For the second year in a row, a graduate studio from the Daniels Faculty has received ARCHITECT magazine's Studio Prize.

The Studio Prize "recognizes thoughtful, innovative, and ethical studio courses at accredited architecture schools" across Canada and the United States. The Daniels Faculty's Option Studio "Coding Flux: In Pursuit of Resilient Urbanism in South Florida" (LAN 3016) taught by Assistant Professors Fadi Masoud, who coordinated the course, and Elise Shelley is among this year's six winners.

Rayna Syed (standing at right) and Alexandra Lazervski (third from left) present their plans for a southern Florida county that faces flooding challenges, increasing water levels and salt water damage (photo by Harry Choi)

The award-winning studio challenged students to develop design solutions to address increased flooding from rising sea levels and intense storms, such as hurricanes, in South Florida — events that are becoming increasingly common to due climate change.

Writes ARCHITECT:

The responses, which the students presented to Broward County representatives who visited Toronto, ranged from a “freshwater credit” system that incentivizes residents to capture excess rainwater in cisterns on their property to a “flux” zoning code that changes as rising sea levels impact land-use patterns around the county. Yet another proposal considers the county’s western border, which abuts the Everglades wetlands, more as an inland “coast,” with recreational and tourism possibilities, and less as a site solely for real estate development, which might leave the area more vulnerable to sea level rise. Juror Jennifer Yoos, FAIA, lauded the students’ approach to “rethinking how these design processes should be done.”

This was the fourth time Masoud has led a hands-on, pragmatic studio focused on South Florida, and Broward County officials say it was the first time their office had worked with such a studio on planning ideas. They say they welcomed the outside insight, and have begun to incorporate some of the students’ ideas, like flux zoning, into their long-range planning.
 

U of T News covered the student's work in the studio last year, from the start of the term in September to final reviews.

Students who participated in the award-winning studio include: Chaoyi Cui, Marianne Lafontaine-Chicha, Meikang Li, Niloufar Makaremi, Leslie Norris, Natalie Schiabel, Qiwei Song, Zainab Al Rawi, Meng Bao, Chukun Chen, Mengqi Dai, Jessica Guinto, Tania Hlavenka, Joshua Kirk, Alexandra Lazaervski, Ning Lin, Aidan Loweth, Carlos Portillo, and Rayna Syed.

For more information, visit ARCHITECT's website.th Florida" recently received the Sloan Award, a Studio Prize from Architect magazine.

Image, top, by: Qiwei Song, Meikang Li, and Chaoyi Cui

The Daniels Faculty is pleased to be co-hosting the 2018 TimberFever student design-build competition September 20-23 in conjunction with Ryerson University. TimberFever is presented by Moses Structural Engineers.
 
TimberFever brings architecture and civil engineering students from universities across Canada together to build a life-size structure out of wood. A total of 96 architecture and engineering students from ten universities across Canada have registered for this year's event, making it the farthest-reaching TimberFever competition yet.
 
The intense four-day competition is a valuable experiential learning opportunity for students, which includes a design charrette, to be held at Ryerson University, and two days of construction, which will be held at the Daniels Building at One Spadina. Each year the design brief is top secret and centered around a current issue. Each team is given the same amount of wood and a base for their structure. They have access to power tools, a workshop, and are given help from workshop staff and representatives from the Carpenters’ District Council of Ontario.
 
An awards ceremony will take place at the Daniels Faculty's Main Hall on September 23 at 4:30pm. The ceremony is open to the public.
 
After the competition, structures remain on display and the public is encouraged to vote for their favorite design on TimberFever website starting Monday September 24, 2018. The People’s Choice will be announced on TimberFever's social media accounts after the structures are taken off display and online voting has ended.

For more information, visit the TimberFever website.

Follow TimberFever on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Photo, top: Daniels undergraduate students design and build an installation at Hart House Farm, Summer 2017 | Photo by Harry Choi

This summer, Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni led a research field trip with five Daniels Faculty graduate students to the Australian outback.
 
In conjunction with the Designing Ecological Tourism (DET) research platform, Chaouni and the students have been working with the South Australian Government and the University of Melbourne to develop rehabilitation scenarios for a decommissioned coal mine in the village of Leigh Creek, South Australia. The research builds on work the students completed as part of Chaouni's winter 2018 Option Studio (ARC 3016) entitled Rethinking the Australian Outback: Imagining Leigh Creek.
 
"I chose this studio because it deals with a real social, economic, and environmental context and because of the ability it presents for our ideas to have an impact," said Master of Architecture graduate student Nicholas Callies. "The opportunity to visit and study a site and to meet with and discuss our ideas with locals has been very influential. It's encouraging to know that our projects have a real potential to make a difference to a place."
 
Australian media took note of the students' work. As The Transcontinental Port Augusta reported, "Local businessman Darryl Bowshire helped sponsor the students' visit and said it gave local people a really positive feeling to have these young people from the other side of the world be so enthusiastic about the town's future."

 
Participating students included: Xiaoting Stephanie Yuan, Yueyi Li, Nicholas Callies, Luis Quezada, and Chenxuan Meng. Alumna Samar Zarifa (MLA 2012) and Professor Gini Lee from Melbourne University joined them on the trip. After attending a seminar at the University of Adelaide, visiting the Leigh Creek mine, and installing a permanent exhibition of their work onsite, the team spent 4 days at Professor Lee’s Oratunga Estate where they synthesized their research findings and completed two outdoors installations composed of found objects.
 
"Ecotourism was one of the main tools we investigated in order to reveal the complex history of the site, while instigating economic growth," says Chaouni. "We developed a unique multidisciplinary approach that integrates ecology, engineering, sociology, landscape architecture, architecture and urban design."
 
Visit The Transcontinental Port Augusta's website to read the full article. 

Architectural historian, critic, author, and lecturer at the Daniels Faculty, Hans Ibelings, will be speaking at the New York Conference, “Acts of Design: New Housing Paradigms in North America”, about his book Rise and Sprawl: The Condominiumization of Toronto, written with Alex Josephson, the principal of PARTISANS. 

The conference is a day-long event with a number of speakers, including Daniels Faculty Professor Brigitte Shim. Through case-studies and panel discussions, participants will explore North America’s current state of housing, specifically workers housing typologies in Mexico City and designing across scales in Toronto, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. The event is open to the public and will be held on Friday, November 16, 2018, 9:30 AM – 5:30 PM EST at Columbia GSAPP.

Visit the conference website to register for your free ticket.

Hans Ibelings has been the editor and publisher of The Architecture Observer. Prior to this, he was the editor of A10 new European architecture, a magazine he founded in 2004 together with graphic designer Arjan Groot. Ibelings is also the author of a number of books, including European Architecture Since 1890 (2011), published in English, Dutch, German, and Russian, and Supermodernism: Architecture in the Age of Globalization (1998 and 2003), published in English, Dutch, Spanish, French, and Italian.

Looking for inspiration? Watch this video featuring U of T Lecturer Jay Pooley who led a team of undergraduate students in a design/build project this summer to create a meditation space for Lululemon.

Pooley is a architect, art director and journeyman carpenter as well as a production designer for film and television.

"My work as a production designer is to set the stage for people to tell the stories of our lives," says Pooley. "Largely I'm responsible for most things in a film that is not a person."

Along with design for film and television, Pooley has also completed a number of design/build projects for clients including The Drake Hotel, Town Barber, Willowbank School and Worship Motion & Design Studio. Current research projects include design/build studio projects and documentary film studies centered around innovative formats for capturing the experience of a building.

Says Jay: "It's absolutely empowering for a student to tell them: that thing you're drawing? You can build that. You can absolutely build that. Go make it!

This summer, a team of local Indigenous youth came together at both the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto and Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA)’s Bolton Camp to learn about design, filmmaking, and ecological conservation combined with traditional teachings of the land.
 
The inaugural program provided the youth with summer employment and an opportunity to contribute design ideas for the revitalization of the Bolton Camp, a 254-acre site 40 kilometres north of the city at the headwaters of the Humber River, which once provided a summer getaway for low income children.

The summer program grew out of a grant that Associate Professor Liat Margolis, director of the Daniels Faculty's Master of Landscape Architecture program; Sessional Lecturer Sheila Boudreau, Senior Landscape Architect at TRCA; and Fred Martin of the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto (NCCT) received this year to explore a participatory model that includes the voice of Indigenous youth in the development and design of green infrastructure.

The Bolton Camp presented an ideal opportunity to build on this initiative. TRCA purchased the property, which had long been abandoned, in 2011, with the goal of bringing it back to life as a cultural hub. ERA Architects and Levitt Goodman Architects are currently involved in the master planning of the site. Ideas developed and presented by the youth — Miles Dziedzic, Aron McVean, Ella Kelly, and Avery Hill — will help inform future planning.
 
The pilot initiative was collaboratively developed by the organizers — including Elder Whabagoon, the Daniels Faculty, the Great Lakes WaterworksWater Allies coordinated by Principal Bonnie McElhinny at the U of T's New College, TRCA, and the NCCT — and provided them with an opportunity to connect youth with Elders and knowledge keepers and expose them to new education and career paths in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, film, Indigenous studies, and environmental conservation.

The youth had the opportunity to meet regularly with Elder Whabagoon throughout the program. Daniels Faculty Master of Landscape Architecture student Aaron Hernandez and Master of Urban Design student Dalia Gebran worked closely with the highschool students to guide them through the steps involved in designing for buildings and landscapes. The program challenged thel students to plan a retrofit of two existing cabins and their surrounding landscape, and engage in storytelling through short films.

As TRCA interns, the students were introduced to a range of field work, including stream restoration, benthic and water quality testing, and bee surveying, organized by Lucia Piccinni, Senior Program Manager of Bolton Camp. A remarkable group of mentors (see list below) generously contributed to the program with guest lectures and design reviews, guided site visits to sustainable urban and landscape projects, a First Story tour, and field trips to Kayanase native nursery and the office of Two Row Architect at Six Nations of the Grand River Territory.

The youth compiled their individual ideas for the site into a single plan that included new trees, a bike path, a rain garden, an accessible boardwalk that leads to the water tower, a tipi and sweat lodge, and a turtle-shaped medicine garden surrounding a fire pit. Ideas for the cabins included a clever way of connecting interior space with the surrounding landscape to provide additional programmable area and gathering space, while preserving the heritage structure of the iconic cabins.

On August 16, the youth met at the Daniels Faculty to present their designs for the site, as well as short films they created about the project with the guidance of filmmaker, Jamie Whitecrow. Together with Elder Whabagoon, they also unveiled a name for the new program: Healing of a Flooded Valley, or Nikibii Dawadinna Giigwag (Flooded Valley Healing) in Anishinaabemowin (Manitoulin dialect).

Pictured standing in the photo above (left to right): interns Miles Dziedzic, Aron McVean, Ella Kelly, and Avery Hill; Elder Whabagoon; Lucia Piccinni (Senior Program Manager, Bolton Camp), Sheila Boudreau, TRCA; Associate Professor Liat Margolis, filmmaker and artist Jamie Whitecrow; Aaron Hernandez, and Dalia Gebran.

Special thanks to supporting institutions and mentors: LACF, Dean Richard Sommer (Daniels Faculty), Dean Robert Wright (Faculty of Forestry), Principal Bonnie McElhinny, (New College), Cal Brook (Brook McIlroy), Doug Webber, Mark Palmer, Andrew Palmer (Greenland Consulting Engineers), Urban Watershed Group, Matthew Hickey (Two Row Architect), Terence Radford (Trophic Design), Danny Bartman, Joe Loreto  (Levitt Goodman Architects), Trina Moyen and Shak Gobert (Bell & Bernard), James Bird (UofT),  Kahentakeron Tyrone Deer (Kayanase Nursery), Michael Etherington, Yvonne Battista (DTAH), Heather Broadbent (Bolton Historical Society), Heather Campbell, Janice Quieta (ERA Architects), Emily Rondel, Christine Furtado, Amanda Yip, Kate Goodale, Jennifer Ouimette, Eric Bender, Elizabeth Wren, Colin Love, Chris Bialek, and Stephanie Perish (TRCA), Nick Reid (Ryerson Urban Water), David Atkinson (Ryerson), Alex Gill (Ryerson Social Ventures Zone), Kristina Hausmanis, Ruthanne Henry (City of Toronto), Marcia McVean (TDSB), Olivia Magalhaes, Marc Ryan (Public Work).

Why study architecture?

Architecture is about more than designing buildings, "it is also a systematic way of thinking," says Dean Richard Sommer.

Dean Sommer spoke to Greg Hemmings and Dave Veale, hosts of the business podcast The Boiling Point, about the "broad lateral thinking that comes with training or schooling in architecture," and how it prepares students not just to be architects and designers, but effective business leaders, problem solvers, and entrepreneurs.

He cites graduates from the Daniels Faculty who have developed successful careers in healthcare, transit planning, branding and fashion, real estate, and the food business, just to name a few. (Hailed Coffee, pictured above, was started by alumnus Salim Bamakhrama, MArch 2010).

"Architecture requires a joined up way of thinking," explained Dean Sommer, who argued that many of the challenges we now face require the expertise of not just one discipline, but many.  An architect brings different perspectives together and is able to consider diverse and competing forces, he says —  few fields force you to think that laterally.

Click hear for a link to the full interview.

Daniels Faculty alumna Tiffany Dang (HBA, Architectural Studies 2014) has received the J.B.C. Watkins Award from the Canada Council for the Arts. The J.B.C. Watkins Award is granted to "a Canadian professional architect wishing to pursue postgraduate studies outside Canada, ideally in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, or Iceland." Recipients are selected by a peer assessment committee and receive $5,000 each.

From the Canada Council for the Arts announcement:

Originally from Edmonton, Alberta, territorial scholar Tiffany Kaewen Dang holds a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and has recently been admitted to the Geography PhD program at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the Canadian National Parks System as a colonial infrastructure of racial oppression and territorial conquest, under the premise that if landscape architecture has a continuing role in the colonization of what is today known as Canada, then the subversion of traditional landscape architectural methodologies can be utilized for decolonization. She is currently conducting research as a part of the OPSYS Landscape Infrastructure Lab.
 

Congratulations to Dang on receiving this award!

Alumni David Verbeek (MArch 2017) and Monica Adair and Stephen Kopp (both MArch 2005) were also recognized by the Canada Council for the Arts this year. Verbeek, a recent graduate, received the Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners, while Adair and Kopp of the New Brunswick-based firm Acre Architects received the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture.

Daniels Faculty alumni swept Canada's Prix de Rome in Architecture awards this year.

Recent graduate David Verbeek (MArch 2017) received the Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners, while Monica Adair and Stephen Kopp (both MArch 2005) of the New Brunswick-based firm Acre Architects were awarded the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture.

Presented annually by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Prix de Rome is one of the field's most prestigious national awards.

Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners - David Verbeek

“Congratulations to David Verbeek: he is one of our most talented recent graduates, and we are thrilled that the Canada Council for the Arts jury has chosen him for this year’s Prix de Rome,” says Dean Richard Sommer. “Field-based architectural research can illuminate the complexity of some of our most rapidly transforming urban geographies. Building on his award-winning thesis and experience at Daniels, Verbeek’s proposed study will bring techniques of careful documentation, visual analysis, and design speculation to bear on a set of liminal spaces where difficult intersections between emerging architecture, globally-networked waterfronts, and climate change come into play.”

Upon graduating from the faculty in 2017, Verbeek (pictured above) received the RAIC Gold Medal, the AIA Henry Adams Medal, and the OAA Architectural Guild Medal. The designer, researcher, and urbanist is now working in Rotterdam with OMA (office for Metropolitan Architecture).

"David's work has been observed to be representative of a true artistic act of architecture, and indeed his illustrations, are evidence of the alternative tendencies that young architects are taking in imagining their work through drawing," says Associate Professor John Shnier, who was Verbeek's thesis advisor in 2017, and Canada Council’s inaugural Prix de Rome winner in 1987. "His published drawings have been described as 'game-changers;' part of a generation of architects that are exploring 'Post Digital' techniques in illustration."
 
Verbeek's prize includes $34,000, which he will use to broaden his knowledge of contemporary architecture through travel and participate in an internship at an internationally acclaimed firm of architecture. The award will provide him with the opportunity to investigate "constructed coastlines in transition," and observe first-hand, the frontlines of urbanization and coastal threats, building on work he completed as part of his Master of Architecture thesis, which explored the idea of "an eventual archipelago in Toronto's constructed port lands as grounds for invention in the future megacity."
 
Verbeek follows in the footsteps of Daniels graduates Drew Sinclair (M Arch 2007) and Kelly Doran (M Arch 2008) who won the Prix de Rome for Emerging Practitioners in 2008 and 2009, respectively.

Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture - Monica Adair and Stephen Kopp, Arce Architects

Adair and Kopp have been receiving a steady stream of awards and media recognition for their work at Acre Architects, where they work to create "original, provocative, contextually driven design." (Read our Q&A with Monica Adair from 2017.)
 
In 2017, they received a Lieutenant-Governor’s Award of Excellence in Architecture. In 2016, Wallpaper listed the firm among 20 “breakthrough practices from around the globe.” And in 2015, Adair was a recipient of RAIC's Young Architect Award.

Last year the duo returned to the Daniels Faculty to teach an option studio that took students from Toronto to the Saint John Harbour to study and develop design ideas for Partridge Island, a former quarantine station and National Historic Site.

Adair and Kopp plan to use the $50,000 awarded by the prize to "experience firsthand world renown projects, places and key people that have succeeded in creating a sustainable tourism that enhances a sense of place, including its environment, its heritage, its aesthetics, its culture, and the well-being of the people who live there."

"There is an appetite in the Maritimes to go beyond the sentimental pseudo-traditional recreated environments, complete with landlocked imitation lighthouses, and to explore new ways to guide the perception of a region toward more meaningful development," write the architects in a post about the award on their website. "We want to be part of shaping an architectural history that bears witness to our era and its richly diverse ambitions, and this requires specialization and currency in learning from successful tourism precedents that serve to forge new ways forward."
 
Adair and Kopp join other Daniels Faculty and alumni who have received the Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture. Associate Professor John Shnier received the inaugural Prix de Rome from the Canada Council for the Arts in 1987.  Associate Professor Shane Williamson (2012), Associate Professor Mason White (2010), and alumni Omar Gandhi (2014) and Pierre Bélanger (2008) have also been recognized.

Working with Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion (CDG), and the Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion Foundation, Aziza Chaouni Projects — led by Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni — is working to rehabilitate the Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex, a historic site of modern architecture in Morocco.

This summer, from July 2 - 6,  Chaouni, together with the broader revitalization team, organized and participated in workshops with international artists and members of the local community to raise awareness about the area's architectural heritage, share memories about the complex, and consider its future.

The week began with architecture training led by Laure Augereau to teach youth about the architecture of Jean-François Zevaco. Zevaco designed Sidi Harazem in 1960 and was part of the brutalist architectural movement. This was followed by tours and conferences, while guest artists collaborated on work within the space. Later in the week, Chaouni and her partners held round table discussions and a collaborative design workshop with hawkers and shopkeepers of Sidi Harazem to reimagine a future program for the site.

The revitalization of the Sidi Harazem Completx is being completed thanks to the Getty Foundation's Keeping it Modern grant, which was established to support important works of modern architecture around the world.

Photo, top, by Andreea Muscurel