Pictured above: Charles Stankievech, director of the MVS program, with Dana Prieto, Mehrnaz Rohbakhsh, Sahar Te, and Miles Rufelds. Photo by Dominic Chan

The MVS Studio program provides a rich environment structured around new approaches to visual art production, art theory, critical writing and professional practice. Students in the program explore increasingly complex modes of visual expression through combinations of text, image, movement, sound and dynamic new electronic media. Core courses focus on contemporary art practice and theory, and students have ample opportunity to develop skills in a variety of projects and media.

For more information, visit the MVS, Studio program page.

Exhibition photos top of page by Dominic Chan. 1) Mehrnaz Rohbakhsh, 2) Dana Prieto, 3) Miles Rufelds, 4) Sahar Te

On Thursday, April 18, the Daniels Faculty was pleased to welcome the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, the Honourable Elizabeth Dowdeswell, to One Spadina to meet with students and faculty, and attend some thesis reviews.

Dean Richard Sommer, together with Master of Architecture student James Bird, brought Her Honour to the Graduate Design Studio, to meet Associate Professor Mason White see some student work.

White shared details on his experiences teaching and conducting design research in the arctic — the subject of the exhibition he curated with his design practice Lateral Office for Canadian Pavillion at the Venice Biennale in 2014. Titled Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15, the exhibition was honoured with a “Special Mention” by the Biennale jury.

Her Honour also met first year MArch student Stephen Caddy, and second year MArch students Raymond Garrioch and Nassim Sani, who showed her some of their recent work.

Afterwards, she sat in on Nicholas Ager's Master of Architecture final thesis review presentation. Titled The Common School, Ager's project proposed a design for a new primary public school that encourages cross-generational discourse and intersectional programming in a underserved Chicago neighbourhood.

Associate Professor Liat Margolis also met with the Lieutenant Governor to share some of the initiatives she has undertaken to engage Indigenous youth in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Margolis spoke of the success of the youth employment and mentorship program launched last summer in collaboration with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority and the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto. Now called Nikibii Dawadinna Giiway (which means Flooded Valley Healing in Anishinaabemowin, Manitoulin dialect), the program returns again this summer and is currently recruiting applicants.

Later, Margolis introduced Her Honour to Master of Landscape Architecture student Devin Tepleski before the presentation of his final thesis: New Ground, Healing Wounds: The Mnemonics of Landscape Scars at Giant Mine, Yellowknife, NT.

"Inclusion, creativity, & design are all central to the work @UofTDaniels," wrote Her Honour on twitter following the visit, "amazing to see how future architects are tackling issues as diverse as public schools in Chicago & mine reclamation in the NWT, all while drawing inspiration from the process of Indigenous reconciliation."

Photos by Harry Choi

Daniels Faculty student Jaysen Ariola recevied an Award of Excellence for his Master of Landscape Architecture thesis, and Meikang Li, Qiwei Song, and Chaoyi Cui won a Merit Award for their studio project from the 2019 World Landscape Architecture (WLA) Awards.

The WLA Awards is an international competition that recognizes and promotes landscape architects for their outstanding work. The Awards seek to highlight innovative work, either conceptual or built.

Images above and top by Jaysen Ariola

Ariola’s thesis project, Waters in Peril Collective Measures for a Dying Lake Winnipeg, included a framework for a new landscape policy and ecological planning to address the issue of nutrient runoff into the Red River, which drains into Lake Winnipeg. The framework addresses and conveys what it means to protect and restore ecosystems to various groups and people.

Jaysen also received the John E. (Jack) Irving Prize and was among recipients of the Academic Honors Certificate upon graduating last spring. 

Image above by Meikang Li, Qiwei Song, and Chaoyi Cui

Li, Song, and Cui’s project, The Drainage Filter for the Everglades, proposed re-channeling water runoff through public-owned properties, where the water will be stored and treated before arriving at its destination, the Everglades. The project proposes a phased, cost-efficient alternative and improvement to existing expensive water treatment infrastructures in the Everglades.


This project was part of the Daniels Option Studio that received ARCHITECT magazine’s Studio Prize. The Studio "Coding Flux: In Pursuit of Resilient Urbanism in South Florida" (LAN 3016) was taught by Assistant Professor Fadi Masoud (coordinator), and Elise Shelley.


Visit the WLA website for more info and to read about other winners. 

We are pleased to announce that the Daniels Faculty is launching Daniels Bootcamp: Exploring Careers in Design, a program for late high school (grades 11 and 12) and undergraduate students of all disciplines interested in architecture.

The program is designed by Jeannie Kim, the Director of the Daniels Faculty's Honours, Bachelor of Arts, Architectural Studies program. The program will include lectures with topics covering the history and techniques of architectural production as well as guest lectures from visiting professionals. They will have studio exercises that also include skills and techniques lecture.

This program is perfect for students who wish to develop an understanding of both the academic requirements and future career paths for a career in the field of architecture.

For registration and detailed information, please click on the link below.

Daniels Bootcamp: Exploring Careers in Design (Grade 11, 12 high school and undergraduate students)

We are pleased to announce that the Daniels Faculty is launching a series of summer camps for kids: Bits & Bytes and DigiFab.

The theme for this summer’s youth programs (Bits & Bytes & DigiFab) is Drones in the City.  Children and youth in grades 4-6 and grades 7-9 will explore the potential of this disruptive technology and how it might change the design of cities in the future.

Youth in each program will work together to both design a city and build their own drones that they will be able to take home. Know a child or middle-school student interested in design, technology, art, science, and engineering? This unique summer program is for them!

Both Bits & Bytes and DigiFab will be held in our new building at 1 Spadina Crescent in Toronto. For registration and detailed information, please click on the link below.

• Bits & Bytes is designed for youth aged 9-11 years old (grades 4-6). 
• DigiFab is designed for youth aged 12-14 years old (grades 7-9).

We are also launching Daniels Bootcamp: Exploring Careers in Design, a program for late high school (grades 11 and 12) and undergraduate students of all disciplines interested in architecture.

Last fall, students in Assistant Professor Justine Holzman's studio, Longitudinal Landscapes: Mud, Monitoring, and Mobilization, were residents at Autodesk in the MaRS Discovery District, working alongside designers and researchers at the forefront of their fields.
 
With graduate students in both architecture and landscape architecture, the option studio challenged students to develop design strategies that support revitalization of the San Fransico Bay Area's watershed: its tributaries, marshes, and mudflats — all of which host important ecologies, retain carbon, and have a role to play in protecting communities from risks associated with rising sea levels, unpredictable weather patterns, increased flooding, fires, and erosion. Autdoesk generously provided specialized software and fabrication training, access to advanced fabrication tools, and space for the students to prototype and develop their ideas.
 
The work of the students built on research and design initiated by the multidisciplinary design team Public Sediment, a participant in the Resilient by Design | Bay Area Challenge, held in 2017. Led by SCAPE Landscape Architecture studio, the team included members of the Dredge Research Collaborative, to which Holzman belongs. Gena Wirth, Partner and Principal of SCAPE Landscape Architecture and Cy Keener, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland supported the students with design and technology workshops throughout the semester. The students also took a field trip to the Bay Area to explore the geography, conduct field work, meet with local stakeholders, and engage with members of the Public Sediment team.

Above: 1) A hydrophone, designed to sense the sediment movement and load, inspired by singrays and horseshoe crabs, by Devin Tepleski, Aaron Hernandez, and John Nguyen; 2) a citizen tool kit for eel grass restoration and floating boardwalks would support these efforts, by Peggy Wong ; 3) a wand that measures turbidity, salinity, and temperature, by Lexi Kalman, Peggy Wong, and Hadi El-Shayeb; 4) part of a series of bio-inspired eco-concrete form that would hold sensors; 5) an electronic sensore that  could measure temperature, salinity, and turbidity, by Neil Philips, Anton Skorishchenko, and Reesha Morar | Images above by Devin Tepleski; images top of page by Harry Choi

The students’ design projects were developed with the understanding that living systems require careful monitoring and adaptive management. With this in mind, they worked to produce site design strategies alongside monitoring infrastructure, such as prototypes for upland, fluvial, tidal, and coastal sensors. Together, they generated concepts that included "listening" to sediment, measuring salinity and turbidity (the amount of sediment in the water), floating boardwalks that support restoration efforts, and citizen ecological restoration tool kits.
 
The studio culminated in a public exhibition of student work at Autodesk’s Toronto Technology Centre. Students, faculty, and guest critics participated in an advanced discussion of how monitoring infrastructure can assist in the design, adaptive management, and understanding of urbanized coastal watersheds while providing opportunities to connect with the public and democratize data.

Students included: Aaron Hernandez, Anton Skorishchenko, Devin Tepleski, Hadi El-Shayeb, John Nguyen, Krystal Kramer, Lexi Kalman, Neil Philips, Peggy Wong, Resa Morar, Shujie Zhang, and Vinaya Mani.
 
For more information:

• Read the studio description: Longitudinal Landscapes: Mud, Monitoring, and Mobilization
• Visit the Dredge Research Collaborative website
• Check out the Resilient by Design | Bay Area Challenge website

Daniels student Andrew Chun-An Wei is participating in the 2019 University of Toronto Shelley Peterson Student Art Exhibition, opening April 17 at the Art Museum.

The annual exhibition celebrates the diverse artistic excellence of visual studies undergraduate students from all three campuses. This year's show considers themes of surveillance, cultural construction, and fantasy.

A 4th year undergraduate student double majoring in visual studies and architectural design, Wei will be exhibiting his piece, Jia De.

“Jia De (呷茶)” is Taiwanese for having tea," writes Wei. His installation, consisting of 28 panels and a fabric sculpture, was influenced by his grandmother's recent passing. Having tea, was an activity they often shared.

From Wei's artist statement:

The panels consist of 2 drawings – one being a line drawing of a dry tea leaf, and the second being a blob imprint created by the wet and brewed tea leaf. These daily drawings capture the two permanent stages of a tea leaf: The dry period it is stored in and the wet condition it is then discarded in. Concrete presence of the tea leaf is absent in both drawings as the line drawing is abstracted and too difficult to recognize, while the colour of the blob imprint only hints at its tea-related origins. The fabric sculpture, on the other hand, brings the often overlooked state of a tea leaf —  the fluctuating state it is brewed in — into the spotlight.
 

The 2019 University of Toronto Shelley Peterson Student Art Exhibition front from April 17 to May 18, and was curated by Masters of Museum Studies students Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif, Kesang Nanglu, and Melina Mehr.

Visit the Art Museum's website for more information.

Congratulations to Cornel Campbell, Thevishka Kanishkan, Reesha Morar, and Anton Skorishchenko! With Professor Ted Kesik as their advisor, this team of students is among the winners of the 2019  International Garden Festival Competition at Jardins de Metis / Reford Gardens.

Established in 2000, the International Garden Festival is the leading contemporary garden festival in North America. Making Waves — the Daniels Faculty team's submission to the festival — was among six new garden projects that were selected from 154 submissions around the world.

The students, which include representatives from both the Faculty's Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture programs, wanted to "create an experience that brings joy and a sense of fun."

From the project description:

In physics, the kinetic energy of an object is the energy built up within it due to its motion. Building upon this idea, our team wanted to show how the motion of just two individuals could build up, expand, and multiply kinetic energy to create a spectacular wave of colour. Visitors are invited to play on a seesaw, but will be surprised at how a familiar activity can have such unfamiliar and exciting results. As the seesaw moves up and down, a wave of kinetic energy radiates from pink to blue as the colourful bars oscillate from the motion created by the users. The fantastic displays of colour and movement created by kinetic energy allows each participant to “make waves” in their own way.
 

The International Garden Festival runs from June 22 to October 6 at Jardins de Metis / Reford Gardens on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River between Rimouski and Matane in Quebec. Visitors may explore 27 contemporary gardens, and enter the interactive spaces created by more than eighty-five landscape architects, architects, designers, and visual artists.

For more information, visit the International Garden Festival website.