With a background in landscape architecture, international development cooperation, and social impact measurement, Jia currently leads a research, analytics, and evaluation team at the City of Toronto's Parks, Forestry, and Recreation Division to provide decision-support to improve quality of life for the public. She has a special interest in community development through design, performance measurement, and socio-ecological resilience research. Jia is also a research collaborator with the University of Toronto, working on translating resilience thinking into practical policy and operational priorities.

Jia brings to the City of Toronto a decade of experience in international development cooperation, working in over a dozen countries in the global south on improving organizational and program effectiveness within non-governmental organizations and government agencies. She has worked with Plan International, the World Bank (Asia), Ministries of Health in Tanzania, Mali, Ghana, Bangladesh, as well as donors including Dubai Cares, Global Affairs Canada, Global Sanitation Fund, and African Development Bank.

In Canada, Jia has developed organizational effectiveness strategies for the Ontario Trillium Foundation and created a social impact measurement toolkit for Park People, a public space NGO. She has also worked with Toronto-based design firms Office Ou and the Planning Partnership.

About the What's Next Speaker Series

AVSSU, GALDSU and FGSA are excited to bring to you What’s Next, an alumni speaker series. Speakers will be presenting their work and career paths since graduating from the different programs at Daniels. You will hear about the various industries and areas of work, skills you can transfer from university to the workplace, networking and more!
The lecture will start with a short presentation by the guest, followed by a moderated discussion with student(s), and ending with an open Q&A with the audience.
If you are unable to attend, please send in any questions you may have, and we will be sure to ask them for you. The talks will be recorded and can be found on Youtube.
If you are a student and are interested in moderating a discussion, please reach out to your respective student union representative (see below).

AVSSU - Randa Omar
GALDSU - Juliette Cook
FGSA - Joshua Quattrociocchi

Design through an Indigenous Lens explores the ways in which we, as Indigenous Peoples, approach the world.  We will be discussing how to improve the process of design and architecture though Indigenous Cultures with an application in contemporary society.  Ideas about design process, multi-generational households, “Universal Inclusivity,” Urban agriculture, multi-service provider neighbourhoods, will be discussed.  We will discuss alternates goals for urban planning and look at a case study that supports all of these ideas.  Understanding Indigenous cultural knowledge can help push us back towards ways of designing and building that create healthier ways of living. 

Matthew P J Hickey  OAA, MRAIC, B.Des., B. Ed., M.Arch., LEED A.P. ARCHITECT
Matthew is Mohawk, Wolf clan, from the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve.  Receiving his Masters of Architecture from the University of Calgary and his Bachelor of Design from the Ontario College of Art and Design, his background continues to have a significant impact on his work.  Practicing architecture at Two Row Architect, located on Six Nations, for 14 years, he currently oversees design and development for the firm.  Their core focus is on Indigenous design and architecture, designing buildings, landscapes, and installations,  on and off-reserve located all over Turtle Island. 

Matthew’s  focus towards sustainability is on regenerative and restorative design - encompassing ecological, cultural, and economic principles. His work pushes the concepts of integrated landscape, Universal Accessibility, food equity, the importance of water, and place-keeping for all species, including humans.    His research includes Indigenous history in architecture of Northern & Middle America and the realignment of western ideology towards historic sustainable technologies for the contemporary North American climate.  

Currently teaching at the Ontario College of Art and Design University, and critiquing at the University of Toronto for the past three years, he also believes that giving back and encouraging younger generations is key to moving Indigenous ways of thinking about design and architecture forward.  He has lectured all across Canada, including most recently at the Architecture Now Series at the University of Lethbridge.  Art being in his blood, he is proud to be a Director on the Board for Artscape Toronto Inc. and a member of Waterfront Toronto Design Review Panel. 

The question "Do black landscapes matter?" cuts deep to the core of American history. From the plantations of slavery to contemporary segregated cities, from freedman villages to northern migrations for freedom, the nation’s landscape bears the detritus of diverse origins. Black landscapes matter because they tell the truth. Acclaimed landscape designer and public artist Walter Hood is the 2021 Michael Hough/Ontario Association of Landscape Architects Visiting Critic. His lecture will discuss notable landscape architects, planning professionals and scholars to probe how race, memory, and meaning intersect in the American landscape. This event is made possible by the generous support of the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects.

Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, CA. He is also a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and lectures on professional and theoretical projects nationally and internationally. He is a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, 2019 Knight Public Spaces Fellowship, 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, and 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize.

Moderated by Clarence Lacy and Liat Margolis

 Clarence Lacy graduated from UofT’s MLA program in 2013, after having completed a thesis entitled “This Thesis is Not About the Gardiner,” which envisioned urbanity centered on social interaction, leisure and alternative modes of transportation. Over the past seven years, Clarence has worked in Toronto, San Francisco Bay area, and Los Angeles to transform the way we think about cities - using landscape architecture to express inclusively the individuals voices to unify, inspire, and enlighten communities. As a landscape designer at RIOS, an L.A.-based multi-disciplinary firm focused on creating rich, comprehensive solutions for a variety of design challenges, Clarence works to create places that center on public accessibility and connection. Recently, Clarence co-led the establishment of the Social Impact Initiative – a combination of policy and programming to develop a more inclusive and diverse office culture at RIOS, while emphasizing a more just approach to project work and the firm’s role in the LA community. In 2020, Clarence has joined the MLA Advisory Board, working with Program Director Liat Margolis on developing anti-racist strategies for a more diverse and inclusive Landscape Program.

To purchase the book please click here

cheyanne turions is a curator, cultural worker and writer currently based on the unceded territories of xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaɬ Nations.  Her work positions exhibitions and criticism as social gestures, where she responds to artistic practices by linking aesthetics and politics through discourse.  Recent projects include Affirmations for Wildflowers: An Ethnobotany of Desire, a solo exhibition by Tania Willard, and The Pandemic is a Portal a group exhibition co-curated with Karina Irvine and Christopher Lacroix, featuring works by Sharona Franklin, S F Ho, Cecily Nicholson, Carmen Papalia, Jayce Salloum, any many others. She is the Curator at SFU Galleries, and sits on the Board of Directors at 221A and the National Editorial Advisory Committee of Canadian Art.

About the What's Next Speaker Series

AVSSU, GALDSU and FGSA are excited to bring to you What’s Next, an alumni speaker series. Speakers will be presenting their work and career paths since graduating from the different programs at Daniels. 
You will hear about the various industries and areas of work, skills you can transfer from university to the workplace, networking and more!
The lecture will start with a short presentation by the guest, followed by a moderated discussion with student(s), and ending with an open Q&A with the audience.
If you are unable to attend, please send in any questions you may have, and we will be sure to ask them for you. The talks will be recorded and can be found on Youtube.
If you are a student and are interested in moderating a discussion, please reach out to your respective student union representative (see below).

AVSSU - Randa Omar
GALDSU - Juliette Cook
FGSA - Nicole Tratnik

Co-organized by the History of Architecture Working Group at University of Toronto

The paradox of the building site lies in the fact that, although inescapably essential to the realization of architecture, the building site must inevitably vanish, superseded by the durable forms of the completed building. Such traces that remain, in documents, photographs, or physical marks upon the building, have been of passing interest to architectural history for the information they reveal about the realized object, but a different mode of attention remains to be focused upon the building site itself. To reveal, and to represent, these dimensions not just as prelude or precondition but as an independent event, architectural history must return to the building site with a different set of tools.

Timothy Hyde is a historian of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose research focuses on the political dimensions of architecture from the eighteenth century to the present, with a particular attention to relationships of architecture and law. His most recent book is Ugliness and Judgment: On Architecture in the Public Eye (Princeton University Press, 2019), and he is also the author of Constitutional Modernism: Architecture and Civil Society in Cuba, 1933-1959 (University of Minnesota Press, 2012). Hyde is a founding member of the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative and is one of the editors of the first Aggregate book, Governing by Design. His writings have also appeared in numerous journals, including Perspecta, Log, El Croquis, The Journal of Architecture, the Journal of Architectural Education, arq, Future Anterior, Architecture Theory Review, and Thresholds. Hyde has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and his work has previously been supported by grants from the Graham Foundation, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and the Huntington Library. He is currently the 2020-21 Clark-Oakley Fellow at the Clark Art Institute.

The Architectural History Working Group (AHWG) at the University of Toronto promotes interdisciplinary discussion about the history of the built environment. Hosted by the Department of Art History, AHWG is open to all members of the University of Toronto graduate community

Graphic by Mariah Meawasige (Makoose)

Sustainable forest management involves balancing multiple competing objectives for a limited resource.  In this session, Rob Keron from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry shares challenges and experience from strategic forest management planning in Ontarios Great Lakes – St Lawrence Forest region.

Rob Keron graduated from Lakehead University with an H.B.Sc.F. in 2010. He then completed an M.Sc.F. from Lakehead University in 2013 specializing in operations research and supply chain management in forestry strategic and tactical planning. Rob has worked with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry since August 2013, most recently as a Regional Resources Analyst in Peterborough Ontario. Rob provides data and analytical support to forest management plans being written for the Great Lakes – St Lawrence Forest Region of Ontario.

Co-organized by the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto and Building Equality in Architecture Canada (BEA/Canada)

Marina Tabassum will share her research on the Meghna estuary and its impact on climate change coupled with a complex land inheritance system introduced by British Colonial rule that to date governs the dynamic landscape of the Ganges Delta. Marina will share the development of a modular mobile home unit to be distributed to landless families living in coastal areas.

Photo Credit: Sandro Di Carlo Darsa

Marina Tabassum is the principal of MTA (Marina Tabassum Architects), founded in 2005 and based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. MTA seeks to establish a language of architecture that is contemporary yet rooted to place. Their built work includes community centres, public schools, museums and eco resorts. Ms. Tabassum graduated from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 1995. In 2016, Ms. Tabassum received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the Bait ur Rouf Mosque in Dhaka. Also in 2004, she received the Architect of the Year Award (AYA) from India for the NEK10 project in Dhaka. She is a recipient of 2005 Ananya Shirshwa Dash award, which recognises women in Bangladesh for their exceptional achievements.

Ms. Tabassum is the academic director of the Bengal Institute for Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements. She was the Aga Khan Design Critic in Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in Autumn 2017 and serves as a member of the Aga Khan Program Advisory Group. She taught Advanced Design Studio as visiting professor at the University of Texas in 2015 and at BRAC University from 2005 to 2010. Ms. Tabassum serves on the Board of Directors of Prokritee, a fair-trade organisation that empowers Bangladeshi women through the export of handcrafted objects. Working with Platform for Community Actions and Architecture, she has initiated “$2000 Home” projects in several villages surrounding Panigram Resort, currently under construction. In 2011, she worked with Hyder Consulting Middle East to create the Abu Dhabi Mosque Development Regulations and Guidelines.

Safoura Zahedi (MArch Class of 2016) is a designer at Superkül with a background in architecture and interior design and experience on a diverse range of projects, including residential, commercial, institutional, cultural and civic buildings. Her award-winning independent work operates at the intersection of art and architecture exploring geometry as a universal design language and digital fabrication. She is highly committed to the design community and acts as Programs Coordinator at the DesignTO Festival and Executive Committee member at BEAT (Building Equality in Architecture Toronto), where she co-founded the annual BEAT Forum, devoted to addressing issues of diversity and inclusion in the design and architecture industry. In addition, Safoura is currently a part-time lecturer at the Ryerson School of Interior Design.

Sarah Rafson (BAAS Class of 2010) is an architecture writer, researcher, editor, and curator, founder of Point Line Projects, an editorial and curatorial agency for architecture, art, and design. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Bachelor of Arts in Architecture Studies and Columbia University's Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices program, she has worked on books with Kenneth Frampton, Bernard Tschumi, and Barry Bergdoll, and collaborated on exhibitions at MoMA, Centre Pompidou, Center for Architecture in New York, and the Parsons School of Design. She was awarded the 2017-18 Ann Kalla Professorship in Architecture at the Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture, where she continues to teach and direct the school’s yearly exhibition and publication, EX-CHANGE.

About the What's Next Speaker Series

AVSSU, GALDSU and FGSA are excited to bring to you What’s Next, an alumni speaker series. Speakers will be presenting their work and career paths since graduating from the different programs at Daniels. 

You will hear about the various industries and areas of work, skills you can transfer from university to the workplace, networking and more!

The lecture will start with a short presentation by the guests, followed by a moderated discussion with student(s), and ending with an open Q&A with the audience.

If you are unable to attend, please send in any questions you may have, and we will be sure to ask them for you. The talks will be recorded and can be found on Youtube. If you are a student and are interested in moderating a discussion, please reach out to your respective student union representative (see below).

AVSSU - Randa Omar
GALDSU - Juliette Cook
FGSA - Nicole Tratnik

What's Next Graphic Credit: Randa Omar

This lecture is a presentation on the Great Lakes dunes, Southern Ontario prairies and savannahs, Northwestern Ontario prairies and savannahs, and alvars. The presentation will include habitat photos, and the plants that grow in these areas.

Wasyl Bakowsky is the Community Ecologist for the Natural Heritage Information Centre. The centre manages data about the location of species of conservation concern, plant communities, wildlife concentration areas, and natural areas in Ontario. Wasyl complies information on rare plant communities, as well as exemplary examples of communities which are not rare, such as old growth forests. Compiled information includes plant community descriptions, species lists, and digitized polygons. This information is used for biodiversity conservation planning, environmental assessments and natural resource management. 
 

BES (planning), MArch (2011), OAA, RAIC
 

Drew Adams (M.Arch 2011) is a designer with a background spanning architecture, landscape architecture and urban design. He is an Associate at LGA Architectural Partners in Toronto with nearly 10 years experience leading innovative and high-profile public interest design projects. This includes affordable housing projects like Eva’s Phoenix to the Evergreen Brick Works carbon neutral Kiln Building while his own speculative work has been distinguished in numerous international design competitions. This work has received recognition ranging from the Mies Crown Hall America’s Prize nomination to material innovation awards and publication features ranging from Fast Company to Architectural Record. Drew recently co-authored a series for Azure on design and climate change, is a frequent speaker and guest critic, and occasional adjunct professor. He received the Irving Grossman Prize in 2011 for his final thesis on innovative and sustainable housing design. In 2020, Drew was named recipient of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Emerging Architect Award.

About the What's Next Speaker Series

AVSSU, GALDSU and FGSA are excited to bring to you What’s Next, an alumni speaker series. Speakers will be presenting their work and career paths since graduating from the different programs at Daniels. 

You will hear about the various industries and areas of work, skills you can transfer from university to the workplace, networking and more!

The lecture will start with a short presentation by the guest, followed by a moderated discussion with student(s), and ending with an open Q&A with the audience.

If you are unable to attend, please send in any questions you may have, and we will be sure to ask them for you. The talks will be recorded and can be found on Youtube. If you are a student and are interested in moderating a discussion, please reach out to your respective student union representative (see below).

AVSSU - Randa Omar
GALDSU - Juliette Cook
FGSA - Nicole Tratnik

What's Next Graphic Credit: Randa Omar