How do networks of technology, resources, energy, transportation and culture operate in contexts as far-flung as Canada and Ghana? Are there similarities that might prove illuminating? Differences that could inspire new strategies? More broadly, how can architecture, landscape architecture and urban design become catalysts for positive change at the scale of both communities and whole systems?

These were just a few of the questions on the minds of 14 University of Toronto students (both graduate and undergraduate) when they set out for West Africa this past July to take part in the Daniels Faculty’s summer studio in Kumasi, Ghana, the second-largest city in the African nation and a centre of Ashanti culture.

The two-week overseas course, conducted in collaboration with the Department of Architecture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), was part of a multiyear initiative seeking to exchange local knowledge among participants and to encourage cooperation on innovative and sustainable strategies for transforming communities and cities.

This year —the course’s second, following a collaborative online studio studying four communities in Canada and Ghana over six weeks last summer—the 14 students from U of T met up in Kumasi with approximately 20 students from KNUST.

“Last summer we looked at four sites: two in Ghana (Assin Kushea and Kyebi) and two in southern Ontario (Innisfil and York South Weston),” says Associate Professor Jeannie Kim, who taught the Summer 2023 course in Ghana and Toronto with Farida Abu-Bakare, a Sessional Lecturer at the Daniels Faculty and the director of global practice at the architecture and urban design firm WXY.

“With mixed teams from both schools,” says Kim, “students examined the hard and soft infrastructure of each site while taking into consideration the ambitious future-oriented plans for all of them. Despite the very different contexts, the teams found that some of the challenges and opportunities were similar, and we had a very productive series of discussions that we sought to build upon this summer and will continue to study in subsequent summers.”

This year, what the contingent from Canada experienced collectively, Kim says, “was a valuable cultural immersion in parts of Ghana that most international tourists do not visit, as well as privileged access to various stakeholders in these contexts and the opportunity to better understand what the practices of architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism look like in the West African context.”

Moreover, “we were very fortunate to spend time with the individuals who live with and work on these issues and to get some sense of what practice is [there] and how it is similar to or different from what we know in a North American setting.”

The highly immersive nature of the trip, which took in the Ghanaian capital of Accra as well as Kumasi, Kyebi and Assin Kushea, was especially appealing to second-year MARC student Mo Bayati, who “was interested in studying the typology of buildings in Ghana and the vernacular approach towards construction.”

The course, he feels, “allowed us to think about bottom-up opportunities for improving cities. And it was amazing to see and to hear from the people and institutions involved in designing and overseeing not only cities, but also forestry and education. [Accessing them] allowed us to understand both their problems and their strategies.”

For Leila Rashidian, currently in her third year of the undergraduate program in Architectural Studies, the people she met throughout the course, from her fellow KNUST studio mates to Ghanaian royalty, also stood out.

“Thanks to our hosts in Kyebi and Assin Kushea, an experience that was exclusive to this trip was the opportunity to meet and interact with the chiefs and kings of these regions. I would never have imagined receiving this honour if I had visited these places on a personal trip.”

Rashidian was also impressed by the multiyear structure of the studio, especially the ability to build on past research. “Based on the previous year’s research in Assin Kushea and Kyebi, we could focus on subjects such as healthcare, mining, cocoa products, drainage and many others. This meant that I could concentrate on one system and create a unique project based on the context and my first-hand observation.”

Bayati, too, was struck by the cumulative aspect of the Ghanaian studio. “After the trip,” he says, “I created a photo journal documenting the landscape, the building typologies, the building materials and the everyday interactions in urban and village settings.

“Also, I made a short video of our full time there. The video examines the urban fabric and the street life of all the places we visited. I would like the journal to help students next year have a clear understanding of the context and build upon different research topics presented in the sections.”

The Summer Studio in Ghana was one of four global studios offered by the Daniels Faculty in 2023. Other courses included studies in Athens, Greece; Berlin, Germany; and Fez, Morocco. A domestic studio also took place on Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador.

How can development, transition and growth in a city still accommodate urban memory and a connection to the past? How does the visual bias present in an image refer to the biases of the general public? How can closely reading the history of ownership, materiality and economic deployment of a site and its material history reveal the forces that have shaped the city?  

These are just a few of the questions posed by 2022-2023 thesis students in the Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies (BAAS) program. A new website serves as an online exhibition showcasing a sampling of the richly diverse creative work of students in the program’s three Specialist Streams: Design, Technology, and History and Theory.

View the 2022-2023 BAAS Thesis website here.

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

For the 2022-2023 academic year, the themes were: 

• The Digital, Nicholas Hoban, Technology Stream 
• On Generosity, Laura Miller, Design Stream 
• Visualizing Planetarity, Simon Rabyniuk, History and Theory Stream; Design Stream 

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

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

Student work featured in banner image:

1) The Architecture of Impermanence: Rebuilding in Post-Disaster Japan
Student: Hanna Kamehiro, Design Stream
Advisor: Simon Rabyniuk

2) In Defense of Urban Play
Student: Adela Hua, Design Stream
Advisor: Laura Miller

3) Machine-Knitted Structures and Material Variability in Textile Construction Automation
Student: Habiba Elezaby, Technology Stream
Advisor: Nicholas Hoban

4) Unprompting: Text-to-Image Software’s ‘Understanding’ of Non-Western Contexts
Student: Raymelene Apil, Technology Stream
Advisor: Nicholas Hoban

5) Pulling and Pushing the Envelope: Reimagining Toronto’s Failing Glass Towers
Student: Massimo Giannone, Design Stream
Advisor: Laura Miller

6) Planetary Voids and Architectural Solids
Student: Marly Ibrahim, Design Stream
Advisor: Simon Rabyniuk

This past summer 14 undergraduate and three graduate students led by Assistant Professor Petros Babasikas investigated Athens as a living laboratory of urban change—testing contemporary theories of urbanism against different sites and itineraries. 

In constant transformation since its foundation as the capital of modern Greece in 1834, “the urban fabric, landscape and publics of Athens have been an unpredictable, diverse and complex laboratory of change,” says Babasikas.

The course considered a genealogy of architectural projects against the ancient building typologies, walkscapes and water networks of Athens today. Over three weeks, students explored, documented and navigated the city via a series of seven routes or “walking seminars” that focused on specific Athenian commons—squares, gardens, walkways, buildings, monuments, waterscapes and ancient sites—to produce a set of composite drawings and images curated in a travel log.  

“Exploring public space, learning through observation and walking, became the essence of the experience,” says Haseena Doost, a fourth-year student in architectural studies, who participated in the studio abroad. 

The walking seminars immersed the students in Athenian history and modern life. The itinerary included:

• Walk 01: Core, Erasures, Bricollage - moving through Neoclassical, Ottoman and Byzantine Athenian monuments and ruins in the Historic Center discussing histories that have been erased.
• Walk 02: Walkscapes + Ideology - ascending from Kerameikos' archaeological excavation to the public parks and hills of Areopagos, Filoppappou, and the Muses, documenting a unique landscape reconstruction of routes, walls, gates, canopies, floorscapes and rocks.
• Walk 03: Seven Versions of a Monument - discussing the different lives of the Acropolis, looking at the tectonics of three catastrophes, two reconstructions, a mythic path and one forgotten landfill.
• Walk 04: Domino Urbanism - crossing the urban density, publics and migrant community spaces of Patisia and Kypseli within the Polykatoikia's incremental, flexible, mixed-use typology.
• Walk 05: Civics, Basements, Arcades - cutting across the urban blocks of post-war Athens, through ground and basement, commercial passageways, hidden among the city's public landmarks.
• Walk 06: Drosscapes, Pickup Ball, and Plato - wandering across the streets, post-industrial infrastructures and neighborhood politics of the Olive Grove, Kolonos, Sepolia, and Plato's Academy.
• Walk 07: Waterscapes and the Non-Coast - following natural and channeled Athenian riverbeds, buried streams, and sewers ending on three expansive, coastal public spaces-under-transformation, revealing political, ecological, and climate emergencies.

“This immersive approach allowed us to directly observe and understand the intricate layers of Athens' urban fabric—both its physical structures and the intangible aspects that have continually shaped the city's evolution,” says Kenny Vo, a third-year student in architectural studies, for whom the trip marked a first visit to Europe.

“Through our studies, it became apparent that Athens serves as a representative case study for many other contemporary cities as well. By closely examining these elements, we gathered insights that were crucial for our travel documentation, focusing on specific facets of Athens' public spaces,” he says.

The X-Athenas: Public Space Stories in Contemporary Athens course, workshops and presentations were hosted by the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMST). 

Following their on-site documentation, the students formed groups and focused on a single, dormant Athenian public space advised by interdisciplinary experts, including EMST curators. The group projects took the form of a one-week design charette where students produced design proposals for the reconstruction of a public space to the north of the museum, “transforming it into a public garden and civic extension of the building toward the center of Athens,” says Babasikas. 

“Something that surprised me about the course was how much I enjoyed working in a group on a design project,” says Grace McKibbon, a fourth-year student in architectural studies. “I found that because we all had different study focuses for our travel logs, we had different approaches to designing our public space project. I thought that the ability to bounce ideas off of each other and build off of our different perspectives led to a richer final product.” 

McKibbon and Doost, along with their fellow group members William Li and Sherry Zhu, identified an unused underground space that could be revitalized for public use. Their proposal aimed to uncover this space, creating a direct entrance to the museum with a bridge connecting it via stairs and an elevator. The envisioned urban park included a café and performance area, as well as a waterfall to mitigate noise from a busy intersection nearby.  

“My research concentrated on the memory of water in Athens, emphasizing its significance. Our design incorporated a waterfall flowing into a splash pad, symbolically connecting to the Illisos River beneath the EMST museum,” says Doost. “Despite Athens' distance from the coastline, water, facilitated by hydro infrastructure, remains a vital part of its history and contemporary challenges.” 

McKibbon's travel logs focused on how plans can create spaces in an urban environment, and she brought that approach to the design: “I found it really interesting to study plants in a different growing region than Toronto and how the types of plants that can grow in Athens affect how public space is used," she says. "In our site specifically, one of the features was a canopy that spanned most of the park with vines growing on top of it to provide shade, which is something that we saw on one of our walks through Dimitris Pikionis’ paths around the Acropolis.” 

Other teams in the design charette envisioned the creation of large-scale canopies from the main volume of the museum—these structures extended the space of the museum to the north with outdoor cultural and play spaces accessible by the public. Students also designed covered areas accessing the nearby subway station and underground parking facilities and created direct connections with a public park. (See a selection of project images above.)

Vo’s final project (seen below) took a different approach and centered on capturing the essence of everyday life in Athens, primarily using film photography.

“The project represented a collection of memories from my brief time in the city, viewed from the perspective of a traveler seeking to understand the concept of familiarity in a foreign place,” Vo says.

“What initially seemed transient and fleeting revealed itself to be shared, cyclic experiences of everyday life. This exercise allowed me to gain deeper insights into the lives of ordinary people, set against the backdrop of Athens' coexisting spaces,” he says. “It was an exploration of the city's layered history, capturing moments that ranged from the intense and mundane to the informal and intimate.” 

While their experiences abroad and approach to the final project differed, Doost, McKibbon and Vo all agree that the trip is a highlight of their time at Daniels—and continues to have an impact on how they view public space today. 

“Being able to see all of the layers of the city, whether it be seeing a portion of the Athens city walls in the basement of a building or visiting a Byzantine chapel built from remnants of classical buildings, was what made the course the most engaging, and really displayed how it is a city that has a lot of history but is constantly moving forward and changing,” says McKibbon. 

“X-Athenas was unforgettable,” Vo adds. “Although it lasted only three weeks, it felt like a lifetime of experiences packed into a brief period.” 

The Summer Studio Abroad in Athens, Greece was one of four global studios offered by the Daniels Faculty in 2023. Other courses included studies in Kumasi, Ghana; Berlin, Germany; and Fez, Morocco. A domestic studio also took place on Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Image credits: 1) Banner image - Young-Mi Kim; 2-3) Petros Babasikas; 4-10) Slideshow of X-Athenas student work; 11) Group photo - Sofia Frick; 12-13) Petros Babasikas; 14-16) final project by Kenny Vo.

Ja Architecture Studio, the Office of Adrian Phiffer and artist/designer Tom Ngo are among the Faculty-related contributors to this month’s Drawing For Food auction in aid of maintaining healthy food supplies to vulnerable Toronto residents.

“Since the pandemic, homelessness in Toronto has become more visible, but there is a lot of invisible homelessness and food precarity,” say the auction’s organizers. “Drawing for Food leverages the power of architectural drawing and spatial illustration to advocate for the needs of our most vulnerable community members. The auction…solicits drawings from designers and architects in support of social causes,” with the entire proceeds from this month’s going to a Toronto organization, Seeds of Hope, assisting community members experiencing homelessness, precarious housing and food shortages.

“Lots of architecture studio briefs have taken on themes such as affordable housing,” say the auction team leaders, which include assistant professor Adrian Phiffer of the Daniels Faculty, architects Stephanie Davidson and Georg Rafailidis of Davidson Rafailidis and fourth-year TMU student Eira Roberts. “However, this project aims to leverage our architectural work to help vulnerable community members more directly.”

More than two dozen firms and individuals have donated drawings to the auction, including all of the team members above, Daniels Faculty sessional lecturer Tom Ngo (a widely exhibited visual artist and a project architect at Kongats Architects) and Ja Architecture Studio (the Toronto-based practice co-founded by Daniels Faculty assistant professor Behnaz Assadi with architect and alumnus Nima Javidi).

Others on the list of international contributors include Fala Atelier of Portugal, NOMOS of Spain, Drawing Architecture Studio of China and Studio Märkli of Switzerland, to name only a few.

For now, the drawings are viewable as a gallery on the auction’s website. The auction will go live at 9:00 a.m. ET on November 24 and conclude at midnight ET on December 1.

All of the drawings have the same starting price of $100 Canadian and buyers will make their bids on the website. Top bidders will be contacted via e-mail on December 2 and asked to donate their bid amount directly to Seeds of Hope using an online donation portal. Credit cards, Google Pay and PayPal will all be accepted.

Once payments have been processed, each donor will ship the drawing to the buyer. Drawing for Food will act as a go-between, hosting the website, taking any questions from bidders and verifying that bids have been donated so that tax receipts can be issued.

“The hope,” says the organizing team, “is to add to the collection of drawings with a new auction each year,” ideally generating funds for a different organization in Ontario or Western New York.

“A broader aim of this auction project,” team members add, “is to explore ways that architectural drawings can be used for public good. Realizing spatial projects of any scale typically relies on a financial backer: an owner, a client, an entity with a commercial interest, etc. The interests of the moneyed participant drive, or at least influence, the interests of the spatial project. But the instrument of drawing, we argue, is entirely ours. It belongs to us, and as designers we can decide what and how we draw, who we draw for, and who benefits from our work.”

Drawings in banner by 1. Ja Architecture Studio. 2. Office of Adrian Phiffer. 3. Tom Ngo. 4. Fala Atelier. 5. Nathalie Du Pasquier. 6. Kemetic Blue. 7. Studio Märkli. Drawing for Food logo on homepage by Claudia Draghia.

Celebrated architect Douglas Cardinal will be giving a lunchtime lecture at the Daniels Faculty on Thursday, November 16.

Entitled “Indigenous Principles for Architecture,” the talk will take place from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in Room 200 of the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent.

To register for the lecture, at which lunch will be provided, click here. The talk is free and open to all Daniels Faculty students and instructors.

In addition to designing such iconic buildings as the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau (pictured above) and the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., Dr. Cardinal has been a long-time advocate for the dignity and advancement of Indigenous peoples and last year joined the Daniels Faculty as Decanal Advisor on Indigenous Knowledge.

In his talk on November 16, he will outline how adopting an Indigenous worldview can guide architects and planners in the creation of sustainable built environments that harmonize with nature for at least “seven generations,” the traditional Indigenous benchmark for decision-making and stewardship. Among his key focuses will be planning.

“The planning that cities and communities are conducting presently,” he says, “is not only not sustainable, but destructive to all life, including our own. Indigenous principles offer an innovative way [of building] that is rooted in their traditions [and] accounts for all life-givers that the land hosts, so plants, animals and humans may have a future together.”

One of the projects that Dr. Cardinal will cite in his talk is the 2017 planning work he conducted for the Ojibway community of Stony Point in Ontario. Previously, the land in question had been occupied by Canada’s Department of National Defense as a military training base. “I will show the multifaceted analysis and holistic integration necessary to reach a sustainable community,” he says of his work, which at Stony Point “integrated all my life experience” in terms of both process and result.

Prior to signing on as Decanal Advisor on Indigenous Knowledge, Dr. Cardinal was the Faculty’s 2020-2021 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chair in Architectural Design. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Toronto in June of 2022.

Last spring Assistant Professor Gareth Long and eight undergraduate Daniels Faculty students traveled by air, land and sea to Fogo Island. Known as an island off an island, Fogo Island is an outport community: a remote coastal settlement unique to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

“For many students this is a completely new and foreign landscape in which to find themselves,” says Long. “Though still in Canada, it couldn’t be more different to the experience of being in Toronto.”

The trip was the first of its kind in the visual studies program at the Daniels Faculty, and one that Long hopes to recreate in the future. Over the course of 10 days, students experienced the island through a series of seminars, fieldwork and visits with both artists-in-residence and locals.

In partnership with Fogo Island Arts, the students were introduced to an institution created with the conviction that art and artists have the capacity to instigate social change and offer new perspectives on issues of contemporary concern. Founded as an artists’ residency program, Fogo Island Arts is part of Shorefast, a registered Canadian charity with the mission to build economic and cultural resilience on Fogo Island, making it possible for local communities to thrive in the global economy. The Fogo Island Inn, designed by architect Todd Saunders, is also a Shorefast initiative and has become a globally recognizable travel destination while helping to secure a resilient economic future for Fogo Island.

“The visual studies students were invited in to not just witness, but become a part of this larger story, this larger social enterprise that has, since its inception, had art at the centre of its mission,” says Long. “Though it is highly specific to Fogo Island, it resonates with countless other places in the world."

For Satyam Mistry, a fourth-year architecture and visual studies student, Fogo Island’s reputation as an international art hub, "encouraged me to pursue the chance to visit a place I otherwise could not imagine having the opportunity to do so on my own.”

Here’s a snapshot of the trip’s itinerary:

• Visits with international artists like Liam Gillick, Cooking Sections, Maria Lisogoroskaya (of Assemble) and Armand Yervent Tufenkian
• Tours of the Fogo Island Inn and the four artist studios, plus visits to the Fogo Island Workshops, the Fogo Island Clay Studios, SaltFire Pottery studio, Peggy White’s guitar studio and the JK Contemporary Art Gallery
• Student presentations on the Fogo Island Arts’ monographs
• Discussions of public artworks on the island Liam Gillick’s “A Variability Quantifier: The Fogo Island Red Weather Station,” and “The Great Auk” by Todd McGrain
• Shared meals with locals, hikes to sites such as Brimstone Head (one of the four corners of the "Flat Earth”) and participation in a rug hooking workshop (more than once)

“It was really shocking getting to the island and immediately being hit with so many things to do,” says Olive Wei, a fourth-year student in visual studies. “After the 10 days it felt as if we had left the island with our to-do list barely halfway done. Everything about the island, the landscape, people and history all invite you back to stay longer and longer,” added Wei, who did stay on after the course for a six-week summer internship on the island.

While the syllabus was full of opportunities to experience what Fogo Island is known for, Long says the emphasis in this course was on communal learning, collaboration and the shared testing of ideas. “I hope some found that being together, thinking together, experiencing this newness together, was the most enriching part and that this might lead to new ways of working and being together in the future. That hospitality takes many forms. That the remote doesn’t have to be remote."

These takeaways ring true in the experiences of the students. “As the trip progressed it became clear to me how much dialogue and learning could be generated simply from the act of being together as a cohort with both my peers and instructors,” says Mistry.

Throughout their time on Fogo Island, students were asked what knowledge they would be able to bring back from the island—how can one take the island off of the island? This question formed the basis of the exhibition, Sediments, that the group produced on their return to Toronto.

"As the question silently lingered throughout the trip and plagued our minds, we had reached our last day and did not get closer to an answer. It was after our departure we had realized we were taking the island within us,” Wei wrote in the exhibition statement. “Sediments attempts to honour the depth of knowledge and history embodied on Fogo Island.”

The presented works investigated attachment to place, remembering, documentation, and intimacy—and a feeling of home about a place one may not have been yet. “The best way one can take the island off the island is through sharing stories of the people, life, and togetherness one experiences while they’re there,” Wei says. “The trip is unique to everyone which lends itself to feeling like a personal, intimate memory.”

Sediments, an exhibition of visual studies work from Summer Studies Abroad: Fogo Island, was on view in the North Borden Building in September 2023. Featuring work from Auden Tura, Chloe Chukwunyelum, David Zolya, Ella Spitzer-Stephan, Gareth Long, Joy Li, Mia Coschignano, Olive Wei, Rahul Sehjipaul—the Daniels Faculty’s digital fabrication technologist, who supported the group on their trip—and Satyam Mistry. 

All images in this story are courtesy Satyam Mistry.

The University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is an unparalleled centre for learning and research, offering graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, forestry, urban design and visual studies, as well as unique undergraduate programs that use architecture and art as lenses through which students may pursue a broader education.   

Situated in the heart of Toronto—a hub for creative practice and home to many of Canada’s leading architects, landscape architects, urban designers, foresters, artists and curators—the Faculty focuses on interdisciplinary training and research in architecture, art and their allied practices, with a mission to educate students, prepare professionals and cultivate scholars who will play a leading role in creating more culturally engaged, ecologically sustainable environments.

U of T, which year after year ranks among the top universities in the world, provides a framework of knowledge and expertise on which all Faculty members may draw. Additionally, the environment in which our students learn and congregate is as unique as our program offerings.

The Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent is a bold work of architecture and landscape on a prominent urban site between U of T’s St. George campus and the vibrant centre of Toronto. Across Spadina Crescent, the North and South Borden buildings (home to our visual studies programs) and the Earth Sciences Centre (HQ for forestry studies) complete the Faculty’s trifecta of sites. 

To learn first-hand how you can study at the Daniels Faculty, visit our campus throughout November for the following information-gathering events.

November 7 and 8: Graduate Open House

Stop by the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent or connect via Zoom on Tuesday the 7th and Wednesday the 8th to learn about the Faculty’s graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design and forest conservation, as well as our research stream programs: our PhD in Architecture, Landscape, and Design, our Master of Science in Forestry, and our PhD in Forestry.

Learn, too, how to prepare for the application process, and pick up information on funding, financial aid and awards.  

Four tours of the Daniels Building will also be offered on Tuesday, November 7. 

To register in advance for this Graduate Open House and the individual tours, click here.

November 16: MFC Program Open House

Learn about the Faculty’s Master of Forest Conservation program—either in-person or online—by joining Assistant Professor Sally Krigstin, MFC Program Coordinator, for a presentation on the subject. The in-person session will take place at 3:00 p.m. in Room ES 1016B of the Earth Sciences Centre. For further Zoom, dial-in or other access, contact Laura Lapchinski, Program Administrator, at laura.lapchinski@daniels.utoronto.ca.

If you can’t make it on the 16th, recordings of the sessions will be made available. For more information, please visit the Daniels Forestry website.

November 23: U of T Fall Campus Day 2023 

U of T’s annual fall event for future undergrads, Fall Campus Day provides the opportunity for prospective students, as well as their parents, families and friends, to visit the downtown St. George campus and get details about our programs, colleges, residences, student life and more. Campus and residence tours, mini-lectures and presentations from the different faculties will be running throughout the day.

At the Daniels Faculty, tours and information sessions will take place at 1 Spadina Crescent from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Join us then to learn more about our undergraduate programs in Architectural Studies and Visual Studies, meet with faculty and students, tour Daniels Faculty facilities and more. 

Click here to register for the in-person FCD!

For more information on all three days, check out the Events page on the Daniels Faculty website.

Standing 7.5 metres tall and weighing three metric tons, The Lodestar is the British Columbia city of Kelowna’s newest civic landmark, animating a previously underused public plaza and serving as “a guide and a gateway” to a burgeoning mixed-use neighbourhood formerly defined by railway tracks, a mill and abandoned warehouses.

Located in North Kelowna, the recently completed wood structure, which has a radius of four metres at its base and includes a canopy, lighting and seating, was designed and executed by Toronto-based DS Studio, of which Daniels Faculty alumna and sessional lecturer Dina Sarhane is a founding partner, along with multidisciplinary company Fishtnk and architectural consultant Tom Svilans.

The Lodestar was the top choice in a 2018 design competition, and functions as both “a place maker and a shining example of how an age-old material can be digitally modified to suit contemporary needs,” according to the project team.

“We summarized what we absolutely needed to make this a successful public space that draws people to it,” says Sarhane, who holds a Bachelor of Architectural Science degree from Carleton University (where she is also a professor of urban design) and a Master of Architecture degree from U of T. “The three necessary components were: an enclosed structure for protection and to bring the massiveness of the city’s scale down to the human scale, a colonnade to define space and signal that something special is happening here, and a marker so that the gathering space can be seen from afar.” 

Posted just outside a new RCMP station, the sculpture is made from FSC-certified and laminated Yellow Alaskan Cedar (a carbon-negative material) as well as custom-fabricated steel braces. 

Its design, says the project team, was not predetermined—the resultant shape was driven by exploring the strength and capacity of the wood. Through an iterative process, the legs and cells of the piece were gradually stretched and pulled into the augmented straight and curved pieces now in place. 

“Repeat prototyping and testing was key, as was developing strategies for custom joinery and detail resolution,” says Svilans.

Only braced where necessary, The Lodestar gives a nod to the history of Kelowna’s timber industry, with its nearly vertical legs suggesting tree trunks that coalesce into a canopy overhead.

Adding to the drama of the soaring structure is a carefully considered lighting system composed of LEDs tucked into the ground. Their positioning illuminates the interior faces of the installation’s components while also creating exterior silhouettes. 

The result, says one team member, is akin to “a campfire in a dark forest,” with attendant warm embrace and safe locus for gathering.

Photos by Andrew Latreille

The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto is proud to announce that ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, an Indigenous-led exhibition organized by and first presented at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal, will be on view in the Architecture and Design Gallery at 1 Spadina Crescent from October 25, 2023 – March 22, 2024.

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home was co-curated by Joar Nango (a Norway-based Sámi architect and artist), Taqralik Partridge (Associate Curator, Indigenous Art - Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario), Jocelyn Piirainen (Associate Curator, National Gallery of Canada) and Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director of Research at the CCA). The exhibition showcases installations by Indigenous designers and artists, reflecting on how Arctic Indigenous communities relate to land and create empowered, self-determined spaces of home and belonging.

Through the exhibition, as well as its accompanying publication and programming, ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home aims to have long-term impact, opening new forms of dialogues and ways of thinking about Northern Indigenous practices of designing and building that are not normally considered in the canons of architecture.

“Towards Home recognizes that architectural design in this country has been generally insensitive to Indigenous peoples’ traditions and cultures,” says Jeannie Kim, Associate Professor at the Daniels Faculty and organizer of the Toronto exhibition. “Participating in this project, our Faculty hopes to broaden understandings, and to support our shared efforts towards fostering practices of land-based design.”

Work on view will include Taqralik Partridge and Tiffany Shaw’s The Porch, a transitional space unique to Northern living that welcomes Indigenous visitors into an institutional setting that has historically excluded them. Geronimo Inutiq’s I’m Calling Home presents a commissioned radio broadcast that recalls the central role that radio plays in both connecting Inuit communities and expediting colonialism. Nuna, an installation by asinnajaq (in conversation with Tiffany Shaw), is a tent-like structure that invites both sharing and reflection while evoking the four elements. Offernat (Votive Night) by Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson is an altar featuring a birch burl that evokes the burning of Sámi drums during Christianization in the 1700s.

The exhibition also facilitated the Futurecasting: Indigenous-led Architecture and Design in the Arctic workshop (co-curated Ella den Elzen and Nicole Luke) that brought together nine emerging architectural designers and duojars (craftpeope) to convene across Sapmi and Turtle Island to discuss what the future of design on Indigenous lands might become.

The full list of contributors includes: asinnajaq, Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson, Geronimo Inutiq, Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory. The original exhibition design was by Tiffany Shaw, Edmonton, with graphic design by FEED, Montreal.

The Exhibition Opening will take place on Wednesday, October 25. Additional updates and related programming will be announced soon.

Land Acknowledgement 

We wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years, it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. The land of 1 Spadina Crescent has been the home and an important trail of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. Spadina is synonymous with Ishpadinaa, meaning “a place on a hill” in Anishinaabe. 

Also, we are acutely aware as architects, that unjust settler strategies and logics denigrated Indigenous land and architecture, particularly harming Indigenous people’s ability to create safe places to call home. Today, many of the ways these lands are used conflict with Indigenous values, practices, and histories. The acknowledgement of past wrongs and current realities are only the beginning of redressing and improving conditions, and creating a more just built environment. 

Image captions: 1) Nuna, asinnajaq in conversation with Tiffany Shaw. qulliq, asinnajaq in conversation with Ludovic Boney and Tiffany Shaw. 2) J'appelle chez nous / I'm calling home / Uvatinni Uqallajunga, Geronimo Inutiq. 3) All images credit ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Vers chez soi / Towards Home exhibition view, 2022. Photos Mathieu Gagnon © CCA. 

The IDEAS Impact Award seeks to recognize Daniels Faculty students for their contributions towards advancing inclusion, decolonial work, equity, accessibility and sustainability at the Faculty or in external communities. 

Seeing the opportunity to recognize their peers for exemplary contributions in this space, the Faculty’s three student unions—the Architectural and Visual Studies Student Union (AVSSU), the Forestry Graduate Student Association (FGSA) and the Graduate Architecture Landscape and Design Student Union (GALDSU)—established the award during the 2022-2023 academic year with the support of the Office of the Assistant Dean, Equity Diversity and Inclusion.  

Nominations were reviewed by the Student Impact Award Committee, which was composed of representatives from AVSSU, FGSA, GALDSU and the Office of the Assistant Dean, Equity Diversity and Inclusion. The mandate of the selection committee is to help the Daniels Faculty advance values of equity and inclusion by ensuring that the candidates selected meet or exceed the award criteria. 

Each recipient of the IDEAS Impact Award is given the lifetime title of Impact Fellow and will join a growing network of students in support of their development as social impact advocates and change-makers.

Meet the inaugural cohort of Impact Fellows:

Oluwatamilore (Tami) Ayeye  

A fourth-year student in the Honours Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies program, Ayeye is recognized for his impact as a mentor for younger students, and his sincere efforts in facilitating these relationships to build community among Black students. Through his spirited work in Black Students in Design, Ayeye supports fellow students while making design and industry skills more accessible to budding Black designers. 

Megan Barrientos  

Barrientos, a Master of Architecture (MARC) student, is recognized for asking critical questions about race and design, her demonstration of her involvement in supporting BIPOC communities, her responsiveness and spirited advocacy in the face of rising racial discrimination, and her honouring and support of Asian communities during critical times. 

Gal Volosky Fridman 

A third-year MARC student, Fridman is recognized for her commitment toward finding ways to create spaces that facilitate appropriate and meaningful experiences for the elderly population, and her efforts toward navigating a sincere and personal connection and new insights on larger global demographic trends. 

Farwa Mumtaz 

Mumtaz, a recent graduate of the MARC program, is recognized for her efforts to facilitate meaningful connections and mentorship between students of all backgrounds while navigating the unforeseen challenges brought on by the pandemic, and for her sincere and fierce commitment to building meaningful relationships and honouring Muslim women and the Muslim community at large. 

Emilie Tamtik  

A third-year MARC student, Tamtik is recognized for facilitating a space for students to navigate unconventional and innovative modes of fashion design and production, her efforts to ask critical questions about the life of materials, and her work in planning and executing the Victoria College Environmental Fashion Show, demonstrating tangible impacts through sustainable design practices and honouring the creativity and activism of student designers.