Undisciplined: Conversations across Architectural Knowledge Domains

“By virtue of what principle do we assume that the strength of a discipline relates necessarily to the question of unity?” —Tim Gough, “Architecture as a Strong Discipline” (2013)

“Interdisciplinarity” can describe a range of pedagogical and research strategies whose general aim is to productively disrupt the bounds of conventional disciplines. These terms are employed so frequently and vaguely that they risk undermining the spirit of the strategies they attempt to encourage, as Robert Frodeman and others argue. The Daniels ALD PhD Program repeatedly employs language referring to these strategies, underscoring their importance to the program and the urgency with which they are deployed, both across and within design-related disciplines. Yet in the research conducted at the doctoral level under the Faculty’s auspices, it is often difficult to speak meaningfully across the boundaries of our own subfields (history/theory, design, landscape, urban design, public art, digital fabrication and design computation, building science, forestry), because the language and frameworks we employ in our research carry different weights and meanings in each area.

On February 11 & 12, 2026, PhD students and faculty will gather at the University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design to examine the theme of interdisciplinarity in our school. Focusing both inward and between disciplines, we challenge what it means to traverse the traditional boundaries of our faculty’s domains of knowledge production. To achieve this, the symposium proposes an introspective approach, beginning with the multiple subdomains that are awkwardly or tenuously grouped under the PhD program of our own faculty.

AGENDA

Wednesday, February 11.

Conversation 1: Data

5:00 - 6:45 p.m.

---

Thursday, February 12

Conversation 2: Material

11:00 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.

Conversation 3: Responsibility

2:00 – 3:45 p.m.

Epilogue: Organizing

4:00 – 5:45 p.m.

Keynote: Theodora Vardouli and Daniel Cardoso Llach

6:30 – 8:00 p.m.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Daniels Faculty