Monday, December 4 to Tuesday, December 19
Daniels Building
1 Spadina Crescent

Whether you're a future student, an alum, or a member of the public with an interest in architecture, forestry, landscape architecture or urban design—you're invited to join the Daniels Faculty for Fall 2023 Reviews. Throughout December, students from across our graduate and undergraduate programs will present final projects to their instructors and guest critics from academia and the professional community.

All reviews will take place in the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (unless otherwise stated). Follow @UofTDaniels on social media and join the conversation using the hashtags #DanielsReviews and #DanielsReviews23.

Please note that times and dates are subject to change.

Monday, December 4 | Graduate 

Design Studio I
LAN1011Y
Coordinators: Alissa North, Peter North 
Room: 330 

Tuesday, December 5 | Graduate 

8:45 a.m.–6:30 p.m. ET 
Design Studio I 
ARC1011Y
Coordinator: Chris Cornecelli 
Instructors: Fiona Lim Tung, Anya Moryoussef, Aleris Rodgers, Julia Di Castri, Tom Ngo 
Rooms: 215, 230, 240, 330 

Wednesday, December 6 | Graduate 

Integrated Urbanism Studio
ARC2013Y, LAN2013Y, URD1011Y
Coordinators: Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Rob Wright, Roberto Damiani
Instructors: Karen Kubey, Aziza Chaouni, Jon Cummings, Christos Marcopoulos, Mariana Leguia Alegria, David Verbeek, Megan Esopenko
Rooms: 200, 215, 230, 240, 330 

Thursday, December 7 | Graduate  

Integrated Urbanism Studio
ARC2013Y, LAN2013Y, URD1011Y
Coordinators: Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Rob Wright, Roberto Damiani
Instructors: Karen Kubey, Aziza Chaouni, Jon Cummings, Christos Marcopoulos, Mariana Leguia Alegria, David Verbeek, Megan Esopenko
Rooms: 200, 215, 230, 240, 330 

Friday, December 8 | Graduate  

Design Studio Options 
LAN3016Y

The Hart House Farm
Instructor: Liat Margolis 
Room: 330 

Urban Design Studio Options 
URD2013Y
Instructors: Kanwal Aftab, Maya Desai 
Room: 230 

Monday, December 11 | Undergraduate  

Drawing and Representation I 
ARC100H1
Coordinator: James Macgillivray
Instructors: Matthew De Santis, Dan Briker, Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Nicolas Barrette, Anne Ma, Jeffrey Garcia, Monifa Charles-Dedier, Angela Cho, Mariano Martellacci, Connor Stevens, Ji Hee Kim, Kyle O’Brien, Lara Hassani, Brandon Bergem 
Rooms: Main Hall (170A, 170B), 215, 230, 240, 315, 330, 340 

Tuesday, December 12 | Graduate & Undergraduate 

9 a.m.–2 p.m. 
Drawing and Representation II 
ARC200H1
Coordinator: Roberto Damiani
Instructors: Nova Tayona, Simon Rabyniuk, Reza Nik, Paul Howard Harrison, Sam Dufaux, Karen Kubey, Katy Chey, Phat Le, Samantha Eby, Alejandro Lopez 
Rooms: Main Hall (170A, 170B, 170C), 209, 215, 230, 240, 315, 330, 340 

10 a.m.–3 p.m. 
Capstone Project in Forest Conservation 
FOR3008H
Instructor: Catherine Edwards 
Room: 200 
View detailed schedule.

Wednesday, December 13 | Graduate & Undergraduate 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 1 
ARC3020Y

Rehearsing the Parade: Ephemeral Assemblies and Persuasion on the Move
Instructor: Miles Gertler 
Rooms: Main Hall (170C), 209 

Architecture and Health Equity in an Imperiled World
Instructor: Stephen Verderber 
Room: 330 

Architecture Studio III
ARC361Y1
Coordinator: Adrian Phiffer
Instructors: Shane Williamson, Carol Moukheiber 
Rooms: Main Hall (170A, 170B), 230 

10 a.m.–3 p.m. 
Capstone Project in Forest Conservation (FOR3008H)
Instructor: Catherine Edwards 
Room: 200 
View detailed schedule.

Thursday, December 14 | Graduate & Undergraduate 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 1 
ARC3020Y

The Certainty of Uncertain Forms, or in search of anexact typologies
Instructor: Carol Moukheiber 
Room: 330 

Counterhegemonic Architecture
Instructor: Lukas Pauer 
Rooms: 215, 240 

If robots are the answer, what was the question?
Instructor: Brady Peters 
Rooms: 209, 242 

Bridging the Divide: An Architecture of Demographic Transition
Instructor: Shane Williamson 
Room: 230 

Design Studio Options 
LAN3016Y

Generative Design in Landscape Architecture: Explorations and Applications
Instructors: Rob Wright, Matthew Spremulli 
Room: 200 

Landscape Architecture Studio III 
ARC363Y1
Instructor: Behnaz Assadi 
Rooms: 315, 340, Main Hall (170C) 

Technology Studio III
ARC380Y1
Instructors: Nicholas Hoban (Coordinator), Maria Yablonina 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Friday, December 15 | Graduate 

Architectural Design Studio: Research 1
ARC3020Y

Swarm / Counterarchive
Instructor: Jeannie Kim 
Room: 330 

ARCHIPELAGO, 4.0: Docu-Drawing, Activism, Re-Building
Instructor: Petros Babasikas 
Room: 230 

SUPERNATURAL
Instructor: Laura Miller 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

USING TREES
Instructor: Zachary Mollica 
Room: 240 

HOUSE FOR PIRANESI at Hadrian’s villa: TRIUMPH OF THE FRAGMENT DRAWING AS THESIS An allegory for illustrated ARCHITECTURAL narrative
Instructor: John Shnier 
Room: 1st Floor Hallway 

Monday, December 18 | Undergraduate & Graduate

9 a.m.–2 p.m. 
Design Studio II
ARC201H1
Coordinator: Miles Gertler
Instructors: Brian Boigon, Jennifer Kudlats, Aleris Rodgers 
Rooms: 215, 240, 315, 340 

9:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. and 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Post-Professional Thesis Review
ALA4021
Rooms: 209, 242

Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Research) 
ARC456H1
Instructor: Petros Babasikas 
Room: 330 

Senior Seminar in Design (Research) 
ARC461H1
Instructor: Laura Miller 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Senior Seminar in Technology (Research) 
ARC486H1
Instructor: Nicholas Hoban 
Room: 230 

Tuesday, December 19 | Undergraduate 

Senior Seminar in History and Theory (Research) 
ARC456H1
Instructor: Petros Babasikas 
Room: 330 

Senior Seminar in Design (Research)
ARC461H1
Instructor: Laura Miller 
Room: Main Hall (170A, 170B) 

Senior Seminar in Technology (Research)
ARC486H1
Instructor: Nicholas Hoban 
Room: 230 

The annual Eyeball exhibition showcasing recent artwork by the Daniels Faculty’s undergraduate students in Visual Studies is currently on view at 1 Spadina Crescent.

Featuring works by nearly two dozen students, the yearly survey will be on display in the Daniels Building's Larry Wayne Richards Gallery until December 1.

Students represented this year include Jacob Muller, Megan Croft, Samahdi Alvarado Orozco, Denise Akman, Elly Yoo, Rory Marks, Jared Rishikof, Fatima Tahir, Nara Wrigglesworth, Cathy Zhou, Jasmine Mohan Zhu, Gillian Stam, Evan Bulloch, Veeshva Rana, Dorsa Sarvi, Prasham Shah, Massimo Giannone, Hanna Kamehiro, Sophie Woelfling, Mandy Chiu and Jinyan Zhao.

The exhibition encompasses a range of media, including painted works on paper and canvas, film and video pieces and mixed-media installations.

A closing celebration will be held in the LWR Gallery from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Friday, December 1. All artists, supporters, Visual Studies faculty and Daniels Faculty staff are invited to attend. Light refreshments will be provided.

In Rehearsing the Parade: Ephemeral Assemblies and Persuasion on the Move, a Design Research Studio (ARC3020) led by Assistant Professor Miles Gertler, Master of Architecture students have spent the semester examining parades, processions, pageantry and other ephemeral events as pragmatic tools for city-building.

“Processions, convoys, assemblies and parades are all about performance,” writes Gertler in the studio description. “They have order and itinerary. Parades affirm a here and a there and, often, a center. Parades are spatial and animate. Parades are wholes made of many parts. They transmit messages, have audiences, and are themselves rehearsals of prospective worlds or realities to come. We could similarly attribute these conditions to architecture, and indeed, parades are designed and behave like so many artifacts shaped by design labor.”

Within the context of the studio, student Jia Chen Mi has been studying Quebec’s Mitis River Salmon Run as a logistical convoy that develops ecosystemic collaboration between humans and fish. Since the damming of the river in 1973, designated stewards of its salmon population have stepped in with various mechanical and vehicular tools to assist the salmon in their annual return upriver.

Jia’s drawings study this situation with a focus on the epigenetic instrumentation that salmon use to navigate their journey, and the sensorial tools that humans and fish use to orient their engagement with the site.

Jia writes: “Every spawning season, in the Mitis River, as in many other rivers in Quebec, salmon are captured and driven past hydroelectric dams to prevent their extinction. The Mitis salmon transportation is a meticulously rehearsed operation. The salmon cage and truck can accommodate only a dozen bodies at a time. A human worker is always on watch, counting, loading, and driving. Inattention can spell death. In this regard, the Mitis salmon run is a delicate parade requiring close inter-species collaboration. It is a waltz of flesh and machines, orchestrated by a myriad of devices. A drive for renewable energy has made the fish dependent on human intervention, yet humans also rely on salmon. For Wolastoqiyik and Mi’gmaq communities of Eastern Quebec and New Brunswick, fishing and eating wild salmon has always been vital for survival—both spiritually and culturally, as well as biologically. For many settler anglers visiting the Mitis River every summer, Atlantic salmon fishing is a way to heal from the strains of urban life. What is the story of the participants in this parade, and what tools do they use to choreograph their mutual survival?”

Lara Sedele’s research into Toronto-based art collective General Idea’s 1971 Miss General Idea Pageant examines how the city and its urban and social infrastructures were instrumentalized toward the construction of an art practice. Lara has enriched her inquiry with archival research at the Art Gallery of Ontario and interviews with AA Bronson, a founding member of General Idea.

Lara writes: “To tell the story of General Idea and the art ecosystem that surrounded them in Toronto, The Miss General Idea Pageant in 1971 takes center stage as a temporal and performative means of challenging the art economy and the value placed on traditional visual art formats.”

Lara’s examination has focused chiefly on three aspects: the mythology crafted by General Idea themselves, the documentary ephemera disseminated through mail, and the financial records of 1971 and 1972, documented by the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Navjot Dhanoa, another student in the studio, has been investigating the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade through the lens of inflation. Navjot has studied how variations in the value of the US dollar track with the scale of the parade's balloons, Macy's revenue, and the value of helium, which is a rare and finite resource.

By studying trans-continental helium infrastructure, recent Macy's store closures across the United States and the locations and audiences of advertisers who participate in the parade, Navjot has developed a nuanced understanding of today's mass consumer market, "where merchandising and spectacle meet."

Rehearsing the Parade: Ephemeral Assemblies and Persuasion on the Move will conclude this semester with a first sketch of a float vehicle or device, and a schematic outline for next term’s focus on thesis, where students may lean into the format of parades or depart from it entirely. Final assignments will be added to a single-issue magazine produced by the studio with this semester's collective research.

Image credits: 1) Banner image: Students participate in a “Speed dating” Typology Workshop in the first part of the studio, which focused on Representation and Language. "BOOMING COMMENTARY" image by Gianlorenzo Giannone and Emilie Tamtik. 2) Student Work: Jia Chen Mi, "Choreographing the Natural: The Mitis Salmon Run" 3) Student Work: Lara Sedele, "The General Idea Behind the Pageant: The 1971 Miss General Idea Pageant Grand Awards Ceremony" 4) Navjot Dhanoa, "Inflating Traditions: The Ballooning Consumption of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade" 5) A sample publication spread from the research articles each student has prepared for the single-issue magazine that will collect all of the semester's projects. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

View the 2022-2023 BAAS Thesis website here.

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

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

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

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

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

Student work featured in banner image:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On view at the Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI) until next June, the exhibition Mnemonic silences, disappearing acts grapples with the absences, erasures and censorships that pervade queer and trans histories, offering alternative forms of documentation, storytelling and memory-keeping that respond to archival gaps and propose strategies for future archiving.

On Tuesday, November 14, exhibition curator Dallas Fellini, who is currently pursuing a Master of Visual Studies in Curatorial Studies at the Daniels Faculty, will provide a guided tour of the show, which features works by artists Jordan King, Kasra Jalilipour, Hazel Meyer and Cait McKinney, Kama La Mackerel and Lan “Florence” Yee.

Following the tour, attendees will be invited to walk over to the Daniels Building at 1 Spadina Crescent, where curator Fellini and artist King will lead a discussion about their work and its role in trans memory-keeping and resistance.

All are welcome to join both the tour and the talk. The hour-long JHI tour will begin at noon on the 10th floor of 170 St. George Street. The talk, at which lunch will be provided, will commence at 1:30 p.m. in Room 230 of the Daniels Building. Attendees may register here.

Situated at the intersection of trans studies and archival studies, Fellini’s research interrogates the compromised conditions under which trans histories have been recorded and considers representational and archival alternatives to trans hyper-visibility. 

King is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and writer whose practice is rooted in performance, archival research and intergenerational dialogue. She is currently a Curatorial Practice MFA student at OCAD University, where her focus is on documentary film and multimedia documentation of underground queer performance. 

The JHI tour and Daniels Faculty talk will take place during Trans Awareness Week, established to encourage awareness of and advocacy around trans rights and inclusion and to affirm trans lives and experiences in all their complexity. Trans Awareness Week will be observed this year from November 13 to 17.

The week will be followed by Trans Day of Remembrance and Resilience (TDoRR) on November 20. TDoRR is observed annually to honour the memory of the trans people who have lost their lives as a result of transphobic violence.

U of T will mark both Trans Awareness Week and TDoRR with a range of events and gatherings. For the full programming list, click here.

Exhibition images: Among the works on view in the exhibition Mnemonic silences, disappearing acts are Untitled by Jordan King (top) and Leaving Space by Lan “Florence” Yee (bottom). On Tuesday, November 14, curator Dallas Fellini will lead a tour of the show at the Jackman Humanities Institute before joining artist King for a discussion at the Daniels Faculty. Lunch will be provided. King photo courtesy of the artist, Yee photo by Alexis Bellavance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All images in this story are courtesy Satyam Mistry.

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

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

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

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

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

November 7 and 8: Graduate Open House

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

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

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

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

November 16: MFC Program Open House

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

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

November 23: U of T Fall Campus Day 2023 

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

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

Click here to register for the in-person FCD!

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