Session 5 of a weekly webinar series showcasing students’ engaged research, virtual simulations, social impact and creative projects.

Thursday, October 8, 2020

2:30pm – 4:00pm

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Presenter Bios

Ivee Yiyao Wang is an aspiring architect who sees the impact of architecture on global environmental issues and strives to improve it through innovative design solutions. Having pursued architecture for seven years, Ivee worked internationally on projects of various scales and programs. Through this experience she observed a growing awareness of sustainability in architecture. But there remains a disconnection between technological development and architectural design, especially in "everyday" architecture that serves commercial and residential programs. Sustainable design needs to be widely accessible and desirable by the public in order to be impactful. She hopes to dedicate her thesis research on this topic, and collaborate with the outstanding faculty of U of T engineering department to design prototypes of innovative and elegant sustainable architecture.

You can read more about her project at Alternative Concrete.

Project Alternative Concrete advocates for a circular path, in which architecture can serve multiple lifecycles through both material recycling and adaptive reuse. 

Qin Wang  Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies, Technology of Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism Stream

Qin Wang is an architecture student who considers themselves a creative and proactive individual. Qin seeks to integrate algorithmic computational tools and data analysis with architecture design to discover problems, reasons, and offer new possibilities. Qin’s travel experiences to Lima, Hongkong, Tokyo, New York, Shanghai and other international cities fostered interest in the relationship between architecture and urban fabric —the heterogeneous artifacts in the urban environment all forming a unique impression of a city. This phenomenon motivates Qin to unveil the wholeness to the heterogeneous parts in urban settings and to study how their interaction and relation to each other form the final wholeness of the city. 

You can read more about her project and report at her website: Understanding Urban Informality Through Urban Food System in Lima. This project highlights how urban informality shapes food systems and how people access life sustenance in Lima, Peru.

By examining the government incented urbanization in Lima, a larger image of global urbanization happening in cities of Global South is projected, and possible envisions for future development are presented.

Garrett is an urban planner and sustainable development consultant with professional experience in the public, private, and non-profit sectors in Canada and the United States. A PhD student in Planning, his research broadly explores community resilience, sustainable transitions, global health, and climate governance. At UofT, he is a member of two collaborative specializations: Global Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Environment & Health at the School of the Environment. He is also a Junior Fellow at Massey College. In addition to serving as a teaching assistant in the Department of Geography and Planning and John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, Garrett currently works as a Research Assistant on a CIHR-funded Healthy and Resilient Cities research project as well as at the Sustainable Built Environments Performance Assessment (SBEPA) network. 
 
He holds a Masters of Science in Planning (MScPl) from the University of Toronto, a Masters of Science in Urban Regeneration (MSc) from the University of Edinburgh, and a Bachelors of Arts in History from Vanderbilt University. Additionally he is a registered LEED Green Associate and WELL Accredited Professional. 
 
Outside of academia, Garrett enjoys travelling with his wife who is an art historian spending lazy weekends with their two cats: Hogan and Gertrude. 

Catherine Lu Bachelor of Arts in Digital Humanities, Environmental Anthropology, Book and Media Studies

Catherine is a second-year student who transferred from Queen’s University in Kingston last year. She’s passionate about the harnessing the power of storytelling to change people’s lives, and critically thinks about stories she comes upon in daily life and the problematic narratives they reiterate. Catherine is also involved with The Varsity, U of T Spoken Word, and various Toronto arts organizations. Her project idea is all about spreading hopeful and diverse ideas so readers can become more empathetic decision makers. 

You can read more about her project at https://amultiplicityofstories.wordpress.com/. 

A Multiplicity of Stories is an original and open access Anthology of short fiction stories set in urban areas. It features 8 themed explorations, insights, and prompts on cities.

Conroy is a passionate, experienced, and knowledgeable student leader within the academic community at U of T. Growing up in traditionally underprivileged areas, an early understanding of the role of urbanization and infrastructure mismanagement in social and health inequalities has driven Conroy to use his passions in public health policy, research, and law toward the demonopolization of resources for traditionally marginalized peoples. Although only a fourth year student, he has engaged in advocacy, outreach, and leadership on the ground through community-service development, policy, research, and student initiatives. These activities encompass work at institutions such as the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Kensington Health, the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, the Hospital for Sick Children, and U of T’s International Health Program.

You can read more about his project: Creative Activism: The Role of Art in Oppression and the City

Project Report:

Conroy Gomes (2020). Creative Activism: The Role of Art in Oppression and the City. A research report. Toronto: CA. School of Cities, University of Toronto.

This work aims to study and report on the use of art by artists in the ever-evolving digital landscape that we find our global society entrenched in.