ARC3015Y F / LAN3016Y F
Instructors: Brigitte Shim, Robert Wright
Meeting Section: L0103
Tuesday, 9:00am - 1:00pm, 2:00pm - 6:00pm; Friday, 2:00pm - 6:00pm

This joint design studio explores the intersection between the disciplines of forestry, architecture landscape architecture and urban design. Architecture, landscape architecture and Urban Design students will work together to realize a comprehensive project designing an industrial building and its landscape. The forest and the factory are both an organized nature constructed to speak eloquently about our contemporary attitudes towards nature and production. Each studio group will provide an integrated design response to the studio brief considering the role of the landscape and built form to address a bold design solution that explores the role of forestry and design simultaneously.  During a time of environmental crisis, we need to rethink the design of our forest in Southern Ontario and explore its re-integration within the production of value-added wood products. We need to act sustainably to provide exemplary models for reforestation and building with one of our most renewable resources – wood. Architecture, landscape architecture and urban design students will work together to realize a comprehensive response to the studio design brief requiring an industrial building to house a CLT facility which will utilize CLT construction and to reconceptualize its surround industrial landscape as a site for the forest of the future. 

Instructor Bios:

Brigitte Shim

Brigitte Shim is a Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto and a principal at Shim-Sutcliffe Architects. She has been teaching at the Daniels Faculty since 1988, and has overseen core design studios, advanced design studios, thesis studios, and courses in the history and theory of landscape architecture. To date, Shim and Sutcliffe have received fourteen Governor General’s Medals and Awards for architecture as well as an American Institute of Architects National Honor Award, among many other professional accolades. n January 2013, Brigitte Shim and her partner Howard Sutcliffe were both awarded the Order of Canada, “for their contributions as architects designing sophisticated structures that represent the best of Canadian design to the world,” along with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. Shim is a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (FRAIC), an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (Hon FAIA), and an elected member of the Royal Canadian Academy (RCA). She is a registered architect in the Province of Ontario (OAA), the State of Maine, and the State of Hawaii.

Robert Wright

Robert Wright has a BSc from the University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada in Open Space Planning, with a major in Ecology and an MLA from the University of Guelph, Ontario Canada. Professor Wright’s work is design centred and extremely eclectic in nature. His notion of design does not privilege the traditional professional disciplines of Architecture, Landscape Architecture or Urban Design. He places his work within a more contemporary and trans-disciplinary framework. As both an educator and as a design practitioner, he holds a strong belief that “Design is built theory” meaning that the translation from thought and concept to built works is primary and essential to design discourse. Having had training in both Ecology and Landscape Architecture places design as a practice that must at its essence deal with context. As a self-confessed “Modernist” with Minimalist and situationalist tendencies. The art of design is not merely “object” making but rather the interplay of Nature, Person, Community, City and Place. Mr. Wright is also the Director of the Centre for Landscape Research. His efforts on behalf of the CLR focus on bringing the University’s expertise together with Community, Industry and government research Interests. He is also an associate of the Cities Centre at the University of Toronto and is cross-appointed with the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto. He is a full member of the OALA and a Fellow of the CSLA.