Competition jury & technical/curatorial advisory

IAN CHODIKOFF OAA, FRAIC | Ian Chodikoff is an architect and editor of Canadian Architect magazine. He has a background in political science, public administration and urban design. His interests range from the effects of transnational migration on urbanization to issues relating to social inclusion and cultural diversity. Ian currently serves on the City of Ottawa Urban Design Review Panel and the External Advisory Board member at York University’s CITY Institute. His research entitled Fringe Benefits: Cosmopolitan Dynamics of a Multicultural City explores the influences of multiculturalism on the suburban communities, illustrating opportunities for social and economic development. He has taught and lectured in various universities and cities across North America and Europe, has served on many design juries and has written in a variety of magazines and journals. His research on the effects of migration on the Senegalese economy was recently part of an exhibition entitled “Journeys” at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. He is a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

ANNE CORMIER is an architect and a founding member of the Montreal group Atelier Big City. She completed her professionnal degree at McGill University in Montreal (1982), and a CEA in Architecture Urbaine at the Unité Pégadogique d’Architecture Paris-Villemin in Paris (1987). She is the director of the School of Architecture of Université de Montréal, and she belongs to the university’s Laboratoire d’étude de l’architecture potentielle (L.E.A.P.) a group dedicated to research on the design process in architecture. She is also a member of the Advisory Committee on Planning, Design and Realty of the National Capital Commission (Ottawa, Canada). With Atelier Big City she has taught in various institutions including Cornell University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Toronto and the University of Calgary. She has contributed to the realisation of several award winning projects of Atelier Big City and she received with Atelier Big City the 1998 Canadian Rome Price.

Marc Boutin was born in Ottawa and studied environmental design (BES. 1985), architecture (B. Arch.,1990), and architectural history (MA. 2000) at the University of Manitoba, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Calgary.  He complimented these studies with sculpture studios at the Ontario College of Art and the Emily Carr College of Art and Design.  During 1994-96, he continued his studies and professional work in Barcelona, investigating issues related to public space and working with Arriola and Fiol Arquitectes, where he was project architect in numerous urban and landscape projects.  After post-graduate work in Architectural History centered on paradigm shifts in modern architecture, he joined the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary, teaching architecture and urban design studios in the graduate architecture program.  His teaching there has been recognized by university teaching and research awards (2001, 2002, 2007).  His design firm, The Marc Boutin Architectural Collaborative Inc., is a research-based critical practice, informed by the application of intense design methodologies to diverse conceptual and physical contexts.

Catherine Hamel’s interests lie in the potential role of architecture as an instrument for social reconstruction. Specific themes investigated to date include identity and estrangement in the context of post-war reconstruction and exile; architecture and justice; memory in the scarred body and the voicing of political experiences in public space. These topics are explored through her teaching, collaborative drawing, and writing.   What agitates her is not the sides people take, but the lines they draw in order to be able to take them. She loves the sound of laughter…

Shafraaz Kaba MRAIC, LEED AP | Shafraaz Kaba is an architect working for Manasc Isaac in Edmonton for the last 11 years. In this time, he has made significant contributions to the design and cultural landscape of Edmonton. He was named one of Edmonton’s Top 40 under 40 by Avenue Magazine in 2010 and had been the instigator of various events in Edmonton, including Capital Modern exhibit and symposium at the Art Gallery of Alberta. Shafraaz is proud of being an Edmonton Arts Council steering committee member for the Art of Living, Edmonton’s Cultural Plan, and the founding member of the Media, Art and Design Exposed in Edmonton Society and the Edmonton Design Committee. He is nearing completion of a netzero-ready house here in Edmonton.

Matthew North Matthew North has an undergraduate degree in Geography and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Calgary. He is a licensed Real Estate agent and a founding principal of Housebrand where he is responsible for the detailed design and construction management of over 250 new home and remodelling projects. Matthew is also a cofounder of the Slow Home Movement, an international advocacy group committed to increasing the design quality in North America’s housing market.  As the person responsible for bringing Housebrand’s design projects to fruition, Matthew has a highly developed practical expertise in translating contemporary design strategies into the realities of North American residential construction techniques. As a result, most of his days working out the detail design of our housebrand’s projects and overseeing their construction; an approach that connects back to the original, and slower, meaning of the term architect as master builder. Matthew North and John Brown founded Housebrand as a new kind of residential architecture practice in 1994 along with Carina van Olm. Read more about Housebrand and its unique approach to residential design in the July/August 2009 edition of Residential Architect. http://slowhomestudio.com/wp-content/themes/slowhome/pdf/resArch.pdf

Katherine Wagner is an associate at DIALOG and has practiced as an architect and interior designer for over twenty years. She has been involved with institutional, commercial and residential projects including the West Calgary High School, Bankers Court and Calgary Zoo North Gate. While an associate at Busby Perkins + Will she was a team member on the Vento development in Calgary’s The Bridges community, the first multi-family project in North America to achieve LEEDTM Platinum Certification. Katherine was a member of The City of Calgary East Village Urban Design Review Panel, co-chair of the Banff Sessions committee and president of the Alberta Association of Architects. She has been an external advisor for master’s degree projects, studio critic, member of the Advisory Selection Committee for Dean for the Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary and is a course coordinator and lecturer at the Faculty. She is a graduate of Ryerson Polytechnic University and the University of Calgary.

Susan Fitzgerald Originally from Stourbridge, England, Susan Fitzgerald is both an architect and an interior designer. She teaches design and professional practice at Dalhousie University in Halifax. In addition to being the founding partner of Susan Fitzgerald Architecture, she is also a principal with Halifax-based Fowler Bauld & Mitchell Ltd. Susan received her Bachelor Science from University College London, England and Master of Architecture degree from Dalhousie University in 1999. She started her architectural career working for Arthur Erickson and Nick Milkovich Architects Inc. in Vancouver.
Susan Fitzgerald Architecture received the 2011 Canada Council for the Arts Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture. They have also been the recipient of several Nova Scotia Lieutenant Governor’s Awards, including the Medal of Excellence. Their work has been exhibited and published in Twenty + Change 02 and 13.3% at WUHO in Los Angeles, California. Their design/build/research method of creating architecture has been explored in a recent national exhibition: The Force is in the Mind. The Making of Architecture.


Omar Gandhi is a first generation Canadian intern architect originally from Brampton, Ontario. After studying in the Regional Arts program at Mayfield Secondary School and then the inaugural Architectural Studies Program at the University of Toronto he moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia where he received his Master’s degree in 2005 at Dalhousie University. After graduation Omar worked for Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, Young + Wright Architects and most recently for MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects in Halifax and worked on several key projects including Manitoba Hydro and the Mike and Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum Nano Centre at the University of Waterloo. In 2010 Omar started his own practice which specializes in regionally informed single-family residential projects, the collaborative spirit between client, builder and intern architect and the impact of varying dramatic spatial contrasts as a narrative tool through a procession.


Barbara Lounder is a visual artist and educator living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. She holds a BFA from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD), where she is now is a Professor. Barbara Lounder’s current art practice focuses on walking as a creative methodology. Her performative works engage members of the public in carefully designed walking activities, sometimes utilizing prosthetics such as walking sticks, stilts, backpacks, locative devices and portable digital projectors. Lounder has presented her work in gallery exhibitions and other venues across Canada and in the USA, Poland, New Zealand, Germany and Bulgaria. Her work has been critically reviewed in C Magazine, Parachute and the New York Times. She has participated in artists’ residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Open Studio Printmaking in Toronto and Full Tilt Creative Centre in Newfoundland.

An Te Liu is Associate Professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.  He holds an Honors BA in Art History and Renaissance Studies from the University of Toronto and a Master of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles.  His installations and sculptures explore issues of function, dysfunction and cultural coding in our built and hypothesized environments.  Liu’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Venice Architecture Biennale, The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, The Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, the Seoul Museum of Art, the CCA in Montreal, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  His work is included in the permanent collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Art Institute of Chicago. Among his numerous grants and awards are the International Artist Residency in Berlin awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York.  The monographic catalog, An Te Liu : Matter, was published by the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin in 2009.  

Chris Pommer has been paying attention to minutiae since growing up on the expansive planar landscape around Winnipeg. Chris graduated from the University of Waterloo School of Architecture in 1988 (along with his partners Lisa Rapoport and Mary Tremain), and worked with Ferguson Ferguson Architects prior to setting up PLANT. Chris also pursued a parallel course for four years to work with Bruce Mau Design exploring type, book, exhibition, and identity design. Chris has taught and lectured at the Universities of Toronto, Waterloo, and Manitoba, and was Driehaus Visiting Lecturer at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. PLANT’s notable projects include Sweet Farm; The Dublin Grounds of Remembrance in Ohio; Foote’s Pond Wood in Morristown, NJ; the Nathan Phillips Square Revitalization; and the new Canadian Firefighters Memorial in Ottawa (in collaboration with Doug Coupland).

Lisa Rochon MA | is an award-winning architecture critic for The Globe and Mail. She is the author of UP NORTH: Where Canada’’s Architecture Meets the Land, a major book on the significance of modern Canadian architecture and its deep connection to the Canadian landscape, and various essays, such as those appearing in Trash and AIR (MIT Press).   Lisa frequently participates on design juries and as a guest speaker lecturing on revitalized cities and architecture of resistance.  Lisa is a board member on the Fort York Foundation, helping to raise funds to build the Visitor Centre designed by Patkau Architects with Kearns Mancini Architects.  Since 2006, she has led a letter writing exchange between children from Thorncliffe neighbourhood, where Canada’s largest concentration of Muslims live, and young students in Toronto’s Beaches.  From 1998 to 2005, Lisa taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, including her graduate seminar on Post-Crisis Scenarios launched immediately after 9-11.   She holds an M.A. in Urban Design Studies from the University of Toronto.  Before that, Lisa studied international relations at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Paris. Her honours degree in journalism and French was completed at Carleton University, Ottawa.

Michael Jemtrud Associate Professor, School of Architecture, McGill University and Founding Director, Facility of Architectural Research in Media and Mediation | Michael Jemtrud is an Associate Professor and former Director of the School of Architecture, McGill University (Montréal). He is founding Director of the Facility for Architectural Research in Media and Mediation (FARMM). His research and teaching encompasses the critical use and development of technologies in architectural design and pedagogy with an emphasis on design methodology and philosophy of technology. 

Marie-Josée Lacroix holds a B.A. in Environmental Design from Université du Québec à Montréal (1982) and a master’s degree in Information Sciences, with a specialization in design and architecture, from the universities of McGill in Montréal and Columbia in New York (1985). As design commissioner, she heads the Design Montréal bureau of Ville de Montréal whose mandate is to enhance Montréal’s design and status as a city of design. Ville de Montréal is the only Canadian city with a commissioner working exclusively at the promotion of design. For most of the last 20 years, Marie-Josée Lacroix has been promoting design and making the general public, the politicians and the business community care about it. Since she started working for Ville de Montréal in 1991, she has worked to encourage public commissions of design work, and also advised a number of federal and provincial government departments and institutions on ways of fostering innovative design in major public projects. She has launched many initiatives which led eventually to Montréal’s designation in June 2006 as a UNESCO City of Design. 

Annie Lebel Annie Lebel obtient un Baccalauréat en architecture de l’Université de Montréal en 1987 et un diplôme de Maîtrise en 1994 en Histoire et théorie de l’Université McGill, avant de devenir membre de l’Ordre des architectes en 1996. Elle fonde en 1995 avec Stéphane Pratte (Geneviève L’Heureux 1995-2000) Atelier in situ où elle y consacre depuis ses activités professionnelles. Sa firme a été primée pour plusieurs projets dont l’édifice Zone (Grand prix d’excellence de l’OAQ, 1997), le recyclage de la Fonderie Darling en centre d’arts (Mention catégorie conversion, prix d’excellence de l’OAQ 2003),  Structure des Jardins de Métis (Prix du Gouverneur général, 2006) et a reçu le prix de Rome en architecture du Conseil des arts du Canada en 2001. Annie Lebel est également impliquée dans le milieu académique. Elle enseigne en tant que professeure invitée l’atelier au niveau maîtrise à l’école d’architecture de l’Université de Montréal.

Rémi Morency Architect OAQ, Urbaniste OUQ | Rémi Morency possède plus de 21 ans d’expérience dans le domaine de l’architecture et de l’aménagement du territoire.  Sur le plan de la conception, il s’est distingué à plusieurs reprises notamment par le biais de concours d’architecture où il a été sélectionné finaliste et lauréat. Il a remporté le premier prix du concours international d’aménagement urbain Perspective Littoral. Il est également membre de l’équipe lauréate du concours portant sur la construction d’un musée d’archéologie sur le site de l’îlot des Palais. Rémi Morency œuvre également dans le domaine de l’aménagement du territoire, notamment en matière de design urbain où il agit comme expert conseil et concepteur sur divers projets de mise en valeur et de requalification. Il collabore sur une base régulière avec la faculté d’architecture, d’aménagement et des arts visuels comme chargé de cours tant à l’École d’architecture qu’à l’École supérieure d’aménagement. Il a également siégé à la Commission de conservation et d’urbanisme de la Ville de Québec de1998 à 2011. Il est actuellement vice-président de l’Ordre des architectes du Québec. 

Pierre Thibault La pratique de Pierre Thibault architecte se distingue depuis 24 ans par les réponses sensibles apportées aux besoins des clients, au contexte culturel et environnemental. La qualité de son travail et de ses réalisations ainsi que la maturité de sa réflexion architecturale lui ont déjà valu plusieurs prix et mentions au Québec, au Canada, aux États-Unis et en Europe. Pierre Thibault introduit dans le processus de conception le pouvoir exceptionnel de transformation des saisons au Québec. Sa démarche de conception est basée sur l’interaction entre l’architecture et son contexte, tant naturel que culturel. Les lieux à créer par l’architecte favorisent un dialogue avec leur environnement au fil du temps. Cette démarche toute personnelle se concrétise à travers des réalisations d’envergure en architecture du paysage et dans les secteurs culturel, institutionnel et privé.

Jim Siemens is a practicing architect in Saskatoon and a founding partner of SKArc - Siemens Koopman Architects.  He holds a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Manitoba.  Jim practiced and taught architecture in Portland, Oregon for six years prior to returning to Saskatoon.  He believes that as architects it is our responsibility to create environments that celebrate the richness of life, that there’s plenty of room for creativity, the inclusion of many, and that it’s time to be light on our feet.

Jeanna South is a Corporate Project Manager with the City of Saskatoon.  She is overseeing the Master Plan for the City’s North Downtown, the Kinsmen Park and Area Master Plan and the Mendel Building Re-Use, and Phase 1 of the City Centre Project.  Jeanna held the position of Saskatoon’s Urban Design Manager from 2005 to 2011. She has been involved in public space projects such as the 25th Street Extension, 3rd Avenue Streetscape, River Landing Phases 1 and 2, and the Avenues A, B and C Streetscape. Jeanna has experience working and teaching architecture and urban design in Vancouver, and Toronto, Nottingham, UK and the University of Saskatchewan. She is a member of the Saskatchewan Association of Architects, the RAIC and a Provisional Member of the APCPS.