Architecture’s Spectacular New Home

After years of planning and painstaking construction, the new home for the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at One Spadina is not quite finished. But it is already a stunning addition to the St. George campus – one of the best buildings in Canada of the past decade, according to the Globe and Mail.

Designed by a team led by architectural firm NADAAA, the new 156,000-square-foot facility at the western edge of the St. George campus – with angled ceilings and airy interiors – welcomed its first students late this summer.

Richard Sommer, the faculty’s dean, sees the new Daniels Building as a kind of urban “skunk works” – a think-tank where students, faculty and professionals from many disciplines and backgrounds will collaborate on the toughest problems facing 21st-century cities. “To get a better city, you need to bring creative thinking and imagination to the game,” he says. “It’s a messy art.”

That may be, but it’s happening in a beautiful place.