The Campaign for the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design
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CONTENTS Daniels on the Rise One Spadina Crescent A Landmark Project for the City Funding Opportunities The Campaign
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Richard M. Sommer, Dean, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design
BOUNDLESS BY DESIGN Many of the greatest challenges we face today — from reconceiving notions of place in a digitally networked world, to making our cities more resilient to climate change, to addressing aging transit, energy, waste, and water infrastructures, to reforming the built environment to promote greater health and social engagement — are not exclusive to a single discipline or realm of professional expertise, but rather fall firmly within the territory of interdisciplinary design thinking. In this changing context, architecture and design, broadly conceived in their artistic and urban dimensions, provide a critical lens for understanding the world, and essential tools for giving it form. Unprecedented opportunities now exist for the architect, landscape architect, visual artist, and urban designer to engage with global issues in imaginative, new ways and lead in the creation of culturally progressive, ecologically resilient, and beautifully crafted buildings, landscapes, and cities.
University of Toronto, we are singularly positioned to be a global leader in advancing the art and design of cities and other environments. The redevelopment of One Spadina Crescent is absolutely critical to our ambitions. This new home for our Faculty will enable us to expand our curricular programs, pursue innovative research, and establish a space in which to model the many ways the built environment will be made and remade in the future. One Spadina will also create a magnificent platform to deepen public understanding and inspire dialogue on the most creative challenges faced by our society today. In these pages, we have highlighted the many opportunities for supporting this important civic project. We hope you will join us in this extraordinary endeavour to transform the Daniels Faculty and reinvent design education, research, and practice for decades to come.
The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is seizing these new opportunities for our disciplines, and driving design research, scholarship, and practice to new heights of relevance and impact. Drawing on the vast interdisciplinary resources of the 5
With the redevelopment of One Spadina, the Daniels Faculty will be a catalyst for designing better cities and reconceiving architecture and landscapes for the 21st century. - Professor Meric Gertler, President, University of Toronto
John and Myrna Daniels and Dean Richard Sommer with the Daniels Scholars — the next generation of leaders in the field — at an exhibition featuring One Spadina.
DANIELS ON THE RISE The John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design is on a remarkable trajectory of growth and transformation. A landmark gift from John and Myrna Daniels in 2008 and a subsequent investment in 2013 have allowed us to imagine a greater role for the Daniels Faculty both nationally and globally, as well as plan dynamic new spaces to benefit our students and support the changing needs of our profession. This outstanding trajectory has inspired others to rally around the Daniels Faculty’s expansion plans. We are tremendously grateful for this support, and look forward to engaging even more of our alumni and friends as our plans unfold over the coming years. Our momentum has enabled us to dramatically expand our academic programs to meet the growing demand for outstanding architects, designers, and landscape architects. Our newly incorporated honours bachelor of arts programs in architectural studies and visual studies have become a great pipeline for future talent. Our master’s programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and visual studies are now competitive with the best programs in the world. Plans are also underway to launch a new PhD program in architecture, landscape, and design studies. Applications to our graduate programs have tripled in the past decade, with the greatest growth occurring in the past few years.
We have also reached new heights of academic and professional excellence. In recent years, Daniels faculty, students, and alumni have won more peer-reviewed design awards and prizes than all of our Canadian peers combined. These include numerous Governor General Awards and Prix de Rome prizes. Many of our young faculty have been selected as ‘Emerging Voices’ in the field by New York’s prestigious Architectural League. In addition, faculty member Mason White and a group of Daniels students, working with Lateral Office, organized and designed the 2014 Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (Arctic Adaptations: Nunavut at 15). Daniels faculty, students, and alumni are literally transforming landscapes, public institutions, and neighbourhoods across Canada, and, increasingly, around the world. The Daniels Faculty is on a great footing, and we are eager to build on our momentum. With the redevelopment of our new complex at One Spadina underway, we have an opportunity to do something extraordinary for our city: build a worldleading venue for architecture and urban design on one of Toronto’s most important historic sites.
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The neo-Gothic building at One Spadina Crescent, which dates back to 1875, was originally built for Knox College, a Presbyterian seminary. Over the years, the building has served as a military barracks, a hospital, and the home for the Connaught Medical Research Laboratories. The University of Toronto purchased the property in the early 1970s. Since that time, One Spadina has remained largely unchanged. The relocation of the Daniels Faculty to One Spadina will signal a rebirth for this important historic site. 8
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Left: One Spadina Crescent, the axial terminus for one of Toronto’s few spectacular vistas, as depicted by W. Wesbroom’s 1886 lithograph (Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library).
ONE SPADINA CRESCENT The original home of Knox College, and later, the University of Toronto’s Connaught Labs, which introduced insulin to the world, One Spadina is an address of deep historical significance. In a city dominated by the logic of the mercantile grid, One Spadina Crescent is one of the few civic flourishes in all of Toronto — a characteristic it shares with Queen’s Park and King’s College Circle. The site also sits atop a corridor that has played a defining role in the development of Toronto as a cosmopolitan city. For more than a century, Spadina Avenue and nearby Kensington Market have provided a foothold for successive immigrant communities.
Our plans for One Spadina will reconnect this vitally important site to the city in a new way, reinventing it as a gateway to the University of Toronto, and establishing it as a hub for urban design and a gathering place for people who are engaged in all facets of city building. A revitalized One Spadina will serve as the northern focal point for the Spadina corridor, an area already emerging as one of the most dynamic design clusters in North America.
Through all this time, One Spadina Crescent stood as a symbol of stately grandeur amid a diverse and growing city. However, in more recent years, it has become a symbol of some neglect, a glorious building seemingly disconnected from its surroundings. 11
Photo by Peter MacCallum
The One Spadina project will restore one of Toronto’s landmark addresses to its original splendour and create an urban design exemplar.
Photo by Peter MacCallum
The revitalization of One Spadina Crescent will integrate a stunning piece of contemporary architecture with the site’s heritage fabric that completes the building’s original cloister and opens up the circle to the surrounding neighbourhood and city beyond. 16
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Rendering by The Flat Side of Design
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A LANDMARK PROJECT FOR THE CITY One Spadina is a signature project for the Daniels Faculty and the city at large. The original neo-Gothic building will be seamlessly integrated with a new, stunning work of contemporary architecture. The new design will open up One Spadina, transforming it from a cloistered space into a site that is more deeply connected to the life of the city. The new complex will double the amount of space available to the Daniels Faculty to more than 100,000 square feet and allow us to consolidate our programs in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, and visual studies along the western edge of the University’s St. George campus. With more space, we will not only respond to growing enrolment demands, but also provide our students with the infrastructure and collaborative research environments that are essential for contemporary design research and education. The heritage renovation will return One Spadina’s interior spaces to their original format and austere beauty. These spaces will flow into a spectacular 20
new facility featuring flexible design studios, lecture and meeting halls, fabrication spaces, and research laboratories. A series of pavilions, radiating outwards, will house cross-disciplinary research units devoted to addressing the most pressing challenges in urbanization, health care, sustainability, city building, and governance. Through a new, dramatic landscape, the circle will be generously opened to the city for perhaps the first time since the 19th century through a new east-west access, various plazas and seating, bicycle parking, and a large southfacing belvedere. One Spadina’s teaching, research, fabrication, and presentation spaces will be a hub for creating more sustainable, beautifully crafted, and socially just cities. The complex will be an exemplar of urban design and thus serve as a model of what we strive to teach our students. The new building will showcase leading sustainable design practices, including adaptable building systems, userresponsive technologies, rainwater harvesting, natural daylighting, and a green roof laboratory built to incorporate photovoltaic technology as it evolves.
The sightline of One Spadina Crescent from the north will provide a transparent and inviting view into the Daniels Faculty’s Design Studios and Fabrication Lab where students learn to apply their craft.
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Nader Tehrani and Katie Faulkner, Principals, NADAAA.
We refuse in many ways to design just a building. It really is a piece of urbanism in and of itself. - Nader Tehrani, NADAAA
PROJECT DESIGN Nader Tehrani and his collaborator Katie Faulkner of the internationally renowned firm NADAAA are designing the new One Spadina complex. With scores of accolades to its name, NADAAA recently ranked first in Architect Magazine’s annual review of the top 50 design firms in the United States.
For the One Spadina project, NADAAA is partnering with the Toronto firm Public Work, founded by Marc Ryan (former director at West 8 Toronto) and Adam Nicklin (former principal at DTAH) on the design of the site’s landscape. Toronto’s Adamson Associates and ERA Architects are also part of the design team serving as executive and preservation architects, respectively.
A recognized innovator, Tehrani has received many prestigious awards for both design and sustainability, including 15 Progressive Architecture Awards. Faulkner has more than 20 years of design and management experience in largescale planning, academic, institutional, and health-care projects. Both have designed awardwinning buildings for other educational institutions and schools of architecture, including the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, the Rhode Island School of Design’s Fleet Library, and Georgia Institute of Technology’s Hinman Research Building. 23
FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES INSTITUTES AND PROGRAMS Global Cities Institute Institute for Architecture and Health
CAPITAL NAMING OPPORTUNITIES Model Cities Theatre and Lab (Pavilion) Global Cities (Pavilion) Architecture and Design Gallery Principal Hall Design Studio (Graduate) North Design Studio (Graduate) South Design Studio (Core) Atrium Belvedere Commons Fabrication Lab (High-Bay) Library Library — Reading Room Médiathèque Avenue and Lake Suites (Conference Rooms) Classrooms (4)
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GLOBAL CITIES INSTITUTE For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban centres. In 2050, this proportion will likely exceed 70 per cent. This rapid urban expansion represents the greatest building boom ever undertaken. Already, India must build the equivalent of a new Toronto every year to keep pace with demand for urban housing. China plans to build 20 new cities annually through 2020 to accommodate an estimated 12 million people moving from rural to urban areas. Each week roughly one million people are born in or migrate to cities in the developing world. For urban growth to be viable, it must be wisely planned and intentionally designed. Urbanization offers an opportunity to lift billions out of poverty. However, rapid change and lack of planning can also lead to a host of urban problems. In this context, the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design have never been more essential. The ideas, forms, and infrastructures we apply to the cities of the future will have a huge bearing on global quality of life and our ability to address global poverty, global health, and climate change. 26
The Daniels Faculty recognizes that the most important global issues today are inextricably urban issues, and that cities are critical to meeting global challenges. The recently launched Global Cities Institute (GCI) is a prime example of our commitment to advancing urban research and the art of city building in the 21st century. The GCI is a collaborative, cross-disciplinary research institute focused on meeting the demand for better tools for designing and planning cities. The Institute is already a world leader in compiling and analyzing comparative data on global cities through its Global City Indicators Facility (GCIF). A new Model Cities Theatre and Laboratory will further the GCI’s research and impact by allowing urban researchers, planners, and designers to take city-level data and apply emerging visualization techniques to model alternative urban futures. The GCI will be housed within a 2,314-square-foot street-front pavilion along the northwestern edge of One Spadina. From this prominent vantage point, the Global Cities Institute will serve as the University’s pre-eminent research hub for scholarship on global cities, offering stakeholders from around the world the design, metrics, and visualization tools needed to develop solutions
Professor Patricia McCarney — founding director of the Global City Indicators Facility and director of the Global Cities Institute — is a leading authority on urban metrics
Photo by John Hryniuk
and governance.
to the largest challenges facing cities and city regions. As millions of people migrate to cities in the coming decades, urban-based data and the collection of city indicators will be increasingly fundamental to managing urban growth and devising solutions to global challenges. While various levels of government, academia, and international agencies already use urban metrics to inform decision-making, there has been, until now, no consistent global standard for urban metrics that would allow meaningful comparisons across cities and over time. This lack of standardization has limited the ability of cities to observe trends, engage in comparative benchmarking with peer cities, share best practices, and learn from each other. The Global City Indicators Facility was created to address the need for a global, standardized system for urban data collection. The GCIF’s database tracks the performance of cities across 115 indicators using a standardized set of definitions and methodologies. These metrics provide cities with a common platform to study and track their effectiveness on issues as diverse as transportation, energy use / carbon footprint, economic growth, aging populations, health
and safety, education, extreme weather impact, and growing income disparity. The GCIF has developed a global knowledge network of close to 300 cities across Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America. The GCIF is recognized as a global leader in urban metrics, governance, and policy. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in Geneva recently certified the GCIF’s indicators as the international standard for city metrics. No other research consortium in the world has received this kind of validation for urban research. Under the auspices of the Global Cities Institute and its research enterprise, civic leaders, developers, planners, and policy-makers around the world will have access to credible, standardized, and comparative city-level data to address the challenges facing fast-growing metropolises.
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INSTITUTE FOR ARCHITECTURE AND HEALTH A growing body of evidence shows that the form of our cities and the architecture of everyday life has a greater impact on our physical and mental well-being than has been understood up to now. The fields of architecture, landscape architecture, visual arts, and urban design therefore have an increasingly prominent role to play in imagining built environments and driving health-care protocols and public policy that contribute to greater health and vitality. Our bodies, our health, and the built environment are inextricably connected. The way we move through our surroundings on a daily basis, the quality of air, light, and temperature of our buildings and landscapes, and the kinds of materials we use to construct our spaces, all combine to impact health and happiness over time. The technological revolutions in city building over the last century and a half that brought us artificial electrical lighting, large concrete and steel structures, mechanically heated and cooled dwellings with indoor plumbing, and rapid modes of transit have had — in many respects — unintended effects on human health and ecology. Now we must revolutionize the aging metropolis, and build new cities to better respond to our sensory and biological needs. The modern hospital is the “canary in the coal mine” of urban buildings as it is seemingly designed to safeguard human health, but often fails to deliver. Even beyond the institutional spaces of health care, the way we configure — by design — our streets, parks, neighbourhoods, and, most importantly, our homes and workspaces, profoundly impacts our health and state of mind. The new Institute for Architecture and Health, one of only a handful of such institutes worldwide, will occupy a large pavilion along the northeastern circumference of One Spadina. The Institute will bring together the University of Toronto’s renowned research and clinical strengths in the health and cognitive sciences and public policy with design expertise at the Daniels Faculty to develop new ideas and design frameworks for healthier buildings, landscapes, and cities. The proximity of University Avenue, which is home to some of North America’s leading clinical research hospitals, will provide fertile ground for collaboration and inquiry. The Institute will explore alternate ways to design hospitals, clinics, and other health-care settings, and examine the impact these structures have on the health-care system and the quality of patient care. 28
The Institute will also look beyond the hospital to see how we can modify the structures and landscapes of everyday life to make people healthier and happier throughout their lifetimes. With the cost of health-care systems soaring worldwide, it is clear that health care and health promotion will have to be distributed differently across the built environment now and in the future. Designing dwellings that help older populations age gracefully in place, or developing neighbourhoods that are more compact and closer to transit, shopping, restaurants, parks, social services, and other amenities to promote active and healthier living — these are just some of the ways design can have a profound effect on our health and social and economic well-being. Our professions have an important role to play in shaping healthier societies. To ensure a strong presence for human health in design education, theory, and practice, the Daniels Faculty plans to launch a specialization in health design in both our master’s program and our planned PhD program — both firsts in Canada. Students will draw on the Institute for Architecture and Health’s research, knowledge, and expertise, and will become the leading professionals to address health and well-being through innovations in architecture, landscape, and urban design.
The Institute for Architecture and Health will explore the relationship between the built environment and health, and examine how design affects our overall physical, psychological, emotional, and social well-being. Left: Oskar Schlemmer’s meditation on the relationship of the body with its surrounding space in his drawing Man as a Dancer (1925). Above: Diagram from Professor Stephen Verderber’s book Sprawling Cities and our Endangered Public Health depicting the dimensions of health promotion within the built environment.
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The new Model Cities Theatre and Laboratory — the first facility of its kind in Toronto — will be a highly versatile space for exploring and planning new models for city building using comparative urban data, immersive technologies, and various visualization techniques. The theatre and lab will facilitate research on designing cities holistically, and offer a public forum for creating new decision frameworks, design options, policy alternatives, and model urban futures.
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MODEL CITIES THEATRE AND LABORATORY For as long as humanity has been constructing cities, modelling and representing their form has been an integral part of the creative process. Drawing on metrics-driven research and insights from the Global Cities Institute, the new Model Cities Theatre and Laboratory will use data visualization to research, design, and reimagine our built environment. The Theatre and Laboratory will be established within a spectacular 4,000-square-foot streetfront pavilion at One Spadina Crescent. The space will advance our ability to apply urban data to modelling the most important design challenges in the field, and generate evidence-based solutions for cities around the world. How can we design our cities to accommodate more people? What city forms are we envisioning? How do we design infrastructure to be more responsive to the needs of citizens? What qualities of life do we imagine for these growing cities? How can the form and reform of our cities contribute to increasing the health of human populations and the broader ecology? How do we ensure sustainable prosperity for cities in ways that generate national and global prosperity, and propel us towards more sustainable, safer, and livable futures? The Model Cities Theatre and Laboratory, through its design research and exploration, will seek to devise design-based solutions to such questions.
and Laboratory will be a crucible for developing immersive technologies, therapeutic modes of design, and intelligent building technologies and situating them within complex, multi-dimensional city models. These models will allow experimental design, planning, and technology-based morphologies for cities to be tested and ultimately understood by the industry and governmental actors key to their implementation. The Model Cities Theatre and Laboratory will bring together “town, gown, and industry” in a public forum to create holistic solutions to the largest challenges facing cities and city regions. In this sense, the Model Cities Laboratory will be the “test-kitchen” for developing new approaches to city design, and the Model Cities Theatre will be the “dining room” in which these new ways of seeing and imagining the city are brought forward for discussion and debate among the various constituencies that build our cities.
Daniels faculty, students, and allied researchers will program and animate the facility, bringing together talents in environmental and programmatic analysis, synthetic 3D urban modelling, parametric design, digital fabrication, and embedded responsive media. The Model Cities Theatre 31
The Daniels Faculty is home to many practicing architects, landscape architects, designers, and artists. Above: Monuments + Bits (2009) by design firm Khoury Levit Fong. Right: Installation view of Professor An Te Liu’s Cloud (2008) at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN GALLERY One Spadina will introduce an elegant new public gallery at street level along the northeastern edge of the site, as part of an emerging “design arts district” that will also include the historic Borden Building, which was recently repurposed to house the Daniels Faculty’s visual studies programs.
The Gallery will also host travelling exhibitions from abroad, as well as exhibitions on Toronto’s architectural heritage and its contemporary design challenges. On a regular cycle, the venue will also showcase the prize-winning work of Daniels faculty and students.
The Gallery will present professionally curated exhibitions of international significance on architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, visual arts, and other allied design fields. The University’s curatorial and teaching talent, as well as its students, will use the gallery to promote experimentation, educate the public about architecture, design, and visual culture, and promote emerging talent.
The Architecture and Design Gallery at the Daniels Faculty will be the only exhibition space in Toronto exclusively devoted to architecture, landscape, and design. As such, the Gallery will be an important advocate for the design professions — generating debate, broadening public interest, and exploring the important ways in which design shapes our neighbourhoods, cities, and daily lives.
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PRINCIPAL HALL Located in the very centre of the One Spadina complex, the Principal Hall is designed to serve as a multi-dimensional public platform for the Daniels Faculty, as well as one of Toronto’s premier venues for discussing the vital role the design arts play in reinventing neighbourhoods, communities, and cities for the 21st century. With seating for 400 people, the new Principal Hall will also be the primary gathering and largeclass teaching space within One Spadina and a showcase for the Faculty’s studio and thesis reviews. Located at the intersection of the historic Knox College building and the new expansion, the hall will complete the original Knox cloister, creating a place where people come together to share ideas, engage in debates, and participate in the diverse work of our faculty and students. Each year, the Daniels Faculty presents public lectures, fora, and symposia that showcase leaders in the fields of architecture, landscape, and urban design, and important thinkers and opinion makers in allied fields. Recent speakers have included such luminaries as Elizabeth Diller, Bruce Kuwabara, Cecil Balmond of Arup, Adriaan Geuze of West 8, Charles Blow of the New York Times, and Pritzker Prize Laureate Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA. 34
These public and academic programs generate a great deal of interest and routinely draw large audiences, which our existing building at 230 College Street and other venues on campus cannot adequately accommodate. The Principal Hall will ensure we have a dedicated space for showcasing the best emerging and established talent in the field and convening meaningful and informed discussions on the role of architecture and design in lifting the prospects of people and places. The configuration of the hall is akin to the communal form of certain Renaissance theatres, with lounges, viewing galleries, and openings to other functions lining the periphery of the space. The design will allow for multiple configurations and uses, ensuring maximum utility for students and faculty, and, most crucially, greater flexibility for a wide range of events opening up the University to the community. As such, the Principal Hall will serve as the centre of intellectual life at the Daniels Faculty.
Situated at the core of the new One Spadina complex, the highly versatile Principal Hall will serve as a public venue for the Daniels Faculty’s engaging program of public lectures, fora, and symposia, as well as a teaching and critique space.
Above: Stadtigel — a city on a sphere made out of cardboard cut and glued by a computer-controlled machine — by Assistant Professor Benjamin Dillenburger with Team Kaisersrot and T. Pawlofski, International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam. Right: A student working with a CNC router — one of the many digital tools used for complex fabrication at the Daniels Faculty.
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FABRICATION LAB
GRIT LAB
In recent decades, parametric modelling and digital fabrication techniques have revolutionized the practice of architecture and design, allowing practitioners to experiment with intricate geometries, incorporate new materials, and imagine projects of greater complexity.
The Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory (GRIT Lab) is a leader in testing the environmental performance of green roofs, green walls, and solar photovoltaic technologies, particularly in northern climates. The City of Toronto and other jurisdictions are now partnering with GRIT to set standards and test policy-based initiatives on green building technologies. This work may have significant economic and environmental benefits for cities, particularly in the areas of air quality, energy usage, storm water management, and the reduction of urban heat islands.
One Spadina will feature an advanced digital fabrication laboratory and high-bay construction area, offering a variety of computationally controlled technologies, including large 3-axis routers, a fused deposition modelling rapid-prototyping system, a colour 3D printer, a 3D digitizer, a 3D laser scanner, several laser cutters, a large format vacuum former, and a suite of workstations. While these types of spaces are often sequestered below grade at other schools, the Fabrication Lab at One Spadina will take centre stage, offering first-hand views from the Commons and the Café into the elevated role of craft and manufacture in our fields. In this space, students and faculty will experiment with form, materials, and methods of fabrication, and create advanced prototypes. The Fabrication Lab will also support and advance the work of internationally recognized research groups within the Daniels Faculty, such as the GRIT Lab and RAD Lab.
RAD LAB Responsive Architecture at Daniels (RAD) is a research program dedicated to the digital enhancement of buildings, cities, and landscapes. Operating from the premise that every building or landscape component can be equipped with computational power, RAD researchers consider how sensors and other embedded technologies can digitally enhance environments to better handle persistent and emerging challenges in the areas of health care, building technology, and sustainability. One recent RAD invention — IM Blanky — is an embroidered blanket of stems and flowers that contains a network of embedded tilt sensors that can be adapted to monitor temperature, pressure, humidity, and heart rate. The blanket has many potential uses, including monitoring the vital signs of the aging population as heath care shifts away from hospitals. This project — among many others at RAD — is exploring the role of embedded technology in our increasingly digitally assisted lives. 37
LIBRARY Traditional, large-format books continue to hold a privileged place among students and practitioners of architecture, landscape, and design as sources of inspiration and creativity. Featuring more than 33,000 volumes, with a focus on the contemporary, the Library at the Daniels Faculty is widely viewed as an indispensable resource for students, faculty, and members of Toronto’s design community. The new Library at One Spadina will include increased space for collections, larger study spaces, group study rooms, additional teaching space, and a dedicated section for our everexpanding rare book collection. Located just steps from Spadina Avenue, the Library’s Reading Room will occupy what was 38
originally the refectory of Knox College. The space will provide students with a place of quiet reflection — a piece of the original cloister in counterpoint to the energy and pace of the Design Studios, the Fabrication Lab, and various teaching and presentation spaces within One Spadina. The Library’s Reading Room will remain open to the public, offering outside students, researchers, urban planners, design professionals, journalists, and design aficionados access to collections in art, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design that are unrivalled in Toronto.
BELVEDERE The parcel of land that became One Spadina Crescent was originally conceived as a grand prospect to Lake Ontario. Standing under the archway of the heritage building today, one still commands a singular view down Spadina Avenue to the lake and islands beyond. To honour and leverage the site’s original purpose, One Spadina will feature a large, raised platform facing the lake. The Belvedere will be a superb gathering and event space for the University community and visiting public. It will also serve the very practical purpose of providing a highly accessible entry point to the original historic building from College and Spadina and the streetcar, thus opening the site to the public and offering a grand entrance into the Principal Hall for large events.
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COMMONS While the neo-Gothic edifice of One Spadina will remain the iconic, southern face of the site, primary everyday access to the building will occur along a newly created east-west pedestrian pathway. This pathway, which we have named the Commons, is an extension of Russell Street and will run through the centre of the circle, linking town and gown. The CafĂŠ, the Lounge, Principal Hall, the Fabrication Lab, the Library, and the pavilions will all link to the Commons. Student amenities such as lockers and informal meeting niches will provide the kind of unstructured space conducive to student life and community. The Commons, in other words, will serve as the main street of the complex.
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Left: Interior view of the Commons — One Spadina’s main thoroughfare.
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ATRIUM Overlooking the Principal Hall, One Spadina’s Atrium will provide an elegant, stepped passage from the Commons and adjoining staircases below to the Design Studios. The space will also serve as a natural gathering space for students to study and socialize.
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Approximately one third of the One Spadina complex will be devoted to the Design Studios, where students learn to collaborate, work in interdisciplinary teams, experiment with form, and gain hands-on design experience.
DESIGN STUDIOS The design studio remains at the core of the Daniels Faculty’s culture and pedagogy, but the nature of the studio, and the activity it houses, is quickly evolving. Today, much more than in the past, the studio is a space of collaboration in which students and faculty model future modes of design practice, often working in interdisciplinary teams. At the same time, the studio remains the place where students learn by doing, and are introduced to foundational design methods. Students experiment with ideas, principles, and techniques gleaned from courses in architectural history and theory, structures, building science, materials and methods, and urban design and apply them to projects. The studio is also the space where students learn to generate drawings, models, and other representations through the creative process and design-based prototyping.
Befitting its indispensable role in design culture and student life and learning, the Design Studios will hold a special place at One Spadina. Indeed, close to a third of the complex — a combined 30,000 square feet — will be devoted to the Design Studios, offering students expansive views of the city, and at the same time, a transparent sightline into the building for pedestrians traversing Spadina Avenue from the north. The Design Studios will feature flexible modern workspaces, areas for fabrication and collaboration, and informal pin-up and digital presentation spaces where group design critiques can take place. Unlike the factory-like spaces typical of a previous generation of design schools, the studios at One Spadina will be akin to a conservatory for design where students, faculty and visiting critics and professionals may gather in dynamic formats, and where creative performance, exchange, and collaboration will be facilitated and encouraged.
The Daniels Faculty has a strong culture of review, critique, and dialogue. In this context, the studio is the primary space where students learn to communicate, present, and defend their ideas, thus modelling the requisite skills for successful careers in the field. 43
THE CAMPAIGN FOR THE DANIELS FACULTY One Spadina is a $72-million project, which has received substantial support from the University of Toronto and lead donors John and Myrna Daniels. The campaign for the Daniels Faculty is a $50-million fundraising effort. Forty-five million will support the redevelopment of One Spadina, while the remaining $5 million will be devoted to new scholarships and fellowships for the Daniels Faculty’s growing complement of exceptional students. Supporters are rallying around One Spadina and thus far the campaign has experienced significant momentum. In the coming months and years, we hope to build on this trajectory and reach new levels of support for this vitally important project. One Spadina will have a major impact on our students, our professions, and our city. The campaign for the Daniels Faculty is an integral part of Boundless — the University’s comprehensive $2-billion campaign to expand U of T’s global leadership across critical areas of knowledge and develop the talent, ideas, and solutions for the defining challenges of our time. The campaign for the Daniels Faculty represents an opportunity to support Boundless and help shape the future of architecture, landscape, visual arts, and urban design education and practice. With your philanthropic support, an iconic Toronto landmark — One Spadina — will be transformed. Once completed, the Daniels Faculty will have a stellar educational and research platform and an unrivalled capacity to envision cities and communities across Canada and around the world. 44
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Photo by Peter MacCallum
To learn more about the campaign and how you might direct your gift, please contact: Jacqueline Raaflaub, Director of Advancement John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design University of Toronto 230 College Street, Toronto, Ontario M5T 1R2 Tel. 416-978-1473 jacqueline.raaflaub@daniels.utoronto.ca www.daniels.utoronto.ca