Archinect - University of Toronto (Utako)

studio effect: the wall of shame

2010-04-13T18:05:17-04:00

-an informal update blog- these photos keep on appearing in our studio..
it's that time of the year of final review at the Daniels faculty

catch up: end of first term

2010-01-12T02:33:07-05:00

It was definitely as busy and crazy as I expected! It got so chaotic but the 'done' feeling after review, especially if it was a positive experience, was nice. The premise of the studio project was unique, in that we had to follow extremely specific process of spatial construction but were completely limitless in terms of form or site. My studio prof, Christos Marcopoulos (nminusone), focused our group on 'form informed form' and 'negative space models' and within that my project focused on 'inhabitable space between skin' sort of ideas.

Final Presentation

Studio mess

catch up: fall all-school workshop (the end result)

2010-01-12T01:20:03-05:00

It's been a while since my last blog entry and since I promised to keep an update on the first ever all-school workshop attempt from last fall. Time flies! I can't do a detailed recap since it's been so long, but here is a quick update. hopefully the pictures will get the idea across of what it was like...

Overall the workshop was good. It was a bit chaotic with all the shuffling of disciplines and people at first, but everyone seemed to have adapted to the change for the week and produced good results in the end. It was super intense, as if we were working on a term-long project in one week, but it was nice to work with a different studio dynamic. The workshop is two-part series, so the part 2 will be taking place next week.

Each team was assigned one of the four sites around Toronto, all of which were actually going to get bulldozed in the near future for re-design. Our team was assigned the Downsview Park, a huge ex-airport site located north of the city. You might have hear...

classes cancelled for a week: seriously

2009-10-26T00:25:31-04:00

So at Daniels this week, we have something strange coming up: an all school charrette for the entire week. What is going to happen is that they're going to merge the entire faculty (students and teachers, architects landscape architects and urban designers) and divide us all into 21 groups (approx 15 people). Then they are going to give us each a site/project from the City of Toronto and we are going to make something (like 6 design panels) and present them at the end of the week (with free food). Our dean, Richard Sommer, announced all that last week and the entire room went into a buzz. Everyone's freaking out about their cancelled studio (knowing the reality of heightened expectation with more time to work on it at night) and also with the possibility of 'exchanging desks' for the week (which the students all shook their head in unison).

I don't know, I think it's actually a cool idea (perhaps it would have been better if it was at the beginning of September but anyways) and I...

big news: school reno

2009-10-11T01:36:10-04:00

This week, the Daniels Faculty of Architecture Landscape and Design announced the architect selected for the school's $14 million endowment expansion. Ofcourse, this will probably be completed just as I will be finishing (i.e. three years of putting up with construction) - just like always.

The architect selected is partners Monica Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani from Office dA. Their planned progress is being displayed in the school foyer right now. The drawings show a series of beautiful cladding that wraps the existing red brick building, as well as fragmented rooftop space that allows people to make better use of the Toronto cityscape.

Image taken from the Daniels school website:
http://www.daniels.utoronto.ca/news/news/2009/10/4793

I can't help but to wonder, though, what will happen to the beautiful view of the city I'm enjoying right now from my seat in studio...

term one: and it begins

2009-10-11T01:17:04-04:00

It's October and well into the first term of my M.Arch at Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. And it's been almost four weeks since class started and I'm already living the unhealthy lifestyle of a stereotypical architecture student (i.e. lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of time, lots of stress, lots of procrastination and lots of coffee) it's actually not so good.

In studio right now, we are still working on the cube-section-cut assignment from the first week; except now we are having to skew, add skin, create model and take photographs of this arbitrary shape we created in our original drawings. Sounds easy, but it's very time consuming and actually kind of confusing. Sometimes this project makes me feel like a grad student trying to solve the complex math behind geometric shapes, and other times I feel like a kindergarden child throwing tantrums with sticky glue fingers.

However, aside from falling into the traps of becoming a perpetual studio mole, there a...

in toronto: back to school and starting m.arch

2009-09-18T02:23:56-04:00

I realize that I haven't written on archinect in a while, but really there was nothing too interesting going on write about, especially when I was consciously trying to avoid the internet all together in an attempt to enjoy the last few days left of summer. And now that I'm back in school and starting m.arch (and with so many new things to write about), I suddenly find myself SO busy with no time to sit down! I guess this is just how it works, and so I now really appreciate the effort kept by the other students bloggers.. yay archinect.

Having said that, things here at the Daniels school of architecture in Toronto had a fairly slow start as we began class only earlier this week. Everyone in 1st year is given the same schedule and so we've been keeping busy bonding and scoping out each other's backgrounds all week. It's actually cool to see how diverse everyone's expertise is at this school. I myself have a civil engineering background, but I've heard of everything from mechanical ...

in cleveland: the verdant city

2009-07-15T15:52:30-04:00

For an odd reason, I had the chance to explore Cleveland Ohio this past weekend. To be honest, I didn't expect to see too much in this verdant city - all I've been hearing about Cleveland is that it's a left over city from the once booming auto industry (like Detroit) and that the city today relies on the sports team industry for spirit. Surprisingly, in the few hours that I took to go around the city (and because of the fully developed road systems and empty car traffic, you only need about a few hours to see the whole city) I found some pieces of interesting architecture around Cleveland. I checked out the Peter B.Lewis Building by Frank Gehry at the Case Western University and also The Verdant Walk art installation by Peter and Alyssa North at the downtown mall. Frank Gehry is a Canadian and Peter and Alyssa North teach at the University of Toronto (my school) so it was a nice surprise to see Canada represent in this central US city!

The Frank Gehry building looks liked a mund...

things learned: in wrapping up 4th year

2009-05-11T17:59:05-04:00

So I'm finally, almost finished being an undergrad student. yay. Deciding to do both engineering and architecture was my choice, but it sure took a long time to get them both done. I have enough people making fun of me for being a permanent student, so it's kind of nice to know that I'm really done, and that I've absorbed all that I could from the undergrad experience at UofT.

Anyway, despite the many years I spent here at UofT, this year was probably the most stressful one, ever. December got a little crazy when I was trying to make a portfolio, work on 2 studio classes and finish up the BA requirements in 3 years. Looking back though, I think it actually worked out because I learned the most during that time. I guess all the stress made me think creatively. I was always forced to think backwards due to constant lack of time, like "ok so I have 12 hours till crit. what's the best way to divert a quality work? ...and make it look pretty?"- definitely something to work on next year!...