BEA Canada is pleased to announce that we have joined hands with Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto and the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, McGill University to celebrate and honour the lifetime achievements of Blanche Lemco van Ginkel - Architect, urban planner, educator, and activist.  

Speakers:
Phyllis Lambert (Canadian Centre for Architecture)
Mary McLeod (Columbia University)
Ipek Mehmetoglu (McGill University)

with an excerpt from 'City Dreamers,' a film by Joseph Hillel

Moderated by
Brigitte Shim (Daniels Faculty) and
Laura Miller (Daniels Faculty).

As an architect, urban planner, educator, and activist, Blanche Lemco van Ginkel has inspired generations of architects. With H.P. Daniel (Sandy) van Ginkel, she founded the firm Van Ginkel Associates in 1957. The firm’s work is distinguished for its integration of planning and architecture and bold, Modernist solutions. 

Lemco van Ginkel is also distinguished as an architectural educator. Following her graduation in architecture from McGill University (1945) and in city planning from Harvard University (1950), she taught at the University of Pennsylvania (1951-57), Harvard University, Université de Montréal, and McGill University. In 1977, she joined the University of Toronto, where she served as Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Architecture from 1980-82. 

In 2014, McGill University awarded Blanche Lemco van Ginkel an honorary doctorate. This year, 2020, she has been awarded the Lifetime Design Achievement award from the Ontario Association of Architects and the Gold Medal from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, reflecting her extraordinary contributions.

*When completing the RSVP form, please check BEA supporter/BEAT member.*

About the speakers:

Supported by:
Ontario Association of Architects (OAA)
Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC)

People notice race and colour. There is no alternative to getting around this fact. Many senior and executive leadership teams avoid conversations about race and colour out of fear of saying the wrong thing. Many people of colour avoid these conversations in the workplace out of fear of being seen as a com-plainer, disruptor — or worse. But pretending that the elephant in the room isn’t there won’t make the current challenges and barriers faced by many in the workplace go away.

What we know is despite Toronto’s demographic composition of being comprised of over 52% people of colour, there are less than 15% in senior and executive leadership positions. Racial and ethnic diversity in the workplace – from recruitment to the advancement of people of colour – continues to progress at an unimpressive pace. The needle is moving so slowly that it appears to be broken.

With organizational culture being so critical, it is the responsibility of senior and executive leadership
teams to create an environment that fosters success among employees from all backgrounds.

Therefore, striving to establish an equitable and inclusive organizational culture just may be the single
most crucial factor in building a diverse workforce.

A meaningful conversation on the importance of partnerships between men and women focused on race, colour and gender equity. While most IWD events have showcased women only themes, our intent is to spotlight how men are required to be included in the conversation, recognizing that inclusion and the advancement of equity in leadership is not a women’s issue, it is a collective opportunity to elevate business strategy.

The Conversation continues! BEAT’s Managing Director, Camille Mitchell, will join an incredible panel with a broad range of experience for the Matrix360 and International Women’s Day discussion on Race, Colour and Gender within the Real Estate Industry!

Register Here: https://bit.ly/2YzH9yE hashtag#leadership hashtag#inclusion hashtag#equity hashtag#gender hashtag#IWD2019

Perimeter Institute will host an inspirational half day conference on Thursday, March 7, 2019. The goal is to bring together like-minded young women with a strong interest in science and expose them to the rewards, challenges, and possibilities of a career in science.

BEAT’s Managing Director Camille Mitchell will be a panelist for the event.

This event is part of the Home and Away lecture series at the Daniels Faculty.

The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) and the Daniels Faculty present a public screening of the Islands and Villages documentary film series on Friday, November 9 from 6:30 to 8:30pm in the Main Hall of the Daniels Faculty (1 Spadina Crescent). Introduced by CCA c/o Tokyo Curator Kayoko Ota, the films explore the transformation of architecture in rural Japan, featuring Atelier Bow-Wow, Kazuyo Sejima, Toyo Ito, dot architects, and Hajime Ishikawa.

The event will begin with a Curator’s Talk by CCA c/o Tokyo Curator Kayoko Ota, followed by the film screening and concluding with a Q&A with Kayoka Ota and Mauricio Quiros Pacheco, Assistant Professor at our Daniels faculty and former Researcher for the Office of the Director and Chief Curator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). Also present from the CCA will be Director Mirko Zardini and Chief Curator Giovanna Borasi.

CCA c/o is a series of temporary initiatives that are locally anchored, moving from city to city worldwide. They can feature independent curators, architects, journalists, photographers, and editors — or other interesting figures encountered along the way. Over the course of 2018 and 2019, the CCA is working with Kayoko Ota, an architectural curator and editor based in Tokyo and commissioner of the Japanese pavilion at the 2014 Venice Biennale, to develop research and facilitate public engagement with their projects in Tokyo.

To launch c/o Tokyo, the CCA commissioned a multi-part documentary on the posturban phenomenon in Japan. Traveling to small villages and tiny islands far from Tokyo, Ota explores how, in place of the conventional system of commissioning, a new kind of exchange is emerging between architects and rural communities. The documentary premiered within a larger online editorial project, What About the Provinces, focused on nonurban cities, providing the perspective of another culture to an ongoing CCA investigation.

About Kayoko Ota
Tokyo-based architectural curator and editor Kayoko Ota is a founding partner of PLAT, a platform for enhancing architectural thinking in socially engaged cultural and educational projects. From 1987 to 1996 she co-directed Workshop for Architecture and Urbanism, organizing a variety of cultural and educational programs, publishing Telescope magazine, and hosting summer schools with the AA School of Architecture in Tokyo. She was also vice editor and editorial board member of Domus magazine in Milan from 2004 to 2007. After ten years at AMO, the creative think-tank arm of OMA in Rotterdam, she returned to Tokyo to curate the Japanese pavilion in the 2014 Venice Biennale for Architecture as commissioner. Ota is the curator of CCA c/o Tokyo through 2019.

About Mauricio Quiros Pacheco
Mauricio Quirós Pacheco is an Assistant Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. He was Researcher for the Office of the Director at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) from 2010 until 2014 and has practiced in America and Europe in offices including Stanley Saitowitz Office and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Read his full biography here.

The Daniels Faculty
The University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty is an internationally recognized school of design offering professional and other programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and visual/curatorial studies, and is at the forefront of research in these fields. For more information, visit us at www.daniels.utoronto.ca

CCA Guest Curator Sylvia Lavin joins University of Toronto Philosophy professor Mark Kingwell for a discussion on themes raised in the CCA exhibition Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths.

This event is part of the Home and Away lecture series at the Daniels Faculty.

A joint initiative with the Canadian Centre for Architecture and their exhibition Architecture Itself and Other Postmodern Myths(Nov. 7, 2018 – Apr. 7, 2019).

Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths proposes a counter-reading of postmodern procedures, replacing the myth of the autonomous architect with accounts of empirically describable architectural activity. The exhibition makes original contributions both to a counter-historiography of the postmodern and to contemporary curatorial methods.

A broad selection of material evidence—including drawings, models, and primary source documents gathered from building sites, libraries, and archives including the CCA collection—supports accounts of architects’ and architecture’s entanglements with bureaucracy, the art market, and academic and private institutions, as postmodernization challenges the discipline to redefine its modes of practice and reconsider the very idea of architecture itself.

Curator: Sylvia Lavin
Associate Curator: Sarah Hearne
Exhibition design: Besler & Sons, Princeton/Brooklyn
Graphic design: Chad Kloepfer, Cambridge

Join BEA Prairies for a collaborative visioning session. Learn more about the initiative and how to get involved!

RSVP by October 25th to BEAPrairies@gmail.com

Drinks and snacks provided! This is a physically accessible location. Please indicate if you have specific accessibility requirements or need on site child-minding. Available upon request.