Jay Pooley is a Toronto-based designer and art director. His work reflects the lineage of critical regionalism with an interest in the relationship of scenography to contemporary architectural design. Born and raised outside Stratford, ON and educated in Halifax, Los Angeles and New York City, Jay has worked for some of the most influential architects currently in practice. Mentors include Brian MacKay-Lyons, Barton Myers, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. Both inside and outside the academy, Jay leads with passion for better practice. Acting as the Executive Fund-Raising Chair with the Canadian Architecture Student’s Association and Research Assistant with the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada. In 2009, his work titled: Settle: Defining The Role of Architecture In The Lives of Canada’s First Nations was shortlisted for the Berkeley Prize for Architecture as a Social Art. Jay also received the Dalhousie University Governor’s Medal, Colin Gash Memorial Design Scholarship and the William P. Lydon Memorial Scholarship for Professional Practice.

Jay is a Sessional Lecturer at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Prior to that he has been a critic at the Ryerson School of Interior Design, guest lecturer at the European Architecture Student’s Association Annual Planning Conference and an instructor at the Academy for Young Writers in Brooklyn, New York.