As a proud alumna of 91亚色, Lauren Hall has been coordinating 91亚色's Transition Year Program since May 2010. With great satisfaction, her colleagues put together a winning nomination file without her knowledge, in order tocelebrate the voice of promise, respect and empowerment that Hall brings to the 91亚色 community every day.

Hall's聽manager has noted that she is an advocate for all students and all opportunities, and notes that whether in person or on the phone, her personality welcomes and engages all 鈥� and a positive relationship with 91亚色 begins. Colleagues say that Hall聽believes passionately in the privilege of pursuing higher education and advocating for accessible education for all those that desire it.聽Her care and attention with students sees them through to realizing their potential and inspires them to believe in themselves.

On a daily basis,聽Hall interacts with a wide variety of people. The Transition Year Program sits outside the Faculty structure, rendering navigation difficult.聽Hall takes this in stride and engages her counterparts in other faculties and administrative departments in order to reinforce a support system. Her exceptional interpersonal skills allow for intervention and advocacy for the Transition Year Program in a dignified and respectful way.聽Hall systematically removes obstacles and builds processes necessary for supporting students with extraordinary needs.

Hall works hard on a daily basis to create a safe and secure place for students to speak to someone about the University, but who feel intimidated by the institution itself. She is noted for her "yes-it-is-possible" attitude and her compassionate approach to each individual case.聽Colleagues say that Hall聽is viewed as a mentor by students in the Transition Year Program. She convinces聽them of their own power and reinforces their dream of something better.

She regularly brings her voice outside the institution, into the community, recruiting and promoting the Transition Year Program. Her nominators note that her intelligence and professional capacity in representing the program to a wide range of audiences is incomparable. They say that she goes above and beyond the call of duty each day, exemplifying an extraordinary personal commitment to 91亚色, and making her worthy of the 2011 President鈥檚 Voice of 91亚色 Award.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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For 91亚色聽architectural historian, Professor聽Shelley Hornstein (right), the relationship between memory and place has been a source of fascination for much of her academic career. Hornstein, who teaches architectural history and visual culture in 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Fine Arts, has authored a new book on the subject.聽 Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place (Ashgate 2011) examines the relationship between memory and place and asks how architecture聽acts as a springboard to聽our memories.

Hornstein will launch Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place at a special event聽at the Gladstone Gallery located on the upper floor of Toronto's Gladstone Hotel on Sunday, Dec. 18. The launch will take place from 6 to 8pm and all are welcome.

In Losing Site, Hornstein聽explores how architecture exists as a material object and how it registers as a place that we come to remember beyond the physical site itself.聽She questions what architecture is in the broadest sense, assuming that it is not just buildings.聽The book聽connects architecture with geography, visual culture and urban studies.聽It explores the infinite variations of how architecture maps our physical, mental or emotional space.

The book's title reflects Hornstein's understanding of culture, place and memory. "We've lost sight of what it means to be in a place, to experience, to know聽the physicality of a place," she says. "Losing Site plays with the ideas that bring together site and sight. How does architecture trigger memory?"

Each chapter explores this concept by providing聽a different example of the many ways that the physical place of architecture is curated by the architecture in our mental space, or聽what Hornstein calls our "imaginary toolbox" that we use when we remember or think of a place, look at a photograph,聽visit a site and describe it later to someone else or write about it on a postcard.

Right: From Losing Site, Dani Karavan, Passages - Homage to Walter Benjamin, 1994, Portbou, Spain.聽Photograph聽by Shelley Hornstein

"Architecture is much broader than we imagine. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that architecture is not only about buildings, but also about the construction of our physical landscape and how we relate to it鈥hat our bodies do and mean in those spaces, as well as the mental maps and architectural constructions we build everyday in our minds聽and the worlds we build visually as we read fiction, for example,"聽says Hornstein.

She notes that even a hedge dividing a garden from a road traces a line that not only divides a space into two places, but creates two new places that did not exist before. "We builds, demolish and shape space into architectural places that are meaningful to us," says Hornstein. "When those places disappear, do we remember them?"

Hornstein describes the聽project as the result of 10 years of writing and teaching that she never realized was a book all along. Writing the text was made possible after she was awarded the Walter L. Gordon Fellowship.

There were two challenges she encountered when writing the book. The first was how to knit together a series of seemingly unrelated case studies into a cohesive manuscript. The second was trying to convince herself that introducing聽what she thought was a wild and crazy idea about architecture to both the specialized architecture communities as well as the general public was indeed possible.

"What fascinated me while researching this book was that no matter who I would describe it to, each person responded with a personal story about the way they remembered a certain place," she says. "A wonderful book would be to record each of those responses!"

Following the launch, Hornstein will turn her attention to an international聽workshop she is organizing to orchestrate a course to be taught by 10 different colleagues in 10 different cities and countries on the theme "Starlets and Starchitecture: Women, Celebrity and Architecture Across Borders". She is also starting a book on the topic of demolition, which she describes as "an assemblage of case studies that riff on what it means to intentionally demolish architecture."

Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place is part of the Ashgate Studies in Architecture. The 182-page book includes 17 black-and-white illustrations.

By Jenny Pitt-Clark, YFile editor

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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