Ja Architecture Studio — the firm of Daniels Faculty lecturers Nima Javidi (MUD 2005) and  Behnaz Assadi (MLA 2008) — has been shortlisted to represent Canada at the 2020 Venice Biennale in Architecture.

More than 350,000 visitors from around the world attend the biannual international event, which works to promote "critical conversations about contemporary architecture." The Canada Council for the Arts provides financial support for Canada's exhibition and acts as Commissioner.

Ja Architecture Studio's proposal, entitled Lightness, notes Canada's "paradoxical relationship to light wood framing:"
 

With its simplicity, flexibility, and affordability, architects are able to conceive of spaces of considerable formal imagination, yet these same characteristics have placed light wood framing primarily outside the disciplinary boundaries of architecture and instead within the realm of building.

By examining Canada through the lens of this specific construction method, Lightness—Ja Architecture Studio’s collaborative submission for the Canadian Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Biennale—asks how we can explore the boundaries of the architectural imagination while connecting it to broader national issues such as ecology, regionalism, colonization, and settlement.
 

This is the second time that the Toronto-based firm has been shortlisted for this prestigious exhibition: Ja Architecture Studio was also in the running to represent Canada at the 2018 festival.

The shortlist news falls on the heels of other recent accolades for the firm: Ja Architecture Studio's project The Octagon recently received an Award of Excellence from Canadian Architect.

Photos of Ja Architecture Studio projects, top: 1) The Arch of Light, a finalist in the Lord Stanley’s Gift Monument Competition, 2) The Octagon—awarded a 2018 Award of Excellence by Canadian Architect, 3) Semi-Split.
Photos 2 & 3 by Sam Javanrouh

Looking for ways to enjoy the outdoors in Toronto during the winter holidays? The Winter Light Exhibition at Ontario Place opens up the former theme park grounds to a series of installations designed to engage visitors and bring light to the city during dark winter months.

Eighteen pieces throughout the landscape include Obscura, a colourful interactive installation designed and built by third year Master of Architecture students John Nguyen, Anton Skorishchenko, Stephen Baik, and Robert Lee. Built and fabricated in the Daniels Faculty's workshop, the piece was among those selected for display by a jury guided by the curatorial theme "Disruptive Engagement."

From the Winter Light Exhibition Website:
 

Obscura is an interactive installation that explores the contrast between light vs. darkness using two/three-dimensional geometry. The Human eye is unable to distinguish two/three-dimensional space in darkness. Obscura plays on this shortcoming by introducing an installation that makes use of the darkness at night to reveal a three-dimensional creation of space, while in the daytime, two-dimensional space is created. As visitors look through the front triangle of the first iteration, a series of twirling forms will create the illusion of seamlessly flowing from one frame to another. Visitors can proceed to travel in-between each of the frames to discover how simple geometry in combination with darkness and light can define and create a new dichotomy to experience and understand space.

Winter Light Exhibition and the student's installation has been featured in Azure, BlogTO, and CBC Toronto. The exhibition runs until March 17, 2019.

Obscura is not the only work by the students that will be brightening Toronto's landscape this winter. Nguyen, Baik, Skorishchenko and fellow student Abubakr Bajaman, together with Assistant Professor Victor Perez-Amado recently learned that they won a spot in the fifth annual 2019 Winter Stations exhibition along Toronto's Woodbine Beach. Their proposal, Calvalcade, is one of 5 installations that will appear on Toronto's waterfront in February.

Follow the students on instagram: @john.design, @stephen.baik, @anton_skor, @rjl1417

The Daniels Building at One Spadina was recently honoured as a finalist for Building of the Year as part of the 2018 AN Best Design Awards.  These awards, now in their sixth year, are a unique project-based awards program that showcases great buildings, building elements, interiors, and installations. Additionally, The Architects Newspaper (AN) panel awarded the Daniels Faculty the top honours in the education category, alongside notable buildings from UCSB and Carnegie Mellon University.

In their announcement of the winners, AN’s William Menking and Matt Shawn said that the final decision was a close one:
 

For our Building of the Year award, our esteemed jury was fiercely divided between two exemplary but very different projects. The final debate came down to SCHAUM/SHIEH’s Transart Foundation—a private gallery across from the Menil campus in Houston—and NADAAA’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. SCHAUM/SHIEH’s relatively small but mighty building employs punched-through balconies and a blurred program to utilize the space to maximum effect. Meanwhile, NADAAA’s extension and renovation of a 19th-century neo-Gothic building includes dramatic, complex lunettes that let in Aalto-esque light. In the end, the jury chose the scrappy Houston project, but the decision really could have gone either way.
 

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design celebrated the official opening of One Spadina on November 17, 2017. Designed by Nader Tehrani and Katherine Faulkner, principals of the internationally acclaimed firm NADAAA — in collaboration with Architect-of-record Adamson & Associates, landscape architects Public Work, and heritage architects ERA — the revitalized One Spadina is an urban design exemplar and catalyst for the transformation of U of T’s western edge on the Spadina corridor. The Daniels Building at One Spadina is a showcase for the city and the University, and a world-leading venue for studying, conducting research, and advocating for architecture, landscape, and sustainable urbanization.

Learn more about the One Spadina project

A group of four talented students from Daniels Faculty recently nabbed the silver spot at the Marvin Architects Student Challenge, placing alongside other top architectural schools from across Canada.

Marvin Windows and Doors invited senior architecture students from across Canada to submit their best and most creative designs featuring Marvin products. Daniels Faculty students Feng Le, Vitusan Vimal, Jonathan Graham, and Raymond Kuang competed along with participants from schools such as University of Manitoba and Laval, and were awarded second place for their submission. In their announcement, the judges described their design as:
 

A geometric delight. The layout is thoughtfully designed to promote well-being and access to natural spaces through the creative use of interior courtyards. Dubbed “a true sensory experience”, this project shows how you can go “outside” without leaving the perimeter of your home.
 

“We entered the competition after attending a workshop which consisted of architects around the world,” explains Feng Le. “The passion in the room was inspiring. We started looking into possible competitions to start learning and found Marvin Windows. The design brief appealed to our individual expertise, and we knew that this was a competition that we would thoroughly enjoy.”

“This win means a lot to us as individual designers, and as a team,” he continues. “This achievement confirms our dreams to be reality. With this win, we are hoping that our individual skills, and determination to succeed become clear to the architecture world, as we continue exploring our young careers.”   

A pair of Daniels Faculty alumni recently received an honorable mention from Eleven Magazine’s “Shaking Up Havana’s Malecon” design competition.

The competition posed a unique challenge: to re-imagine Cuba’s iconic Malecon esplanade road, which runs alongside Havana for five miles, serving as both a key piece of traffic infrastructure and vital defense against flooding.

Participants were required to consider the following priorities in their proposals: “protection in the form of a renewed sea defence, engagement in the form of new cultural social spaces along the Malecon, and identity in the form of resurrecting an old icon back to life and defining a new beginning for Havana in the 21st century.”

Master of Landscape Architecture graduates Xiru Chen (MLA 2012) and Stella Yuan Lin (MLA 2014) received an honourable mention for their submission “Malecon Rhapsody”.

The team explains their innovative and naturalistic approach to the challenge in the project summary: The MALECÓN RHAPSODY addresses Havana’s vulnerability to coastal flooding with a protective ribbon along Malecón. The 8 km-long landscape infrastructure incorporates public space with the storm and wave surge defense systems. This also creates architectural elements, amenities, energy generation stations, and food production hubs that provide the locally needed cultural, recreational, and socio-economic benefits.

Xiru Chen says that their interest in the project resulted from a meaningful trip to visit Cuba. “We were both fascinated by the colorful landscape, passionate culture and complex history of Cuba,” she explains. “The scope of the competition, to create a renewed sea defence, and act as new cultural social spaces, is also very attractive to us.”

She further explains that the process of working on the project helped them to recall the broader thinking learned during their time at Daniels. “This process reminded us of the days when we spent late nights in school working on studio projects,” says Chen. “We both graduated years ago, and the fast pace of real practices rarely allows for deep design thinking. Working on the competition has reminded us of the essentiality of critical thinking in the design process. This award encourages us to remain curious and keep learning.”

Thursday, December 13

Advisor : Laura Miller
Location: Room 230
Guest critics: Rebecca Taylor, Robert Levit, Dina Sarhane, Mark Sterling, Mauricio Quiros, Erica Allen-Kim, Richard Sommer

10:00am: Introduction
11:00am: Mohammad A. Ridha
12:00pm: Alexandra Varvarikos
2:00pm: Gurtej Singh Brar
3:00pm: Pooya Aledavood
4:00pm: Zainab Al-Rawi
5:00pm: Barron Crawford

Advisor : Jeannie Kim
Locations: Various (see below)
Guest critics: McLain Clutter, Clare Lyster, Mason White, Petros Babasikas, Sam Dufaux , Ultan Byrne

12:30pm: Ilana Hadad (Room 242)
1:30om: Sohee Ahn (Room 204)
2:30pm: Jeanie Lim (Room 330)           
3:30pm: Brendan Onstad (Room 330)
4:30pm: Advita Madan (Room 330)
5:30pm: Vannary Lyboun (Room 330)

Advisor : Brian Boigon
Location: Room 215
Guest critics: Julia Di Castri, Elizabeth Czartoryski, Roberto Damiani, Jan Greban, Hans Ibelings, Mark Lowe, Carol Moukhieber

10:00am: Daniel Liu
11:00am:  Erica Nassirian  
12:00pm: Xueying Zhang  
2:00pm: Maggie MacKinnon  
3:00: Yazhuo Alice Wang  
4:00: Xiaolong Li  

Advisor : John Shnier
Locations: Various (see below)
Guest critics: Ashley Shafer, Dereck Revington, Dieter Janssen, Behnaz Assadi, Erica Allen-Kim, Peter Sealy

10:00am: Yulia Ilyukhina (Periodical Room, Eberhard Zeidler Library)
11:00am: Phillip Daniels (Main Hall)
2:00pm: Elly Selby (Room 241)
3:00pm: Brandon Bergem (Front Foyer, south entrance & 1st floor  Hallway)

Advisor : Micheal Piper
Location: Larry Wayne Richards Gallery
Guest critics: Elisa Silva, Pina Petricone, Paul Hess, Adrian Blackwell, Lola Sheppard

9:30am: Christina Wilkinson (Advisor: George Baird)
10:30am: Ramsey Leung
11:30am: Annie Cottrell
1:30pm: Sasha McWilliam
2:30pm:  Bradley Dunn
3:30pm: Joe Loreto
4:30pm: Samantha Eby

Friday, December 14

Advisor : Aziza Chaouni
Location: 330
Guest critics: Taymoore Balbaa, Elisa Silva, Gini Lee, Samar Zarifa, James McGillivray, Erica Kim, Behnaz Assad, David Lieberman

1:00pm: Introduction
1:10pm: Tristan Crawford
2:05pm: Yueyi Li
3:00pm: Chenxuan Meng
4:10pm: Luis Quesada Siles
5:05pm: Stephanie Yuan

Advisor : Mason White
Location: Various, see below
Guest critics: McLain Clutter, Clare Lyster, Behnaz Assadi, Jeannie Kim, John Harwood

9:30am: Jasmine Graham (Room 230)
10:30am: Cassandre Firmin (Room 230)
11:30am: Grace Shih-En Chang (Room 341)
1:30pm: Esther Cheng (Room 230)
2:30pm: Serafima Korovina (Room 230)

Advisor : Stephen Verderber
Location: Room 209
Guest critics: Cliff Harvey, Vivian Lo, Janna Levitt, Salmon Khalili

9:00am: Navid Jamali
10:00am: Victoria Pilles
11:00am: Jake Wolf

Advisor : An Te Liu
Locations: 242, 2nd Floor Hallway, Larry Wayne Richards Gallery
Guest critics: Jimenez Lai, Adrian Phiffer, Nima Javidi, Marcin Kedzior

11:00am: Hoda Farahani
11:45am: Kirby Tobin
12:30pm: Ming Fu
2:30pm: Tane Um
3:15pm: Lim Farfel
4:00pm: Jaimie Howard

Advisor : Ted Kesik
Location: Room 240
Guest critics: Drew Adams, Katy Chey, Emilia Floro, Dean Goodman, Ian Hamilton, Joe Lobko, David Oleson, Larry Wayne Richards, Jason Smirnis, Alex Speigel, Nick Swerdfeger

9:00am: Welcome and Introductions
9:15am: Zoal Abdul Razaq
10:30am: Kei Yan Kevin Chan
11:45am: Allison Home-Douglas
1:30pm: Welcome and introductions
1:45pm: Martin Malchev
3:00pm: Jonathan Day
4:15pm: Danna Lei

6Place Toronto (6PT) is a joint research project/working group investigating significant urban spaces in Toronto where media and infrastructure intersect with architecture and public space.

Funded by University of Toronto’s Mcluhan Centre for Culture and Technology and supported by the University of Toronto School of Cities and the Daniels Faculty, the project includes talks, walks, and open seminars, and documents invisible or iconic buildings, landscapes, and infrastructure as potential public spaces.  

On Friday, November 30, from 5:00 – 6:30pm, 6PT presents “Rebel Plans:  Apple, Star Wars, and Architecture at Bay,” a talk featuring Nicholas de Monchaux, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, UC Berkeley, and Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media.

About the talk:
 

The San Francisco Bay Area, home to only seven million of the United States’ 325 million inhabitants, is generally consigned to the footnotes of architectural history. But if one takes only a slightly broader definition of ‘architecture’ — one that acknowledges the many ways in which design and technology have profoundly transformed our landscapes and cities in the last few decades — a different view emerges. Central in this expanded field are two cultural monoliths at architecture’s periphery — Apple Computer, as embodied in its enormous new headquarters, and George Lucas’ imagined universe of Star Wars, embodied in the massive architecture of the Death Star. The two structures, it turns out, share an essential history not only with each other, but also the professional disciplines of architecture and city planning. Engaging this history and its prospects for design today, we can gain a new insight on the ethics, outcomes, and outlines of an emerging, technologically mediated interaction with space and city happening worldwide.

Nicholas de Monchaux is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UC Berkeley, where he serves as Director of the Berkeley Center for New Media, as well as a partner in the Oakland-based architecture practice modem. He is the author of Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo(MIT Press, 2011) and Local Code: 3,659 Proposals about Data, Design, and the Nature of Cities (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016). His work has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Lisbon Architecture Triennial, The Storefront for Art and Architecture, SFMOMA, and the Chicago MCA. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.

Assistant Professor Petros Babasikas who leads the 6PT research project/working group will give the introduction.

Click here to register for this event.
 

“Rebel Plans:  Apple, Star Wars, and Architecture at Bay,” is the first of a series of 6Place Toronto weekend events.

This talk is paired with a walk at Toronto's Portlands (Sat, Dec 1/18 – 12:00pm to 5:00pm) and an open Seminar at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture (Sun, Dec 2/18 – 1:00pm to 3:00pm, Room 230, 1 Spadina Crescent).  Both events are open to the public.  Please contact farah.michel@mail.utoronto.ca for more information.

Led by Daniels Faculty Assistant Professor Petros Babasikas, 6PT includes Lecturer Mark Sterling, director of the Daniels Faculty’s Master of Urban Design Program; Assistant Professor Charles Stankievech, director of the Daniels Faculty’s Visual Studies programs; Assistant Professor Heba Mostafa who teaches in U of T’s History of Art/Graduate Department of Art; and Jamie Allen, Canada Research Chair at the Nova Schotia College of Art and Design.

When Rachel McKenna-Marshall ran the Toronto Waterfront 10K, she got to see a display of the fruits of her labour from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

 

Marshall, who came to U of T to study architecture two years ago, will be graduating this fall with a double major in architectural studies and visual studies.

 

This summer, McKenna-Marshall took an intensive course where the class designed and built a meditation pavilion for athletic apparel firm Lululemon, with groups working on different aspects of the final product.

 

She and a few classmates “were the most excited about it, so we got a lot done” – including building meditation chairs by hand. 

 

The pavilion was displayed at the Toronto Waterfront 10k. “It was really incredible,” she says, of seeing the pavilion in use, post-race.

 

McKenna-Marshall also did an independent study this summer involving her artwork. She took underwater photos of friends in a pool, which served as the source images for her paintings.

 

Her project was conducted under the supervision of Associate Professor Sue Lloyd, who praises McKenna-Marshall’s productive and self-led efforts and says the course allows students to do work at the master's level.

 

Looking back, McKenna-Marshall is grateful for the opportunities she’s had, especially working closely with faculty members. “They care about the individual students.

 

“I think that it’s really good to have a lot of creative people in the same space," she says. "I think it helps your work, I think it helps what you produce."

U of T announces a new $6-million gift to create the John and Myrna Daniels Foundation Opportunity Awards to help talented graduate and undergraduate students at the Daniels Faculty shape the future of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design.

John and Myrna Daniels’ philanthropy has been a game-changer for architecture education in Canada. With this additional gift—which benefits students who might not otherwise have the chance to pursue studies at the University of Toronto—their support is growing stronger.

Announced Monday November 12, an additional six-million-dollar gift—from the John and Myrna Daniels Foundation—adds to an already impressive legacy of support for the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design and for its students, who are being prepared to design and build the environments around us. This latest gift brings Mr. and Mrs. Daniels’ support to a remarkable $30 million.

“Like John Daniels, creative people across the Daniels Faculty are thinking of ways to design better communities that reflect a commitment to social uplift,” says President Meric Gertler. “Today the Daniels Faculty is a globally recognized school and at the forefront of city-building. This is due primarily to the transformative philanthropy of John and Myrna Daniels, whose most recent support will ensure that qualified students will have the means to pursue an excellent education.”

Long-term, visionary support

The new gift adds to the Faculty’s endowment and will benefit students far into the future. It will also help ensure that the Daniels Faculty can both attract and remain accessible to high-ranking, deserving candidates. Recognizing the importance of this gift, the University of Toronto will match the annual payout on the endowment for students, thus doubling the impact of the gift. The John and Myrna Daniels Foundation Opportunity Award will support students who demonstrate both financial need and academic merit.

John H. Daniels (BArch 1950, Hon LLD 2011) is an architect and veteran developer with a keen passion and track record for building socially sustainable and livable urban environments. He is the former Chairman and CEO of Cadillac Fairview Development Corporation, and founder of The Daniels Corporation, one of Canada’s largest and pre-eminent builders and developers. Some of the corporation’s most renowned projects in Toronto include the redevelopment of Regent Park and the TIFF Bell Lightbox and Festival Tower.

“This is the most recent in a number of catalytic gifts from John and Myrna to the Daniels Faculty,” says Dean Richard Sommer. “Thanks to their incredible commitment and support, our students are tackling the very real challenge of transforming Canada’s urbanizing cities and landscapes. We are extremely grateful to them; their generosity will enable us to compete for talent globally and help ensure that our school plays a leading role well into the future.”

An outstanding legacy of giving

Both Mr. and Mrs. Daniels serve among the Honorary Chairs of the University of Toronto’s historic Boundless campaign. Their first gift of $14 million, in 2008, helped create the John and Myrna Daniels Scholars Award and provided capital support for the school’s expansion. To date there have been 81 John and Myrna Daniels Scholars, all professional master’s students with financial need, and some are notably the first in their families to go to university. Through their studies, the Scholars—and, indeed, students across the faculty—have been exploring the various ways that design addresses 21st-century challenges, such as the relationship between growing inequality and cities, architecture and human health, digital technology and craft/construction, and data analysis and sustainable development.

A second major gift of $10 million from John and Myrna Daniels, in 2013, made it possible for the Daniels Faculty to undertake an ambitious transformation of One Spadina Crescent, where the school is located today. Toronto architects, alumni and the business community continue to make donations to One Spadina’s ongoing capital campaign, supporting a project that has been acknowledged by Toronto architecture critic Alex Bozikovic as “one of the best buildings in Canada of the past decade.”

“This latest commitment from John and Myrna through their charitable foundation brings their visionary and generous commitment to $30 million,” says David Palmer, Vice President Advancement. “Their support has helped the Daniels Faculty attain a new level of global leadership. It now attracts the finest young minds and faculty from Canada and internationally, who are dedicated to creating more livable communities for people around the world.”

Photos, top: 1) Sarah Martos (MArch 2016) 2) Isabel Amos (MArch 3), Avery Clarke (MLA 2), Zoona Aamir (HBA 3). Model by Raymond Garrioch (MArch 2).

A model by the Office of Adrian Phiffer — the firm of Daniels Faculty Lecturer Adrian Phiffer — will be featured in the group exhibition, MIRABILIA, December 1-15. Master of Architecture students Angela Cho, Matthew Leander Kalil, and Avi Odenheimer were also part of the project team.

Exhibition curators challenged architects and artists to create a model that represents one of the invisible cities from Italo Calvino’s book of the same name. The exhibition showcased one model for every city narrated in Calvino’s text, each at 20x20 cm.

As described in the exhibition brief, “The aim of the project is the creation of a space in which to discuss, undermine and investigate the idea of landscape. Artists, architects and photographers will participate with multiple interpretations on the subject.”

Phiffer and his team worked on the model for the city of Melania from the chapter titled “the City and the Dead.” Their model explores the relationship between and the unification of an immortal city and its mortal citizens.

Visit the Office of Adrian Phiffer’s website to learn more.