A retrospective exhibition showcasing work that came out of the ROB|ARCH conference held simultaneously at the Daniels Faculty and at TMU last year is currently on view at InterAccess Gallery in Toronto.

In May 2024, some of the world’s top robotics researchers gathered at both schools to examine key currents in robotic art and architecture. Led by Maria Yablonina, Paul Howard Harrison, Nicholas Hoban, Zachary Mollica and Brady Peters of the Faculty and by Jonathon Anderson of Toronto Metropolitan University, the ROB|ARCH 2024 conference included, among its programming, eight hands-on robotics workshops run over three days. 

Work from each of those workshops is on view in the InterAccess show, which runs until April 5. Entitled Beyond Optimization: ROB|ARCH Retrospective, the exhibition has been led by Anderson, Hoban and Mollica.

On Wednesday, April 2, a closing reception will take place between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. at InterAccess, which is located at 32 Lisgar Street. All are welcome to attend.

A free public event showing participants how to draw paper illustrations from digital designs using the Universal Collaborative (UR) robot arm is also being held on the last day of the exhibition. 

Collaborative Robot Drawing will take place between 2:00 and 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 5.

Participants may register here.

Volume 1 of Scaffold* Journal, created and published by the student-run SHIFT* Collective, has been released. 

It’s the first print edition of the rebooted publication, which evolved out Shift Magazine, a previous Daniels publication.

Shift Magazine, an undergraduate risograph journal, was released nine times between 2014 and 2019. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all Shift operations until 2022, when they were revived by the members of the SHIFT* Collective. 

Since 2022, the collective has published four additional risograph zines while planning the reimagined Scaffold* Journal. Its members consist of students from across all years and programs within the Daniels undergraduate cohort.

“Our current team created Scaffold* in response to a gap that we had perceived in access to research within our academic context,” says the collective. “All of the research we had seen was perfect, it was pedestaled, and we wanted to provide a clearer path through which students could pitch themselves into the pits of scholarship.” 

Their goal with the new publication, team members add, was “a process-oriented research journal platforming the work of emerging scholars in disciplines of the built environment.” To that end, the editing team met “prolifically” with student contributors and faculty advisers “to understand their practices and our responsibility in representing them.”

Volume 1 of the journal, whose contributions include students and faculty members across programs, contains “a multitude of disparate perspectives that all fall under the constructed-environment umbrella.” According to its creators, the edition explores methodologies ranging from collage and board gaming to junk appropriation and speculative fabulation.

“Scaffold* only attempts to represent the diversity of work that goes on within disciplines of architecture, art and the built environment. Ultimately, it is a testimony to what we, as a community within the Daniels Faculty and beyond, have learned and continue to learn from each other.”

With the first print edition of Scaffold* now complete, the SHIFT* Collective is already at work on Volume 2, submissions for which “will open soon.”

Print copies of Volume 1 are currently available for purchase at Cafe 059 in the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent. A digital version can also be accessed at theshiftcollective.net.

Above: Contributors and faculty recently joined members of the SHIFT* Collective to mark the launch of Scaffold* Journal’s first print edition. Scaffold* is a new iteration of Shift Magazine, a previous Daniels publication.

In the final days before the fall of Saigon in 1975, 125,000 Vietnamese resettled in the United States. Finding themselves in unfamiliar places yet still connected in exile, these refugees began building their own communities as memorials to a lost homeland. Known both officially and unofficially as “Little Saigons,” these built landscapes are the foundation for Assistant Professor Erica Allen-Kim’s latest book.  

Building Little Saigon: Refugee Urbanism in American Cities and Suburbs (University of Texas Press) provides an in-depth look at how Vietnamese American communities have shaped urban landscapes across the U.S. Allen-Kim’s research focuses on the architectural and planning approaches adopted by Vietnamese Americans over the past 50 years, showing how these efforts have influenced mainstream urban practices.  

For Allen-Kim, the connection to this research is close to home. “Growing up in Southern California, I spent my childhood in Orange County's Koreatown, just next door to Little Saigon,” she says. “I saw how ethnic entrepreneurship was changing in response to generational shifts as well as broader transnational movements. I wanted to document the buildings, memorials and storefronts of these communities.”  

Through visits to 10 Little Saigons and interviews with developers, community planners, artists, business owners and Vietnam veterans, Allen-Kim examines the challenges and successes in building and maintaining these communities. Building Little Saigon highlights the role of everyday buildings—from family-owned businesses to cultural centres—in reflecting and preserving cultural heritage. 

Allen-Kim’s work contributes to the understanding of how immigrant communities shape urban environments. By exploring the design and function of various spaces within Little Saigons, Building Little Saigon offers insights into the broader impacts of migration on city planning and architecture. 

The book will be featured in the Fall 2024 Community for Belonging Reading Group at the Daniels Faculty. This initiative, open to all Daniels students, alumni, faculty and staff, will focus on the theme “Reclaiming Place and Identity in Urban Diasporas.” Participants will read Building Little Saigon alongside Denison Avenue, by Daniel Innes (illustrations) and Christina Wong (text). 

Building Little Saigon is available for checkout at the Eberhard Zeidler Library in the Daniels Building and for purchase online. 

From Paleolithic caves to spiritual temples like the Panthenon, medieval cathedrals and mosques to modernist planetariums, domed architecture has served as a pivotal space for human reflection. In his new book, The Desert Turned to Glass, acclaimed artist and Associate Professor Charles Stankievech explores the evolution of the planetarium as it relates to the origins of life, consciousness and art. 

The book reflects over a decade of Stankievech’s research, pairing visual documentation of his cinematic installations with newly commissioned essays by geologists, exobiologists, philosophers and archeologists. The book’s title is inspired by Stankievech’s time spent in the desert during an artist residency in Marfa, Texas, “where both meteorites and the first atomic explosion melted the desert sand into glass.”  

The book opens with a newly translated 1923 Walter Benjamin text that discusses the inauguration of the first planetarium and humanity’s search for a cosmic connection during a period of technological progress and post-World War I reflection. This historical context frames the subsequent essays by editors Ala Roushan, Dehlia Hannah and Nadim Samman. 

Originally commissioned for the 100th anniversary of the planetarium, a central part of the publication documents Stankievech’s exhibition The Desert Turned to Glass, first mounted at Calgary Contemporary. The cinematic installation Eye of Silence blends footage of atmospheric phenomena, volcanic landscapes and meteorite craters to depict the Earth’s evolution and provoke reflections on creation and transformation.  

Additional essays by physicist Karen Barad and archaeologist David Lewis-Williams explore cosmological questions from a deep-time perspective. Further interviews with experts, including renowned architect Douglas Cardinal, who serves as Decanal Advisor on Indigenous Knowledge at the Daniels Faculty, offer insights into geoscience, meteorites, architecture, Zen Buddhism and Artificial Life. 

The book also includes a final section on Stankievech’s methodology, featuring a discussion with primary collaborator Roushan. 

“With this closing dialogue weaving together the book’s themes, I hope we have established a new realm of connections, resonances and relationships,” Stankievech writes. 

The Desert Turned to Glass is available for checkout at the Eberhard Zeidler Library in the Daniels Building and for purchase online through Hatje Cantz. The related body of work will be exhibited at Oakville Galleries and internationally in Germany, Prague and Denmark this fall. 

Banner image: The Eye of Silence, 2023. 6K video 30mins with 7.1 audio. Installation View at Contemporary Calgary Planetarium Dome.

Assistant Professor Rasoul Yousefpour has been appointed the new Executive Director of the Mass Timber Institute at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. 

Established at the Faculty in 2018, the Mass Timber Institute focuses on bridging the gap between academia, industry and Indigenous communities to drive forward mass timber technologies and practices. 

Yousefpour, who joined the Daniels Faculty as a tenure-track professor in Forestry in 2021, brings a wealth of experience in forest economics. His previous role at the University of Freiburg in Germany and his extensive research on forest ecosystem processes and timber markets make him an ideal fit to continue the Mass Timber Institute’s mission to position Canada as a global leader in sustainable mass timber products and technologies. 

“We will collaborate with research and industry partners in wood construction, design, manufacturing and production to tackle supply chain challenges and create solutions for the expanding sustainable building sector,” Yousefpour said of his goals as he steps into the role of director. “We are advancing a holistic forest-to-building model that rigorously evaluates the sustainability, economic benefits and potential GHG emissions reduction of wood-based housing policies.” 

Yousefpour will continue to work closely with Dr. Anne Koven, who will remain involved as the founding director of the Mass Timber Institute. 

Recent and ongoing initiatives of the Mass Timber Institute include: 

Ontario Forest and Wood Sector Model 
In partnership with the Centre for Research & Innovation in the Bio-Economy (CRIBE), this project investigates the supply and demand dynamics of wood fiber in Ontario. It aims to optimize supply chains and enhance the sustainability of the mass timber industry in the region. In collaboration with the International Institute for System Analysis (IIASA, Austria), the Ontario Forest and Wood Sector Model is developed to integrate global and regional wood production, imports and exports, offering a climate-smart forecasting and policy analysis tool for future wood markets including mass timber. 

Historical Tall Wood Structures in Toronto 
This research project, led by Ross Beardsley Wood, investigates the historical construction methods of Heavy Timber Mill Construction buildings in Toronto. The goal is to recover and document the construction principles of more than 40 significant examples across the city. 

Local Red Pine CLT Pilot Project 
In collaboration with the Ontario Woodlot Association and other partners, this initiative explores the use of local conifer plantation wood for cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels. By sourcing materials locally, the project aims to reduce the carbon footprint and support local economies. 

Mass Timber Building Science Primer 
MTI has published an open access “Mass Timber Building Science Primer,” authored by Professor Ted Kesik. This extensive guide is designed for professionals at all levels and provides detailed information on mass timber science, materials and construction technologies. 

Cost and Carbon for Commercial Construction in Canada 
MTI is working with Ha/f Climate Design, Entuitive and Bird Construction on a comprehensive report that explores the financial and carbon impacts of various structural systems. The report will highlight the potential of mass timber to reduce carbon emissions while remaining cost competitive. 

Mass Timber Today Podcast 
MTI’s podcast addresses challenges, innovations and trends in the mass timber sector. It features discussions on climate change, embodied carbon and supply chains, with insights from industry experts and practitioners. 

Mass Timber Institute Newsletter 
The newsletter updates on MTI’s research, projects and developments. It serves as a vital communication tool for engaging with industry professionals, academics and the public, and includes an annual virtual conference with The Architect’s Newspaper. 

For more details on the initiatives and recent projects, visit the Mass Timber Institute website. 

Images: 1) Rasoul Yousefpour. 2) Zero Carbon Hybrid Wood Tower Prototype. Courtesy of DIALOG.

Over three days in late 2022, the Daniels Faculty’s  Centre for Landscape Research, led by Associate Professor Fadi Masoud, hosted the first post-pandemic gathering of the Great Lakes Higher Education Consortium, an academic action group dedicated to fostering a more resilient, climate-ready Great Lakes Basin through the study and promotion of “integrative blue-green infrastructure.”

The Consortium had been co-founded in 2020 by the Council of the Great Lakes Region (CGLR), the University of Toronto and the University of Illinois System. A year later, four other major universities joined the group, which aims to address the region’s most pressing environmental challenges by encouraging regular and impactful collaborations among academics, industry and governments.

On the heels of the 2022 conference, the Consortium released a summary report entitled REIMAGINING WATER II: The Future of Blue-Green Infrastructure in the Great Lakes Basin. The group has also launched a website featuring an interactive map of Great Lakes cities and case studies associated with them.

Together the two resources offer practitioners and policy makers “a clear path” toward developing the kind of region-specific planning and design initiatives that will become increasingly essential as jurisdictions across the Great Lakes grapple with climate-related issues such as the flooding (pictured above and below) that caused an estimated $1 billion in damage this month in Toronto.

“Landscape architects have been at the forefront of designing integrated blue-green systems,” says Masoud. “We work with terrain, water (blue) and vegetation (green) to shape the public realm and urban infrastructure as a foundational disciplinary premise. 

“Climate shocks and stresses, such as urban flooding and extreme heat, remind cities worldwide of the need to integrate dynamic blue-green systems as critical landscape infrastructures. These infrastructures will increase cities' capacity to adapt to climate change. The Great Lakes warrant their unique set of landscape-based urban design standards, as each region’s physiographical conditions and pressures vary.”

The question of the Great Lakes Basin as a unique environment is at the core of the Reimagining Water project and of the RWII report, which cites “the mismatch between policy and technical guidelines for green/blue infrastructure developed on the East and West Coast [of North America] and the specific conditions of the Great Lakes.”

“This disconnect in technical terms,” it continues, “is complemented by a cultural disconnection. Progressive practices in green/blue infrastructure design are suspect here if they haven’t been developed or proven here.”

The 2022 conference, which Masoud co-organized with James Wasley of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, brought 45 participants from academia, professional disciplines, NGOs and government to the Daniels Faculty.

Among the topics they discussed were a vision for the Great Lakes Basin as an ecological unit, the promise of common project types in terms of fostering resilience and the connection between social and climate justice.

All of its findings and more are presented in the report. The work of the Consortium is ongoing and further conferences are planned.

Images of Don River flooding in Toronto by Paul Faggion

Jason Nguyen, Assistant Professor in the history and theory of architecture, is the 2024 beneficiary of the Mayflower Research Fund, the research endowment established by a generous donor in 2018 to encourage and stimulate study in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, allowing for collaboration with other areas of the University where appropriate.

Nguyen’s awarded research project, “Crafting Contracts: Law and the Architecture of Commemoration in Old Regime France,” looks at building practice and the regulatory bodies that structured it during the 17th and early 18th centuries in France. The project considers how reforms in contract and cost management contributed to a reframing of the architect as a civil and commercial figure at the dawn of the modern age.

Beyond its scholarly impact, the research is significant because it provides an historical instance in which debates on labour and project financing helped establish the scientific and institutional grounds on which the profession of architecture first came and continues to be practiced.

“The award means quite a lot, and is a testament to the work that I have been undertaking since my doctoral dissertation,” says Nguyen. “[The award] will help advance the project through one of the last stages of research, which considers how the streamlining of contract documentation abetted the professionalization of the architectural trade during a period of momentous social and intellectual change.”

In particular, this facet of the project examines how the architect and theorist Pierre Bullet (1639-1716) streamlined the drafting, notarizing and filing of legal contracts into professional architectural practice, taking a lawsuit that he and sculptor Philippe Magnier filed in November 1698 against the estate of Jean Coiffier de Ruzé, the Abbot of Effiat, as a starting point.

In that injunction, Bullet and Magnier sought compensation for drawings and models they had completed for the abbot, who had hired the pair to design and build a sumptuously decorated family mausoleum in Paris. When the abbot died unexpectedly in October 1698, he left a mountain of unpaid bills and, ultimately, insufficient direction and funding to see the mausoleum finished. The French court’s eventual decision, which privileged the architect’s contract, stands as a legal precedent in the professionalization of architectural practice.

Remarkably, Bullet had warned of labour and fee disputes in his treatise Architecture pratique (1691). The book included sample contracts as guides for architects to measure decoration and draft expedient legal documents. This move helped to formalize the architect’s civil function as a coordinator of labour and arbiter of taste in an increasingly commercial society. That Bullet’s study unfolded alongside contemporaneous theorizations of the social contract by the philosopher John Locke and habits and customs by the jurist Montesquieu testifies to the period’s broader concerns for legal order and the structures of modern governance.

“Contemporary conversations in Canada about labour rights and the politics of project financing and development have parallels in this formative moment in architectural history,” says Nguyen, who plans to apply his Mayflower funding to research-related travel, publishing, and student training.

“The training will include primary and secondary source documentation, mapping and digital reconstruction of since-lost buildings,” he says.

Nguyen’s broader project, of which this research is a part, is titled Bodies of Expertise: Architecture, Labour, and Law in Old Regime France. 

“Ultimately,” he says, “Bodies of Expertise will argue that the effort to establish a legal category of expertise, rooted in the labour and law of building practice, directly contributed to the professionalization of architectural practice as well as the crystallization of public and commercial culture at the dawn of the modern age.”

Aspects of this research have to date been published in a variety of journals, including Grey Room, Livraisons d’histoire de l’architecture and Oxford Art Journal.

Drawing image: An anonymous drawing, likely after Pierre Bullet, depicts the Mausoleum for Antoine Coiffier de Ruzé, marquis d’Effiat, at the convent of the Filles de la Croix in Paris (c. 1698). The drawing is housed in the Nationalmuseum Stockholm in Sweden.

The Inuusirvik Community Wellness Hub—an award-winning building designed by the practice Lateral Office, which Professor Mason White co-leads with Lola Sheppard—is featured on the cover of the June issue of Canadian Architect. 

“The building opened late last year in Iqaluit’s downtown core and was instantly beloved,” journalist Adele Weder writes in the feature article devoted to the project. “In a community that struggles with social and geographic isolation, the Wellness Hub could turn out to be the town’s most important new building in years.” 

The Wellness Hub is a compact multi-purpose community centre that brings together many services in Nunavut’s capital, such as counselling and daycare facilities, a wellness research centre, a research library, food preparation and gathering spaces.

Inspired by Indigenous vernacular structures, the building’s design was recognized with a 2023 Canadian Architect Award for the Lateral Office team, which includes sessional lecturer Kearon Roy Taylor, as well as Verne Reimer Architecture Inc. 

Professor White has long focused his architectural research on the North—among his projects have been the Canadian exhibition “Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15” at the 2014 Venice Biennale, the 2017 publication Many Norths: Spatial Practice in a Polar Territory, and the ACSA Award-winning installation “Contested Circumpolar: Domestic Territories.” 

“For all their years of research, the Wellness Hub is the first completed building for Lateral Office, whose principals hold academic positions at the architecture schools at the universities of Toronto and Waterloo,” Weder writes. “Their practice has long been more focused on raising questions than chasing commissions.”  

Iqaluit is one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada and, as Weder notes, the burgeoning demand for new buildings is both an architectural opportunity and an imperative to design responsibly. 

“There is a wider conversation about circumpolar architectural typology: What is an arctic vernacular today?” says Professor White, Director of the Faculty’s Master of Urban Design and Post-Professional programs. “This building is a response to that question, but it is not the response. We’re just happy that this building can contribute to the wider conversation.” 

Read the full article online or pick up a copy of the June issue of Canadian Architect. 

All photography ©2024 Andrew Latreille. All rights reserved.

In March, the exhibition “How to Steal a Country” opened in the Daniels Faculty’s Larry Wayne Richards Gallery, transforming the display space at 1 Spadina Crescent into scenes from the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Using scale- and life-size dioramas, vignettes and tableaus, the immersive exhibition reflects some of the research conducted by 2022-2024 Emerging Architect Fellow Lukas Pauer into the role that architecture can play in asserting or suppressing national identity and sovereignty. 

As both the exhibition and his fellowship wind down, Pauer took the time to answer a few questions about the show and the work behind it. “How to Steal a Country” closes on May 14.

“How to Steal a Country,” your research-based exhibition on the role of architecture in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is part of the research and teaching you have undertaken as an Emerging Architect Fellow. Can you elaborate on how the exhibition reflects this work?

My work has been concerned with the histories of space and power in the built environment and their entanglements with the present. On arrival here at Daniels and building upon the findings of my doctoral dissertation, I started developing a series of teaching aids for my students in various formats to allow them to better understand imperial-colonial violence as a pervasive and ongoing reality around the world that is not a historic event but that continues to be manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices and built objects of the everyday.

For example, in a series of input lectures, I shared my theoretical framework and research on many case studies from different sites around the world in which countries presently instrumentalize buildings and infrastructure to project power, to claim authority over people and land. These cases were envisioned as exemplary vehicles for students to acquire and test unconventional skills that most students might not have acquired yet during their studies. In a series of skills workshops, I taught a range of techniques I have employed in my practice and research for students. Consequently, having spent a large part of my fellowship translating my practice and research into original teaching aids in the context of the courses I taught, it felt only natural to also conceive my fellowship exhibition as a teaching aid.

In terms of its medium/format, the aim behind the work remains a didactic-pedagogical one—how do we develop a vocabulary that allows us to visually, materially and spatially describe how authority over people and land is manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday?

The title of your exhibition is a provocative one. Is the Russian invasion of Ukraine a prototypical case of using built objects to project power and subvert sovereignty or an atypical one?

Many visitors of the exhibition would speak to me about the parallels they saw in the exhibition with what is part of the imperial-colonial history and ongoing present of what is presently known as Canada. For example, one section of the exhibition discusses the forced deportation and naturalization of Ukrainian children. By supposedly “evacuating” Ukrainian children into the supposed “care” of “foster parents” in Russia under the guise of supposed “reeducation” and “welfare services,” the Russian government has sought to make it difficult to preserve their independent post-Soviet Ukrainian identity. Not unlike what happened to many Indigenous local children in what is presently known as Canada, this has led to the assimilation of children, by invalidating their originally identity.

So in terms of its topic, the exhibition applies the aforementioned theoretical framework and analytical techniques for the role of architecture in sovereignty disputes to discuss a very specific context. However, part of the didactic-pedogagical intent of the exhibition is for the visitor to be able to make parallels to other contexts. This is not by chance. Over the past 10 years, I have critically studied how imperial-colonial expansion has been performed architecturally throughout history in ancient, medieval, modern and recent times, as well as still today.

This has led to a comparative theoretical framework and repository of case studies from different sites around the world in which countries presently instrumentalize buildings and infrastructure to project power. This includes but is not limited to the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is not necessarily an atypical case. So there will be subsequent exhibitions and associated publications applying the framework and techniques to other sovereignty disputes. Stay tuned.

What lessons might be learned from your research by either governments or their people about recognizing subversion and protecting sovereignty?

Although recent scholarship alludes to a relationship between space and power as well as the various ways in which power has configured space, many people seeking to participate in the political life of their community still lack the vocabulary to describe how authority over people and land is manifested through seemingly minor or banal practices of the everyday.

We have come up with diplomatic doctrines to respond to soft power. We have military doctrines to deal with hard power. However, policy-makers lack appropriate tools and models that aid the recognition of more hybrid kinds of non-verbal visual, material and spatial interventions. These come above the line of what is commonly understood as diplomacy but below the line of warfare. Within this grey zone, recent practices have instrumentalized many different types of built objects. For example, in the case of the current exhibition on display, Russia has instrumentalized humanitarian aid operations, bank branches and Internet and telephone facilities, as well as child boarding and care facilities to project power.

Such objects capitalize on their ambiguity. They seem to be neither diplomatic nor military in function, which renders their instrumentalization plausibly deniable. A lack of understanding how any object may be instrumentalized for political purposes limits people’s ability and responsibility to contribute to political decisions about the built environment.

One of your conclusions is that “sovereignty is a performative concept dependent on an audience.” Can you elaborate on this idea?

Sovereignty has been a key term for my work. If we untangle the very definition of this concept, which refers to “authority over people and land” and then untangle the concept of authority itself, which refers to “recognized power,” or a power that is being seen, that is being recognized by individuals or a community as being legitimate.

So if power over people and land depends on being seen, on being recognized in order to become legitimate, by definition sovereignty depends on an audience. As such, the very definition of sovereignty is a theatrical, a performative concept. It depends on being seen by a domestic or foreign audience. The hinge that can anchor a claim to authority over people and land to the ground are sovereignty markers, the “facts on the ground.” You can plant a flag or construct a building as a marker of sovereignty, to make a claim in a very specific place, but if you do not document this flag or building in various media such as taking a photo or making a drawing of it, it may as well have never happened.

In the case of the current exhibition on display, these would be the buildings and infrastructure that Russia has instrumentalized to legitimize its claims to sovereignty—the humanitarian aid operations, bank branches and Internet and telephone facilities, as well as child boarding and care facilities. These four case types are each displayed in a niche of the gallery. Not by chance have they been displayed as theatrical prop-like objects to create an immersive experience. These techniques from theatrical set model-making in the design of the exhibition are a nod to the theatricality of claims to sovereignty.

All images, including Lukas Pauer at the opening of “How to Steal a Country” in March 2024, by Harry Choi

The Canada Council for the Arts has announced that the Living Room Collective will represent Canada at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, from May 10 to November 23, 2025. 

Selected by a Council-designated selection committee, from among the group of five shortlisted candidates, the Living Room Collective will curate the next architecture exhibition at the Canada Pavilion. 

The creative team is led by bio-designer Andrea Shin Ling, alongside core team members Nicholas Hoban, a lecturer and the Director of Applied Technologies at the Daniels Faculty, Vincent Hui, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Department of Architectural Science, and Clayton Lee, a curator, producer and performance artist.  

Together this group of architects, scientists, artists, and educators will work at the intersection of architecture, biology, and digital fabrication to situate architecture as an integral and supportive component of our ecosystem.  

“It is an incredible honor to have been selected to represent Canada at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale,” the Living Room Collective said in a statement. “In demonstrating the possibilities of a collaborative relationship with nature, we look forward to leveraging this global platform alongside national and international partners to engage in a critical dialogue around alternative design practices that can sit alongside contemporary carbon neutral building strategies.”  

Read the full announcement from the Canada Council for the Arts. 

About Living Room Collective   

Andrea Shin Ling is an architect and bio-designer who works at the intersection of design, digital fabrication and biology. Her work focuses on how the critical application of biologically and computationally mediated design processes can move society away from exploitative systems of production to regenerative ones. She is the 2020 S+T+ARTS Grand Prize winner for her work as Ginkgo Bioworks’ creative resident designing the decay of artifacts in order to access material circularity. Shin Ling is a founder of designGUILD, a Toronto-based art collective, and was a researcher in the Mediated Matter Group at the MIT Media Lab, where she worked on Aguahoja I, a 3D-printed bio-material pavilion. She is currently a doctoral fellow at the Chair of Digital Building Technologies at the Institute of Technology and Architecture, ETH Zurich.

Nicholas Hoban is a computational designer, fabricator and educator. He works at the intersection of computational design, robotics, construction and simulation in pedagogy, research and practice. Hoban is the Director, Applied Technologies, at the Daniels Faculty and a lecturer within the Daniels technology specialist program, leading various research and teaching labs while developing curriculum for studios and seminars on advanced fabrication and robotics within architecture. His research focuses on the application of robotics within fabrication and construction, and how we can solve critical problems in geometry through integrated processes. Hoban was a lead fabricator and computational designer for two previous Venice Biennales: for the 2014 Canadian Pavilion for Lateral Office’s Arctic Adaptations and for the 2016 Swiss Pavilion for Christian Kerez’s Incidental Space.  

Vincent Hui is a distinguished professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Department of Architectural Science, imparting knowledge across diverse domains from design studios to digital tools. His pedagogical excellence has earned him multiple teaching accolades, as he delves into the intersections of architecture, fabrication and allied disciplines. With over 25 years of experience, his extensive publication portfolio focuses on design pedagogy, simulation, prototyping and technological convergence, complemented by a rich body of creative work showcased globally. Collaborating with esteemed organizations such as the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) and the Canadian Architecture Students’ Association (CASA), Hui endeavors to empower the next generation of designers, navigating emergent shifts in praxis. Committed to bridging academia and industry, he advocates for experiential learning initiatives and outreach endeavors for aspiring designers. His remarkable contributions have culminated in his induction into the esteemed RAIC College of Fellows.  

Clayton Lee is a curator, producer and performance artist. He is currently the Director (Artistic) of the Fierce Festival in Birmingham, England. He was previously the Director of the Rhubarb Festival, Canada’s longest-running festival of new and experimental performance, at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Lee has also worked as Creative Producer on Jess Dobkin’s projects, including For What It’s Worth, her commission at the Wellcome Collection in London, England; as Curatorial Associate at the Luminato Festival; and as Managing Producer of CanadaHub at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Lee’s performance projects have been presented in venues across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. He was one of the Art Gallery of Ontario’s 2023 Artists-in-Residence.  

Banner image from left to right: Andrea Shin Ling. Photo: Andrei Jipa; Nicholas Hoban. Photo: Nazanin Kazemi; Clayton Lee. Photo: Sam Frank Wood; Vincent Hui. Photo: Florencio Tameta.