Dr. Jojola has a distinguished career as an educator and practitioner in urban and regional planning and other related subjects, with particular specialty in Indigenous planning. Since 1980, he has taught at the University of New Mexico (UNM). He served as director of Native American Studies from 1980-1996, acting director of the Community and Regional Planning Program from 1995-96, and director from 2004-05.

In 2010, he obtained funding for iArchitecture, an interdisciplinary course on contemporary Indigenous architecture at UNM. He has an ongoing cultural consultancy with the Native American Cultural Center, Northern Arizona State University, Studio Ma Architects. Dr. Jojola prepared the Tribal Planning Student Internships & Planning Information Handbook for the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department in 2009. He conducted community workshops on indigenous planning for the US Department of Justice and regional workshops on tribal community planning, Policy Research Center, National Congress of American Indians in 2008. He is an ongoing participant in the Indigenous Planning Exchange, US Department of Education since 2007. Dr. Jojola participated in the Visioning 21st Century Tribal Community Planning, Tribal Planning Summit, Arizona State University in 2007. He has also been involved since 2007 with the New Mexico Indian Education Atlas.

Dr. Jojola has published in many books and periodicals, and has prepared technical and commissioned research reports. Recently, he prepared Planning in Indian Country: Regional Conversations, a report of findings for eight regional tribal summits, 2007-2009 for the National Congress of American Indians (released 2011). He wrote the Legacy of the Pueblo Revolt and the Tiquex Province in an anthology of Po`pay and the Pueblo Revolt, edited by Joe Sando, Clear Light Book Publishers in 2005. He has also received many recognition awards for the merits of his work, including the Richard W. Etulain Honorary Lectureship in 2012 and distinguished professorship in 2011.

Founded by Stefano Pujatti, ELASTICOFarm is an architectural firm based in Torino and Toronto recognized for its focus on merging formal and material explorations through an approach that addresses global challenges by strategically leveraging local resources. 

In this lecture, Pujatti will discuss a selection of both built and unbuilt projects—exploring how environmental factors such as time, climate, and water influence the firm's design process. Buildings like the SlowHorse hotel (featured in the first image above) exemplify Pujatti's approach to sustainability through a masterful design that integrates natural elements like snow in the building tectonics, providing a distinctive appearance. 

The audience will become acquainted with the firm's design philosophy, which is marked by an optimistic and ironic outlook that propels ideas past obstacles while welcoming doubts more than certainties.

Stefano Pujatti is an Italian architect and the founder of ELASTICOFarm. His project SlowHorse was short-listed at the Mies Van der Rohe Award in 2013 and winner of the Plan Award in 2015. In 2023, S-LAB by ELASTICOFarm (featured as the second image above) won the Italian Architecture Prize by Maxxi and Triennale di Milano as best built project in Italy. He has taught at Politecnico di Torino (2004-2014) and the University of Toronto (2014-2015) and exhibited at the Architecture Biennale in Venice for multiple years (2006, 2010, 2014, 2021). He won the INARCH-ANCE Young Designer Award in 2006 and Architect of the Year by AIAC in 2021. 

Image credits: 1) SlowHorse image courtesy Jacopo Riccesi; 2) S-LAB image courtesy Studio Campo.

'One clover, and a bee' explores architecture's expanding role in addressing global challenges, focusing on climate action, social equity, and community impact. Beginning with the climate emergency, it introduces KPMB’s approach, which leverages innovative design and construction methods to significantly reduce carbon emissions.  

The lecture then shifts to social equity, highlighting BEAT, an initiative advocating for gender equity in architecture, alongside affordable housing projects aimed at addressing inequity in Canada.  

Finally, the presentation underscores KPMB’s commitment to enhancing public spaces and fostering community through projects including the Harrison McCain Pavilion addition to the Beaverbrook Gallery and the award-winning Montreal Holocaust Museum (featured above). These examples illustrate how architecture can be a force for sustainability, inclusivity, and positive community transformation. 

Shirley Blumberg is a founding partner of KPMB Architects and a Member of the Order of Canada for her contributions to architecture and community. She has designed many of the firm’s noteworthy and award-winning projects that range in scale, from interiors to architecture and planning. 

In addition to her academic and cultural projects, she has also focused on social justice work in affordable housing. She is currently working on such projects as the competition-winning Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, an affordable residential community in Toronto, and prototypical housing for the northern Indigenous community of Fort Severn in Ontario, Canada). Several years ago, Shirley began a conversation with like-minded colleagues that became BEAT - Building Equality in Architecture Toronto - a grassroots initiative to promote equality for women in the profession that has since grown to include chapters across Canada. 

Image credits: 1) Montreal Holocaust Museum. Image courtesy KPMB; 2) Harrison McCain Pavilion at Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Image courtesy doublespacephotography; 3) Fort Severn First Nation. Image courtesy KPMB.

In this lecture, Tosin Oshinowo brings her wealth of experience from her recent success as curator of the 2023 Sharjah Architecture Triennial, which investigated architectural innovation in the face of scarcity. Delving into architecture and urbanism in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, she will share her perspective on urbanism routed in tradition and evolved from informality and challenge conventional notions, offering fresh perspectives on design and architecture tailored to the twenty-first century’s cultural and climatic needs. 

Tosin Oshinowo is a Lagos-based Nigerian architect and the principal and founder of Oshinowo Studio, established in 2013. She has worked on several civic, commercial, and residential projects throughout Nigeria and is renowned for her socially responsive approach to architecture, design, and urbanism. 

Her work demonstrates a strong interest in architectural history while embodying a contemporary perspective on African design and innovation. Her curatorial work focuses primarily on concerns of culture and identity, embodying a contemporary perspective of urbanism in the global South. 

She co-curated the second Lagos Biennial in 2019 and curated the second Sharjah Architecture Triennial in 2023. She is a 2025 Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. 

Image credits: Studio Oshinowo architectural projects by Tolu Sanusi; Tosin Oshinowo portrait by Spark Creative.

Where the Wild Things Are with Omar Gandhi (Omar Gandhi Architects) chronicles the journey of a small architecture studio based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The work of its two studios in Halifax and Toronto has garnered national and international recognition in the practice’s brief history now with projects spanning 7 provinces, the US and Caribbean. 

From small renovations and dramatic coastal private residences to the design process and value-based approach that propelled the firm to major public and community projects. Gain insight into the power of collaboration and public consultation as the studio looks ahead to the future of both the profession of architecture and their own growing practice.

Omar Gandhi is the Principal of Omar Gandhi Architects, an architectural practice founded in 2010 with small teams in both Halifax and Toronto. In its early years, the studio was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Professional Prix de Rome, was included in Wallpaper* Magazine’s Architects Directory, and Omar himself was named as one of Monocle Magazine’s ‘Most Influential Canadians’. Omar was chosen as one of the Architectural League of New York’s ‘Emerging Voices’ of 2016 and in 2018, was appointed the Louis I. Kahn visiting Assistant Professorship in Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture. 

Most recently, Omar Gandhi Architect was the recipient of a 2018 Governor General’s Medal in Architecture for its work on Rabbit Snare Gorge and honored as the only Canadian practice in Architectural Record Magazine’s 2018 Design Vanguard. In 2020, the studio was part of the team awarded the new Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and in 2021, completed the revitalization of one of Canada’s most Iconic landmarks, Peggy’s Cove. Omar was made a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Association of Canada in 2022.

In this public lecture, Isabel Okoro, the Faculty’s inaugural Filmmaker-in-Residence, will explore her world-building practice from the conception of the visual universe Eternity to the present. Okoro will discuss influences, research and current ideas on the project—highlighting ways in which imagination is a radical act, and how exploring her own has provided the freedom to reshape her personal world, as well as suggest ideas for an alternate plane of existence.

The world is greying. By 2050 the global population age sixty-five and older is projected to nearly double—from 12% to 22%, and while many older persons continue to experience relatively good health, contributing importantly to society as family members, volunteering, and in the workforce, others will be at high risk of becoming unhoused, experiencing mental health and cognitive disorders, and comorbidities. 

Resilient architectural responses are needed to anticipate the needs and aspirations of older persons, particularly against the backdrop of the global climate crisis. Broad trends are examined in relation to progressive architectural case studies in the field of architecture and aging with particular focus on the long-term care housing crisis in Ontario.

Speaker Bios

Diana Anderson, MD, M.Arch, FACHA

Dr. Diana Anderson is a triple-boarded professional healthcare architect (ACHA-American College of Healthcare Architects), internist and a geriatrician. She earned her MD from the University of Toronto (OT8). As a “dochitect,” she pioneered a collaborative, evidence-based model for approaching healthcare from the medicine and architecture fields simultaneously. A past Fellow of the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, Dr. Anderson explores the ethics of built space related to design for aging. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Boston University, and a recipient of an Alzheimer's Association Clinician Scientist Fellowship. She is a healthcare principal at Jacobs, contributing her thought leadership at the intersection of design and health.

Molly Chan

Molly Chan is a principal with the firm of NSDA Architects, a diverse and dynamic architectural practice based in Vancouver, BC. A six-time recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s award, the firm focuses on a wide range of projects including special needs, social purpose housing, affordable rental, healthcare and multi-family residential. Current projects include YWCA Housing for Women and Children, The Salvation Army Harbour Light facility, and Foxglove Supported Housing and Shelter.

Stephen Verderber, Arch,D., NCARB, ACSA Distinguished Professor

Dr. Stephen Verderber is Professor of Architecture, Director of the Centre for Design + Health Innovation in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, and Adjunct Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health/IHPME at the University of Toronto. 

A Registered Architect in the U.S. and co-founder of R-2ARCH (Research to Architecture), he is sole author of seven books, co-author of two, and has published over one-hundred peer reviewed scholarly and professional articles. His most recent books are Innovations in Transportable Healthcare Architecture (2016), Innovations in Behavioural Health Architecture (2018) and Innovations in Hospice Architecture (Second Edition, 2020). His first book, Healthcare Architecture in an Era of Radical Transformation (2000), has become a standard reference. 

Principal investigator of numerous externally sponsored research projects and reports, he holds one of only two North American faculty cross-appointments linking architecture and public health. Dr. Verderber has delivered invited keynotes at numerous international conferences on evidence-based health research and design, educational pedagogy, eco-humanist health-centric design, and has received numerous awards for his interdisciplinary contributions to the advancement of the discipline, profession, and broader community.

Architecture of Health: 
The Annual Zeidler-Evans Lecture 

The Zeidler-Evans Lecture honours Dr. John Evans, the ninth president of the University of Toronto (1972-78) and the first dean of McMaster University’s School of Medicine, and his dear friend, renowned architect Eberhard Zeidler. The annual public lecture focuses on the Architecture of Health to address complex health and design challenges that will help us to build stronger and more inclusive societies.

Between 1967 and 1972, Zeidler and Evans collaborated on McMaster’s Health Sciences Centre, revolutionizing hospital design and education in the process. Zeidler served as an adjunct professor at the Daniels Faculty from 1983 to 1995 and established the Eberhard Zeidler Scholarship with his wife Jane in 1999. The Eberhard Zeidler Library, housing 37,000 volumes in the Daniels Building, is also named in his honour.

In the 2024 George Baird Lecture, Elizabeth Whittaker will focus on how the work of her firm MERGE has evolved from small-scale material explorations to transforming housing typologies in Boston, Detroit, and throughout the US. The presentation will explore contemporary interpretations of varying contexts, as MERGE reimagines the vernacular of each unique site and region at the missing middle scale of housing. The need for more modest scale housing, in particular, offers immense opportunity for experimentation and the revitalization of many neighborhoods throughout the country. As the housing crisis in the US has reached a fever pitch, we cannot rely on big development to satisfy our collective housing needs and changing lifestyles. Whittaker will discuss how MERGE is translating known residential building types in both form, function, and material to address this demand for tectonic and social diversity through their research and built work on the flat, maisonette, duplex, triple-decker, and Chicago 6-flat, among others.

Elizabeth Whittaker is an Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she has been teaching Core Architecture Studios since 2009. Elizabeth is also the founding principal of MERGE architects, a practice that aims at developing contemporary craft, transforming typologies, and addressing social ecologies throughout the US. Her practice operates at multiple scales through commercial, institutional, retail, private residential, multi-family housing, graphic and furniture design. The work combines both digital fabrication and the hand made by working through a cross-disciplinary as well a cross-production process.

The George Baird Lecture honours the legacy of Professor Emeritus George Baird, alumnus (BArch 1962), former dean, and beloved friend of the Faculty. Professor Baird was a preeminent figure in the history and evolution of both the Faculty and the architectural profession. As an architect, scholar, educator and mentor, his contribution to the discourse and practice of architecture was profound, progressive and international in its reach. Established by colleagues, family, and friends, the annual George Baird lecture brings scholars and practitioners from around the world.
 

This lecture will delve into Chris Cornelius’ journey—showcasing their innovative approach to architecture that honors and integrates Indigenous traditions and values, and the profound impact their cultural heritage has on their design practice.

He will share insights into how Indigenous philosophies, storytelling, and sustainable practices have influenced their designs, resulting in structures that are not only aesthetically stunning but also deeply meaningful to the communities they serve.

Chris Cornelius is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, and Chair of Architecture at the University of New Mexico. Cornelius is founding principal of studio:indigenous founding and creates architecture and artifacts that dismantle stereotypes surrounding Indigenous design and offer a distinct vision of contemporary Indigenous culture. 

His awards include the Miller Prize from Exhibit Columbus and multiple Best of Design and Best of Practice Awards from the Architect’s Newspaper. His work has been exhibited at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and the 2023 Chicago Architecture Biennial. He has been a visiting professor at Yale University and Columbia University.

In conjunction with their upcoming publication, In Depth: Urban Domesticities Today,  SO – IL founders Jing Liu and Florian Idenburg will discuss their practice's decade-long pursuit of transforming the paradigm of urban housing today—towards a denser, more human and communal environment.  

Appealing to students and professionals alike, In Depth examines how housing might promote the well-being of its inhabitants by presenting new typologies for our ever-more urbanized world. The design office’s attempt to “hack” the codes, cores, courts and corridors takes center stage, exemplified by a selection of  SO – IL’s most recent projects, exploring concepts including porosity, connectivity, community and orientation in urban living.  

Jing Liu, born in 1980 in China, is a founding partner at  SO – IL. She grew up on three continents and in five cities, and most of her childhood homes were lost to rapid urbanization. She teaches at universities on the East Coast of the United States and works from her current base in Brooklyn, New York. Florian Idenburg is co-founder of SO – IL and Professor of the Practice at Cornell University. His grandmother’s house was designed by her great-uncle H. P. Berlage. On her veranda, he learned firsthand the benefits of the space in between. 

Liu and Idenburg are the 2024-2025 Frank Gehry International Visiting Chairs in Architectural Design.