Doors Open TO 2026 | TSA Architects Talk: Toronto’s Identity

Alissa North is a Professor of Landscape Architecture at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Her research entails both publication and creative practice. Her writing aims to bring knowledge regarding the professional discipline of landscape architecture to a broad public, with a particular emphasis on the dissemination of works of Canadian landscape architecture. Publications include, the JoLA article Processing Downsview Park, Operative Landscapes: Building Communities Through Public Space published by Birkhäuser, and Innate Terrain: Canadian Landscape Architecture published by the University of Toronto Press. A registered landscape architect, she is a Co-Founding Director at North Design Office, a Toronto based landscape architecture firm established in 2005. Alissa North graduated with Honours from the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture Program at the University of Toronto, and received the Master in Landscape Architecture with Distinction from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.

Brigitte Shim along with her partner, A. Howard Sutcliffe, are both principals in the design firm Shim-Sutcliffe Architects. Shim-Sutcliffe’s built work explores the integration and interrelated scales of architecture, landscape, furniture, and fittings. To date, Shim and Sutcliffe have received sixteen Governor General’s Medals and Awards for Architecture from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) and an American Institute of Architects National Honor Award along with many other professional accolades for their built work ranging from projects for non-profit groups to public and private clients. Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe were honored to be recipients of the 2021 RAIC Gold Medal for Architecture.

Brigitte Shim is also a full Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto and has been an invited visitor at Yale, Harvard, Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, Auckland University, and others.

Grant is a member of Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, Co-Chair and founding member of the Canadian Society for Landscape Architect’s (CSLA) Reconciliation Advisory Committee, Landscape Architecture Foundation Board Member, and Indigenous Design Lead at PFS Studio where he works closely with Indigenous collaborators on planning and design projects. He received his MLA at the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at UBC where his thesis research focused on the potential of traditional knowledge to inform climate adaptation and received a Master of Landscape Architecture in Urban Design with Distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design where his thesis examined Tkaronto’s Indigenous future.

In 2015 Grant was named the National Olmsted Scholar by the Landscape Architecture Foundation, the premier award for landscape architecture students in North America. His work with the CSLA Reconciliation Advisory Committee is growing Indigenous representation in landscape architecture and building capacity for collaborations with indigenous communities. In 2021 the CSLA awarded him the Emerging Professional Award for his demonstrated leadership and contributions to the profession.

Marco L. Polo (OAA, FRAIC) is a Professor in the Department of Architectural Science at Toronto Metropolitan University. His work focuses on Modern and contemporary Canadian architecture, and he served as editor of Canadian Architect from 1997 to 2003. Marco’s publications include chapters in Canadian Modern Architecture 1967-2017 edited by Graham Livesey and Elsa Lam (2019), and The Rise of Awards in Architecture edited by Jean-Pierre Chupin, Carmela Cucuzzella and Georges Adamczyk (2022).

In collaboration with Professor John McMinn of the University of Waterloo Marco co-curated the exhibition 41° to 66° Architecture in Canada: Region, Culture, Tectonics, which represented Canada at the 2008 Venice Biennale of Architecture. With Professor Colin Ripley of TMU he curated Architecture and National Identity: The Centennial Projects 50 Years On, an exhibition examining the role of Canada’s 1967 Centennial Projects in the articulation of a national identity, which toured Canada from 2014 to 2017, with an accompanying catalogue published by Dalhousie Architectural Press. 

Roberto Damiani is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, where he teaches urbanism at the undergraduate and graduate levels. His two edited volumes—The Architect and the Public: On George Baird’s Contribution to Architecture (2020) and the forthcoming The Architect and the Social: Peter Prangnell’s Architecture Curriculum Fifty Years Later (Fall 2026)—trace the genealogy of a Toronto “school” of architecture and urbanism. His ongoing research project, Just Main Streets, examines the city’s main streets as socio-cultural spaces and the specific threats and opportunities they face from urban densification.

Stefan Novakovic is a Toronto-based writer and editor specializing in architecture and urbanism, and a co-founder of Expo Magazine. Throughout his career, he has sought to clearly situate design practice (and theory) within historical, political, cultural and ecological contexts. Stefan was previously a Senior Editor at Azure Magazine, and also served as Associate Editor at Canadian Architect, and Assistant Editor at UrbanToronto. His writing has also appeared in a wide range of publications, including The Architect’s Newspaper, Canadian Interiors, Designlines, Building, 3 Magazine, the New York Review of Architecture, the McGill International Review and Torontoist.