Fall 2015 Thesis Reviews Booklet

Vanessa Abram / Andrew Afonso / Justin Kwanho Bae / Saarinen Balagengatharadilak / Alana Brooks / Matthew Brown / Sarah Meaghan Burke / Elaine Chau / Allison Cheng / Shegalla Choy / Caterina Rosaria Cuda / Luke Duross / Daniel Louis Faibisoff / Faye Diana Jerao Fernando / Matthew Firestone / Leah Catherine Gibling / Ryan S. Giuricich / Michael Good / Alistair Grierson / Luchen Guo / Lizbeth Guzman-Javalera / Adam Hall / Amanda Hamilton / Michael Henoch / Jin Han Jeon / Nicholas Jones / Keerat Kaur / Faiyaz Zakaria Khan / Peter Kitchen / Anamarija Korolj / Andrew Lee / Regina Wan-Chi Li / Liu Liu / Jody Luk / Tyler Malone / Joseph McBurney / Deagan McDonald / Keltie McLaren / Wayne McMillan / Carolina Sofia Mellado / Md Mohiul Islam Motasim / Parastoo Najafi / Salome Nikuradze / Kelsey Nilsen / Katrina Novak / Mateusz Nowacki / Sugra Panvelwala / Gloria Elizabeth Perez / Andrew Piotrowski / Paula Carolina Prada / Emily Jennifer Ross /Jahanvi Sharma / Jocelyn Lambert Squires / Jeremy Stam / Siobhan Sweeny / Zhou Tang / Trenton Thompson / Paul Tak-Shen Tsang / Margaret Irene Upenieks / Hamza Vora / Kaegan Walsh / Philip A. Wharton / Lisa Wong / Hui Ting Yang / Max Powell Yuristy /Jiefei Zhang / Jay Zhao / Juyao Zhao

Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews Fall 2015

This book showcases the final thesis projects presented by Master of Architecture students at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto on December 16 & 17, 2015.

Advisors George Baird Benjamin Dillenburger Jonathan Enns Hans Ibelings Wei-Han Vivian Lee David Lieberman An Te Liu John J. May Michael Piper John Shnier Mark Sterling Shane Williamson

8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74

Vanessa Abram Andrew Afonso Justin Kwanho Bae Saarinen Balagengatharadilak Alana Brooks Matthew Brown Sarah Meaghan Burke Elaine Chau Allison Cheng Shegalla Choy Caterina Rosaria Cuda Luke Duross Daniel Louis Faibisoff Faye Diana Jerao Fernando Matthew Firestone Leah Catherine Gibling Ryan S. Giuricich Michael Good Alistair Grierson Luchen Guo Lizbeth Guzman-Javalera Adam Hall Amanda Hamilton Michael Henoch Jin Han Jeon Nicholas Jones Keerat Kaur Faiyaz Zakaria Khan Peter Kitchen Anamarija Korolj Andrew Lee Regina Wan-Chi Li Liu Liu Jody Luk

76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94 96 98 100 102 104 106 108 110 112 114 116 118 120 122 124 126 128 130 132 134 136 138 140 142

Tyler Malone Joseph McBurney Deagan McDonald Keltie McLaren Wayne McMillan Carolina Sofia Mellado Md Mohiul Islam Motasim Parastoo Najafi Salome Nikuradze Kelsey Nilsen Katrina Novak Mateusz Nowacki Sugra Panvelwala Gloria Elizabeth Perez Andrew Piotrowski Paula Carolina Prada Emily Jennifer Ross Jahanvi Sharma Jocelyn Lambert Squires Jeremy Stam Siobhan Sweeny Zhou Tang Trenton Thompson Paul Tak-Shen Tsang Margaret Irene Upenieks Hamza Vora Kaegan Walsh Philip A. Wharton Lisa Wong Hui Ting Yang Max Powell Yuristy Jiefei Zhang Jay Zhao Juyao Zhao

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Vanessa Abram Advisor : Shane Williamson

Records of Manufactured Decay Slow destruction across Detroit’s inner city is approaching a degree of completeness and total erasure to rival the material absence of postwar cities. A city that was thriving in 1945 now stands vacant and plagued by burnt ruin, similar to the leftovers of fast wartime destruction that was itself a product of Detroit’s military industrial complex.

The demolition of Detroit, however, appears natural; its slow process of decay renders its condition inevitable despite ongoing erasure.

The city remains in a state of amnesia as slowness disguises an active withdrawal and deliberate exodus. Processes of foreclosure and demolition of inner city blight continue a trajectory initiated by white flight and a racist real estate market.

This thesis is an archive and curatorial workspace that expands to fill a block in the inner city suburbs, one currently surrounded by vacancy. The building’s purpose is to document the destruction of the postwar city, collapsing time in an effort to realize Detroit’s destruction in a greater entirety. As the city approaches total destruction, the archive transitions from its active curatorial state to a museum of past events.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Andrew Afonso Advisor : George Baird

Redeveloping the Greyfield Despite Edmonton’s recent and ongoing building boom in the downtown core, a majority of the city’s population growth and development has predominantly occurred on greenfield land. Throughout the years, the city’s rapid development has resulted in a vast amount of underdeveloped property, or greyfield land, situated throughout the inner city.

This thesis proposes a redevelopment strategy for a parcel of land situated directly adjacent to Stadium LRT Station in northeast Edmonton, and presents a new model to counteract urban sprawl while improving mobility, optimizing land use, and densifying prime urban land.

Being cognizant of the dynamics that make up the city’s social, cultural and economic structure, the project questions whether this particular model can foster an urban growth that challenges common sensibilities around living in proximity to transit, particularly within a car-oriented culture.

Through the close integration of new and existing public and private programming, lower scaled high density buildings, and the reorganization of transportation modes, this thesis intends to prove the viability and efficiency of the transit site. As new urban conditions are introduced, the porosity of the ground plane plays an important part in redefining how a human-scaled, sociallysustainable environment can redefine the function of the site while fostering future growth for the surrounding community.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Justin Kwanho Bae Advisor : Benjamin Dillenburger

Metamorphosis The Olympics have grown beyond a sporting event; it not only promotes sports, but also human values, achievements, and future ideals.

On the other side of glory, however, the financial burden to host the games has gotten greater.

Many cities in the recent past have failed to balance their ambitions with their finances, which has led to post-Olympics catastrophe.

Apart from the financial problem, the current Olympic-stadium model has a unique architectural problem: it is monumentally demanding yet extremely temporary in its nature. After the Olympics, the main stadium is often too large or ineffective or expensive to host similar functions or events, therefore it is left unused most of the year.

In the future, the Olympic stadium should not be categorized as a ‘stadium’, but rather a ‘structural frame’. The new vision for the Olympic stadium is inspired by ‘metamorphosis’ — envisioning a building like an organism that can transform and change its functions. Architecture is no longer categorized by its function, but rather by its meaning. Likewise, the Olympic stadium seeks to be a structural frame, which will transform itself after the Games to create diverse spaces for different functions.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Saarinen Balagengatharadilak Advisor : Mark Sterling

HYPER-MODAL HYPER-MODAL is a proposal for a transit station integrating inner city and regional train service attached to a hyper sports facility and floating park that occupies the air space of the Toronto rail corridor at Cherry St. Within the context of the developing east Toronto waterfront area, the proposal identifies an opportunity to serve the growing community and the rest of the GTA with a transit hub to facilitate access to a series of stacked ice rinks, a park, a major institution, and a shopping center. The potential to leverage urban infrastructure to serve multiple functions is necessary within the context of sustainable densification in Toronto.

Programs such as ice rinks are difficult to accommodate in Toronto due to the quantity of real estate they consume, and the need to accommodate regional access, which often means a mass of parking. This project suggests a public-private partnership to build a recreational facility that spans the corridor, is tied to regional and local transit, and is linked on either side to the neighborhoods beyond.

The proposal is crafted to unlock the value of underused infrastructure, and to service a rapidly emerging array of development.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Alana Brooks Advisor : Wei-Han Vivian Lee

The Complex This project explores identity in the Caribbean island of Barbados: cultural identity, socioeconomic identity, and climatic identity.

A former British colony, the living situation in Barbados is bound up in the residue of a Plantation economy, characterized by divisive socio-economic layering and a pre-occupation with property ownership and social mobility.

Despite these contentious societal traits, notions of gathering and community are a key part of the vibrancy of the island. In addition to this, the built environment must address the climatic character of the region, which is not only hurricane-prone, but hot and humid.

This project endeavors to create an innovative housing complex that addresses the social and climatic aspects of Barbados. The complex will be an attractive alternative and efficient housing option that retains some characteristics associated with the identity of Barbados.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Matthew Brown Advisor : David Lieberman thesis in graphic novel format:

ARCHITECTURE DEPARTMENT This thesis uses the graphic novel medium to explore the creation of worlds, how these worlds live within us as collections of remembered and archetypal spaces, and how we navigate both inner and outer worlds to find who and what we are. It employs drawing as a method of thinking about and investigating this journey.

The graphic novel ARCHITECTURE DEPARTMENT takes its inspiration from the city of Benares (also known as Varanasi) where I first experienced the inner worlds of the sacred archetypal unconscious, expressed in built form as the felt and experienced urban fabric and riverfront of this unique sacred city — possibly the oldest continually inhabited city in the world — on the bank of the Ganges River in India.

The narrative is about a young man in an alternate world who pines to attend architecture school, although he’s from a remote province. He gets his wish, but several days later the world ends. He is preserved from the destruction of the world in the mystical city of Varanasi / Benares which is suspended above the universal cycles of cosmic destruction and creation on Shiva’s trident. There, he is commissioned to design a new world to be inhabited once the floodwaters recede…

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Sarah Meaghan Burke Advisor : John J. May

Making A Type of Continuity What we know contributes to what we make, and what is made contributes substantially to what is possible to know. — Dalibor Vesely, Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation In classical thought, making was conceived as rendering an idea as an image, a tangible realization of something ideal. This synthesis was at the root of the development of type in architecture in the nineteenth century.

This thesis seeks to position architecture as a figure of the continuity between idea and image. It will examine type as mediating between thinking and making.

This will be examined in buildings centred on the practice of live/work, particularly those involved in making, or live/make. Live/make has formed a continuous but shifting undercurrent in the midst of more dominant modes of production. This project seeks to engage and reconfigure these minor types, asserting their relevance to contemporary production and the city. A survey of making within the discourse on type, and its engagement with assembly and collage will gather up these fragments.

This will become the departure point from which to project and thus move from type to an architecture within the city. A survey of making within the discourse on type, and its engagement with assembly and collage, will become the departure point to move from type to an architecture within the city.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Elaine Chau Advisor : Wei-Han Vivian Lee

Wasting Futures Future history will no longer produce ruins. It does not have the time for them.

— Marc Augé In our post-historical reality, things become irrelevant once they are born. Rarely do we get to witness and experience the process of time itself — we do not give it time. Instead, our culture amounts to the production of waste.

Waste is a product of culture, but it also matter embedded with cultural significance. With an increasing quantity of waste, waste itself ends up forming the context and materials for new architectures. How can the complex nature of discarded materials be reclaimed and manipulated through the framework of a hypervernacular aesthetic? What are the spatial dialogues that may emerge between the old and the existing? This thesis explores the future of culture-making through the interpretation of what remains.

Image: Dan Peterman, Villa Deponie (House from the Landfill), 2002

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Allison Cheng Advisor : Benjamin Dillenburger

Materiality of Data Architecture Every day we send out numerous emails; every month we save hundreds of documents, and every year we upload thousands of photos. As global internet usage increases, our society’s dependency on virtual storage also intensifies.

Therefore, we must address our changing relationship to data and the way that data is spatialized to reflect the way we store, process, and distribute information. Due to the advance of cloud computing, data centers are becoming an emerging typology in the age of internet consumption. Therefore, it is vital to address the relationship between physical and virtual infrastructures so that can humans can interact with data centers in a more meaningful way. By addressing the built form of digital systems, architecture aims to give materiality to digital systems that are largely invisible. The objectives of this thesis are (1) to rethink the data center by addressing how it integrates within an urban context which reinforces the public street on a human scale, (2) to rethink office and data center design to reflect changing technological, social, and cultural demands of the 21st century, and (3) to create collective meaning by negotiating relationship between human, machine, and built environment.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Shegalla Choy Advisor : Michael Piper

Transit Hub: The Auto-mated Future

Our cultural attitude towards the automobile constantly shifts. We persistently construct and re-construct the socio-cultural narrative associated with the automobile as it undergoes technological advancement. Today, we witness the potential of the automobile to accommodate for public transportation demands as we shift from an ownership to a collaborative economy, which further redefines our cultural attitudes. The thesis is a response to this disruptive mode of mobility projected in the year 2035 when shared automated vehicles become a major mode of public transportation.

Highway interchanges can spatially adapt and accommodate to autonomous cars on demand by capitalizing on its underused residual spaces.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Caterina Rosaria Cuda Advisor : Mark Sterling

[Sub]opolis:

Suburban Infill Mixed Income Housing Affordable housing has become one of the biggest challenges for the Greater Toronto Area as the demand for growth continues beyond Toronto. Regional municipalities such as York Region are transforming from suburban sprawl to micro urban to meet the demands of intensification. A lack of affordable housing, an aging population, and a growing income gap has pressured suburban towns to grow from predominantly detached homes to mid- or high-rise housing. A shortage of developable land has also challenged the expansion and evolution of smaller municipalities in response to the needs of both old and new residents.

[Sub]opolis analyzes the unique infill potential of existing residential subdivision lands in Richmond Hill, exploring opportunities for intensification and the provision of much needed affordable housing. The project challenges affordable development practices by seeking to build public-private relationships and to shape more multi-faceted communities.

This thesis purposes new planning and typology options that utilize incremental approaches to suburban evolution in response to changing needs. Can suburban communities transform and embrace their original built form?

For more comprehensive information on the project, visit: http://subopolis.info.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Luke Duross Advisor : Michael Piper

Retail Revisions:

Ownership, Authorship and the Ethnic Mall Recognizing the significance of commodity and consumption within the North American suburban lifestyle is not a profound concept.

Anthropologists and sociologists have long understood the role that accumulating retail products, such as furniture, clothing, patio equipment, electronics and even food has in the expression of an individual’s identity. However, when we consider that North America’s suburban demographics are becoming increasingly diverse, both ethnologically and economically, we can begin to recognize how the homogeneity of the shopping mall, the suburban monument to consumption, can fail to reflect this diversity. Does the shopping mall adequately provide an environment and commodity base capable of supporting an expression of personal and civic identity representative of these new suburban demographics?

The rise of the so-called ‘ethnic mall’ within the suburban retail landscape is in part a response to these issues. Projects such as Pacific Mall in Markham, Ontario provide emblematic examples of these new suburban developments. What lessons can be extracted from the study of a community’s adaptation and agency over these newly emerging spaces?

This research seeks to explore and understand new architectural practices of the expression of civic and personal identity through the collective ownership and authorship of interior public spaces.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Daniel Louis Faibisoff Advisor : An Te Liu

Architecture : Photograph The physical principles underlying the photograph existed for centuries prior to the invention of the medium itself. So did the capacity to reproduce works of art. Yet, the arrival of photography has been heralded as truly revolutionary as a method of reproduction.

The ability to reproduce across time and space gave rise to the that which Reyner Banham referred to as the “first movement in the history of art based exclusively on photographic evidence.� Since these words were written the photographic medium has itself gone through a revolution. The digital has supplanted the chemical. The distance, however near, between the photograph and the work of art has been reduced. The two have become indistinguishable.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Faye Diana Jerao Fernando Advisor : Wei-Han Vivian Lee

The Other Eye Techniques of representation communicate spatial concepts but also determine the limits one sets for imagining different spatial conditions. During the Renaissance, linear perspective was taken to be an expression of the natural experience of sight. The invention of perspective corresponded to a scientific worldview that provided the geometrical means to rationalize space. One of perspective’s primary preconditions however, requires the observer to look through a single eye, an essentially monocular mode of looking. This thesis seeks to investigate complementary and alternative aspects of vision that may have been forgotten by asking what kinds of spaces might we imagine if we no longer ignored the other eye and a binocular mode of observation is explored? How might the ambiguities that occur with both eyes (vibrating between two images hitting the retinas) affect notions of symmetry when forms are doubled or merged and one is forced to contend between two points of convergence?

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Matthew Firestone Advisor : Shane Williamson

Corktown Creative Commons Over the last half century the city of Detroit has seen an exponential increase in the rates of abandonment, poverty, and crime that culminated in the city’s formal declaration of bankruptcy in December 2013. However, the city of Detroit has begun to implement a strategic plan to redevelop, and reinvigorate its economy.

This plan focuses on leveraging existing infrastructure, strategic development, and an emphasis on the arts as a driver of the new creative economy.

Despite the city’s optimism and reliance on this 50-year plan, what has become apparent throughout the process of renewal is that in and of themselves, the arts are insufficient to drive major economic change and improvement. In order to create a thriving neighbourhood and local economy in post-industrial Detroit, equal focus must be given to re-education (for the creative economy) and innovative business opportunities for current residents.

Within the framework of the 50-year plan, Detroit’s historical Corktown neighbourhood has been designated as an industrial/creative hub for redevelopment. This proposition seeks to leverage Corktown’s existing infrastructure, buildings, and local community to fulfill these requirements through the creation of a community-centered creative hub. Paramount to the success of this proposal is the confluence of the arts, education, and innovation within the overall plan for redevelopment.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Leah Catherine Gibling Advisor : John Shnier

Reflect – Refract Abstraction of vernacular forms is done to associate new structures with cultural and emotional resonances. Though this abstraction takes from reality, what it creates is something that endures only in thought, with no physical existence.

The architecture of downtown St. John’s Newfoundland which once adapted to the challenging landscape and available resources now must adapt to the concept of heritage conservation. It is a shift from physical constraints to ones that are socially constructed. Buildings are now expected to maintain their historical façade or ‘reflect’ the façades of their historical neighbors. Yet by idealizing traditional forms, the city’s downtown building fronts detach from their current context. This tests the limits of relevancy and begins to question the authenticity of St. John’s historic building fronts, as they transform merely into symbols of the past.

This thesis is aimed at reflecting upon and testing the limitations of the methods used for conservation and imaging how building traditions can evolve to create a representation of culture of place that is authentic yet relevant to today.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Ryan S. Giuricich Advisor : Mark Sterling

Friction Zones Friction zones are areas in Toronto’s downtown core in which new high-density development conflicts with the existing historic fabric.

This is a result of a process that focuses on developing individual lots while ignoring the implications such development has on the surrounding built form. As development continues, new projects are being proposed for some of Toronto’s most prominent historical blocks. These sites present some of the most important design opportunities in the city. The process surrounding this type of development needs to be reevaluated to better integrate new proposals into the existing fabric.

This thesis aims to address this issue through a two-step process. The first step focuses on existing friction zones in the King-Spadina area. The zones are analyzed and re-evaluated based on the scale of the city block in order to develop a set of rules and guidelines to apply to future projects. The guidelines and rules then serve as a tool for designing a proposed mixeduse development which further explores how different aesthetics and typologies interact favorably with the surrounding historic fabric.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Michael Good Advisor : Mark Sterling

Celebrating Divergence Over the past several decades, Toronto’s economic prosperity has led to continual population increase, necessitating rapid intensification. This process has exposed faults in the way our new urban fabric reflects the aims of the city’s future growth. Though rooted in a progressive planning policy, the physical manifestation of Toronto’s built environment leans towards homogeneity, typological repetition, and a resistance to urban transformation — particularly in older or wellestablished communities. This is perpetuated by a disconnect between the short term objectives of the private sector and long term civic intentions outlined in planning policy.

This project hypothesizes a new highdensity transit oriented masterplan for the revitalization of the Dundas West and Bloor area, focused around the framework of the Metrolinx Mobility Hub studies. It posits a 2.5 hectare site as an investigative design response to the above mentioned conditions.

The project focuses on employment opportunities as a catalyst for linkages within the city as a whole, and forms a basis for stable long-term growth for the immediate neighborhood. Physically, the scheme seeks to embrace conflicts in the urban landscape and uncover the latent potential of divergent spatial forms essential in a modern city.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Alistair Grierson Advisor : An Te Liu

Future Heroes A fiction based upon i) two future ideologies — the Managerial and Jest. Each ideology is created by individual agents, Managerial agents reject their freedom and assume values a priori, they strive to be objective and logical. The agents of Jest rejoice in the subjectivity their freedom, they assert themselves and their values with no regard for others — they are adventurers! ii) representations of the physical manifestations arising from the competing ideologies iii) pairing archetypal agents with the artifacts of their creation iv) the subsequent categorization of creator-agents as heroes of action, reaction or non-action v) the question, who are the heroes of our future?

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Luchen Guo Advisor : Wei-Han Vivian Lee

Live [ Work ] Shop In past decades, working at home has become a common social phenomenon in Canada. This lifestyle is very popular because it reduces the vacancy and security issues in a residential neighborhood as the units are occupied almost 24/7. It also increases productivity for the workers who are self-employed and motivated.

Unfortunately, this population is relatively socially isolated and physically out-of-shape as they barely move a foot out of their apartment.

This thesis proposes a condition where living, working and shopping can co-exist in a single building type, and where the private and the public will collide and intertwine to allow for improved social interactions. The building consists of two intertwined systems: an inner core of retail components that brings the public in from the ground level up into a spiral circulation. Here, the stores are partially owned by the inhabitants living in the residential units of the outer ring. The interesting spatial relationship between the two systems is key for various interactions of different users to take place.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Lizbeth GuzmanJavalera Advisor : Wei-Han Vivian Lee

MICROCOM:

A Micro-Community for Dense Urban Centres MICROCOM is a residential proposal that highlights the need for community spaces in a trend of decreasing unit sizes. In a building made up of micro-units, amenities become the community infrastructure needed to maintain an increasing density in Toronto’s downtown.

Our need to densify with condo towers is taking a toll on community spaces which are not able to keep up with densification.

This neighbourhood in a building analogy is designed around 3 atriums of amenity spaces that cater to an increasingly young population.

With a growing workforce and the majority of downtown Toronto made up of young people between 20 and 34 years old, experiential living can become the new city infrastructure needed to sustain a growing population. The necessities of the home are maintained while the use of amenity spaces as extensions of the home, accommodate the need for additional space historically designated to personal projects, meeting, entertaining & working at home. Creatives, explorers, entrepreneurs and collaborators need social activities to pursue their hobbies. With the public infrastructure of community spaces interwoven within, all residents have to do is step out of their unit. Space for living, growing and socializing with plenty of room for social gatherings and interactive programs, the building enables dynamic interactions that cater to a new generation with enough room for the individual.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Adam Hall Advisor : Shane Williamson

The Bell Island Beacon 50 years since the failure of its mining industry, Bell Island remains in search of a new identity.

Once a site of economic prosperity, the closure of the island’s mining operations in June of 1966 precipitated a historical exodus from the island. With limited economic opportunities, the Island’s population dwindled from nearly 13,000 residents in 1966 to a population of only 2,400 today. Despite its economic stagnation, the island’s isolation has left its cultural heritage largely intact. This proposal seeks to leverage this unique heritage as a key feature for establishing a new economic leg for Bell Island based on cultural tourism.

Having undergone its own culture-led regeneration fostered by recent architectural interventions, Fogo Island has experienced an increase in tourism that necessitated the purchase of a greater capacity ferry. Because Bell Island has not yet experienced a similar surge in tourism, its decision to purchase a ‘twin ship’ represents an optimistic 50 million dollar gamble by the province. With this new and improved infrastructure in mind, and with the elevation of culture as its mandate, the Bell Island Beacon seeks to act as a conduit for Bell Island’s economic and social regeneration.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Amanda Hamilton Advisor : Michael Piper

Dealing with Density:

A Look at Integrating Neighborhood Amenities A neighborhood requires specific amenities in order to function successfully. Traditionally, community services and facilities are standalone, horizontal elements that require an excess of space within the urban fabric. This mindset towards the formal distribution of community amenities has restricted the ability to provide them in emerging high-density neighborhoods where space is a luxury not afforded by current development patterns.

For example, Toronto’s King-Spadina East Precinct has been experiencing rapid and intense development, a by-product of the regeneration strategy implemented in 1996.

The initiative, modeled after Jane Jacob’s concept to deregulate restrictive zoning, was a radical approach to city planning for its time.

The subsequent response was unpredictable and therefore it was impossible to plan for community amenities in advance.

Today the area is nearly built to capacity, having effectively transformed from a declining warehouse district to a neighborhood of towers. However, the fundamentals necessary to sustain the current and future population have yet to be incorporated and space is quickly disappearing. In an attempt to insert these absent amenities, this thesis explores an alternative model of programmatic allocation within the tower, introducing hybrid amenity space with vertical distribution, transforming the nature of each type, its spatial arrangement, access, and circulation.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Michael Henoch Advisor : Shane Williamson

A Place of Storytelling British Columbia’s Indigenous cultures are identified as being particularly deeply rooted in the landscape, expressing essential relationships between landscape, language, and storytelling. Stories offer a means through which these diverse people learn about themselves, the world, and others, while the languages in which they are told offer distinct means of communicating such ideas.

According to the 2011 census by Statistics Canada, off-reserve Aboriginal people constitute the fastest growing segment of Canadian society, as the benefits offered

by Vancouver and other major cities are increasingly attracting those from smaller towns and rural regions. Such migration tends to isolate Urban Aboriginal people from their existing cultures and ways of life. Vancouver’s Urban Aboriginal population experiences further alienation, as it tends to inhabit the densest areas of the city.

This thesis project seeks to provide opportunities for deeply connecting with landscape through an architectural consideration of Indigenous stories, creating places for First Nations storytelling through a variety of means both traditional (oration) and contemporary (arts).

Image: The Raven and the First Men, Bill Reid.

Photo by Michael Henoch.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Jin Han Jeon Advisor : Jonathan Enns

New Type of Arboretum in Condensed Urban Area In Seoul, the extreme high density of the urban district has resulted in a severe shortage of communal social spaces, i.e. green spaces for socialization and shared human activities. As a result, many areas in Seoul do not adequately address the basic human need to connect with the natural environment.

The Jung District (Jung-gu) in Gangbuk, is currently extremely crowded with no room for natural green spaces or areas for residents to socialize. However, the residents of Jung District (Jung-gu) need these very communal spaces.

Seoul’s government now faces the dilemma of how to create such spaces within the existing, tightly congested neighborhood structure.

Although a vertical city resolves the issue of limited space within an area facing population growth, a lack of public places is emerging as a new dilemma as the urban population’s quality of life deteriorates.

Seoul’s urban infrastructure currently fails to provide adequate green space for its hyper dense population. To address the city’s lack of green space, this thesis proposes a multilevel arboretum, which marries landscape and architecture by integrating green space within areas surrounding building structures. This will intensify the current green space in the city.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Nicholas Jones Advisor : Mark Sterling

Social Infrastructure: A Response to the Micro-Condominium

The city of Toronto is undergoing radical transformation through the sustained growth of condominium development. These new developments are made up of increasingly smaller unit sizes to maximize profits in a context of surging land values but also to fulfill a growing desire to intensify in areas with preexisting transit services and infrastructure.

This trend in development is creating a new market of micro-condominiums whose total living area ranges from 220 to 800 ft2. As the total market share of smaller units grows, the ability to find adequate living spaces at an affordable price becomes a greater concern.

At a neighbourhood scale, public and privately owned public spaces must serve as extensions of personal living spaces to mitigate possible negative impacts on quality of life. Thus, a layer of social infrastructure is proposed, to be embedded within the physical infrastructure of the dense urban environment in which these developments are occurring. This social infrastructure must be precise in its response to changing needs and cultural values, addressing the common losses of social and personal space within the neighbourhood.

The first piece of this social infrastructure is proposed for the Yonge-Bloor neighbourhood where 12,249 units are coming to market.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Keerat Kaur Advisor : John Shnier

Constructing from the Deconstructed Constructing from the Deconstructed seeks to question whether architecture that is embedded with traditional weight can have currency. Quila Mubarak fort in Patiala, Punjab, which once housed the royal family of the city, has long been neglected for many decades; its architectural design is partly to blame for its obsolescence in the dense marketplace in which it is situated. Through a transformation of existing vernacular form, this thesis seeks to extend the experience of the site to users of the surrounding marketplace. The current weight of the structure is treated as invisible in order to make way for a novel architecture that is forward-thinking and honours tradition.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Faiyaz Zakaria Khan Advisor : Benjamin Dillenburger

n-natures This thesis investigates the political and material limits between nature and urbanization in the countryside of Southern Ontario. Currently these limits are articulated with borders defined by the Greenbelt Plan (2005). This project investigates the possibility of understanding these borders as territories in and of themselves—in other words, treating borders between ecologies as a veritable space for intervention. Through the use of mapping, photography, diagrams, and projective design speculations, these territories are seen as an opportunity to hybridize ecological systems towards an archipelago of alternative architectural and landscape futures.

Three types of borders are defined as a space for design speculation — borders between nature and settlements, nature and agriculture, and agriculture and settlements. The backyards of a suburban development, surface mines surrounded by forests, and the agricultural edge of an exurban town are explored as sites of intervention towards the production of hybrid landscapes, infrastructure, and architectural form.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Peter Kitchen Advisor : Jonathan Enns

Privacy, Politics and Preoccupations with the Invisible With the emergence of digital technology, architecture is failing to provide the conditions necessary for privacy.

For thousands of years the elements of architecture were deaf and mute. Today they are learning to speak, listen, collect information, and act accordingly. Where walls used to protect against peering eyes, digital technology can penetrate. Where information was once cherished, today it is given up or stolen without our knowledge.

Architecture should protect us and it must adapt by understanding the new condition of privacy within the electromagnetic fog that penetrates it. Architecture should be capable of filtering, selecting or disrupting the airwaves around it to protect our rights and privacy.

This thesis is implemented through historical narratives spanning five decades from the 1950’s to the 2000’s and imagines altering major political moments in history as well as intergovernmental relations.

The thesis is then applied as a paranoid architecture in today’s contemporary landscape tuned to specific frequencies to protect information, secrecy and our right to privacy.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Anamarija Korolj Advisor : George Baird

Innocuous Buildings Index The elements that constitute good residential architecture are no mystery: in essence, good housing is simply access to plentiful air and light. However, in practice this straightforward checklist becomes entangled in myriad forces, from finance and economy, to location, to a desire to extract every last resource in a development project. The resulting cramped condo units pervade Toronto’s downtown, with their legal loophole of windowless bedrooms and views into neighbouring facades. This thesis proposes an alternative housing model to these condo units, in two parts. Part I is a study of Toronto’s Innocuous Architectures, the antithesis to condo units.

These everyday buildings are considered poor architecture; Charles Jencks calls them the “unselfconscious 80%”, while Atelier-Bow Wow named them da-me, meaning, as the critics would call them, “not good.” Yet these buildings are flexible, rentable, subdivisible, personalized, and change over time; in short these buildings result from dweller-driven architecture. Based on lessons gleaned from this study, Part II of this thesis is a housing proposal: How can we bring the flexible, personalized spirit of Innocuous Architectures to a large-scale housing complex? What is a financial model within our current system that could support better housing at a massive scale?

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Andrew Lee Advisor : Benjamin Dillenburger

Difficult Parts The architecture of the large city depends essentially on the solution given to two factors: the elementary cell and the urban organism as a whole. The single room as the constituent element of the habitation will determine the aspect of the habitation, and since the habitations in turn form blocks, the room will become a factor of urban configuration, which is architecture’s true goal. — Ludwig Hilberseimer, 1927 Current forms of multi-unit dwellings in dense, urban areas are governed by an economy of scale. The subject of domestic habitation in this realm of repetition and standardization has largely left Architecture out of the conversation.

This thesis seeks to reprioritize the individual unit as the basic biological cell for the organism of the building. The unit becomes an expression of the fuzzy boundaries of life within, rather than monotonous containers of economy.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Regina Wan-Chi Li Advisor : Mark Sterling

Tale of Families:

The Search for Homes in the Urban White Space For urbanite families, searching for the “perfect” home to raise one’s children is difficult or even impossible. They are searching for their homes within a white space.

What is a white space? It is an area of unmet needs. It is also an area within which it is possible to uncover unseen opportunities and create innovative solutions. Urban family housing is our white space. Notwithstanding the fact that there is a growing preference among urbanite families to choose downtown as their home, the lack of availability, the unsuitability, and the unaffordability of potential “family units” currently offered by the development process in Toronto forces families to move to the city fringe and beyond.

This thesis envisions the future living space of families in an urban context by analyzing typical condominium building and unit designs to identify the characteristics of white space as it exists today — where the incongruities between existing family needs and patterns of living are experienced. The possibility of new and/or modified residential building typologies will be examined in search of a new form of urban family living that makes raising children in an urban setting more viable and affordable downtown Toronto.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Liu Liu Advisor : Wei-Han Vivian Lee

Cloud Urbanism:

The Occupation of Public Space Network around Yonge and Dundas Square, Downtown Toronto Public spaces in modern metropolitan areas are profoundly different from the traditional Western public space typologies originating from the Roman Piazza model, which celebrates monumentality and collective activities. Instead, they derive their form and function from the omnipresent impact of ownership-management structures, while their roles in civilian’s daily life are influenced by the global urban life trends characterized by constant mobility and consumer culture.

Under these sociological impacts, the public spaces of contemporary metropolitan areas are often either designed to serve specialized functions or intentionally left “undesigned� to allow for maximum programmatic flexibility. The monumentality and collectivity of traditional public space is diminished in both cases.

The methods and designs contained in this thesis propose an architecture that addresses the monumentality of public space in contemporary cities. The thesis seeks to discover a new public space typology that balances permanence and temporality consistent with an ownershipmanagement framework.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Jody Luk Advisor : Jonathan Enns

Play Tower The iconographic office tower, with its central core, operates like a machine. This machine sacrifices quality of experience for profit.

Deep plans that are organized to function as efficiently as possible multiply upward while the core remains vertically immovable.

Hermetic cells, economical space, and repetition enforce an unnatural order on the buildings we live in each day.

The office is evolving; it has embraced informal social spaces as a place where creativity and productivity occur. Analyses of office buildings in Toronto show that public space is highly valued in the overall rating* of a building. These spaces create unique and valuable social interactions in an otherwise isolating plan.

How can the office tower create value by embracing the specific over the generic?

*refers to the BOMA Rating.

Image: Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967)

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Tyler Malone Advisor : Mark Sterling

The Collector The Collector is a response to an emerging office market. New values such as health, flexibility, mobility, mixture, authenticity, and independence are driving a model that is very dissimilar to the restrictive corporate structure.

However, environments related to work and business have seen very little evolution.

Instead, what is happening, is an increase in office space density and thus decrease in workspace area per person. If this trend is to continue, perhaps there is a way to meet the economic constraints while at the same time improving the quality of daily life inside the building itself. The Collector proposes to achieve such an improvement through five main principles: mobility, health, discovery, resource, and interaction. The ultimate goal of the building is to personalize experience and improve daily working life. The Collector will achieve this through interactive media that connects individuals to building operators in real time. The individual or collective is able to manage and schedule work around the availability of the building and access its resources at a specific time for a specific fee. Everything from work desk to theatre to informal terrace workspace is provided, as The Collector is a true mixed-use building.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Joseph McBurney Advisor : An Te Liu

The Genesis Museum The Genesis Museum is a speculative project, which traces the human evolution towards a Post Terrestrial species. Staged as a satellite orbiting Earth, the architecture provides a forum for questions of cultural development through built material. The narrative unfolds with five distinct epochs focusing on architectural attitudes. The architectures nostalgically recall style as a trope deployed to codify their existence and establish a rhetoric for new ways of living and understanding the galactic milieu. Fractured arguments through meaning and non-meaning apotheosize ideology as the driver for the creation of form, the occupations of new territories, and the competition which ensues.

Architectural communication uses outer space as a parable for design thinking and what attitudes will be projected into the future.

Central to this exercise is the International Space Station and the latent cultural modalities present within it as an object, the multi-national participatory programs which govern it, and the activities occurring remotely and aboard the vessel. The creation of knowledge, the establishment of new bureaucratic agencies, and its ability to create new economies can all be used to question the role of architecture, and what architecture may provide in a Post Terrestrial society.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Deagan McDonald Advisor : Shane Williamson

Reframe Detroit In the aftermath of Detroit’s economic collapse and large-scale abandonment, the city has been forced to adopt new scales of economy and industry as it fights to gain momentum.

The automotive manufacturing industry that was once the backbone of the city is dead and gone, leaving a swath of abandoned and functionally obsolete infrastructure in its wake.

These empty shells now frame a massive and literal void in the city they once anchored.

How can these skeletons of a once vibrant industry provide the framework for new typologies of economy and growth?

Detroit’s new industry is art. As a new generation of creative youth flock to the city, Detroit’s burgeoning art scene is poised to rival those of New York or Chicago. Artists are viewing the city through the lens of optimism, and seeing an environment where you can live easily and create freely.

This proposal seeks to harness the optimistic vision of Detroit’s new youth, repurposing the city’s abandoned industrial assets and forming a network of artistic creation and energy.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Keltie McLaren Advisor : Michael Piper

Deep Streets:

Constructing Connection on Dixon Road Between the 1950s and 1970s, a staggering concentration of concrete apartment towers were built throughout Toronto’s suburbs reflecting the desired lifestyle of a growing and upwardly mobile population. Car owners preferred to reside outside of the city where open-space was a luxury, and work, groceries, and social connections were a convenient drive away.

While the demand for the suburban apartment lifestyle is gone, the towers remain. Age, neglect, and a decline in popularity means that these towers now comprise most of the affordable rental housing in the GTA and frequently become a point of arrival for new immigrants to Toronto. Among the new tower tenants, low car ownership and a desire for local social connections and conveniences are in direct conflict with the idyllic separation from city life that the towers were originally designed for.

This thesis proposes an intervention that facilitates local connection and convenience in the tower neighbourhood along Dixon Road in central Etobicoke. The proposal expands the public realm from the existing narrow sidewalk to create a deep streetscape populated with much needed community programming, indoor and outdoor places to gather, and local businesses while maintaining a threshold between the private sphere of tower residents and the public street.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Wayne McMillan Advisor : Michael Piper

A Tall Order:

Considering Public Space in King – Spadina Toronto’s King – Spadina East Precinct is quickly approaching a tipping point, where the initial desire to stimulate reinvestment in the former manufacturing district now directly threatens to compromise its livability.

The scale of development emerging in the East Precinct has drastically exceeded the City’s initial expectations, meaning that regeneration has simultaneously proven to be tremendously economically successful and tremendously problematic in terms of ensuring new development meets the needs of the urban constituency. Planning staff have had limited success addressing the inadequacy of community services and public open spaces to accommodate a rapidly growing population.

This thesis suggests that the civic responsibility to deliver an urban environment equipped with the necessary physical and social infrastructures is gradually succumbing to the intense commercial pressures of the area’s economic regeneration. These observations necessitate a reassertion of political and creative will from local politicians, architects, and planners to develop strategies to resist these pressures, and to ensure the long term health and livability of the district.

As such, this proposal considers an alternative approach to parkland acquisition, and investigates how future development might endeavor to blur the boundaries between public and private spaces in an effort to reinforce and extend the public realm of the East Precinct.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Carolina Sofia Mellado Advisor : Wei-Han Vivian Lee

(Inter)Face:

Surface as Image, Image as Interface The big box is at the centre of North American gathering space for communities, especially in the suburbs. Thus, when retailers abandon buildings as a result of failure, they leave a devastating and barren scene of impermeable surfaces and blank façades that communities no longer relate to. These black holes planned into the suburban landscape contain the idea of logistically oiled machines that have the potential to become new social condensers for these fringe cities.

This thesis gives attention to the implication architectural indeterminacy acquires in the field of vision within the context of the big box and its systems. The epidermal and superficial demonstrate that where we truly dwell in is language vis-Ă -vis the affect, effect, and defect of visual perception. The oscillation between surface and depth provide a social formation that extends from gradient conditions where they are in constant and simultaneous reference to one another.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Md Mohiul Islam Motasim Advisor : George Baird

Towards a WellIntegrated Compact City Centre in Etobicoke Greater Toronto is one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the North America.

To sustain this growth, the city is rapidly urbanizing by transforming its size, shape, and land use patterns. Toronto’s core may not be able to sustain the forecasted population of 11.5 million, by the year 2031; accommodating an urban population of this size may require multiple urban growth centers. However, a sustainable growth centre requires a built environment balanced with socio-economic and environmental features as well as a wellconnected a street system that integrates it with neighbouring growth centres. This thesis will focus on one such growth centre in the Greater Toronto area: Etobicoke. The intention is to investigate Etobicoke city centre’s connectivity with the existing city fabric and enhance integration and intensification of mixed-use development. The aim is to take a ‘compact city’ approach and revitalize the area with a civic centre, cultural complex, and recreational facility, accompanied with park and open spaces.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Parastoo Najafi Advisor : An Te Liu

the crystallocene This project addresses the epoch of the Anthropocene, the age of man. The term was coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000 to depict the human impact on geological processes. Most of the discourse on the Anthropocene epoch revolves around natural-cultural binaries, the claim that the cultural practices of man has resulted in an asymmetrical re-composition of materials on earth; that the disturbances in the metabolism of earth is a result of man’s cultural activities, among which is the generation of habitable space, architecture.

Architecture is a kind of probe that seeks out and remakes geological and geographic formations while being directed by the requirements of an aesthetic, economic, corporate, and engineering amalgam.

— Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the outside For the purpose of this investigation, crystallization, as a mineralogical, inanimate and self-organizing geological formation, has been studied. In the crystal’s diachronic growth, temporality is a key factor. Space generation has been reified inside a beaker via the binary process of geological formation and deformation. The beaker is thus the milieu, the chemical solution is hence the reserve.

A man lives in a beaker in the crystallocene epoch, the age of crystal. His head is an octahedron…

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Salome Nikuradze Advisor : Michael Piper

XS:

From Form to Form-work 1920s avant-garde practices in the Soviet Union saw the traditional city (the physical city) as an extension of the bourgeois proprietary structures of capitalist cities. The agents that shaped the socialist city were divorced from notions of plastic forms and instead focused on generating frameworks for the new way of life to take place. Their approach signaled an emergence of non-figurative design and planning practices and anticipated the shift of the built environment into a system of enabling and organizing devices. In Western cities half a century later, economic and political processes led to the export of production, while notions of productivity shifted focus from a factory setting to cultural and social spheres of urban life. This arguably rendered the physical form of the city a redundant appendage to the act of generating scenarios and enabling frameworks required to sustain this mode of production, de-centering the role of the design profession accordingly. Can architecture retain its relevance by surrendering the figurative and the permanent, and reclaim its cultural agency by looking for critical opportunities within the curatorial, the ephemeral, and the relational?

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Kelsey Nilsen Advisor : George Baird

The Bridge to Our Future The Victoria Street Traffic Bridge in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan has been the topic of debate since a failed structural examination lead to its sudden closure in 2010. In the years since, the bridge has been partially demolished and a now severed volume hangs above the river, as if to highlight the infrastructural shortfalls of the city as a whole.

Bisected by the South Saskatchewan River, the city offers connection between its disparate halves primarily by automobile. The vibrant banks of the river function separately, offering users no more than a visual connection across its flowing waters.

However, the historic scale of the Victoria Street Traffic Bridge and its direct connection between the banks offers the opportunity to salvage the remaining structural piers and connect the banks at a pedestrian scale with a dedicated pedestrian and cycling crossing, a first for the city. The city has committed to revitalizing its downtown core, acknowledging the potential of the river valley to become a destination for recreation across all four seasons.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Katrina Novak Advisor : Shane Williamson

Corktown’s Skilled Trades and Fabrication School In the first half of the 20th century, Detroit was recognized as an industrial capital. However, since peaking in the 1950s, the population has been steadily declining due to a lack of employment opportunities (688,700 in 2013). This rise and fall, mainly dictated by the automobile manufacturing industry, has left the city punctured by a pattern of blight and demolition.

As the “Third Industrial Revolution� emerges, the digitization of manufacturing presents a unique opportunity for Detroit. Low rent, vacant sturdy infrastructure, and a history of manufacturing and skilled trades, make Detroit an ideal environment for artists, entrepreneurs, and small businesses looking to penetrate the market characterized by innovation, product development, and commercialization.

The internet has made essential resources available to smaller players; however, bringing an idea to market can be prohibitively expensive.

Having the proper skills to design, prototype, and produce in a self-sufficient way often determines whether ideas come to fruition.

Transforming the abandoned Roosevelt Warehouse in Corktown, Detroit, into a skilled trades school would provide space for teaching, training and empowering individuals through knowledge and the mastery of specialised tools.

Situated within a new creative hub for the arts and innovation, this project will allow smaller players to greatly contribute to the blossoming of this new economy.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Mateusz Nowacki Advisor : Michael Piper

pause city As the city expands laterally, tactics of territorial planning and annexation have resulted in an outer patchwork of housing enclaves and agricultural land, thereby blurring the relationship between urban and rural. The commoditization of housing development has presented harsh conditions where the built fabric meets the vast rural, demonstrating a tension between the production of the insular home and the demographics of the agricultural economy. Opposed to theories which identify this tension through an absolute limit, this thesis proposes the border as a temporary condition examined as both a method which mediates further urbanization, as well as a speculative architectural framework which questions the role of domesticity within this dialogue.

Considering California as a paradigm for these conflicts, this research reinterprets housing not by large-scale planning, but rather by a restructuring of domestic space itself.

Identifying the agricultural working class as the protagonist within the social dichotomy of urban and rural housing modes, new archetypes for collective living are explored to address issues of integration and the city. The reclamation of the edge offers the physical limit as a place of access, countering the isolated and subdivided structure of housing production while making evident the productive labours of agriculture.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Sugra Panvelwala Advisor : Jonathan Enns

Toronto: Down Under Redefining the Subterranean

The noble savage, according to Laugier, left the naturally available subterranean cavernous forms to explore the superterranean additive geometries of columns, entablatures, and pediments. The underground, despite renewed interest in its potential, continues to be designed keeping superterranean architectural principles in mind. This thesis aims to critique this nature of underground structures by identifying the unique spatial and tectonic conditions that result from subtraction. Subterranean architecture is a distinct condition, which deserves its own set of architectural principles — its own primitive hut.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Gloria Elizabeth Perez Advisor : John J. May

Thickness of Air Atmospheres, energy, and climates are all intangible elements, but how can these elements become architecture? At what moment do they become tangible? Our “normal� thermal comfort level has been determined by varying types of environmental factors. These normal thermal conditions in our milieus are easily controlled and altered by the HVAC system. Could we reprogram our bodies to accommodate a new normal thermal climate? Could we in turn alter the way we live in our milieus to accommodate this new climate? Our living conditions are dictated by the architectural form, but what if temperature is the designer, creating fluctuating spaces that conform to our daily lifestyle while conserving our resources. By utilizing a material that can actively adjust/actuate based upon the exposure to varying types of micro climates, we can see new potential for how form can respond. The integration of a material that can respond to thermal conditions creates an atmospheric space btween two surfaces, and an eventual new way of thinking of poche.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Andrew Piotrowski Advisor : Michael Piper

The Bigger Box The Bigger Box pushes a typical suburban Big Box to extreme proportions. The Bigger Box is expanded to the edge of the typical site and filled in with forms of retail, residential, and infrastructure. Accepting the standard Big Box store and its future existence within the suburban context, this project explores opportunities for the site within existing constraints of strict architectural, planning, and corporate profit strategies of Big Box retail.

A reconfiguration of the current surface parking in a shared Metrolinx facility frees the ground plane and allows for an engaged juxtaposition of the corporate Big Box, residential, and landscape. The Bigger Box takes advantage of the “flexible� Big Box perimeter configurations of programming while not disrupting the core logistical efficiency of the retail operation.

This project proposes a hybrid envelope of structure, screen, and advertising to the site extents. The envelope allows for framed open space within. The recreation, residential, and Big Box retail exist in an entirely new way.

Within The Bigger Box site the balance of commercial intensity, residential program, and civic courtyards produces a contemporary suburban experience, which is different, yet strangely familiar.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Paula Carolina Prada Advisor : Shane Williamson

Blackboard + Our world is battling many great global issues, such as the lack of formal housing provided to all citizens of a state regardless of their income. This is largely apparent in — but not exclusive to — Latin America. In Bogotá, Colombia, there is a tremendous lack of formal housing and infrastructure due to internal rural migration, which has increased exponentially, creating informal settlements. This issue has been abundantly addressed through major realms of practices from political to anthropological, theoretical, and practical — sometimes achieving great success and other times creating larger problems by treating the symptoms rather than the causes.

This thesis looks at the lack of education as the root of the problem. Can the introduction of satellite academic institutions into these communities begin to change the dynamics of these areas and generate improvement? Could they provide an opportunity to develop a fully serviced community in an area with limited essential services and insufficient money and materials? These educational hubs create a place where less can inevitability become more, creating a more balanced environment, igniting community involvement and new opportunities for development.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Emily Jennifer Ross Advisor : Michael Piper

Regrouping Suburban areas are densifying, but conventional schemes for introducing urban density are not always well adapted to the sites they intervene on. Where building types, configurations, and patterns of parcelization and ownership are varied and largely idiosyncratic, transplanting schemes from dense urban contexts only emphasizes the sense of incoherence. Examining building types and latent patterns of these challenging sites presents the opportunity to introduce higher density incrementally, accommodating both existing context and future development.

This thesis explores the potential of gradually introducing density to a suburban commercial strip, envisioning the thoughtful grouping of a collection of architectural entities along a stretch of Dundas Street West in Etobicoke in order to not only increase density, but also form a diverse and rich urban environment. Drawing on Fumihiko Maki’s concept of Collective Form in architecture, this project seeks to introduce a quality of coherence and collectiveness as interventions populate the strip over time.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Jahanvi Sharma Advisor : John Shnier

Future Memory Void This thesis project situates itself in the post-earthquake city of Christchurch in New Zealand. Christchurch was struck by a devastating magnitude 6.3 earthquake in 2011 that was responsible for wiping out the core of this vibrant city and leaving some of the most beloved buildings in a state of ruin. Elaborate plans for redevelopment have been made and are underway for the future as Christchurch once again aims to be the economic center of the Canterbury region — largely defined by the south east coast of the country.

I’d like to take this opportunity to contemplate.

Through the power of drawing, my thesis project extracts the essence of a speculative space that provokes questions of the preservation of history and commemoration of memory that takes place in Christchurch.

Future Memory Void is a perpetual journey through the presence of an absence — a pilgrimage without destination, which reorients one’s sensibilities within the context of a city that is in the state of flux. The optimism of the future, the gravity of the past and the uncertainty of the present coexist in a liminal moment, which can only be experienced and understood through drawing.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Jocelyn Lambert Squires Advisor : Wei-Han Vivian Lee

Spatial Optics with Light Optical diffraction changes the scattering of light as it passes through holes: the phenomenon behind soft and sharp shadows, and the dappling of light as it passes through trees. Light becomes a wave, adding and subtracting in ways incomprehensible to our Newtonian conception of reality. Two flat screens, with two different patterns, become a third pattern when light shines through both. The shadows activate, bringing alive a flat surface. Literal transparency becomes phenomenal. Flat walls vibrate as a new space is perceived.

Our understanding of physical space occurs primarily through vision. Even spatial knowledge of the body such as touch and proximity is conveyed through sight. We can, after all, infer what it is to touch a surface when angled light emphasizes its texture.

Therefore not only properties of shape and surface, but also properties of light, combine to form our understanding of the environment.

Manipulating the gradient of light to dark in a light beam, changing the shape of a beam of light, changing our perception of perspective, and controlling reflections all subtly affect our perception, and thus experience, of space.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Jeremy Stam Advisor : Jonathan Enns

Expression Exchanged:

Digital Infrastructure’s Analogue Monument The Internet’s sublime vastness and international significance is often wrongly perceived to have an airy lightness, stemming from architectural illegibility in the built realm.

Staggering physicality is veiled by anonymous sheds and repurposed utilitarian structures, implying insignificance. This misrepresentation is problematic. Critical aspects of the physical Internet — like its exponential growth, astounding energy consumption, and unsettling politics — remain abstractions, not validated through architectural expression. The digital world needs an analog, physical expression — an infrastructural monument as the counterpoint to an invisible network.

This thesis argues for an Architecture of Expression, as demanded by the Internet’s emerging physicality, by establishing a reimagined Internet Exchange for Toronto.

This expression is an unapologetic excess, a deliberate addition of overt representation in scale, material, and human interaction.

This expression lies somewhere between a modernist ideal of bottom-up, performative architectural language, and a top-down realization of a singular parti. It is an exaggeration beyond mere functional efficiency. A new architectural type emerges that responds to the Internet’s political, environmental, and physical realities. The Internet’s invisibility is replaced by expressive monumentality at the new Internet Exchange.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Siobhan Sweeny Advisor : John Shnier

City’s Table As he begins to recognize the artistic depth of the meal, Lorens, issues eager authentications of each dish and vintage searching in vain for some eye at the table with whom he might share this unexpected pleasure.

— Isak Dinesen, Babette’s feast The distribution of food has fundamentally changed from purely utilitarian to a dialogue between people, their city, and their food.

Whether you are shopping for it, cooking it eating it, ogling or fetishizing it, food is a vehicle for human interaction. The discourse surrounding food is also having a physical, aesthetic impact. City’s Table explores the relationship between the company and communality of food and the multitude and variety of venues in which it is transacted, shared, and consumed. City’s Table is an inclusive cornucopia that is as much about experience that transcends expectation as it is about transmuting the culture of food from its world on the table to a phantasmagoric place for food on the world stage.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Zhou Tang Advisor : Wei-Han Vivian Lee

Dragon City 2.0 Chinese traditional architecture emphasizes the art of “void”. Two thousand years ago, Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu connected his Taoism thinking to architecture: “We pierce doors and windows to make a house; And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.

Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.” This has become the root of all traditional architecture where the assembly of different void spaces is introduced to enrich user’s experience.

Toronto’s Chinatown neighbourhood is the cultural center of the city’s Chinese population, however, its architectural expressions are limited to a figurative level (dragon figure, Chinese pitched roof etc.). The objective of this research is to compliment the existing figurative expression of Chinese culture in the Dragon City Mall project by bringing a spatial understanding of “void” to the site, with respect to its urban context and density requirements.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Trenton Thompson Advisor : An Te Liu

An archeology of attention The course of study practices itinerant methods of making as mode of discovery.

The course of study exercises a certain posture of perception.

The course of study attends to what takes place otherwise.

The course of study appropriates singularities from backgrounds of normality.

The course of study contemplates error and its premeditation.

The course of study exchanges corporeal grammar and oneiric mark.

The course of study basks in melancholy and atmosphere.

The course of study follows degrees of density using light as metric.

The course of study notwithstanding its obscurity, should give rise to pause.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Paul Tak-Shen Tsang Advisor : Benjamin Dillenburger

Vertical Rituals Currently, there is a growing Christian community in the city of Hong Kong. This means that there is a need for new churches, but the context is challenging because of the city’s urban density. The megachurch of the 1960s that flourished in suburban contexts by incorporating the sacred with popular culture is no longer an appropriate model in today’s compact urban environments.

My thesis is about designing a new church type in the contemporary context of hyper density in Hong Kong. The objective is to design a tower with a limited footprint that would help alleviate overcrowding during peak hours of worship in the downtown fabric.

The design concept rests on the procession of space informed by the five colours of the salvation bracelet in Christianity.

They symbolise consumption, community, confession, rebirth, and paradise. The qualities of the spiritual spaces spread to spaces that serve the building’s physical requirements.

In addition, studies of spatial hierarchy, sculptural articulation of traditional churches, and expressions made possible though computation inform the poetics of my design, the “Ascension Tower”.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Margaret Irene Upenieks Advisor : Jonathan Enns

Water House When building systems shift from their traditional position behind walls and between floors to the surface, architecture reveals the truth about its construction. Inspired by largescale projects such as the Pompidou Centre and Lloyd’s Building where services are exposed on the exterior, Water House is an urban residential dwelling with exposed services on its interior. A new spatial experience is created through an all-surface hydronic system with variable densities of piping layout. Unlike traditional hydronic sys-tems that utilize steam and hot water, Water House makes use of earth energy systems coupled with the thermal mass of below-grade rainwater collection cisterns.

Tempered rainwater is continuously circulated through Water House but at a temperaÂŹture above the dew point. As a result, water-based floors, ceilings, and walls deliver both thermal comfort and delight and a circulatory system for a metaphorically breathing dwelling.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Hamza Vora Advisor : Wei-Han Vivian Lee

Revival Loop In essence, the combined affect created by the buildings, streets, merchandise, and other armatures is the Bazaar (Street Market). The interface of the building and the street, the merchandise that flows on to the street, and the furniture used to display the merchandise all play an equal part in creating this affect.

This combined architecture mediates the flow of people, causes congestion, activity, and determines the behavior of the crowds.

This thesis aims to re-create this affect with the aid of a superimposed armature in a dense residential environment where the ground plane is desolate and not well utilized. My intervention provides a frame to accommodate services that have been absent, highlight those that exist, and add new programs. The intervention is proposed for the interstitial spaces between tall towers of Concord Canada place south of Front Street, a recently developed piece of urban fabric that suffers from Condo Obesity.

The goal is to create an additive space, in contrast to the very tall residential structure, which has a stronger relationship with the ground plane, and creates a dynamic public realm for the dense residential neighborhood.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Kaegan Walsh Advisors : John J. May & Hans Ibelings

A Geologic Journey of Reinforced Concrete The intent of this thesis is to articulate the importance of an overlooked aesthetic quality of concrete; our concrete architecture stands as a record of our natural history. Not just another element of our built environment, a concrete wall, floor, foundation, or sidewalk bears the mark of the ancient history responsible for much of our natural resources. This record is imperceptible at first glance, but revealed through a simple analysis of the aggregate used in our concrete, aggregate which originates from a specific geographic location as a result of a complex geological process which lends it irreplicable properties. As we demolish older concrete architecture to make way for new developments, we degenerate an important component of our local culture; this thesis aims to promote architectural preservation of concrete in an attempt to highlight the local significance of this material and the fragility of our natural environment.

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Philip A. Wharton Advisor : John J. May

Lake Conveyance Man creates artificial conditions. This is Architecture. Physically and psychically man repeats, transforms, expands his physical and psychical sphere. He determines ‘environment’ in its widest sense.

— Hans Hollein, Everything is Architecture 1967 The Greater Golden Horseshoe, is the expansive urban agglomeration of over 50 cities and suburban municipalities surrounding the north-western end of Lake Ontario and north-eastern tip of Lake Erie. With a population exceeding 8.76 million, the region has quickly developed into one of the most densified and economically diverse regions in North America.

As our municipalities continue their rapid and far-reaching growth, the consequences of an increasing population density will continue to manifest most acutely in the realm of public transit and mobility. Our present and nearfuture transit networks are already at capacity and will only worsen with time.

An artificial island situated approximately 25 kilometres from the north-western shores of Lake Ontario, promptly presents itself. The lake, an untapped natural resource provides an efficient and integrative solution for public mobility and conveyance for municipalities located within the Greater Golden Horseshoe region.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Lisa Wong Advisor : An Te Liu

HAVEN Architecture kindles an awareness of presence, sparking an admiration for the magical yet transient qualities of the real world. At the same time, to appreciate the space that surrounds us demands a contemplative strategy of perception.

A study of the temporal aesthetics of ‘wabisabi’ and the Japanese tea ritual inspired the making of a portable tea box. Ceramic vessels and walnut wood disassemble in a prescribed fashion, creating an impromptu place setting for tea. An experiment on craft, materiality, and ritual, the box is rooted in the desire to create a place of solitude and presence.

HAVEN continues the pursuit of architecture that brings awareness and appreciation towards the imperfection and impermanence of the real world. Nestled on the edge of a conservation site within the city’s limits, the proposal offers spaces for rest, shelter, and observation. Its architecture utilizes the versatility of wood as a medium for demonstrating how the synthesis of materiality, atmosphere, and time is capable of igniting the contemplative energy required of reading the space around us. It is a portrayal of architecture that incites and amplifies the awareness of presence (and absence) and the appreciation for the details of one’s surroundings and one’s self.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Hui Ting Yang Advisor : George Baird

Re-Connect Moss Park In recent decades, Toronto Community Housing (TCHC) has initiated revitalization plans for several of its affordable housing projects, including Moss Park, Alexandra Park, Regent Park, and Lawrence Heights. Throughout the long and challenging process of neighborhood revitalization, thousands of households were relocated. As a result, residents were removed from their community and separated from their usual support networks.

This thesis is a proposal for the intensification and re-zoning of the Moss Park neighborhood without household relocation and demolition of existing buildings. The area is rezoned to introduce new programs and mixed use buildings while maintaining existing homes.

In addition, the project attempts to reenvision the typical podium and tower building model while initiating discussion about the relationship between individual and collective needs in Toronto’s urban setting. Using the current revitalization projects as examples, this proposal aims to provide long-term oriented design strategies in order to create a more dynamic neighborhood.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Max Powell Yuristy Advisor : George Baird

Tasting Sights Once the site of the longest-running iron-ore mine in Canada, the surface of Newfoundland’s Bell Island now lies dormant. Like many exurban communities, Bell Island has undergone a dramatic shift from a productive (mining) to a consumptive (tourist) landscape economy. This thesis aims to use architecture as a vehicle to pair the resilience of an agricultural economy with the dynamism of an emerging tourist economy as a means of re-activating the postproductive surface.

The crossover between food and architecture provokes discussion surrounding the economic identity of Bell Island and how food traditions, products, and architecture can be combined to foster economic development. In this process, a new territorial identity can emerge, one that is both productive and consumptive. As a cultural product, food shores up a community’s vitality while offering a touch-stone between the tourist and local.

This thesis focuses on the historic location of Dominion Pier, one of Bell Island’s two main deep-water piers from which iron ore was shipped. Perched on the concrete remains of the pier, a cooking school and interconnected food and tourist infrastructures become a site of exchange between tourists and local community members, production and consumption, as well as land and sea.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Jiefei Zhang Advisor : Jonathan Enns

Deep Customization The focus of this thesis is on an architectural phenomenon that has not caused enough reflection: the fact that customization typically decreases in taller buildings. High-rise buildings are now the least customized architectural type, because their envelope, structure, layout, ceiling height, and building code requirements are highly fixed. Alejandro Zaera-Polo stated that the building envelope is currently the only section that can be customized because other parts of the building are usually fixed to ensure efficient project delivery. In contrast to Alejandro, this thesis argues that deep customization could happen in the interior of a building, rather than just the envelope.

To allow for greater customization, this thesis proposes to divide one-man authorship and minimize the fixed parts of the architecture.

These ideas have led to a design for an infrastructure where different types of units made by different architects could be located.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Jay Zhao Advisor : John J. May

A Platform for Collective Production Manufacturing during the 20th century was governed by mass production for mass consumption, favouring large-scale production facilities located within the urban periphery.

However, the 21st century is transitioning to a mode of production where the process of design, assembly, and use has been amalgamated into one. With advancements in fabrication technology and the proliferation of online DIY communities, tools and information once exclusive to corporations, have now been radically decentralized through digital platforms to the hands of the population at large. This has led to a fundamental shift of production, one in which individuals are free to determine the level of specificity in their own commodities.

Human creativity has become the nucleus of the emerging networked economy, which advocates for collective sharing, production, and consumption, drastically challenging the industrial economy of the past century.

This cultural trend is not only re-establishing manufacturing in our cities but further provokes a wider discussion of how local production must embrace mass creativity from a multitude of backgrounds, provide support for independent entrepreneurships, and emphasize the benefits of collective production.

Fall 2015

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Daniels Faculty Thesis Reviews

Juyao Zhao Advisor : John Shnier

Sublunary Realm The world beneath our feet has always been a unique and fascinating realm to discover.

From ancient Egypt to present day, sublunary and subterranean spaces have played an important role in history. Orvieto, rising above vertical-faced tufa cliffs, is one of the Italy’s most significant cities. Its archaeological ruins and extensive underground spaces mark its rich layers of stories, fragments, and traces of history. Inspired by these historical spaces, my thesis seeks to explore unique architectural conditions by creating a new realm between upper and lower Orvieto. Looking at expressions of materiality, lighting, and change in orientation, the project attempts to create new spatial experiences in the contemporary world that did not exist before.

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