One of the founders of SHoP Architects, Kim Holden established her own practice, Doula X Design, after her experience giving birth led her to become a doula. In this lecture, she will discuss how design can facilitate better birthing experiences, in particular by creating positive environments that support labour rather than inhibit it.

Kim Holden is currently the William Henry Bishop Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale School of Architecture. A registered architect, trained birth/postpartum doula and certified lactation counselor, Holden is focused on the intersection of design and women’s health. Through her work and examination of the role that design plays in shaping the physical, physiological and psychological experience of birth, she seeks to improve outcomes and experiences for women, birthing people and their families. Championing safer, more respectful and more equitable care, her work seeks to reframe childbirth not as a women’s topic but rather as a societal one.

Banner images courtesy Pobby Tan and Katie Jin (1), Raven Xu (2) and Nicole Niava (3, 4)

London- and Los Angeles-based artist P. Staff will discuss recent exhibitions, influences and working methodologies, as well as read from their recent collection of poetry. Recent exhibitions include In Ekstase, Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; Impact Play, Fundacio Joan Miro, Barcelona; and On Venus, most recently presented at the the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, titled The Milk of Dreams. Staff’s work spans installation, poetry and video, and is concerned with affect, biopolitics, queer and trans theory and disability and debility.

Born in the UK in 1987, P. Staff lives and works in Los Angeles and London. As a filmmaker, installation artist and poet, they draw from a wide-ranging assortment of inspirations, materials and settings, of which recent examples include Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics, affect theory and the transpoetics of writers such as Che Gossett and Eva Hayward, as well as their own studies in modern dance, astrology and end-of-life care. In Staff’s interdisciplinary practice, these varying threads serve to emphasize the processes by which bodies—especially those of people who are queer, trans or disabled—are interpreted, regulated and disciplined in a rigorously controlled society. Staff has exhibited extensively, gaining significant recognition and awards for their work, which is held in private and public collections internationally. Staff received their BA in Fine Art and Contemporary Critical Studies from Goldsmiths University of London in 2009. They completed the LUX Associate Artists Programme and studied Contemporary Dance at The Place in London in 2011.

Banner image: In Ekstase, 2023 Kunsthalle Basel. Photo by Philipp Hanger

Join Zachary Mollica, Emerging Architect Fellow at the Daniels Faculty, for this lecture on the promise of re-diversifying the ways we build with wood. By using more than just a few species, as is currently the practice, builders and designers can help re-establish healthier processes, reversing the simplification of forest ecosystems worldwide. This talk is in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name (pictured above).

Inaugural 2022-2024 Emerging Architect Fellow Zachary Mollica is an architect, maker and educator whose work with trees has become a primary reference in alternative wood building futures. His work integrates innovative digital methods with craft and material knowledge in the pursuit of better natural, social and constructed environments.

Often “the public realm” is defined as publicly owned places and spaces that belong to and are accessible to everyone, but reality finds that these ostensibly inclusive environments tend to be open and accessible only to a privileged few.

Chelina Odbert, the co-founder and CEO of Kounkuey Design Initiative, will present strategies for making the public realm more public, demonstrating ways that designers, planners and communities can ensure that these shared spaces are as inclusive and accessible as their name suggests they should be.

As Founding Principal and CEO of Kounkuey Design Initiative, Chelina Odbert aims to bring good design to places where it isn’t often found and connect localized design interventions to large-scale policy change. Her work is driven by her belief in the power of community-engaged design to advance racial, environmental and economic equity in neighbourhoods and cities.

This lecture by architect and academic Kholisile Dhliwayo will describe the tenets and methodology of making Black Diasporas Naarm-Melbourne and the forthcoming Black Diasporas Tkaronto-Toronto—projects celebrating cultural practices and knowledge systems that support the creation of places where Black communities can thrive. In particular, the talk will outline how oral narrative, filmmaking and exhibition are both archival and aspirational—archival in their celebration of the spaces and places created by Black communities in Toronto and aspirational in the articulation of hopes and dreams and how these manifest in the built environment. It will be moderated by the Daniels Faculty’s Kaari Kitawi.

Architect Kholisile Dhliwayo is an Adrian Cheng Fellow at the Social Innovation Change Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School and a 2023 resident at the Center for Architecture Lab in New York City. A founding member of afrOURban Inc., a 501c3 dedicated to documenting and celebrating the spaces that have meaning to Black communities worldwide, Dhliwayo leads the afrOURban project Black Diasporas, a community-led geolocated oral narrative mapping project that examines the experiences, spaces and places having meaning to Black people.

Moderator Kaari Kitawi is a landscape architect and an urban designer with the City of Toronto. She is an alumna of and a sessional lecturer at the Daniels Faculty. Prior to moving to Canada, she ran a landscape company in Kenya.

Image 1 by Bonn Creative from the exhibition Black Diasporas Naarm Melbourne. Image 2 by Bonn Creative. Image 3 from the Black Diasporas film TRAMS TRAINS TKZEE + ME, directed by Scottnes Smith, co-produced by Phillipa J. Smith, with cinematography by Abdul Yusuf and starring Kgomotso Sekhu. Image 4 from afrOURban Black Diasporas.

For architect and academic Germane Barnes, founder of Studio Barnes and an Associate Professor at the University of Miami, architecture and identity are closely connected, with the built enviroment influencing community agency. Join him as he explores in this lecture the themes of community-oriented design, the expansion of architectural representation, and alternative design authorship.

Germane Barnes’ research and design practice investigates the connection between architecture and identity, mining architecture’s social and political agency to explore how the built environment influences black domesticity. The founder of Studio Barnes, he is currently an Associate Professor and the Director of the Community Housing Identity Lab (CHIL) at the University of Miami School Of Architecture. In 2021, Barnes was awarded the Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize, among his many professional and academic accolades.

Join Vietnam-based architect Võ Trọng Nghĩa as he discusses the ways in which designers can contribute to healing the Earth, from increased mindfulness to the many sustainable practices he employs in his own work. This lecture will touch upon his use of bioclimatic materials and collaboration with local skilled labourers to merge traditional Vietnamese construction techniques with contemporary design. He will also expound on the value of meditation as an effective modern design tool: Võ spent years meditating intensively at Pa-Auk Forest Monastery in Myanmar, using the knowledge and experience he developed there to contribute to social and environmental wellness through his architectural projects.

A graduate of the University of Tokyo and of Waseda University, architect Võ Trọng Nghĩa established his eponymous practice, Hanoi-based VTN Architects, in 2006. Celebrated for infusing his work with lushly planted walls, hanging vines, structure-piercing trees, weathered stones and sunken landscapes, he incorporates traditional Vietnamese building techniques, such as complex bamboo trusses, perforated blocks, cooling water systems, shaded terraces and thatched roofs, into his uniquely innovative designs. In 2014, the World Economic Forum selected Võ as a Young Global Leader, and he was named Architect of the Year by Dezeen in 2019.

Jeffrey Cook Memorial Lecture
The Jeffrey Cook Memorial Lecture is presented in the name of architect Jeffrey Ross Cook. Born in Canada, Cook studied architecture at the University of Manitoba and was a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and an elected member of the International Committee of Architectural Critics. Widely acknowledged as one of the pioneers of solar and bioclimatic design, he ran a Masters course in Solar Energy Design at Arizona State University that attracted students from countries around the world. The Faculty expresses its appreciation to the Jeffrey Cook Charitable Trust, which was established in 2005 to pay tribute to its namesake.

In addition to advancing Cook’s lifework and legacy, the Trust has as its focus the opportunities of the built environment and its interaction with the natural environment in securing human sustainability and enhancement. This includes passive and low energy design, respect for indigenous cultures, and the wise use of local resources in the built environment. We are grateful to the Jeffrey Cook Charitable Trust for its philanthropic grants to the Faculty to support research, the annually recurring Memorial Lecture, and its support of student travel related to selected design studios.

Communities worldwide were threatened by fire on an unprecedented scale this year. In this talk by expert Jonah Susskind, currently a senior researcher at SWA, increasingly urgent mitigation and protection issues will be examined, including critical feedback loops between urbanization and environmental risk in fire-prone landscapes, key disciplinary knowledge gaps among practitioners, and the introduction of applied strategies for community-scale wildfire resilience.

Jonah Susskind is a senior research associate at SWA. His work addresses issues related to climate change and urbanization, with a special focus on wildfire risk and resilience. Susskind has held teaching appointments at Harvard University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught courses in architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning.

Understanding the limitations of design can be productively reframed as a way of opening up possibilities. This talk by architect and academic David Fortin will offer a series of discussion points surrounding current housing challenges, how they are impacting both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians, and why they beckon for reflection on what design is and who it serves. The talk will feature the Architects Against Housing Alienation project Not For Sale, currently on view in the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Fortin is a member of AAHA, which curated the pavilion for 2023.

Architect David Fortin is a Professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture and the first Indigenous person to direct an architecture school in Canada. His research investigates the instrumentality of the design process in influencing how we see our futures, with a particular focus on Indigenous voices and agency. A member of the Métis Nation of Ontario and of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Indigenous Task Force seeking ways to foster and promote Indigenous design in Canada, Fortin also leads a small design firm working closely with communities to realize their visions. In addition to this year’s Venice Biennale project, he was co-curator, with Gerald McMaster, of UNCEDED: Voices of the Land, Canada’s entry to the Biennale in 2018.

As an art historian focused on art since the 1960s, Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan has become one of the leading voices shaping the public discourse around art and technology today. In this talk, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum curator, frequent Artforum critic and active social-media presence will provide an overview of her recent and forthcoming exhibitions and publications, which together serve as the basis for her reflections on the state of the future, present and past of video and digital art.

Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan is a widely-recognized art historian and critic specializing in the field of art and technology, as well as a Curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Her honors include an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and being named to Artnet’s “Innovators List.” In this talk, she will refer to her recent and upcoming exhibitions and publications to reflect on the future, present, and past of video and digital art.