The objective of this course is to prepare students for the type of teams, processes and decisions used for complex socio-technical engineering design projects. The course will equip students with tools and strategies for leading, following other leaders, in this context. Students will have the opportunity to apply their learning on three hybrid team-individual assignments. The course readings will be sourced from real industry cases and experiences.

There is growing demand (and requirements) within both industry and academia to have engineers, leaders, researchers, and instructors who are versed in equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) principles and leverage that knowledge to positively influence the development and impact of their work. However, engineers and STEM researchers often feel unsure how to properly navigate these social principles within their technical spaces.

This course is for both working professionals or research academics who operate within engineering industry, research or teaching spaces seeking to develop an understanding of EDI principles and how they may apply to their technical contexts. This course seeks to provide students with space to learn about and develop tools, strategies, and reflections when engaging equity and social considerations within their work.

This course provides training in these areas while focusing on your current research project, simultaneously providing you with future training and immediately applicable strategies to help you complete your thesis research project. Through facilitated activity-based workshops you will develop your research and project management skills, acquire strategies to identify and articulate a research hypothesis, set research goals and plan your research approach (including quantification of results and validation of quantitative metrics), and share research findings via oral, written, and graphical communication.

The course is designed to provide an overview of the theory and practice of community development, including an historical review, an examination of contemporary issues and debates, theories of social change, methodological considerations, and examples of current community development initiatives. Key concepts to be explored are the important definitions of communities, globalization and neoliberalism, differences in the types and styles of participation, the role of voluntary associations, minority groups and community leadership.

The studio introduces the basics of city-making and urban analysis in a set of design exercises. By means of didactic abstractions, the exercises isolate difference aspects of the city-ranging from infrastructure to signage - for scrutiny in a sequence of increasing complexity, culminating in a synthetic design project. The sequence also shifts the emphasis from issues of consolidation in traditional urban cores to dispersion in the post-metropolitan periphery, from city as physical structure to city as a system of communication. Attention is given to problems of representation particular to the complexity and dynamism of urban form and experience.

Urban Design Studio 2 is offered to students who have completed the urban design studio (URD1011Y). Students may select from different options announced at the time of before registration.

This course provides an overview of computing technology relevant to urban design. Students will gain exposure to database systems. geographic information systems (GIS) and computer aided design (CAD). Particular attention will be placed on the integration and movement of data between these technologies to form comprehensive urban information systems. Visualization and hypermedia will be examined as tools for communication, dialogue and decision-making.

This course will present a history of the development of the urban form of the city and the urban region of Toronto from the late eighteenth century to the present. We will explore the characteristic relationships that have grown up over the years between the distinctive topography of the city; it’s pre-settler indigenous patterns, early European settlement, and the evolution over time of its successive infrastructures, including railways, port facilities, expressways, transit lines and pedestrian walkway systems. These characteristic infrastructures will be described in terms of their gradual, systematic impact on the evolving form of the city. At the same time, the architecture of the city will also be described, but this description will demonstrate primarily how buildings became typological in the historical evolution of Toronto. One might say that the buildings will be depicted to the extent that they demonstrate the typical relationships of the city’s building typologies to its emergent urban morphology.

The course has been conceived to be of particular interest to urban design and planning students, but it is open as an elective to students in the architecture and landscape architecture programs as well.

This course surveys the design challenges of contemporary urbanism. In so doing it focusses upon modern, postmodern, and postcolonial architecture and city planning from several standpoints of critical theory - such as Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, as well as the various modernisms and influential reactions to them. To complement the normative dimension of such critiques, interdisciplinary perspectives drawn from urban geography, history, sociology, anthropology, planning theory, and political economy will furnish an account of the social, cultural, political, and economic forces now shaping cities - with an optimistic view to creating alternative visions and forms of urban space.

Urban Design & Development is a course about the competing forces that shape our cities and communities. The course will involve students in the examination of the complex relationship between public policy and urban form and reveal the various ways that government policies, politics, and market forces shape the physical form of our cities and communities in both intentional and unintentional ways. In a seminar/lecture format students will examine how modern cities are designed and built and the mechanisms by which government and society attempt to understand, guide and regulate the individual buildings, neighbourhoods, open spaces and infrastructure that are the products of those forces. There is a natural tension between public and private forces – and the success or failure of cities often depends on the ability of opposing sides to work together to find an optimum development solution. In Ontario, when parties are unable to agree on the form of the proposed development -- developers are able to appeal their case to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) -- formerly the OMB and the LPAT.  

Starting with an understanding of the provincial, regional and local structures that form the framework for growth, students will examine the policies and guidelines that the various levels of government employ to shape their communities. This examination will include consideration of the numerous forces at play including policies, by-laws and guidelines and the ways in which they are interpreted and enforced by municipal staff, politicians, the general public and the OLT. During the term, students will have opportunities to engage with the dynamics of urban growth through in-class lectures; directed reading and research; presentations by individuals involved in proposing and planning for development; and individual or group seminar/presentations on relevant, selected topics.  

Urban Design Studio Options is a set of advanced studios on various topics chosen by faculty based on their research and design interests. Topics vary from year to year. 

Supervised independent research on a topic defined b the student, leading to the formation of an urban design thesis proposal. Emphasis is on the completion of a comprehensive and critical review of literature and relevant works as well as the development of a clear proposal for the design thesis.

The course is taught in individual tutorial with the thesis advisor and following a program tailored to the particular research demands of the particular topic.

Execution of an independent design thesis to be undertaken by each student under the supervision of a thesis advisor and leading to the fulfillment of the requirements for an urban design thesis.

Provides an overview of the Canadian and U.S development industries within the real estate development process. The course covers the financial basis of urban development projects (private and public finance); the participants; land assembly procedures and land banking; mixed use projects, sectoral and scale differences within the development industry market and locational search procedures. Finally, it addresses the interface of the industry with the public sector.

The MVS Proseminar offers Visual Studies graduate students in Curatorial Studies and Studio Art the opportunity to connect and exchange with leading international and local artists, curators, writers, theorists, and other scholarly practitioners and researchers. Publicly presented as a programmed series of talks. Alongside the public talks, the MVS Proseminar speakers engage in a series of exchanges with the graduate students in a variety of potential forms, from masterclasses, to individual studio-visits, talks, and Q&As.

Students will undertake and present self-directed research and artistic production that demonstrates well-developed ideas and practical expertise within the specific field chosen by the student. A single body of work is expected to be completed during the first year of study and this course ends with a faculty-wide critique of work-in-process at the end of the Fall term. Weekly student-led seminars are important sessions for individuals to learn to share their research processes and refine presentation strategies, while inversely participating and engaging in colleagues’ research seminars. The course manages the logistics of the studio program, fosters a community of research and production, and provides feedback on individual studio production over a sustained period of time. The course meets weekly and is run in tandem with VIS2001H to facilitate interaction across the first- and second-year cohorts.

Students continue the body of artistic research and production started in the Fall term, engaging in one-on-one meetings with faculty, visiting artists, and scholars. The course culminates in a group critique assessing a resolved body of work conducted over the entire year.

Master of Visual Studies students are required to participate in an internship over the summer term of their first year. Though compulsory, the internships are flexible in form. They are chosen by the student to ensure that they receive access to a resource, experience, or knowledge that will benefit their Thesis or subsequent work in an exchange with the internship host. The internships will necessarily be diverse in nature with opportunities based on the research and production areas of the students in both Studio and Curatorial Studies.

This course focuses on defining moments in the development of contemporary art after 1960, both in Canada and internationally. Examining critical events, turning points, practices, and artwork, the course includes topics such as the relationship between contemporary art and its markets, institutions, the development of media, and new post-colonial and global contexts for the visual arts. The course is offered as a series of seminars, with assigned readings, research papers, and presentations by students.

This course engages major developments in contemporary theory and criticism as pertinent to the history of contemporary art. The course attends closely to the relationship between art practice and its interpretation. The course has a particular focus on critical writing, close readings of artistic practices, and the development of pertinent frameworks and methodologies for the explanation and interpretation of contemporary art and artistic research. The course is offered as a series of seminars with assigned readings, research papers, and presentations by students.

This course traces the history of exhibitions and their historical contexts. Using various case studies, the course examines the assumptions, theoretical considerations, and critical undertakings that underwrite the making of exhibitions from the 18th century onward with particular focus on the contemporary period.