People passing by the Autodesk Technology Centre in the MaRS Discovery District on the corner of College Street and University Avenue may catch a glimpse of Generative Pavilion through the floor to ceiling windows.

Designed and built by Daniels Faculty students, the project was part of an Independent Study Project proposed by Master of Architecture Students Anton Skorishchenko, John Nguyen, Stephen Baik, and Robert Lee and led by Lecturer Jay Pooley. The studio was supported by an Autodesk research grant.

Creating the Generative Pavilion allowed the students to explore the relationship between modular building materials and computational component design.

“To extend the thought process off the page and into reality suggests new questions of material, connections, tolerances, durability, portability, scale and weight,” writes Pooley. "By connecting pre-existing construction systems to component-based design, the goal was to produce a working prototype for a connecting system that allows the user to build structural forms from generic building materials.”

Photos by Yasmin Al-Samarrai

For the first assignment of ARC253: Close Readings in Urban Design, taught by Associate Professor Jesse LeCavalier, students worked in groups to investigate Toronto's King Street corridor, from the Queensway in the west to the Don River in the east. Each group studied a different block along the street.

King Street was divided into five zones, one for each section of the class. Students were asked to analyze thresholds between public and private space by making a plan, an elevation, and a model of their assigned section. The individual models come together to form a collective portrait of an iconic Toronto street.

As King cuts through a range of neighborhoods and conditions, it acts as a microcosm of sorts to understand its larger urban context. Through building this stretch of King Street in a collaborative setting, students got a chance to be familiar with their block — its history, its life, and its habits — which helped them understand a strip of their local geography in a unique way. 

On Saturday, February 23, the Daniels Faculty is hosting the Dronesphere Colloquium, a day-long event that will delve into the use of drones in cities. The Colloquium has been organized by third year graduate student Simon Rabyniuk, whose research on aerial robotics will inform his final Master of Architecture thesis. Undergraduate student Tina Siassi spoke to Rabyniuk about the relationship between architecture and drones, the regulation of low-altitude urban airspace, and how drones may affect our experience of the city.

What prompted your interest in drones in cities?
Last year, I participated in Associate Professor Mason White’s research studio, “Velocities,” which looked at different forms of land, water, and air transportation and mapped the spatial by-products of each. Through this course, I researched the history of drones and some of the aspirations for their future use. While drones are not new, their presence in cities outside of conflict zones is, and, at present, low-altitude airspace is largely uncontrolled except in the vicinity of airports. This led to a curiosity about the intersection of drones and cities, and how drones might impact patterns of movement and lead to the need for new forms of infrastructure.

How are drones currently regulated?
No city has really integrated drones into its airspace yet. Within Toronto they are explicitly regulated based on setbacks required from buildings, cars, and people. You have to be a certain distance away from airports, and there are limits on where you are permitted to launch from. Low-altitude airspace regulations are interesting to track as they are changing quite quickly. In the Canadian context a new set of regulations will take effect June 1.

What kinds of things do new regulations around the use of drones need to consider?
National aviation regulators are concerned with safety, but it is a limited idea of safety. It seeks to ensure safe operation but ignores a broader set of issues related to use and privacy. Part of my research has focused on two pilot projects testing the integration of drones in the United States. These pilots are occurring in 17 different cities. In each context, quite complex public-private partnerships are researching and testing approaches to the integration of drones. Ciara Bracken-Roche from the University of Ottawa notes how this method of working tends to make future regulations reflect a very narrow range of interests. Issues such as ecology and the aesthetic experience of the city need to be considered as well. Orit Halpern, Jesse LeCavalier, Nerea Calvillo, and Wolfgang Pietsch have a useful article called Test Bed Urbanism, which is really helpful in broadly thinking through the nature of these partnerships for introducing new forms if information and communication technology, for which the drone is but one example, to cities.

You were able to further your research on drones in cities this past summer thanks to funding from the Howarth-Wright Fellowship. How did the opportunity to travel inform your research?
The Howarth-Wright Fellowship afforded me a great deal of time for dedicated study and to engage with materials and sites that wouldn’t have been otherwise available. I was able to attend two conferences: the Military Landscape symposium at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington and the AutoSens conference in Detroit. In August, I spent about ten days at the Avery Library, which is home to Frank Lloyd Wright’s archive. This allowed me to expand the historical frame that I was looking at this with.

The archival work was great to see in person. From very early on, it seemed that Frank Lloyd Wright imagined how communication technology, such as radio or the telephone, and vehicles such as cars, planes, helicopters, and taxis could enable a decentralized urbanism.

One thing I learned from a series of interviews I did is that we have a very narrow conception of what a drone is. We often think of it as the four-propeller quadcopter. But the form of drones enables different uses and scales of action. In this sense, understanding the geography of the drone needs to account for planetary, regional, urban, and district scale relationships. Currently there is a prototype for a drone that can carry 500 pounds 20 miles. From an architectural perspective, perhaps the device itself isn’t that important, but the geographies that it produces are. This is a very logistical example, suggesting different type of supply chain, but it invites starting to think about the relationship of the drone to the city in a different way.

[Ed. note: To learn more about travel awards available to our students, visit: https://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/graduate-awards]

What questions do you hope to explore at the Dronesphere colloquium on February 23?
As this is an emerging topic, the colloquium is taking a broad focus. The day opens with a history of airspace, and concludes with a film-based performance lecture exploring possible futures of the drone. In-between are three panels bringing together landscape/architects, artists, engineers and humanities scholars which will address early stage proposals for the use of drones by designers, the current use of military drones in domestic airspace, and the role of interdisciplinary collaboration in designers working with drones. This multi-disciplinary group of speakers will provide critique, examine histories, and delve into the nuts and bolts of drone use — but the presentations and discussions will certainly invite other possibilities.

What questions are you exploring as part of your Master of Architecture thesis?
I’m interested in understanding the conditions that might produce a more diverse aerial ecology. For example, how could an urban aviary reserve that privileges the movement of birds affect the zoning of airspace? How might property relations change if the entire city becomes and airport, if every rooftop becomes operationalized in some way for drone use? I’m curious about how we might engage with this emergent technology and its possibilities.

Images, above: stills from the dance film "landforms" (2018) made  by Simon Rabyniuk with choreographer Cara Spooner

Are you a drone pilot yourself?
Last summer, in addition to conducting interviews, visiting different sites, and digging into the archives, I bought a drone. This allowed me to engage in a form of practice-based research that forced me to figure out what current airspace regulations meant for me as a hobbyist. It made me more attentive to the airspace above me. I started seeing the places I was walking through in a different way. I thought about what I might see if I launched a drone and took in that aerial view. Flying a drone changed my relationship with my surroundings.

Will you be continuing this research after you present your final thesis? Where do you hope to go from here?
In June I will be attending a conference to share a paper I’m working on it with a friend who is doing graduate work in law at the University of Saskatoon. The paper’s working title is “Archaeology of future airspace.” Archeology in this context refers to the history of property law as it intersects with air rights in the city. It’s an interesting topic, and there’s a lot of ways to keep working with it.

The Dronesphere Colloquium is free and open to all. Click here to register for a free ticket.

Image, top: by Simon Rabyniuk, part of a section drawing created for a pamphlet (in progress) titled Dronesphere: Roofscapes

A new temporary public art installation by Assistant Professor Victor Perez-Amado and third year Master of Architecture students John Nguyen, Anton Skorishchenko, Abubaker Bajaman, and Stephen Baik is drawing large crowds to Toronto’s Woodbine Beach.

Part of the Winter Stations exhibition, now in its 5^th year, the project is one of six installations enticing visitors to explore the city’s waterfront in the winter.

Four of the installations were selected via an international design competition and two were created by invited post-secondary institutions. The group from the Daniels Faculty was among the international competition winners, which included teams from the United States, Mexico, and Poland.

The theme of this year’s exhibition was migration. Cavalcade — the Daniels Faculty team's winning design — depicts brightly coloured silhouettes of migrants on a journey to a better life. Visitors may walk around them, their footprints converging in the sand and snow. At the centre of the installation is a mirror where one may view their reflection and see themselves as part of the collective.

Video and photos above courtesy of the Cavalcade team

"Cavalcade is an installation that reflects the collective spirit of human movement and transversal," wrote the Daniels Faculty team about their installation. "Not just in the contemporary political sense of global migration, but in the consensus that the human quest for a better life is one that is timeless and universal.”

Mayor John Tory visited the installations on the opening day, February 18, and was on hand to view presentations by each team February 13 at Rorschach Brewery.

Woggle Jungle photo by Yasmin Al-Samarrai; Obscura photo courtesy of Ontario Place

In their presentation, Perez-Amado and Skorishchenko, representing the Daniels Faculty team, shared other public art installations they created in Toronto that helped inform their approach, including Woggle Jungle, Obscura (pictured, respectively, above), and most recently a modular 3D printed design now on display at Autodesk’s Toronto headquarters.

Open to the public, the Winter Stations exhibition runs until April 1.

Read media coverage of the Winter Stations exhibition, via CBC News, and Now magazine.

On January 29^th the Master of Landscape Architecture students participated in the Daniels Faculty’s Student-Professionals Networking Event, hosted in collaboration with the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects (OALA), represented by president Jane Welsh (MSc, Planning 2000) and former president Doris Chee (BLA 1984).

This annual event provides students with the opportunity to meet with landscape architecture professionals, ask questions about their practice, and gain knowledge of their prospective career paths. Since its inception a few years ago, this event has helped to usher our students into the world of professional networking, providing a crucial link between the academic and working worlds.

MLA students from all years were encouraged to attend, and the event provides value for people at all levels of their development. Elf Ozcelik, a 1^st year MLA student, praised the event for allowing a perceptive shift. "Before coming here, my understanding of professionals was that they're unapproachable, but with this networking event, I understood that they are interested in us as students at U of T,” Ozcelik explains. “They were very approachable, and this really helped break that anxiety of post grad and some internship worries.”

Lousia Kennet, another 1^st year MLA student, says the event opened her eyes to the breadth of the field. "What this event made me realize was how diverse the field of Landscape Architecture is, and how there is something for everyone,” says Kennet.

“The success of this event is due to the meaningful contributions of our alumni community and participating firms.The Daniels Faculty would like to thank all the professionals who generously donated their time to meet and share advice with our students:

Elyse Parker - City of Toronto

Jane Welsh - City of Toronto Environmental Planning

Kiran Chhiba - Dillon Consulting Limited

Bryce Miranda - DTAH

Aina Elias - Elias +

Angela Chieh - Forrec Ltd.

Gordon Dorrett - Forrec Ltd.

Louis Vicic - Forrec Ltd.

David Leonardo - Garcia HOK

Doris Chee - Hydro One Networks Inc.

Darlene Broderick - IBI Group

Neno Kovacevic - IBI Group

Nicholas Gosselin - Janet Rosenberg & Studio Inc

Todd Smith - IBI Group

Caroline Cosco - Ontario Ministry of the Environment

René Fan - PLANT Architect Inc.

Marc Ryan - Public Work

Mark Schollen - Schollen & Co

Jim Vafiades - Stantec

Samar Zarifa - Terraplan Landscape Architects

Zhuofan Wan - Terraplan Landscape Architects

Jana Joyce - The MBTW Group

Michelle Lu - The MBTW Group

Tonya Crawford - The Planning Partnership

Sheila Boudreau - Toronto Region and Conservation Authority

Viive Kittask - Vertechs Design Inc.

Matt Perotto - Hargreaves Associates

Lesley MacAulay - Lesley B. MacAulay Landscape Design + Planning

Historically, Toronto has had a complicated relationship with our local ravines and waterways. While most Torontonians pass the Humber River or the Don Valley at some point during our daily commute, as urbanites we don’t often consider our relationship with these green spaces and how we might best leverage them to improve the livability or infrastructure of our city. 

A new book, birthed in the creative ferment of the Daniels Faculty’s studio environment, seeks to address this lack of consideration by reimagining our two main local ravines as more useable public space, as enhancements to our infrastructure, and as environmental assets to the predominantly urban local landscape.

Ravine Re-create highlights work from Daniels Faculty students in the 2016 Option Studio, established by Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Alissa North, as well as designs from the similarly-structured 2018 MLA Design Studio 4, coordinated by North and co-taught with Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture Justine Holzman, and Sessional Lecturer Emilia Hurd.

Working in collaboration with several divisions of the City of Toronto and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority, Waterfront Toronto, and Evergreen, students developed designs and ideas for reimagined landscapes that sought to address specific action items and priorities identified by the Toronto Ravine Strategy,  the City’s recently developed policy guide for future development and use of our urban waterways. In addition to this close collaboration and consultation with local agencies, students also undertook a guided tour of the Humber River, led by Alan Colley, founder of Toronto Aboriginal Eco Tours.

The studio framework consisted of two main stages. Students first worked on mapping these areas in order to better understand the larger ravine systems, and then proceeded to proposing specific design ideas for particular sites along the ravine or river. This work has now been compiled into a book recently published by North entitled Ravine Re-create: Design Ideas for Toronto’s Ravines, featuring designs and drawings from students.

“The hope is that this book will allow Torontonians to gain new perspectives and see new potentials for the ravines,” explains North. “And that the interesting maps and design proposals in the book will spur their own ideas. The ravine system is a very big network, and it will need many heads to guide it toward balanced integrity.”

North says that this kind of thinking is timely, given the rapid urban growth experienced by the GTA in recent decades. “Our ravines are such a great asset for our exponentially increasing city, but we have modified them to such a great extent, and mostly detrimentally,” she elaborates. “Due to their urban context, they cannot be returned to any type of pre-settlement state, so their health is in our hands. How and what we decide to do has potential beneficial impact environmentally, socially, equitably, economically, and ecologically, but only if we commit to the ravines. I think Toronto now values its ravines, but doesn’t really know what that means, or what to do with that notion. This book provides, ideals, ideas, and visions.”

Ravine Re-create: Design Ideas for Toronto’s Ravines retails for $47.50 (including tax) and can be purchased by emailing Associate Professor Alissa North.

Images by:
1. Stephen Brophy
2. Adelin Yingqian Hu
4. Andrew Hooke
5. Waiyee Chou, Irene Wong, Angela Moreno
6. Yuxin Liu, Kathleen Alexander, Cynthia Chiu Chen, Andrea Lam

Photo above by Sean Galbraith

Photo courtesy of Ontario Place

Image above: Rendering of Stellar Spactra by Dionisios Vriniotis and Rob Shostak (MArch 2010)

4. Explore Winter Stations at Woodbine Beach. Colourful, interactive installations will bring crowds to the beach again this winter starting in February. Be sure to check out Cavalcade, by Master of Architecture students John Nguyen, Anton Skorishchenko, Abubakr Bajaman, and Stephen Baik, and Assistant Peofessor Victor Perez-Amado, The installations will be revealed on February 13th and remain on display until April 1st, 2019.

For more information, visit Winter Stations website. 

Image above: Rendering of Cavalcade by John Nguyen, Anton Skorishchenko, Abubakr Bajaman, and Stephen Baik and Assistant Peofessor Victor Perez-Amado

Image above by Bob Gundu

The Daniels Faculty would like to congratulate first year Master of Architecture student James Bird on winning the President's Award for Outstanding Indigenous Student of the Year. Lisa Boivin, an undergraduate student from the Faculty of Medicine, also received this honour. Two students, one graduate and one undergraduate, receive the award each year.

"I felt honored to be selected from a very large cohort of extremely talented people. It is a humbling experience, and I am filled with deep gratitude," said Bird. "The President's Award means a recognition for perseverance and persistence in educations goals I had always hoped for."

Bird recently completed his Bachelor of Arts in Indigenous Studies and Renaissance Studies at U of T. He began his master’s degree in architecture this fall after nearly 30 years as a carpenter, journeyman, and cabinet maker. A knowledge keeper from the Nehiyawak nation and Dene Nation, he says his future goals include the possibly pursuing a PhD and continuing his SSHRC research in "linguistincs and the interaction between space making and Indigenous languages."

A ceremony and reception for the President's Award was held on December 6th at First Nations House at U of T.

Looking for ways to enjoy the outdoors in Toronto during the winter holidays? The Winter Light Exhibition at Ontario Place opens up the former theme park grounds to a series of installations designed to engage visitors and bring light to the city during dark winter months.

Eighteen pieces throughout the landscape include Obscura, a colourful interactive installation designed and built by third year Master of Architecture students John Nguyen, Anton Skorishchenko, Stephen Baik, and Robert Lee. Built and fabricated in the Daniels Faculty's workshop, the piece was among those selected for display by a jury guided by the curatorial theme "Disruptive Engagement."

From the Winter Light Exhibition Website:
 

Obscura is an interactive installation that explores the contrast between light vs. darkness using two/three-dimensional geometry. The Human eye is unable to distinguish two/three-dimensional space in darkness. Obscura plays on this shortcoming by introducing an installation that makes use of the darkness at night to reveal a three-dimensional creation of space, while in the daytime, two-dimensional space is created. As visitors look through the front triangle of the first iteration, a series of twirling forms will create the illusion of seamlessly flowing from one frame to another. Visitors can proceed to travel in-between each of the frames to discover how simple geometry in combination with darkness and light can define and create a new dichotomy to experience and understand space.

Winter Light Exhibition and the student's installation has been featured in Azure, BlogTO, and CBC Toronto. The exhibition runs until March 17, 2019.

Obscura is not the only work by the students that will be brightening Toronto's landscape this winter. Nguyen, Baik, Skorishchenko and fellow student Abubakr Bajaman, together with Assistant Professor Victor Perez-Amado recently learned that they won a spot in the fifth annual 2019 Winter Stations exhibition along Toronto's Woodbine Beach. Their proposal, Calvalcade, is one of 5 installations that will appear on Toronto's waterfront in February.

Follow the students on instagram: @john.design, @stephen.baik, @anton_skor, @rjl1417

A group of four talented students from Daniels Faculty recently nabbed the silver spot at the Marvin Architects Student Challenge, placing alongside other top architectural schools from across Canada.

Marvin Windows and Doors invited senior architecture students from across Canada to submit their best and most creative designs featuring Marvin products. Daniels Faculty students Feng Le, Vitusan Vimal, Jonathan Graham, and Raymond Kuang competed along with participants from schools such as University of Manitoba and Laval, and were awarded second place for their submission. In their announcement, the judges described their design as:
 

A geometric delight. The layout is thoughtfully designed to promote well-being and access to natural spaces through the creative use of interior courtyards. Dubbed “a true sensory experience”, this project shows how you can go “outside” without leaving the perimeter of your home.
 

“We entered the competition after attending a workshop which consisted of architects around the world,” explains Feng Le. “The passion in the room was inspiring. We started looking into possible competitions to start learning and found Marvin Windows. The design brief appealed to our individual expertise, and we knew that this was a competition that we would thoroughly enjoy.”

“This win means a lot to us as individual designers, and as a team,” he continues. “This achievement confirms our dreams to be reality. With this win, we are hoping that our individual skills, and determination to succeed become clear to the architecture world, as we continue exploring our young careers.”