversity and the prevention of environmental degradation? How can the intersection of urbanism, architecture and social equity be used to inspire a higher quality of living? [And] how can the concept of a building site transcend physical location to be inclusive of cultural, historical and ecological influences?"

At the same time, questions based on medium and methodology—such as the effectiveness of orthographic drawings in communicating design intent and organization or the degree to which unconventional two- and three-dimensional forms challenge expectations of how design is interpreted—are also posed in the show.

The End of Year Show in its current building-wide incarnation will be on view at 1 Spadina until the end of June. A curated selection will then be installed in the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery and the Commons until early September. 

The Daniels Building is open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. every weekday, with fob access only on Saturdays and Sundays.

All photographs by Adrian Yu + Office In Search Of

The Inuusirvik Community Wellness Hub—an award-winning building designed by the practice Lateral Office, which Professor Mason White co-leads with Lola Sheppard—is featured on the cover of the June issue of Canadian Architect. 

“The building opened late last year in Iqaluit’s downtown core and was instantly beloved,” journalist Adele Weder writes in the feature article devoted to the project. “In a community that struggles with social and geographic isolation, the Wellness Hub could turn out to be the town’s most important new building in years.” 

The Wellness Hub is a compact multi-purpose community centre that brings together many services in Nunavut’s capital, such as counselling and daycare facilities, a wellness research centre, a research library, food preparation and gathering spaces.

Inspired by Indigenous vernacular structures, the building’s design was recognized with a 2023 Canadian Architect Award for the Lateral Office team, which includes sessional lecturer Kearon Roy Taylor, as well as Verne Reimer Architecture Inc. 

Professor White has long focused his architectural research on the North—among his projects have been the Canadian exhibition “Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15” at the 2014 Venice Biennale, the 2017 publication Many Norths: Spatial Practice in a Polar Territory, and the ACSA Award-winning installation “Contested Circumpolar: Domestic Territories.” 

“For all their years of research, the Wellness Hub is the first completed building for Lateral Office, whose principals hold academic positions at the architecture schools at the universities of Toronto and Waterloo,” Weder writes. “Their practice has long been more focused on raising questions than chasing commissions.”  

Iqaluit is one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada and, as Weder notes, the burgeoning demand for new buildings is both an architectural opportunity and an imperative to design responsibly. 

“There is a wider conversation about circumpolar architectural typology: What is an arctic vernacular today?” says Professor White, Director of the Faculty’s Master of Urban Design and Post-Professional programs. “This building is a response to that question, but it is not the response. We’re just happy that this building can contribute to the wider conversation.” 

Read the full article online or pick up a copy of the June issue of Canadian Architect. 

All photography ©2024 Andrew Latreille. All rights reserved.

The SHIFT* Collective, a student-run publishing group based within the Daniels Faculty, will be hosting a launch event this week to celebrate the first edition of its new digital and print publication, called Scaffold* Journal.

The launch will take place on Friday, May 31, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., in the Student Commons at 1 Spadina Crescent. Remarks will be made by the editorial team, accompanied by refreshments and a complimentary zine. No tickets are required, and all interested students, faculty and members of the public are invited to attend.

Focusing on the various methodologies of design research and visual inquiry used by students, scholars and practitioners, the first edition of Scaffold* includes the work of 21 contributors, as well as interviews with six emerging scholars and practitioners, plus visual contributions.

As noted in the call for submissions in December, the journal “intends to demystify the research process and present researchers with the opportunity to curiously and critically reflect upon their own creative and design processes.”

To that end, a diverse range of published works has been assembled, deconstructing methods from the use of interviews and ethnography in the design process to architectural reconstruction and speculative fabulation. Contributions include essays, drawings and mixed-media works spanning architecture, landscape architecture, visual studies and urban design, with projects and ideas from students at the undergraduate, graduate and doctoral levels.

Drawing on the legacy of the previous journal SHIFT* as a risograph publication, the collective will release an exclusive zine that reflects on the inspirations behind the new journal and its formation over the past months. Three commissions from undergraduate and graduate students also reflect on the process of “what it means to scaffold a project,” from the role of social media in curating precedence to self-scaffolding and the ongoing projects of SHIFT* team members.

In addition, the team has designed a small installation detailing the works behind the publication, displayed on the ground level of the Daniels Building (pictured at top).

The SHIFT* Collective “would like to express its immense gratitude for the ongoing support” of the Daniels Faculty and of the Office of the Dean, “both of which have been instrumental in the realization of this first publication.”

The journal’s faculty advisory board, which includes head operational advisor Lukas Pauer and internal advisor Jewel Amoah, “has also played a crucial role in the development and curation of the project.”

The digital publication can be accessed at theshiftcollective.net on May 31.

A full printed volume including the first and second editions will be released in the fall.