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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

EVENT: Architect Burton Hamfelt on “the Urbanization of Architecture”

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WHAT: bulthaup Lecture at the University of Toronto
WHEN: Tuesday, October 9
WHERE: The Daniels Faculty, 230 College Street, Room 103

Next week, architect Burton Hamfelt presents a bulthaup Lecture at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design that will explore the role that architects play in city building. His talk, entitled “the Urbanization of Architecture,” will include a look at various projects he has done around the world, with a particular emphasis on educational centres and mixed-use housing projects, such as the regeneration of Tarling Estate in East London (pictured above).

“Increasingly the architectural design profession is being asked to address larger and more complex questions related to buildings and the environment that have put into question the traditional role of the profession to address these complex challenges,” wrote Hamfelt on the website for his Amsterdam firm Burton Hamfelt Architectuur Stedebouw Prototypes. Hamfelt’s projects explore how to better integrate often isolated housing, commercial blocks, and educational centres into their urban environments — a challenge architects, planners, politicians, and community members here in Toronto have taken up in the redevelopment of neighbourhoods such as Regent Park and Alexandra Park and tower neighbourhoods across the city.

Of course the complex challenges that architects face go beyond those involved in simply designing a good-looking building. Architects are required to be part engineer, part artist, part urban planner, part economist, part political scientist, part facilitator, and part sociologist, among other things. An alumnus of U of T’s architecture program who has worked both here and in Europe, Hamfelt is helping architectural students at the Daniels Faculty sharpen their multidisciplinary skills this semester in a studio course he is teaching as a visiting professor entitled “Free State of Toronto.”

For more information on the lecture, click here.

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One comment

  1. that’s great for him. i worked with burton many years ago. he’s a good guy.