A research project exploring “the practice of perspective” in the works of 16th-century French architect Jacques Androuet du Cerceau held at the British Museum has garnered the Daniels Faculty’s Georges Farhat a Visiting Fellowship from the British Academy.

The British Academy’s Visiting Fellowships provide outstanding academics based in any country overseas (and active at any career stage and in any discipline within the humanities and the social sciences) with the opportunity to be based at a U.K. higher education or other research institution of their choice for up to six months.

Dr. Farhat, a landscape historian specializing in the history of knowledge and technology as applied to garden and landscape design, will use his Fellowship to further develop his long-standing research on built-in optical devices and topographical perspective that has previously been supported by, among others, the Académie d’Architecture de Paris, the Centre de recherche du château de Versailles, the Descartes Centre at Utrecht University, the Society of Architectural Historians, and Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.

“This collection,” Dr. Farhat says of du Cerceau’s works in the British Museum, “is key to understanding the intertwined histories of perspective and landscape design in the West. Yet, despite growing scholarship on du Cerceau, the practice of perspective in his British Museum works remains a puzzle.”

Although du Cerceau’s oeuvre encompassed buildings, ornament, furniture and metalwork, he is largely remembered today for his detailed and often fanciful engravings of French chateaux, gardens and architectural elements. These works were influential among contemporary and later designers and even aided in garden preservation efforts in the 20th century.

For more information on Dr. Farhat’s project, entitled The Practice of Perspective in the Works of du Cerceau at the British Museum, click here. For more information on the British Academy’s Visiting Fellowships, click here.

Assistant Professor Fadi Masoud, Director of the Daniels Faculty’s Centre for Landscape Research (CLR), has been awarded a 2023 Research and Innovation Award by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects (OALA).

The honour, which recognizes scholarly activities and innovative practices that further the advancement of the art, science and practice of landscape architecture, is Masoud’s second major prize of the year: This past spring, he was also the recipient of a 2023 CELA Award for excellence in design studio teaching.

“I am truly honoured to be recognized by our educational (CELA) and professional (OALA) bodies for my research and teaching," says Masoud. "Landscape architecture, like other professionally accredited disciplines, demands robust links between academia and practice–a productive space that propels the innovations needed to address our planet’s contemporary challenges.”  

Masoud’s founding of the Platform for Resilient Urbanism—the interdisciplinary design, education and research arm of the CLR—was cited by the OALA as a “testament to his commitment to advancing the role of landscape architects in addressing the global climate crisis.”

Among his accomplishments, Masoud has secured grant funding to advance landscape research, collaborated with government agencies and international research institutes, and trained over 30 Master of Landscape Architecture students as research assistants over the past five years. 

“Fadi’s work has undoubtedly left a lasting impact on the field of landscape architecture and will continue to do so for generations to come,” noted the OALA committee.   

The 2023 OALA Honours and Awards will be presented on June 8. Visit oala.ca for more information. 

How will multiplexes address the growing housing crisis in Toronto? How can “citizen developers”   leverage changing housing policy? 

ReHousing—a research collaboration between Tuf Lab, led by Assistant Professor Michael Piper, and LGA Architectural Partners—contributed to policy change this week as Toronto City Council moved to approve multiplexes (see an excerpt from the commissioned report).

The project hopes to address the issue of housing affordability by offering 50 open-source architectural design templates to reconfigure the 13 most standard Toronto home types into multi-unit dwellings.

To empower citizens to take advantage of these new policy changes, ReHousing is working with non-profit housing creators and development advisors to create a guide for citizen developers, enabling non-professionals to take on these kinds of multiplex projects. 

Explore the Housing Catalogue.

Banner image and renderings courtesy ReHousing.

The colonial fishing villages and maritime infrastructure along the shoreline of early modern Newfoundland are the foci of an article by Assistant Professor Jason Nguyen in the international quarterly Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes.

Nguyen’s essay, titled “Encountering the Shoreline: Ecology and Infrastructure on the Early Modern Newfoundland Coast,” is part of a special issue, “Port Cities and Landscapes of the Sea,” edited by Kathleen John-Adler and Stephen H. Whiteman.

The issue also includes articles by Christy Anderson from the University of Toronto, Edward Eigen of Harvard University and Jeremy Foster of Cornell University. 

An historian of architecture, landscape and urban planning in the early modern world, Nguyen (pictured below) contends in his essay that, during the 17th and 18th centuries, the establishment of settlements and construction of seagoing vessels, preservation stations and other logistical sites at and across the littoral line supported the commercialization of the global cod market while fundamentally altering the coastal ecologies of North Atlantic waters. 

The Grand Banks of Newfoundland—the underwater plateaus that provided shallow feeding conditions for underwater life—made the sea shelf one of the richest fishing regions in the world. 

On a global scale, the commercial extraction and preservation of cod supported the expanding diet and political economy of the early modern imperial state. 

On a local scale, the construction of buildings along the shoreline intruded on the littoral ecosystem and impelled the relocation of the native Beothuk inhabitants to the island’s interior, thereby highlighting the genocidal ramifications of European coastal development. 

How, Nguyen’s article asks, might one conceptualize the logistical architecture of the Newfoundland fisheries as both a spatial node within a global network of trade as well as a material intrusion into the ecology of the North Atlantic coastline?

To read the article, click here. Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes is an open-access journal.

Banner image: Matthäus Merian’s “Richard Whitbourne and the Mermaid of St. John’s Harbour,” in Theodor de Bry’s Dreyzehender Theil Americae, 1628. The etching and engraving is in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

A team of researchers led by Professor Sean Thomas of Forestry has been awarded a $1.3-million grant by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

The grant, provided through NSERC’s Alliance Mission program, is one of the largest single research grants ever provided for an individual project at the Daniels Faculty.

The funding is intended to support the creation of “novel strategies” for mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from urban forestry waste.

“Everyone has seen urban forestry waste, but it kind of goes unnoticed,” says Professor Thomas, who is also the Faculty’s Associate Dean, Research. “Think of the tree-pruning guys with the aerial lift and the noisy chipper. Where does all that stuff go? It turns out that all the chipped bits of branches and leaves are first taken to large storage yards, and then mostly end up in compost facilities. A large part, unfortunately, also goes to landfill. From forestry studies, we know that this kind of material can be a large source of greenhouse gas emissions—not just carbon dioxide, but also methane, which now represents about 30 percent of climate forcing. The GHG emissions specific to urban forestry waste have not previously been quantified.”

To measure and potentially mitigate those emissions, Thomas has been joined by a cadre of co-researchers. Fellow “principal investigators” include Sandy M. Smith and Rasoul Yousefpour of Forestry, Alison D. Munson and Janani Sivarajah from Université Laval, Carly Ziter of Concordia University and Scott Chang of the University of Alberta.

Other collaborators include Liat Margolis of the Daniels Faculty, Deborah Wunch from U of T’s Department of Physics and Nathan Basiliko of Lakehead University.

The endeavour also extends beyond academia. Among the project’s municipal partners are City of Toronto Forestry, Quebec City Forestry and City of Edmonton Parks and Roads Services. Partners from the private sector include Titan Smart Carbon Technologies, Haliburton Forest and Wild Life Reserve Ltd., Airex Énergie, Innovative Reduction Strategies and Seed the North.

In addition to better quantifying direct GHG emissions from urban soils and vegetation in Canada, including the elucidation of urban GHG-emission “hotspots” connected with urban forestry waste, the far-flung team aims to explore novel soil amendment and vegetation planting strategies to reduce emissions, with a focus on the use of modified forms of pyrolyzed organic matter (biochar) as an urban soil amendment to enhance urban soil C sequestration, reduce direct GHG emissions, and increase urban vegetation growth and resilience to stresses. 

“Integration, modeling and life-cycle analysis components of the project,” the grant proposal states, “will address the potential for novel strategies to generate a ‘virtuous cycle’ in which waste material from urban vegetation is recycled via pyrolysis for use in urban green infrastructure, with knock-on benefits that include reduced urban energy demand.”

Examples of “urban green infrastructure,” Professor Thomas says, run the gamut from green roofs to bioswales to street trees—any kind of vegetation or soils “valued for providing ecosystem services, like reducing urban flooding and mitigating the urban heat-island effect.”

He adds: “Urban forestry waste isn’t exactly glamorous, but urgent action is needed on climate change, which is ultimately driven by various kinds of waste. This project addresses a small part of the big picture of GHG emissions, but it is a part we can really do something about in the short term. The most gratifying part is to work as part of a team to actually have an impact.”

On that note, Professor Thomas says, “it’s great to get this grant, but I need help. We have funding in hand for students (undergrads, Masters, PhDs) to make the measurements, implement experiments, do inventories, run the economic numbers, take action. It’s important.”

Any students who are interested in participating, he notes, should connect with him via e-mail at sc.thomas@utoronto.ca. 

“If you’re grabbed by this, please contact me. You can be part of this unglamorous but important effort.”

Tree waste image: A significant amount of urban tree-pruning waste, shown above next to a chipper, ends up in landfills. It is also a source of GHG emissions.

A paper co-authored and -supervised by Rasoul Yousefpour, assistant professor of forestry economics and policy at the Daniels Faculty, has just been published in the open-access online journal Nature Communications.

Called High economic costs of reduced carbon sinks and declining biome stability in Central American forests, the article is the result of a multi-year study into ecosystem services (ES) in the forests of the title region.

ES refer to the many social and climate benefits provided by tropical forests, such as carbon sinks for climate regulation and crucial habitats for unique biodiversity.

The study—which Yousefpour conducted with three colleagues at the University of Freiburg in Germany, from which he obtained his PhD in 2009—looks at the implications of climate change “for the economic value of these services,” an area that the co-authors say has “rarely [been] explored before.”

Among their findings: “projected ES declines in 24 to 62 percent of the study region with associated economic costs of $51 billion to 314 billion a year until 2100.”

These declines, they add, will particularly affect montane and dry forests and have strong economic implications for Central America’s lower-middle-income countries, such as El Salvador and Honduras.

“In addition, economic losses were mostly higher for habitat services than for climate regulation. This highlights the need to expand the focus from mere maximization of carbon dioxide sequestration and avoid false incentives from carbon markets.”

The maps above show what the authors call economic hotspots, forested areas with the highest projected monetary losses as a result of climate stress.

In his study of adaptive forest management and decision-making, which is Yousefpour’s specialty, he uses ecological modelling approaches to forecast the ways in which forests will grow and change over time, then performs analysis on those models to determine the effects of different human interventions.

The paper in Nature Communications is the latest of several he has written on the subject of forest management. His co-authors for this one are Lukas Baumbach, Thomas Hickler and Marc Hanewinkel.

Banner image of Costa Rican montane forest by wirestock on Freepik

The relationship between power and space. The ongoing reality of imperial-colonial expansion in a city such as Montreal. A planned exhibition decoding how one Eastern European nation uses built objects to dominate its neighbours. These are just a few of the topics and projects that Lukas Pauer has been pursuing since joining the Daniels Faculty this fall as an inaugural 2022-2024 Emerging Architect Fellow.

The two-year Emerging Architect Fellowship Award, a non-tenure appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor, was established by the Faculty to offer early-career architects an opportunity to teach in a supportive environment as well as the resources to develop focused research. 

In the case of Pauer, an architect and urbanist whose Vertical Geopolitics Lab, which he founded, is now based at the Faculty, that research is underpinned by a desire to expose how the built environment denies or entrenches power, giving people more political agency in the process.

Recently, the graduate of Harvard University and ETH Zurich and onetime employee of Herzog & de Meuron spoke about the specific nature of his research work, his interdisciplinary approach to it, and his experiences at the Faculty—both inside and outside of the classroom—since arriving. 

What area of research will you be exploring over the duration of your Emerging Architect Fellowship?

The focus of my work is on exposing how material objects and imaginaries of power interrelate and co-construct each other in the built environment. In my recent academic practice, I have critically examined built objects as evidence of the projection of power, authority and influence of politically organized communities. Specifically, my doctoral dissertation, entitled Staging Facts on the Ground, has critically studied how imperial-colonial expansion has been performed architecturally throughout history. There is a lack of general understanding of imperial-colonial violence as a pervasive and ongoing reality around the world. To not recognize the workings of this violence around us is a risk.

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.

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. Throughout my career, I have maintained a mindset and aptitude for working within an interdisciplinary framework. This approach has allowed me to research beyond my immediate field of training and to teach across disciplines.

The fellowships also involve teaching both undergraduate and graduate students. What courses have you been teaching and what has the experience been like?

I have specialized in research-based teaching, which is in part why this fellowship opportunity made a lot of sense to me. As part of my appointment here at Daniels, I am teaching three courses. One of them is more analytical in the history/theory of the built environment. The other two form a year-long course sequence that is more projective in the design of the built environment.

In our undergraduate architectural studies program, I teach a near-300-student core lecture course in which the understanding of public space as “public” only to those who are politically represented and organized is central to it. In our graduate architecture program, I supervise a group of final-year students in a year-long thesis research studio course sequence supporting investigations on space and power in an effort to expose, challenge and reconstitute the pervasive and ongoing reality of imperial-colonial expansion.

What have been some of the highlights of your time at the Faculty to date?

I have been pursuing a career of highly integrated professional practice, research and teaching. Since my arrival here, it has been a pleasure to see the Faculty appreciate the value this integration can add to a school of architecture and beyond. Having somewhat grown out of or you could say “spinned off” from my fellowship project, I have been very excited about an educational development project I am currently working on together with Jeannie Kim and Jewel Amoah. This project seeks to establish a working group to identify and further develop didactic-pedagogical approaches to reading and writing—or seeing and drawing—power in the built environment.

Then in the context of my lecture course and in line with the overarching hypothesis of this course, which is that public space is not actually “public” for everyone, I just organized a self-guided field trip around Toronto that will help my students see and gain a better understanding of how particular people or individuals have often not been considered enough in the making of a city and its public spaces.

Also, in the context of my studio course, and in partnership with local contacts including staff at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, I just organized a travel seminar to Montreal, where my students will be able to critically engage with the pervasive and ongoing reality of imperial-colonial expansion in the case of Montreal. These are just a few examples of moments that I have been excited about. There would be many to list.

Your fellowship project will ultimately be exhibited and disseminated within and beyond Daniels. Any hints on what it might look like or involve?

I am currently working on a research-based exhibition project that seeks to decode and deconstruct a compendium of built objects that an Eastern European country has instrumentalized in recent history, and still today, to project power over its so-called Near Abroad. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a digital/online platform for sovereignty dispute visualization. The underlying hypothesis is that built objects of the everyday can be instrumentalized to convey subversive messages of power.

Still, the prevailing conception is that geopolitics and international relations are shaped by and conducted either through diplomatic missions and military forces on the ground or through written policy documents and cartographic drawings. Through the paradigmatic case of how this Eastern European country is presently projecting power, this exhibition project seeks to recentre the study of how sovereignty is acquired and disputed as a practice-based matter of space and power in the built environment. Stay tuned.

This winter has seen a bumper crop of awards go to Daniels Faculty instructors in Landscape Architecture and Forestry.

In February, Assistant Professor Fadi Masoud was named the recipient of the 2023 CELA Excellence in Design Studio Teaching Award—Junior Level. The highly competitive award is conferred annually by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, the premier international organization for educators in the field. Assistant Professor Masoud, whose research and design work engages the landscape as an operational force in shaping urbanism, also directs the Faculty’s Centre for Landscape Research.

“Masoud’s professional achievements are extensive, and he brings a wealth of knowledge to the students he teaches,” one of the CELA jury members wrote. “His strengths include [the] incorporation of salient global social and environmental challenges to studios; transdisciplinary…program-based studio projects; diverse methods and tools used for problem-solving; and a high number of student awards and publications.”

On March 17, Masoud will be on hand at CELA’s 2023 Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas to officially accept the award. A week later, he will also be in Pittsburgh to take part in a Carnegie Mellon University symposium entitled Architecture’s Ecological Restructuring, which invites six leading academics and practitioners to speculate on the ongoing reimagination of the discipline as it pertains to the natural world.

In other awards news, Associate Professor Liat Margolis, who directs the Faculty’s Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory (gritlab) and formerly oversaw the Master of Landscape Architecture program, has been awarded a Minister’s Award of Excellence by the Government of Ontario.

Launched in 2020 to recognize postsecondary leaders who worked to address and mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the province, the Minister’s Awards now celebrate the positive impact of leading and emerging educators, researchers and changemakers in five categories.

Associate Professor Margolis was cited in the category of Equality of Opportunity, which recognizes “faculty and staff who have excelled at creating opportunities in postsecondary education for marginalized and underrepresented groups.”

In particular, she was singled out for her “tireless work” supporting “Indigenous and racialized youth” at the Faculty.

The awards, which attracted more than 500 nominations from across the province, were handed out by Jill Dunlop, Ontario’s Minister of Colleges and Universities, at a ceremony in Toronto on February 6.

Lastly, Md Abdul Halim, a postdoctoral fellow at Forestry since 2019, has been awarded the 2022 Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Co-led by the University of Toronto’s Data Sciences Institute, the fellowship is part of a larger initiative launched by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his journalist-activist wife Wendy to accelerate scientific research through the application of artificial intelligence.

Halim, who acquired his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the Department of Forestry and Environmental Science at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology in Bangladesh, earned his PhD in biometeorology at U of T three years ago.

Currently, his research examines the energy balance of green roofs and greenhouse gas fluxes from green roof substrates.

The Schmidt Fellowship, which kicks off this month, will provide Halim with research funding for up to two years, plus the opportunity to participate in funded travel and training activities.

The Daniels Faculty’s Adrian Phiffer (Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream) has been awarded a 2023 Architectural Education Award by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). 

The award, in the category of Creative Achievement, recognizes Design Studio 2: Site, Matter, Ecology, and Indigenous Storywork, the second studio in the Faculty’s Master of Architecture core studios sequence. 

Developed in partnership with a team of Indigenous advisers, including the citizens of the Ho:dinösöni/Six Nations of the Grand River, Design Studio 2 encompasses two interconnected design projects interwoven with workshops illuminating Indigenous ways of being, ways of knowledge and traditional design practises.

The first project tasks students with imagining a new Haudenosaunee Centre of Excellence where the modest building currently housing the Woodland Cultural Centre sits in Brantford, while the second “advances the explorations from Project 1 at the scale of a building via the design of a Seedbank at Kayanase, on the Six Nations of the Grand River land.”

The syllabus was developed in collaboration with alumnus and co-instructor James Bird (Knowledge Keeper of the Dënesųlįné and Nêhiyawak Nations and a residential school survivor), the late Alfred Keye (Lead Faith Keeper at the Seneca Longhouse), Amos Key Jr. (Faith Keeper of the Longhouse at Six Nations of Grand River Territory and a member of the Daniels Faculty’s First Peoples Leadership Advisory Group), Janis Monture (Executive Director of the Woodland Cultural Centre) and Patricia Deadman (Curator at the Woodland Cultural Centre).

Other contributors to the course include Carole Smith (Administrative Team Lead, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Kerdo Deer (Cultural Coordinator, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Nina Hunt (Junior Botanist, Kayanase Ecological Restoration Centre), Erin Monture (CEO, Grand River Employment and Training Inc.) and Matthew Hickey (Partner at Two Row Architect).

In addition, Phiffer cites the “incredible support” offered by Wei-Han Vivian Lee, Director of the Faculty’s Master of Architecture program.

A “concrete response” to Answering the Call: Wecheehetowin, the University of Toronto’s follow-up to the report by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Design Studio 2 specifically addresses Call to Action No. 17, which proposes the integration of “significant Indigenous curriculum content” in all of U of T’s divisions by 2025.

Among the stated course objectives are engaging with Indigenous worldviews, exploring the concept of relational accountability, and understanding the meaning of contextualizing and re-contextualizing.

“The final studio projects are developed in response to real site, program and cultural demands,” a course précis notes. “The results make an impact in the life of the community.”

Based in Washington, D.C., ACSA was founded in 1912 by 10 charter members and now represents more than 200 schools in the United States and Canada. 

Its Architectural Education Awards, handed out annually, are bestowed in a range of categories, with the Creative Achievement Awards recognizing specific initiatives in teaching, design, scholarship, research or service that advance architectural education.

Images 1 and 2: Design Studio 2 students conduct a site visit at Kayanase, on the Six Nations of the Grand River land, as part of their two-project coursework. The second project in the studio involved designing a seedbank for the site.

A tree planting and additions to Forestry’s commemorative Woodwall were on the program when the Daniels Faculty community gathered at the Earth Sciences Centre on November 24 to celebrate past and present forestry achievements. 

The ironwood tree (Ostrya virginiana) was planted in the Carolinian Forest Courtyard in honour of former professor Erik Jorgensen, who founded the University of Toronto’s Shade Tree Research Laboratory in the 1960s and is considered the father of urban forestry, a previously unexplored branch of forestry studies that he largely defined and promoted. 

Born in Denmark in 1921, Jorgensen and his colleagues at the Shade Tree Lab were especially instrumental in the study and control of Dutch Elm Disease (DED). Jorgensen passed away in 2012. 

Others honourees on the 24th included a dozen new additions to Forestry’s commemorative Woodwall, located inside the Earth Sciences Centre. Initiated in 2007, when Forestry at U of T celebrated its 100th birthday, the Woodwall recognizes illustrious alumni, faculty and staff on an artfully hung array of individual square wood plaques. 

The installation of the 12 new plaques — an initiative supported by Forestry’s Class of 1966 and led by alumnus Derek Coleman, who acquired his Bachelor of Science degree in Forestry that year — completes the current display.  

“Our increasing awareness that forestry reserves are key to mitigating climate change,” says Dean Juan Du, who attended both events and addressed attendees afterward, “makes forestry knowledge more important than ever. The research and instruction done in forestry at the University of Toronto has been vital in contributing to regional and national practices and policies. Now that our various forestry programs share a home with our programs in architecture, landscape architecture, visual studies and urban design, we have an opportunity to refine our educational and research approaches with a more comprehensive understanding of one environment, the natural alongside the built.” 

This perspective resonated with many in attendance, says Forestry Director Sandy Smith, who describes attendees as “a very receptive crowd of urban foresters who have been waiting for this opportunity to build on the beginnings of urban forestry at U o T.” 

“It was great to get together in person and to celebrate past achievements in urban forestry,” she adds. “Everyone who participated was excited by the new vision for forestry at Daniels shared by the Dean.” 

Among those on hand for the planting in the Carolinian Forest Courtyard, a studiously maintained space studded with native trees and shrubs, was Erik Jorgensen’s granddaughter, Stoney Baker.  

The names completing the Woodwall include Dr. Smith, Dr. Coleman, Dr. Shashi Kant, Dr. Sally Krigstin, Dr. Jay Malcolm, Deborah Paes, Fred Pinto, Dr. Danijela Puric-Mladenovic, Dr. Mohini Sain, Dr. Sean Thomas, Tony Ung and Amalia Veneziano. 

Image slideshow: 1. Attendees gather in the Earth Sciences Centre after the November 24 tree planting honouring former professor Erik Jorgensen, a pioneer of urban forestry. 2. Forestry Director Sandy Smith and alumnus Derek Coleman (Class of ’66) unveil the newest honourees on Forestry’s Woodwall, which recognizes illustrious alumni, faculty and staff both past and present. 3. Daniels Faculty Dean Juan Du addresses the gathering after both ceremonies. (Photos by Evan Donohue and George Wang)

Banner image: Erik Jorgensen’s granddaughter, Stoney Baker (holding shovel), joined Dean Du (third from right), Forestry Director Smith (second from right) and others for the tree planting ceremony in honour of her grandfather. Jorgensen founded the Shade Tree Research Laboratory at U of T in the 1960s. (Photo by Evan Donohue)