Congratulations to Associate Professor and former Director of the Master of Architecture Program Robert Levit at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. He and his partner Rodolphe el-Khoury of Khoury Levit Fong (KLF) were selected as Official Participants at the upcoming 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB). KLF is the only firm from Canada to receive this distinction.

KLF’s exhibition, Typetopia, was designed by Levit and el-Khoury along with Daniels Master of Architecture graduate student Nick Reddon; research associate at the University of Miami, Chris Chung (MArch 2014); and recent graduate Dorsa Jalalian (MArch 2016).

The Biennial, which recognizes outstanding work in the field, is the “main stage” of contemporary architecture, unveiling avant-garde ideas, materials, technologies, and practices. It is where architects connect, collaborate, and engage the public while examining disciplinary issues and global concerns.

The first architecture biennial, took place in Venice in 1980. Twenty-five years after Venice, China launched the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in 2005 in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Chicago is the third city in the world to host an Architecture Biennial that upholds the structure, programming, and international representation of the original Venice Biennale.

CAB’s 2017 theme, “Make New History” will focus on the relationship between art and architecture, history, and modernity, with the curatorial guidance of Los Angeles-based architects Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee of Johnston Marklee.

In 2015, more than 530,000 Chicago residents and visitors took part in CAB. It was the largest international exhibition of contemporary architecture ever held in North America, and featured the ideas of more than 100 architecture and design firms from 30 + countries. Based on the diverse selection of firms by CAB’s new artistic leadership team, the second edition is poised to build on the success of the first. The magnificent Chicago Cultural Center, operated by Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, will once again serve as the anchor of the exhibition, with additional sites across the city.  Through its constellation of exhibitions, full-scale installations, programming, and related events, the Chicago Architecture Biennial invites the public to engage with and think about architecture in new ways, in a global discussion on the future of the field. It will take place from September 16, 2017, to January 7, 2018.

For more info on KLF, go to: www.khourylevitfong.com and for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, go to: chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org. More information on KLF's exhibition at the Biennial is available at: http://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/participants/khoury-levit-fong/

Image, top & middle: Chicago Cultural Center (SUTTON), courtesy of the Chicago Architecture Biennial

Alumnus Tye Farrow (BArch 1987) has designed a bold solution to help address the need for more affordable housing in Toronto — and the Bloor Viaduct, one of city’s most iconic bridges, is at the heart of his plan.

His proposal would transform the bridge from a single-use function into a multi-use one. In addition to connecting the neighbourhoods west of the Don Valley Ravine with those to the east, the bridge could providing places to live, places to play, and places to work and shop — and be a popular tourist destination to boot. Dave LeBlanc recently wrote about Farrow’s Living Bridges idea in the Globe and Mail.

"There are few government-owned or low-cost sites in the city’s core available for development," writes Farrow in his proposal for Living Bridges [PDF]. "The quest to identify economical sites that are near public transit as well as suitable for quick construction will require innovative thinking and bold action."

Key to the building's affordability is the use of a new type of inexpensive material — metal-strengthened plywood, now being developed by a company called GRIP Metal. Made of “thin sheets of metal with microhooks between the plies of wood,” the plywood can be formed into cylinders, built off-site, to create individual units.

“Can we dream that big again?” writes LeBlanc. “Can we spike the water with 1960s Kool-Aid?” He is not the only one interested in this bold idea for the Bloor Viaduct. The proposal has been also covered by the Toronto Star, BlogTO, Daily Hive, Salus, and Vancouver Roundhouse Radio. He will be presenting the design idea at the inaugural Healthy City Design 2017 International Congress in the UK in the Fall.

Visit Farrow’s website to read his full proposal [PDF] for Living Bridges.

Designed by Nader Tehrani and Katie Faulkner, the Daniels Faculty’s nearly finished new home at One Spadina Crescent has been receiving accolades from both members of the public (search #OneSpadina on instagram and twitter) and the media (see Architecture Critic Alex Bozikovic’s review in the Globe and Mail).

Tehrani and Faulkner are principals at firm NADAAA. And with the completion of The Daniels Building at One Spadina, the Boston-based firm will have a total of three architecture school buildings under its belt — “a feat that no one else is known to have achieved,” reports Architectural Digest. Tehrani has also designed the buildings for the architecture school at Georgia Tech and the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne.

From Architectural Digest:

Now he is preparing for the opening of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto on a prominent site with an existing neo-Gothic building, which he incorporated into the new structure. Given that the school offers training in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design, Tehrani made sure the building “engaged all three disciplines.” Indeed, like the other two buildings, it invites collaboration; Tehrani says that “with the withering away of architecture as a siloed practice, we need buildings that encourage interdisciplinary thinking.”

As the Dean of the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at Cooper Union in New York, Tehrani is familiar with the needs of architecture schools and can easily put himself in the place of a dean working with a designer. Close collaboration is key, he tells Architectural Digest.

At One Spadina, NADAAA collaborated with Adamson & Associates (the project’s Architect-of-record), heritage architects ERA, and landscape architects Public Work.

Visit Architectural Digest’s website to read the full article: “Nader Tehrani Is Literally Shaping the Future of Architecture.”

Photos by Nic Lehoux

Associate Professor An Te Liu is working with Daniels Alumus Graeme Stewart (MArch 2007) to brighten up Kensington Market.

Writes Dave LeBlanc for the Globe and Mail:

What do you get when you mix the following? An architect with a particular interest in “tower renewal” – the science of reskinning 1950s-1970s buildings to be more energy efficient – who also works at one of the city’s top heritage firms; a world-class sculptor who has had solo exhibitions in Berlin, Shanghai, Los Angeles and New York; a condominium board filled with artists, educators, architects, engineers, writers and other creative types; and a wall that didn’t exactly look good after some much-needed structural repairs.

You get a new gateway to Kensington Market on the east wall of the Kensington Market Lofts at 160 Baldwin St.

“This will be his biggest public piece,” said Stewart of Liu’s design. A professor in the Master of Architecture program at the Daniels Faculty, Liu has been engaged in sculpture and installation work that explores issues of funtion, occupation, and cultural coding in the domestic and urban realms since 1999. A principal at ERA Architects, Stewart was a key initiator of the Tower Renewal Project, which examines the future of Toronto’s modern tower neighbourhoods, and a founding director of the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal.

Writes ERA on their website:

While not a tower renewal project, there are several aspects that have been informative for tower renewal endeavours. This has included:

• Detailed thinking about construction sequencing without displacing residents.
• Instituting a best practice approach to recladding of existing assemblies that takes into account long term durability, fire protection, improved insulation, and continuity of vapour barriers.
• Showing how an initially functional imperative can be leveraged to provide a design approach with additional meaning for the residents and the community.

Visit the Globe and Mail’s website to read the full article by Dave LeBlanc.

Image, top: Artist An Te Liu once painted a postwar bungalow ‘Monopoly green’ as part of the ‘Leona Drive Project’ in Willowdale, Ont.

Associate Professor Aziza Chaouni will help revive the Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex — a historic site of modern architecture in Morocco — thanks to a generous grant from the Getty Foundation.

The Foundation’s Keeping It Modern grant was established to support important works of modern architecture around the world. Chaouni led an initiative to preserve the Complex,  built in 1957 by Moroccan-born French architect Jean-François Zevaco as a gathering place in “a Moroccan oasis where ancient mineral springs have drawn visitors for centuries.”

The project to preserve the Thermal Bath Complex’s architecture and reopen it as a dynamic tourist center will be led in collaboration with the Fondation Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion (CDG), which owns the site; the CDG’s hospitality branch HRM, and the following experts: Robert Silman and Eytan Solomon (Conservation engineers); Karim Bennani (Engineer); Mohammed Boumeshouli (Lab); Salim Belemlih (Surveyor;, Andreea Muscurel (Photographer and film director); Camelia Bennani (Research assistant); and Aziza Chaouni, Veronica Gallego, Lamiss Ben El Haj and Zineb Tazi (Aziza Chaouni Projects).

Sidi Harazem is the first North African project to receive the Keeping it Modern Fund.

From The Getty Foundation’s website:

The Sidi Harazem Thermal Bath Complex represents a marriage of nature, public space, and modern architecture. Built four years after Moroccan independence, the complex is the ambitious statement of a new nation determined to create modern and forward-thinking gathering places for its citizens. In 1957, a state-owned pension fund commissioned Moroccan-born French architect Jean-François Zevaco to design the site. Opened a year later to widespread acclaim, the complex is Zevaco's largest work and marks an early example of concepts that he would revisit throughout his prolific career.

By the 1980s the aging baths had waned in popularity and today only limited parts of the site are open to the public. The market, bungalows, and central courtyard—envisioned by Zevaco as the heart and soul of the site—remain closed indefinitely. The Fondation Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion (CDG), which owns the site, is committed to reopening it fully in response to a renewed interest in the oasis. By using Getty funds to create a conservation plan to inform future interventions, the CDG can preserve the complex's architectural significance while allowing careful adaptations that will improve the location as a tourist center. The resulting plan will create a preservation roadmap that puts the site's owner and the local community on the path to revitalizing and restoring the baths to their full functionality.

For more information visit the Aziza Chaouni Projects website.

Earlier this year, Bachelor of Arts, Architectural Studies student Jan Doroteo was awarded first prize for the Berkeley Essay Competition — an endowment established by the Department of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley.

“Winning the Berkeley Prize has given me a sense of agency to investigate architecture that I find inclusive and considerate, and the confidence to determine what I value as 'good' architecture,” says Doroteo about winning the prize. “In my future career, I hope to practice architecture through words, writing, analysis, and exploration.”

The essay, titled “The Little Pinoy Sari-Sari Store: Of Otherness and Belonging in a Global Diaspora,” explores the importance of small convenience stores in the Philippines and more specifically in Filipino ethnoburbs in Toronto.

From Doroteo's essay abstract on the Berkeley Essay Competition website:

“[Sari-Sari Stores] are numerous, found in many cities worldwide, and aesthetically unexceptional. Yet I've come to declare these stores as a legitimate, if not symbolic and rhetorically impactful, architectural type with a program that isn’t just commerce. They are significant as safe-spaces of ‘otherness.’ They allow Filipinos to exercise their ethnic identity in the complicated and contradictory way that it functions as neo-colonial subjects.”

Since 1999, the Berkeley Essay Prize has asked questions critical to the discussion of the social art of architecture. This year, a total amount of $25,000 USD was spread out among one First Prize, one Second Prize, one Third Prize, and one Fourth Prize Winner, and two Honorable Mentions. Semifinalists for the Prize are invited to submit proposals for funding to travel to an architecturally-significant destination of their choosing to participate in a hands-on service-oriented situation.

Visit the Berkeley Prize Essay Competition website to read Doroteo's essay.

Associate Professor Zeynep Çelik Alexander was recently featured in GSAPP Conversations – a podcast produced in partnership between ArchDaily and Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Alexander discusses her ongoing research on the history of modern architecture since the Enlightenment and the meaning of "Gestaltung,” the need for developing new language suitable for contemporary practice, and the role of architecture schools within the context of research universities.

“We haven’t yet developed the language with which to understand the world that we live in,” says Alexander to Columbia GSAPP student Jarrett Ley.

GSAPP Conversations is a podcast series designed to offer a window onto the expanding field of contemporary architectural practice. Each episode pivots around discussions on current projects, research, and obsessions of a diverse group of invited guests at Columbia, from both emerging and well-established practices.

Alexander recently published the book Kinaesthetic Knowing: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Modern Design (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2017), which “offers the first major intellectual history of kinaesthetic knowing and its influence on the formation of modern art and architecture and especially modern design education.”

From the University of Chicago Press website:

Focusing in particular on Germany, and tracing the story up to the start of World War II, Alexander reveals the tension between intellectual meditation and immediate experience to be at the heart of the modern discourse of aesthetics, playing a major part in the artistic and teaching practices of numerous key figures of the period, including Heinrich Wölfflin, Hermann Obrist, August Endell, László Moholy-Nagy, and many others. Ultimately, she shows, kinaesthetic knowing did not become the foundation of the human sciences, as some of its advocates had hoped, but it did lay the groundwork—at such institutions as the Bauhaus—for modern art and architecture in the twentieth century.

When Isaac Seah started his Honours Bachelors of Arts degree, Architectural Studies at U of T in 2015, his goal was to land a summer job at an architecture firm by third year. This summer, his goal became reality when he was offered a placement at Perkins+Will. During his first two years at U of T, Seah held positions at the GRIT Lab, the Entrepreneurship Hatchery, The Varsity, and Shift Magazine. He also co-founded a start-up called Placey — a virtual reality visualization tool for architecture. Each of these positions provided an opportunity for him to use his skills in design and computer science, topics he enthusiastically writes about for his personal blog on LinkedIn. Honours Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies student Josie Northern Harrison (HBA 2017) met up with Seah to chat about his summer job at Perkins+Will, the value of extracurricular activities, and the benefits of creating a start-up.

Tell me about your summer job at Perkins+Will.
My summer internship encompasses a lot of different aspects of architecture; it’s a way for undergraduate students to explore the design industry in general. I’ve been involved in designing a donor wall (a wall that recognizes donors and alumni), and I’ve helped with feasibility studies for higher education buildings. For these studies, I mapped out the spaces for programs in a building to figure out what activities we could fit into a certain space. For example, sometimes I analyze how many labs can fit onto the third floor of a building. We go through multiple explorations based on the programmatic requirements that the client gives us. The exercise is very similar to one of the second year architecture studio courses, but this project is much more technical in the sense that we have to follow code requirements and the structure of a building. For the studio course, we were asked to design a study space that reflected the architectural qualities of the Goldring Centre and Robarts Library. From there, we identified the programs we could fit onto the site, and we were given height requirements, as well as different site conditions that we had to respect.

What inspired you to apply for a summer job at Perkins+Will and how did you go about it?
I was offered my summer position at Perkins+Will because of my start-up called Placey, which I created with Amin Azad and Freddy Zheng. Placey is a virtual reality visualization tool for architecture. To develop our start-up, we participated in the U of T Entrepreneurship Hatchery program last summer. The program allows students to spend a summer developing a product, and if it’s good enough then you are allowed to present your idea to potential investors. We developed a prototype, and went through a series of exercises to identify who our target market would be. We eventually found that our potential clientele could be architecture firms.

We went through 16 weeks of pitch presentations. Every two to three weeks, we would pitch our idea to seasoned entrepreneurs, professors, and other people well-versed in pitching strategies. As we pitched to more people, we became more relaxed and more organic in our presentation. There were several firms interested in listening to our pitch, and Perkins+Will was one of the companies interested in collaborating with Placey. After we presented, the representative from Perkins+Will asked me to send in my resume to be considered for the co-op placement.

Out of all the firms that I researched, Perkins+Will offered a developed research environment. They are highly involved in technological pursuits and research which they publish in their own journal. For example, they often collaborate with Autodesk and create computational tools like space plan generators. My minor in computer science allows me to better appreciate these research efforts. Perkins+Will has that vision and direction of innovation. They serve as practitioners of the architecture field, but try to innovate and bring in people from computer science, materials engineering, and other fields as well. That was something that I got really excited about because it offers an opportunity to imagine practicing as an architect while keeping an active interest in research.

You’ve worked with the GRIT Lab, The Varsity, and Shift Magazine. Did these positions help you with what you’re working on now and maybe what you want to work on in the future?
For Shift I was a Website Designer; for GRIT Lab I helped develop the Performance Index; and for The Varsity I was a Website Developer. There are many different types of architects; for example, you could emphasize the arts aspect, or you could emphasize the technology and optimization aspect like Norman Foster. My involvement with different groups at U of T allowed me to have a taste from these different perspectives. The experience at the Entrepreneurship Hatchery was eye-opening because it helped me understand the potential for computer science, and how helpful programming is to every single field of study. Shift Magazine was my entry into understanding the community at the Daniels Faculty, and how we could perceive architecture through an arts and humanities lens. With the GRIT Lab, I explored the technology perspective: how we assess the performance of green roofs and what kind of tools we can develop to explain this information to the industry. The Varsity pushed that thinking a little further, but it was less about architecture and more about the graphic design, and it was a campus-wide organization, which exposed me to some aspects of organizational thinking.

What advice do you have for Daniels students?
I would highly recommend the Entrepreneurship Hatchery program to anyone who has a chance to do it. The Hatchery experience helped me to adopt a more systematic way of thinking, defined my public speaking skills, and exposed me to the business mindset that explores the value of a product. It’s especially effective for architecture students because we are essentially in a service industry: we have to respect our client’s wishes while convincing them to choose the wisest option without too much pressure.

For the first-year students, I would encourage them to explore the diverse and established ecosystem of research going on at U of T. Those research avenues are places where you can learn about ideas relevant to architecture. If you’re willing to be exposed to these topics early on in your education then you’ll be in a very good position to realize that architecture is more than just drawing a section or a perspective. Architecture can become very exciting when we think about how we can integrate different fields like computer science, engineering, biology, and visual studies. My advice is to go to other faculties and explore the different majors and minors that the school offers.

Associate Professor Shane Williamson has been appointed Director of the Master of Architecture Program for a three-year term effective July 1, 2017.  Williamson’s research and creative practice employ advanced digital tools as a means to critically engage/transform traditional modes of construction and tectonic expression. His work seeks to situate digital fabrication and wood construction in a broader cultural context and link theories of design and technology to sustainable building strategies. He is a Principal of Williamson Williamson Inc., a Toronto-based architecture and design studio that operates at multiple scales ranging from furniture design to master planning. One of the recurring themes within his (and Betsy Williamson’s) studio’s body of work is the notion of “Incremental Urbanism” which recognizes the possibilities of intensification latent in the morphology of urban fabric.

Williamson’s built, projected, and speculative work has been widely-published and has garnered significant awards and accolades, including the Ronald J. Thom Award for Early Design Achievement and the Professional Prix de Rome for Architecture from the Canada Council of the Arts, the Emerging Architectural Practice Award from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, the Young Architects Prize and the Emerging Voices Award from the Architecture League of New York, and various design/construction awards, including awards from Residential Architect, a Journal of the American Institute of Architects, the Ontario Association of Architects, the Canadian Green Building Council, and the Canadian Wood Council.

Williamson brings with him his interest in our Master of Architecture program’s relationship to the City of Toronto and the broader profession, and his focus on the nexus between architecture, urbanism, and digital (and traditional) modes of representation and fabrication.

It’s been a decade since Toronto’s building boom — which saw cultural institutions such as the ROM, the National Ballet School, the Toronto Film Festival, and OCAD, among others — transform the city with new works of architecture. Chief among these new buildings was the Art Gallery of Ontario, whose Frank Gehry-designed expansion was completed in 2008.

So how is the addition holding up? The Toronto Star spoke to AGO employees and local architects — including Daniels Faculty Dean Richard Sommer — about the transformation and how it came to be.
 

Writes Nick Patch:

Compared to the audacious scratch-made classics Gehry had recently turned out to worldwide acclaim — 1997’s astonishing Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, of course, or 2003’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles — he was going to be, in some ways, restrained simply based on the realities of the site.

Yet several critics now believe those limiting circumstances ultimately benefited the project.

“Gehry was doing extremely high-budget, big-gesture projects at that point in his career, and this one didn’t allow for that,” said Richard Sommer, dean of the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. “He’s sometimes at his best when he has to do something scrappier.”
 

Visit the Toronto Star’s website to read the full article “Frank Gehry’s gift to Toronto gets better with age.”