Stephen Kupferman

U of T students part of first Canadian team to win prestigious urban design competition

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 16 Apr 2021 17:01:33 +0000

U of T students part of first Canadian team to win prestigious urban design competition

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 04/16/2021 - 13:01

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A team comprising students from U of T, York and Ryerson won top prize at the annual Urban Land Institute/ Gerald D. Hines Hines Student Competition with a design that focused heavily on sustainability and community use (image courtesy of Fusion team)

Stephen Kupferman

Topic

Global Lens

Cities

Global

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Sustainability

A team of Canadian students, including two from the ��Ƶ, recently took home top prize in the Urban Land Institute/ Gerald D. Hines Hines Student Competition – the first time a non-American team has won the prestigious contest.

Ruotian Tan, a master of urban design student, and Chenyi Xu, a master of architecture student, were both members of the winning team, which also included students from York University and Ryerson University.

The annual competition asks entrants to find a solution to a complex urban design problem – in this case, by developing master plans for the East Village, a neighbourhood in Kansas City, Mo.

“It was a great multidisciplinary learning experience for me,” Tan said earlier this year. “It was a very good chance for me to practice and get some good results before I actually go into a professional career.”

For the Kansas City project, the student teams had to take into account a number of goals, including economic impact, sustainability, housing affordability and access to transportation. Teams were asked not only to design ways of transforming the neighbourhood, but also to develop phased implementation and financial plans.

A vertical farming greenhouse was part of the Canadian student team’s winning submission (image courtesy of Fusion team)

The Canadian team's design, titled “Fusion,” was unique among the competition’s finalists in that it didn't include any tourist infrastructure. Instead, the group chose to focus on building a lively pedestrian promenade for locals that was lined with mixed-income residences, office space, retail, and a 107,000-square-foot community centre with housing for seniors inside.

“One thing that distinguished our proposal from the other finalists is that we wanted to create a community for people who are actually living there, rather than attracting tourists or visitors to the site,” Tan said back in March.

The group's master plan also included a network of green infrastructure intended to control the flow of stormwater across the site. Permeable pavement and street bioswales would allow the East Village to absorb rain and store it for reuse in a series of local gardens and green roofs. A vertical farming greenhouse would make it possible for the neighbourhood to produce some of its own food.

The team’s attention to environmental sustainability and agriculture won the competition jury's approval.

(image courtesy of Fusion team)

“Fusion stood out as it pushed a new paradigm for an urban neighborhood based on the strong regional legacy of agriculture,” ULI Hines jury chair Diana Reid wrote in a statement. “Their financing plan and design enabled economic resilience through small scale food growth and distribution, local culinary incubation, and research-driven employment opportunities.”

U of T’s Tan and Xu worked closely with three other teammates: Frances Grout-Brown and Leorah Klein of Ryerson University and Yanlin Zhou of York University. They were supervised by Steven Webber and Victor Perez-Amado, both assistant professors at Ryerson's School of Urban and Regional Planning. Raymond Lee, a senior associate at Weston Williamson + Partners, and Christina Giannone, vice-president of planning and development at Port Credit West Village Partners, acted as advisers.

The all-Toronto team, which made its final submission to the competition's jury on April 8 during a videoconference presentation, bested a field of 104 other entries from schools around North America. The four other finalists represented a number of America's top schools, including Pennsylvania State University, Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

In addition to bragging rights, the Canadian students will split a US$50,000 grand prize.

“Reflecting on this experience in its entirety, it’s surreal how much we’ve learned along the way,” the Canadian team said in a statement. “Though each member of the team brought different skills to the table, we were strongly aligned in our aspirations for the site and were proud to present our proposal rooted in enabling physical and social connectivity and achieving economic and environmental resilience.”

U of T architecture students, faculty install a pop-up park beside the CN Tower

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 17:32:08 +0000

U of T architecture students, faculty install a pop-up park beside the CN Tower

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 08/07/2020 - 13:32

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(photo by Rémi Carreiro)

Topic

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Undergraduate Students

The ��Ƶ is bringing a little bit of the natural world to one of downtown Toronto's most prominent locations.

Pebbs and Hex, an educational pop-up park, was created by Assistant Professor Victor Perez-Amado and forestry PhD candidate Eric Davies, in collaboration with a team of students from U of T’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. It sits at the base of the CN Tower, one of Canada's most recognizable urban landmarks.

The park opened to the public on July 25th in the plaza located immediately to the south of the tower. It will remain on display until early December.

(photo by Rémi Carreiro)

The Pebbs and Hex park consists of a series of wooden “pebbles” – rounded seating structures accentuated with kinetic, solar-powered lighting elements that move with the wind – created using a computer-controlled mill that allows designers to make precise cuts. The “hexes” are modular hexagonal planters that hold a gallery of native trees, including burr oak, black ash, sugar maple and poplar.

A series of explanatory plaques helps visitors learn about the different tree species and the important roles they play in Ontario's ecology.

The park’s elements were fabricated in the Daniels Faculty’s digital fabrication laboratory.

(photo by Rémi Carreiro)

The installation is part of the CN Tower's ongoing effort to bring life and variety to the downtown core.

“We are excited to partner with ��Ƶ’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design to bring the Pebbs and Hex pop-up park to life at the base of the CN Tower,” says Peter George, the tower’s chief operating officer.

“With its beautiful array of trees that are part of the city’s natural canopy, the installation is one of many ways the CN Tower is helping Torontonians fall in love with their city all over again, and we’re so pleased to provide our community with a refreshingly green urban space to enjoy.”

For Robert Wright, interim dean of the Daniels Faculty, an installation in the CN Tower's plaza represents an opportunity to bring design excellence to a wide audience.

“I'm proud of the Daniels Faculty’s support of this activity and Victor’s work on this project,” Wright says. “Pebbs and Hex is both beautiful and educational.

“And it's an incredible showcase for the Daniels Faculty's design expertise and fabrication technologies.”

Pebbs and Hex was completed with support from Sidewalk Labs.

The Daniels Faculty design team consisted of:

Concept design and research:

Victor Perez-Amado – assistant professor of architecture and urban design
Anton Skorishchenko – master of architecture student
Christian Huizenga – master of architecture student
Niko McGlashan – master of architecture student

Concept design and research of native tree gallery:

Eric Davies – PhD candidate in forestry

Concept design and research of educational component:

Eric Davies – PhD candidate in forestry

Pebbles and lights fabrication:

Anton Skorishchenko – master of architecture student
Christian Huizenga – master of architecture student
Miranda Fay – master of architecture student
Niko McGlashan – master of architecture student
Peter Dowhaniuk – bachelor in architectural studies student

Hexagons fabrication:

Victor Perez-Amado – assistant professor of architecture and urban design
Anton Skorishchenko – master of architecture student

Project management and project installation:

Victor Perez-Amado – assistant professor of architecture and urban design
Anton Skorishchenko – master of architecture student

Photgraphs:

Rémi Carreiro

U of T researchers to co-lead national Wildland Fire Research Network

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 19:31:06 +0000

U of T researchers to co-lead national Wildland Fire Research Network

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 07/08/2020 - 15:31

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Smoke billows into the sky near Fort McMurray, Alta. in May 2016 (photo by Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images)

Topic

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Research & Innovation

Two ��Ƶ professors are among the scientists leading the Wildland Fire Research Network – a new, Canada-wide coalition of seven forest-fire researchers at six different academic institutions.

Professor Emeritus David Martell and Associate Professor Patrick James, both of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Landscape, Architecture, and Design's forestry department, have been tapped to play key roles in the new network, which aims to increase Canada's expertise in wildland fire science.

As part of the initiative, James and Martell will have access to new funding earmarked specifically for the purpose of training new master's, PhD, and post-doctoral students in forest-fire research techniques. The federal government said it would be partnering with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) to provide $5 million for the creation the Wildland Fire Research Network.

“I have three new PhD students who have already signed on, and there will be more in the future,” James says. “Without this grant I wouldn't have had the financial means to take on these students. It's a huge boost to our forestry group.”

James is a specialist in landscape-scale forest disturbance processes, including the destruction wrought by the spruce budworm and the mountain pine beetle – insects whose fecundity and voracious feeding habits make them capable of killing vast swaths of Canadian forests (the dry, dead trees they leave behind can act as tinder when exposed to fire).

Martell is co-director, with Mike Wotton, of the Fire Management Systems Laboratory. He studies new techniques for detecting and managing forest fires.

An increase in the number of trainees isn't the only benefit for the U of T researchers. “It's not just about increasing the number of students,” Martell says. “It's about increasing the breadth of expertise of people who are interested in fires.”

By drawing on the varied backgrounds and institutional connections of the network's participants, students will be able to study forest fires from the perspectives of different disciplines, including ecology, physics, chemistry and the social sciences.

Students from across the new research network will also have opportunities to meet each other and form valuable professional connections. “The most important thing we're going to do is have 'summer schools,’” Martell says. “We’re going to bring our graduate students together. Students will make presentations, and we'll bring in professors to give talks – but, most importantly, the students will start to network with each other.”

The end result will be a new generation of highly qualified researchers and professionals with the skills, knowledge and interpersonal connections necessary to protect Canada's forests and forest-adjacent communities for decades to come.

The infusion of money into Canadian forest-fire research comes at an opportune moment: With climate change continuing unabated, scientists expect forest fires to become more frequent and more severe. According to federal government statistics, there are approximately 8,000 fires in Canadian forests each year.

Although fires can be a natural and healthy part of a forest's lifecycle, they pose a threat to human safety when they approach what's known as the wildland-urban interface – the border between the natural world and dense human settlements. Recent disasters like the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire and the 2011 Slave Lake wildfire have demonstrated the potential costs of a lack of investment in forest-fire research and control.

“This grant is a response to those events, and a recognition that we need more people to work on these problems,” Martell says.

Here's the list of researchers who will be leading the Wildland Fire Research Network:

Mike Flannigan, University of Alberta

Lori Daniels, University of British Columbia

Laura Chasmer, University of Lethbridge

Douglas Woolford, Western University

Mike Waddington, McMaster University

Patrick James, ��Ƶ

David Martell, ��Ƶ

U of T researcher co-authors global study on tropical forests' diminishing capacity to absorb carbon

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 04 Mar 2020 21:22:09 +0000

U of T researcher co-authors global study on tropical forests' diminishing capacity to absorb carbon

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 03/04/2020 - 16:22

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Sean Thomas was a co-author on an international study, involving more than 100 institutions, that found the world's tropical forests are losing their ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere (photo by Sean Thomas)

Topic

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Research & Innovation

Sustainability

The world’s tropical forests are losing their ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere – a development that could have serious implications on efforts to forestall climate change.

That is one of the findings of an international study by dozens of researchers – including the ��Ƶ’s Sean Thomas, a professor of forestry at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design – that was featured on the cover of this week’s issue of Nature.

In the mid-1990s, Thomas helped establish four 10-hectare research plots in the Ituri Rainforest in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The densely treed areas, teeming with small forest antelope, monkeys, and the occasional zebra-striped okapi, were essentially living laboratories that, a quarter century later, yielded key data for the global study led by researchers at the University of Leeds.

“Intact tropical forests have been offsetting global carbon dioxide emissions, [but] that's going to go away,” says Thomas of the study’s findings.

“That makes the problem of achieving the goals of the Paris Accord and stabilizing temperature increases much more difficult."

Using tree measurements from Thomas's research forests, along with similar measurements from hundreds of other tropical forests in Africa and South America, the study's researchers concluded that intact tropical forests – that is, those that haven't been logged or otherwise commercially exploited – absorbed only about six per cent of manmade carbon emissions by the 2010s. That’s compared to 17 per cent in the 1990s.

Furthermore, the study’s results suggest the forests’ ability to remove carbon will keep declining in the future.This means the ability of tropical forests to absorb and capture carbon has already passed its peak. In the parlance of environmental scientists, these forests are becoming "carbon saturated."

Trees capture carbon by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air and chemically transforming it, via photosynthesis, into the complex sugars that fuel tree growth. When a tree dies, the opposite happens: it releases carbon back into the environment as it decomposes.

Scientists have long understood that intact tropical forests are capturing more carbon than they're releasing, essentially scrubbing the atmosphere of manmade pollutants.

Sean Thomas conducts research in the forests of Ecuador (photo by Pedro Guayasamin)

Until recently, the general scientific assumption was that the net amount of carbon being captured by each hectare-sized unit of these forests was mostly unchanging. That's partly because carbon dioxide is tree food. If humans add more of it to the atmosphere, as they have been doing since the industrial revolution, plants have more fuel available to them. Well-fed plants absorb more carbon dioxide. It's a feedback loop, and it means that forests can, to a certain extent, increase their carbon capture capacity in sync with increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

But, according to Thomas and his co-authors, that beneficial feedback process is not what's currently happening in Africa and South America because too many trees are dying. The scientists aren't sure why tree death is increasing, but climate change is considered a likely culprit.

As a result, these tropical forests are losing their ability to capture more carbon than they produce. If the trend continues, the forests may actually become a net source of carbon, rather than a carbon sink. In other words, the amount of carbon released into the environment from decaying plants will be greater than the amount of carbon absorbed by living plants.

"That point of diminishing returns has been thought to be not for a long while, maybe 100 years away," Thomas says. "Now we know that it's already here, or imminent.”

Thomas's role in the study, which involved participation from nearly 100 different institutions, was to help analyze three decades' worth of measurements of the heights and diameters of trees in the four Congolese research forests he played a part in establishing so many years ago. Using those numbers, he was able to extrapolate information about how the forests' ability to capture carbon has changed over time. He also participated in writing the final paper.

The details of the study's findings are sobering. The intact tropical forests of Amazonia – the rainforest region of South America – are rapidly losing their ability to capture carbon. The study predicts that, by 2030, those forests will have lost so much of their carbon capture ability that they will be a net source of carbon.

In African tropical forests, the subject of Thomas's analysis, the data points to a different conclusion.

Unlike South America's forests, Africa's intact forests haven't shown a significant decline, per hectare, in their carbon capture ability over the past three decades. But they aren't immune to the same sort of decline currently afflicting the Amazon. The latest data shows the beginnings of a slower downward trend that could dramatically reduce Africa's carbon capture in coming decades.

The divergence in the fates of the two forests is likely related to differences in geography. "The Amazon has much lower elevation, on average," Thomas says. "At the mouth of the Congo is a series of waterfalls, so it's completely above the elevation of the Amazon." The higher elevation makes African forests cooler and less prone to the adverse effects of global warming.

As dire as the study's findings may seem, Thomas cautions that the reality may actually be even worse, because researchers weren't able to take all possible measurements of carbon saturation into account.

"This study is all based on live tree measurements," Thomas says. "But a large part of the carbon in forests is in the soil. What you worry about, as temperatures increase, is that the decomposition processes in the soil will be accelerated, and there will be loss of soil carbon."

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture launches new gallery with inaugural installation 'New Circadia'

noreen.rasbach — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 15:00:18 +0000

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture launches new gallery with inaugural installation 'New Circadia'

noreen.rasbach Wed, 11/06/2019 - 10:00

Cutline

The new Architecture and Design Gallery's inaugural exhibition, New Circadia, transforms the 7,500-square-foot space into a darkened, cave-like environment designed specifically to coddle the body and calm the mind

Stephen Kupferman

Topic

City & Culture

Culture

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Sleep

Subheadline

'We are interested in using architecture to convey the idea that idling and resting isn't unproductive. It's essential'

Most art and design exhibitions demand rapt attention from visitors. Nobody would visit a gallery expecting to lay back and let their mind wander in a darkened space, where every detail has been tweaked to encourage states of rest and repose.

And yet, that type of relaxation is precisely what will be asked of visitors at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design's new Architecture and Design Gallery when it opens to the public on Thursday.

The gallery's inaugural exhibition, New Circadia, transforms the new, 7,500-square-foot space into a darkened, cave-like environment designed specifically to coddle the body and calm the mind. The installation, curated by Richard Sommer, dean of the Daniels Faculty, in partnership with Natalie Fizer and Emily Stevenson of Pillow Culture, a New York–based interdisciplinary design studio, will open to the public on Friday until April 30.

If the idea of an architecture school designing an environment intended to put visitors to sleep sounds counterintuitive, that’s mostly by design. New Circadia's curators see it as a kind of antidote to the effects of normal architectural practice.

“Architecture is inextricably bound up in the urbanization of the planet,” Sommer says. “In fact, the very culture of the profession of architecture has been built on adopting mindsets and technologies that mechanize the body, facilitate long work hours and encourage a 24/7 lifestyle. Architecture marks time as much as it shapes space. We are interested in using architecture to convey the idea that idling and resting isn't unproductive. It's essential.”

The project was inspired by the Mammoth Cave Experiment, a 1938 study in which University of Chicago professor Nathaniel Klietman and his student, Bruce Richardson, sequestered themselves underground in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave. There, in a primordial space, shut away from daylight and daily fluctuations in temperature, they tried to investigate what happens when the human body deviates from a 24-hour cycle of sleep and wakefulness.

New Circadia won't require its visitors to be quite so intrepid. The installation will be split into three distinct zones. The "Transitory Zone" will be a vestibule-like area lit with CoeLux technology –artificial skylights that create the impression of perpetual daylight. Visitors to the gallery will remove their shoes and coats, and then drape their bodies with pillow-like "spelunking gear."

Once visitors are suitably outfitted, they'll enter the "Dark Zone," a dimly lit area filled with curving structures intended to resemble the uneven surfaces found in the interior of natural caves. But unlike the surfaces in a natural cave, New Circadia's "rocks" and floors will be covered with thick, soft felt. There will be subtle, cycling lights and sounds. All of this will help create what the curators refer to as a “loungescape.” Visitors will be encouraged to make use of the Dark Zone's soft surfaces for self-directed rest and meditation.

The third zone, called "Oneiroi," is a project by Assistant Professor Petros Babasikas and artist Chrissou Voulgari. Visitors will be invited to record descriptions of their dreams or listen to dreams recorded by previous visitors.

At various times throughout New Circadia's six-month run, the Daniels Faculty will host speakers, musicians, and other types of experimental performers in the space. The precise dates and times of these special events will be announced on the Daniels Faculty's website in coming weeks.

The launch of New Circadia will mark the grand opening of the Daniels Faculty's Architecture and Design Gallery, a reclaimed space on the lower level of the faculty's new home in the Daniels Building, at One Spadina Crescent. The area that is now the gallery was originally a coal storage area within the 19^th-century Knox Theological Seminary’s cloister. (The former seminary building – later the Connaught Laboratory – has been fully renovated, and it now forms the southern half of the Daniels Building.)

The coal bin was excavated and remediated. With financial support from the estate of James Drewry Stewart and the federal government’s Canada Cultural Spaces Fund, the area where the bin was located was ultimately transformed into a usable room. The new gallery is now the only large exhibition space in Toronto devoted entirely to architecture and design.

New Circadia will run from Nov. 8 to April 30. There will be a public launch event on Nov. 7, for which free tickets are still available. For gallery hours, see the Daniels Faculty's website. Support for New Circadia exhibition was provided by the Lorne M. Gertner Fund.