Watch | "The Search" | Lecture by Daniel Toole
Joshua Tree House by Daniel Toole
Join CAPLA for the School of Architecture Lecture Series, featuring dynamic speakers from across built environment industries.
The Search
With each new opportunity to create architecture, one is faced with limitless possibilities, anticipation, and doubts. An architect must learn to search and patiently listen for an idea strong enough to endure the journey a building must take. The idea may arrive via a distant memory, a thought traced in a line, a physical experience of a place, or none of these, or all of these. The idea must come at the beginning, and it must stay forever.
Daniel shared where the search has taken him and his studio in the first five years of practice in projects throughout the landscapes of the west, from the forested slopes of the Pacific Northwest to the high desert of Joshua Tree. He will also share recent housing work within the city, seeking to follow the same search while dealing with an ever-increasing set of constraints.
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About Daniel Toole
Born in Austria and raised in Portland, Oregon, Daniel has traveled and worked extensively throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia before founding his studio, with the most recent stop along the journey home being in Tucson at Studio Rick Joy, so returning to give this talk at CAPLA is very special to him.
Daniel started independently practicing in 2013 after receiving the Miami Design District alley commissions during his Master's of Architecture at Harvard’s GSD. After balancing private projects with working for other offices, he founded Daniel Toole Architecture in 2020. With over fifteen years of experience, he has designed award-winning private residences, multifamily, and cultural buildings, as well as public spaces with various internationally recognized offices including Studio Rick Joy in Tucson, Barkow Leibinger Architects in Berlin, Perkins + Will in Seattle, and Allied Works Architecture in Portland, before founding DTA.
A registered Architect in the states of Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, and Florida, he received his Bachelor’s of Architecture from the University of Oregon and his Master’s of Architecture in Urban Design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He completed additional studies at Columbia University in New York City and Paris, as well as a year-long DAAD research grant from the German government at the TU Berlin.
Daniel is an adjunct studio instructor at the University of Oregon School of Architecture & Environment and participates on studio reviews at universities throughout the United States and Europe.
About Daniel Toole Architecture
Daniel Toole Architecture is an award-winning architecture and urban design studio based in the Pacific Northwest, working nationally on contemporary, crafted, private, commercial, and public buildings and spaces with a careful attention to detail. The practice places importance on the sculpting of light and materials to create unexpected spaces for contemplation.
The studio works at all scales--from furniture to buildings to masterplans--and continues to expand its geographic reach, working on both coasts of the United States. Current projects include a series of single family residences throughout the west coast, multifamily mixed use buildings, and ongoing research into the sculptural potential of materials and intimate urban spaces.
DTA has recently won national and local AIA awards, and the studio’s Madrona House in Seattle has been published in multiple journals including the New York Times.
