The cultural landscapes of migration are an inextricable part of Canada’s urban, social and national identity. However, recent debates about immigration, diversity, multiculturalism and the visibility of cultural symbolisms raise controversial, often polarized public opinions. Policies of migration have accentuated divisive interpretations and legitimized isolation among multiple cultural communities, instead of promoting dialogue. This session...

“Migrations are made, they don’t just happen. There are conditions which cause them” (Saskia Sassen)Although urban populations are becoming increasingly diverse, the built environment is not designed to accommodate these differences. Rather, throughout the 20th century in the Western world, the standard subject that has guided design has been the experiences of white, able-bodied, heterosexual, male populations. In contrast, Statistics Canada estimates that nearly one-third of Canad...

Home is a deceptively simple term connecting a vast network of people, places, objects, and emotions. As people move from place to place, home manifests through inhabitations of built form. These spatial identities are records of movement which reinforce the importance of home as an architectural research site to learn about diverse diasporas in a rapidly globalizing world.This research explores a process for understanding diasporic spatial identity through how people remember, inha...

The cultural landscapes of migration are an inextricable part of Canada’s urban, social and national identity. However, recent debates about immigration, diversity, multiculturalism and the visibility of cultural symbolisms raise controversial, often polarized public opinions. Policies of migration have accentuated divisive interpretations and legitimized isolation among multiple cultural communities, instead of promoting dialogue. This session...

The cultural landscapes of migration are an inextricable part of Canada’s urban, social and national identity. However, recent debates about immigration, diversity, multiculturalism and the visibility of cultural symbolisms raise controversial, often polarized public opinions. Policies of migration have accentuated divisive interpretations and legitimized isolation among multiple cultural communities, instead of promoting dialogue. This session...

I discuss a narrative “zine”, Home Smart Home, which I created in 2021 as a commission for UKAI Projects and the Goethe-Institut Toronto as part of the Goethe-Institut’s Algorithmic Culture project. The zine consists of a series of observations sited within my family’s suburban home in Scarborough, Ontario, in a neighbourhood made up primarily of first- and second-generation South Asian and Southeast Asian immigrants. The goal of the commissioning institution was to seek what Neta B...

Many of our Canadian cities and towns currently find themselves in need of revival and renewal. Disinvestment in the public realm, decentralization – exacerbated during the COVID 19 Pandemic – vacancies and abandonment - including brownfields and grayfields – are some of the many challenges which they currently face.  Both dwindling tax bases, and depleted revenue streams, make more formal and top-down urban strategies less tenable. Prevailing Modernist paradigms such as urban ...

This paper discusses the pedagogical strategies and outcomes of a recent seminar, conducted at the McGill school of architecture in 2022, which aimed to recover underrepresented actors, sites, and design theories during the pivotal period from roughly 1945 to 1980. Students were asked to prepare a visual storyboard based on an extant public building in the city of Montreal, dating from the postwar period, and using the conventions of the graphic novel. Drawing on archival imagery and texts...

Oromocto, NB was known as “Canada’s Model Town” in 1959. This New Town was a collaborative design between Central Mortgage and Housing’s Architecture & Planning Division and the Department of National Defense’ s consultant, McGill Professor Harold Spence-Sales. Oromocto offered utility as a New Town and well-designed neighbourhoods servicing the needs of Canadian Forces Base Gagetown’s soldiers and their families. Oromocto was a CMHC showcase for inexpensive Modern homes and good neigh...

Architectural history and heritage have historically been defined by superlatives. Vernacular traditions and local histories, on the other hand, have often been pushed to the margins or overlooked. These everyday spaces and places are often relegated to the quotidian, and perceived as unworthy of recognition.  The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has changed our daily lives, and in many cases, our values. Now, we have been forced to see the everyday in a new light. What might this n...

“Felt experiences” have become key components  of our understanding of the world in the digital age, which could explain the increase in research on the diversity of the ambiences experienced in built environments. These approaches, which sometimes give privileged access to worldviews or lead to design modes that are more attentive to the experience of users, shed new light on previ...

Through an investigation of the Citadel Theatre of Edmonton, one of the largest North American theatres, I investigate works of architecture as physical indices of colonial violence. This investigation is made through a postcolonial and ecomaterial framework that enables me to focus on the materials used in the building of the Citadel Theatre: both their geographical origin (Medicine Hat, Alberta, and California) and the labor that has gone into its extraction. Labor and extraction tie bui...

While the relationship between architecture and community are intrinsically intertwined, the built form of “community spaces” is not easily defined by any specific style, design, or building typology. Though there are many purpose-built community buildings across Canada, including community and recreation centres, performance venues, and town halls, many community spaces often evolve organically and informally from the community itself in a div...

La ville extraordinaire is a three-year Partnership Development oral history research-creation project that aims to understand the ways in which diverse communities have shaped the city of Montreal over time. To this end, for the past year, our team has been interviewing older (broadly defined) residents of the city, including members of the Filipino-, Haitian-, and Chinese-Montreal communities, as well as less clearly delineated groups, such as older sex workers and older adults who face ...

The future of development in peri-urban/rural areas and our cities depends on how we respond to the challenges of today. Due to population growth and migration pressure, two of the most pressing problems of urbanization in rural communities are poverty and environmental degradation (Marshall et al., 2009). To counteract the problems of urbanization, community planning and co-creation through value-inclusive design are proposed as essential to developing healthy and sustainable towns and ci...

The talk explores the Adaptive Reuse and Revitalization of Christian Religious Architecture by diverse faiths. These heritage spaces are transformed layer by layer and are adapted to the religious practices of the new inhabitants. The “original,” however, is largely evident and co-exists symbiotically with the “altered.” Interventions are made mostly to the interior of these spaces and the new occupants grapple with a form that does not necessarily align with their religious practices. Exp...