On December 5, as Toronto City Council voted in favour of moving forward with planning for Rail Deck Park, Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture, and Master of Urban Design students presented design ideas for this new public space, which would be built over the rail corridor that cuts through the southern edge of the downtown core.

"Toronto city council voted 36-4 in favour of pushing ahead with planning work for the park, which is now estimated to cost some $1.665 billion although only five per cent of the design is complete," reported CBC News. "If built, the park would span the rail corridor from Blue Jays Way to Bathurst Street, creating more than eight hectares (21 acres) of green space in the middle of the city."

Above are photos of some of the projects that were presented on December 5.

Congratulations to all Superstudio students on completing your final review!

Congratulations to Aziza Chaouni Projects. The firm of Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni was part of a winning team in an international competition for the extension of Lycée Paul Valery, a school in Meknes in Morocco. The team included the Paris-based architecture firm LAPS, Pyramide Engineering, and Transsolar.

The team at Aziza Chaouni projects included Verónica Acprojects, Aziza Chaouni, Treasure Zhang, Pedram Karimi, Parham Karimi and Yi Zhang, Wendy Wang and Daniel Xu. Lecturer Adrian Phiffer’s firm, The Flat side of Design, created the renderings.

The college’s extension will include a new boarding school, arts centre, and scientific building.

"The future is certainly wood," says Shane Williamson, a principal at the architecture firm Williamson Williamson Inc. in Toronto, and Associate Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

The director of the Master of Architecture program at the University of Toronto was recently interviewed for a Globe and Mail article on the revival of timber-framed construction. The piece was inspired by George Brown College’s plans to build a 12-storey tower framed of wood.

"It's a cost-effective approach to building tall," Williamson told writer Adam Stanley, who noted “wood’s green and efficiency virtues.”

Williamson’s Toronto-based firm Williamson Williamson Inc. (previously Williamson Chong) travelled the world to study the application of engineered wood known as cross-laminated timber (CLT) after winning the Professional Prix de Rome in 2012. This research culminated in, among other things, an exhibition at Corkin Gallery in 2014 that explored wood’s material history.

Building on research and a creative practice that employs advanced digital tools as a means to critically engage and transform traditional modes of construction and tectonic expression, Williamson’s work seeks to situate digital fabrication and wood construction in a broader cultural context. He links theories of design and technology to sustainable building strategies.

"CLT in some ways can be considered a replacement for concrete," Williamson told the Globe and Mail. "In many ways, it provides similar characteristics while offering tremendous benefits."

To read the full article, visit the Globe and Mail’s website.

Earlier this month, graduate students in Peter Sealy’s course, ARC 3309 “The Photographic Mediation of Architecture,” travelled to Montréal to view photographs from the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s collection. The students were asked to research a photograph from the collection in advance of the trip. While there, they gave a presentation to the class in the presence of the actual researched piece. Louise Désy, curator of photographs at the CCA, took the students on a tour of the Centre’s underground photography vault. The class also visited Phyllis Lambert’s Greystone exhibition of photographs, taken with Richard Pare in the early 1970s.

While in Montreal, the class also visited  a number of buildings with local architects as guides, including: U, by Atelier Big City with architect Howard Davies; the Stade de Soccer de Montréal by Saucier + Perrotte, with Lia Ruccolo and Olivier Blouin; and The Schulich School of Music by Saucier + Perrotte, with Vedanta Balbahadur.

An elective course at the Daniels Faculty, “The Photographic Mediation of Architecture” provides a broad survey of architecture’s contemporary and historical relationship with photography.

From the course description:

From  Julius  Shulman’s  idealizations  of  California  modernism  up  to  Helène  Binet’s present-day interpretations of Zaha Hadid’s and Peter Zumthor’s buildings, architectural photographs tell us much about architecture in its cultural and intellectual  contexts. Sometimes  images  correspond to the intentions of architects, their clients and the imagined publics for whom buildings have been designed; in  other  cases, photographs reveal previously hidden  aspects of built space and invite new interpretations. While the relationship between buildings  and their representations is necessarily complex, themes including space, subjectivity, materiality, ornament, mimesis, interiority and otherness all find their expression in architectural photographs.

Peter Sealy is an architectural historian who studies the ways in which architects constructively engage with reality through indexical media such as photography. He holds architecture degrees from the McGill University School of Architecture and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is currently completing his PhD at Harvard on the emergence of a photographic visual regime in nineteenth-century architectural representation.

The transformation of the West Don Lands in Toronto into a sustainable, mixed-use community has been recognized with a 2017-2018 Global Award for Excellence from the Urban Land Institute (ULI). The award-winning pedestrian-friendly community — a 79-acre site nestled between the Don Valley and Gardiner Expressway, near the Distillery District — was designed with the help of a number of faculty and alumni from the Daniels — including the Director of the Faculty’s Master of Urban Design program Mark Sterling.

Sterling was the Urban Design Lead for the Public Realm Master Plan led by David Leinster (BLA 1985) of The Planning Partnership.

Writes Batel Yona for the ULI’s website:

Innovative and high-quality parks and public realm are among the area’s hallmarks, each incorporating robust biodiversity and natural landscapes. Corktown Common is positioned atop a flood-protection land form that protects 519 acres (210 ha) of downtown Toronto and unlocks the area’s development potential. Underpass Park transformed an unused area into a family-friendly recreational community space. The Front Street Promenade, a linear park that constitutes the spine of the new neighborhood, is programmed with curated public art installations and linked to the district’s secondary network of mews, courtyards, and pathways to create a healthy, walkable, integrated new community. Toronto’s first woonerf streets are also found here.

The team for the West Don Lands project includes:

Master developer: Waterfront Toronto; precinct plan: Urban Design Associates
Developers: Urban Capital (River City), DREAM Unlimited, Kilmer Group (Canary District), Toronto Community Housing
Public realm and urban designers: the Planning Partnership with PFS Studio plus &Co., Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc.
Landscape designers: Claude Cormier & Associates, NAK Design Strategies Architectural design: (River City) Saucier & Perrotte, ZAS Architects; (Canary District) architects Alliance, KPMB Architects, Page + Steele/IBI Group Architects, Daoust Lestage, MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects, (Shade Pavillion) Maryann Thompson Architects
Design/builder: (Canary District) EllisDon Inc., Ledcor Group
Retail designer: Live Work Learn Play

For more information, visit the ULI website.

November 17, 2017 — Today, the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design celebrated the official opening of its new home — the Daniels Building — at historic One Spadina Crescent.

Located on the western edge of the University of Toronto’s St. George campus just north of College Street, the iconic neo-gothic building and stunning contemporary addition, currently nearing completion, is now poised to become an international focal point for education, research, and outreach on architecture, art, and the future of cities.

University of Toronto President, Professor Meric Gertler; Dean of the Daniels Faculty, Professor Richard Sommer; and Chair of the Governing Council at the University of Toronto, Claire Kennedy welcomed donors, alumni, faculty, students, and other esteemed guests to commemorate the Daniels Faculty’s new home — which the Globe and Mail’s architecture critic has called “one of the best buildings in Canada of the past decade” — with an official ribbon cutting ceremony and reception.

Photo, top (left to right): graduate student Lydon Whittle, Dean Richard Sommer, undergraduate Student Farah Michel, Chair of Governing Council Claire Kennedy, Professor Ron Daniels, Myrna Daniels, John H. Daniels, President Meric Gertler, Mitchell Cohen, graduate student Mahshid Shahrjerdi

Referring to Canadian and international reviews of the building, President Gertler said, “This global standing ovation for the Daniels Building is contributing to U of T’s reputation as a world-leading centre for the study of architecture, landscape architecture, and design; as one of the world’s greatest universities, and as a city-building institution of the first rank. And it heralds a new era of local, national, and international impact on the part of our professors and students, whose work is already helping to re-define urbanism in the 21st Century.”          

The proceedings took place in the heart of the new building in the Faculty’s new Principal Hall, a prismatic, polychrome, multi-dimensional space, soon to become one of Toronto’s premier public venues for public discussion and events showcasing leaders in the fields of art, urbanism, and the built environment.

In addition to housing the Faculty’s expanded undergraduate and graduate programs in architecture, visual studies, landscape architecture, and urban design, the new Daniels Building will allow for enhanced interdisciplinary research and greater public outreach and engagement, elevating the role that the design arts and visual thinking can play in addressing the critical challenges of our time.

“Toronto, like many cities around the world, has to contend with unprecedented growth. How we develop a compelling set of visions for the future, stage better discussions and debate about how to grow, and model ways for a diverse set of actors to work together to realize these visions, is vital to the success of our city, and every city” says Professor Sommer. “Over its 127 –year history, our Faculty has made many creative and intellectual contributions to this city and the profession, but the school has never really had a home worthy of its ambitions. Thanks to our community of generous supporters, we now have a major platform.“

Mr. John H. Daniels, Mrs. Myrna Daniels, and Professor Ron Daniels | Photo by Lisa Sakulensky

Following the announcement of a historic $14 million benefaction in 2008 (the largest of its kind in Canada to a school of architecture) and another $10 million in 2013, John H. Daniels (BArch 1950, LLD Hon. 2011) and Myrna Daniels today witnessed the vision for U of T’s architecture and design students become a reality. The new Daniels Building is named in their honour.

Toronto architecture firms, development and business leaders, faculty, friends, and alumni have also come together to support the project through philanthropic gifts totaling more than $30 million. To date 85% of the fundraising goal has been met. With a number of naming opportunities still available, the Faculty plans to announce additional gifts from donors in the coming months. The project is part of the University of Toronto’s unprecedented 2.4 billion Boundless campaign.

Key spaces in the Daniels Building include the Graduate Design Studio, with a column-free span of over 34 metres that incorporates an undulating ceiling with 11 clerestory windows; the Eberhard Zeidler Library, with collections in architecture, landscape architecture, art, and urban design that are unrivalled in Toronto; an extensive workshop and double-height Fabrication Lab, and the Commons, an interior “main street” and gathering space that runs east-west through the center of the building, linking “town and gown.”

The Daniels Faculty’s award-winning Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory (GRIT Lab) whose work helps inform the City of Toronto’s green roof standards, will open a second site on the roof of One Spadina, where it will study the integration of rainwater harvested on site, while a new 8,000-square-foot Architecture and Design Gallery — the only exhibition space devoted exclusively to architecture and design in Ontario — will be complete by next year.

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 building has already received broad critical acclaim. Former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto Ken Greenberg (BArch 1970) declared it “a remarkable feat of form-making, site planning, and city building,” in a recent review of the building in Canadian Architect. During Doors Open, the new Daniels Building was among the most popular destinations in Toronto, welcoming over 8,000 visitors.

Daniels students helped make the Building Opening event a huge success | Photo by Lisa Sakulensky

“A hinge between ideas and action, Architecture is as much a way of finding the world, as it is of forming it,” says Professor Sommer. “As we celebrate the opening of this spectacular new building — we are reminded about what better architecture, landscapes, and cities writ large should afford society. It is not just about the glass, steel, and concrete, but what we can and will do with these things — what more thoughtful and beautiful environments inspire. We have received a great gift in this new site and building, but this is just the start. “

The main phases of the One Spadina Project will be completed in 2018. Future phases/additions are planned. For more information, visit the Daniels Faculty’s website at www.daniels.utoronto.ca

Photo, top: by John Horner

Last month, the Canada Council for the Arts announced that the Indigenous design project UNCEDED was selected to represent Canada at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Members of the 2018 peer-assessment committee that selected the winning team included, among others, Daniels Faculty Associate Professor John Shnier, founding partner of Kohn Shnier Architects; and Lola Sheppard, founding partner of Lateral Office, the firm that represented Canada at the Biennale in 2014. Associate Professor Mason White is also a founding partner of Lateral Office.

The shortlist for the 2018 Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale included Daniels faculty and alumni. The shortlisted teams included:

• Scapegoat Journal, co-founded by Instructor Marcin Kedzior. Daniels Faculty Instructor Manar Moursi is one of the editors of the journal.
• Ja Architecture Studio, the office of Daniels Faculty alumni Nima Javidi (MUD 2005), Behnaz Assadi (MLA 2008), and Hanieh Rezaei (MUD 2004)
• Patkau Architects, from Vancouver

UNCEDED is led by architect Douglas Cardinal along with Anishnawbe Elders and Indigenous Co-curators Gerald McMaster and David Fortin. They are supported by a decorated group of Indigenous architects from across North America. The winning team plans to emphasize and celebrate the work of Indigenous architects and designers throughout Turtle Island. The exhibition will be on view at the Arsenale in Venice from May 26th to November 25th, 2018.

Titled Arctic Adaptations, Lateral Office's exhibition at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale presented proposals by five design teams for Nunavut, Canada's largest territory. Each team was made up of representatives from a Canadian school of architecture, a Canadian architecture office with extensive northern experience, and a Nunavut-based organization. Each team’s proposal examined one theme — housing, health, education, arts, or recreation — and was rooted in Nunavut’s distinct land, climate, and culture.

The exhibit was honoured with a Special Mention at the Biennale’s awards ceremony for “its in-depth study of how modernity adapts to a unique climatic condition and a local minority culture.”

Photo, top: Arctic Adaptations exhibition by Lateral Office at the Venice Biennale, 2014.

Professor Ted Kesik is a member of a multi-disciplinary team that made a successful application for funding under the 2017 University College London – University of Toronto Call for Joint Research Projects and Exchange Activities. University College London (UCL) and the University of Toronto contributed matching funds to support collaborative education and research initiatives through a joint call for proposals for the development of collaborative activities.

The 2-year research project entitled Best Practices Guidelines for Tower Block Refurbishment is a response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy in North Kensington, West London in June 2017, which resulted in numerous deaths and injuries.

Kesik was the principal researcher for a major technical guide in support of Toronto’s Tower Renewal program in 2009. The guide focused on overcladding and briefly outlined the need for a more comprehensive approach to the refurbishment of tower apartment buildings based on the ‘building-as-a-system’ approach. Technological advances, performance gaps, and recent disasters are among the many reasons updated guidelines and regulatory protocols need to be developed and transferred to the housing sector.

The research team is led by Professor Marianne Touchie, an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Civil Engineering and Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, and includes Dr. Nicole Zimmermann and Dr. Ian Hamilton, who are both part of the Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources at University College London. Dr. Kesik is a professor of building science at the Daniels Faculty.

This fall, as students and faculty at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design start school in their new home at One Spadina Crescent, questions around the changing nature of the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, art, and urbanism and their evolving pedagogical approaches have become especially urgent.

To celebrate the school’s new home and speculate about how to make best use of it in the coming years, the Faculty is mounting a series of discussions, lectures, and workshops, as well as a symposium. These events will explore the relationship between our workspaces and the pedagogies, research projects, and forms of public outreach in which we engage.

What kind of a pedagogical instrument is a school? What is its scope and reach? How do we conceptualize its relationship to the public? How can a school be a both a place where ideas are cultivated and where they are subject to continuous experimentation? And what implications does this productive tension have for the politics at play in our approach to art, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design? The series will host a rich array of educators, theorists, historians, and practitioners and will culminate in a symposium in the spring that will bring together thinkers who are at the forefront of conceptualizing and designing our schools.

“My mantra has been that architecture and its allied disciplines are as much a way of finding the world, as they are of forming it, and how it follows that a great design school models practice by acting as a hinge between study and action,” says Professor Richard Sommer, Dean of the Daniels Faculty. “With our new platform at One Spadina, we have an unprecedented opportunity to explore and demonstrate this.”

Upcoming lectures include:

• Daniels Faculty Associate Professor and founding partner of Lateral Office Mason White, architect and urbanist Charles Waldheim, research manager at Harvard’s Urban Theory Lab Daniel Ibañez-Moreno, and architect, educator, and writer Clare Lyster, who will talk about their new book Third Coast Atlas, which strives to capture emergent and shifting forms of urbanization, increasingly understood as socio-spatial and political processes that defy conventional modes of description,
   
• Associate Professor and architectural historian Mary Lou Lobsinger and Joaquim Moreno, guest curator of the exhibition The University is Now on Air: Broadcasting Modern Architecture at CCA from Novebmer 14, 2017 to April 1, 2018, who will discuss how schools disseminate knowledge and what role mass media play in the transformation of the culture of architecture and design in conversation with Associate Professor John Harwood,
   
• Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Liat Margolis and President of the Nunavut Association of Landscape Architects Chris Grosset, who will address the ongoing dialogue between Canadian landscape architecture practices and indigenous culture, and how this discussion informs how we might train the next generation of landscape architects.

For more information about this series, visit www.daniels.utoronto.ca/events/what-is-a-school

The new home of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is the cover story of Canadian Architect this month. The article, written by former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto, Ken Greenberg (BArch 1970), looks at the place of One Spadina in the city.

“It is fitting that the urban design catalyst for the western edge of the campus should be an architecture school,” writes Greenberg of the new Daniels Building, noting the landscape, which includes a promenade that encircles the site, bike parking, and a raised belvedere that when complete will act as an outdoor event space with views down Spadina Avenue to the lake. “These convivial gestures speak to a new understanding of the university’s place in the city as committed steward and active contributor.”

Greenberg calls the Daniels Building “a remarkable feat of form-making, site planning, and city building.”

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 Daniels Building at One Spadina houses the University of Toronto’s programs in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design.

Visit Canadian Architect’s website to read the full article, available via an electronic copy of the magazine published via issue.

The Canadian Architect article is one of a number that have recently been published about the Daniels Building. The New York Times, the Globe and Mail, Abitare, Architectural Digest, and Toronto Life, among others, have reviewed One Spadina as it nears completion.

Read what people are saying about One Spadina.