Doors Open Toronto 2024 – Architects Talk: Layered City

Alex Bozikovic is the architecture critic for the Globe and Mail. He is an author or editor of three books – the bestseller 305 Lost Buildings of Canada; Toronto Architecture: A City Guide; and House Divided. He won the 2019 President’s Medal for Media in Architecture from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada for his journalism.

Helen Mills is the founder and co-director of Toronto Green Community’s Lost Rivers project.  Now in its 30th year, Lost Rivers has walked, named and mapped hundreds of lost creeks and accumulated a treasure trove of information about Toronto’s water, land, peoples, bio-cultural ecosystems and neighbourhoods. Helen also co-founded Rivers Rising and RAINscapeTO, two related social enterprises that connect diverse communities with nature-based climate solutions.  The 2022 City of Toronto policy about daylighting historical watercourses is opening up some exciting possibilities for the future of the Lost Creeks.  Helen was the recipient of the Water Watchers Lifetime Water Protection Award in 2021.

Dr. Jon Johnson’s research is focused on urban land-based Indigenous Knowledge in Toronto, as it is expressed through oral and digital forms of storytelling. He works actively within Toronto’s Indigenous community as a lead organizer for First Story Toronto, an Indigenous-led community-based organization that researches and shares Toronto’s Indigenous presence through public education initiatives such as storytelling tours of the city and digital storytelling projects.

Beyond academia, Dr. Johnson also actively contributes to public engagement in this work, striving to promote Indigenous voices and leadership through documentaries, news pieces, and public education projects. His community-based research, teaching, and service focuses on fostering respectful and mutually beneficial projects and engagements between the University of Toronto and Indigenous communities. As an educator, Dr. Johnson emphasizes experiential learning and community opportunities, in the hopes of creating meaningful educational experiences for his students. He currently teaches courses in Academic Bridging, Digital Humanities, and First Year Foundations, and is the co-ordinator of the Woodsworth One program.

Linda Zhang (she/her) is an architect (OAA, AIA), interior designer (NCIDQ), creative technologist and educator. She is the founder of Studio Pararaum / Para Lab and an assistant professor at University of Waterloo School of Architecture. Her spatial practice and research supports community ownership and anti-displacement through architectural co-design. Since she returned to Tkaronto’s Chinatown in 2018, she has been documenting Chinatown East and West by 3D scanning the neighbourhoods’ built environments. From these 3D models, she creates architectural memory technologies and co-design platforms to build community power in Chinatown through co-imagination and co-remembering to envision a more generative, affordable and culturally meaningful shared future(s) for all. 

张亦飞（她）是一位建筑师（OAA、AIA）、室内设计师（NCIDQ）、创意技术专家和教育家。 她是 Studio Pararaum / Para Lab 的创始人，也是滑铁卢大学建筑学院的助理教授。 通过建筑共同设计，她的空间实践和研究旨在建立社区所有权和防止失所化。 自从 2018 年回到多伦多以来，她通过 3D 立体扫描技术来记录东区唐人街和西区唐人街的建筑环境。 她利用这些 3D 模型来创建建筑记忆技术和共同设计平台，以在唐人街建立社区力量。通过共同想象和共同记忆，从而为所有人设想一个（或多个）更具创造性、更经济适用和更具有文化意义的共同未来。

Mitchell is an architect and heritage professional with a decade of experience in design and conservation projects across Ontario. Over the course of his design career, his work has focused on exploring the relationships between new and existing architectures. As an associate at Giaimo, his current work focuses on adaptive reuse, maintenance, embodied carbon, and sustainable alternatives to demolition.  

Prior to joining Giaimo, he worked with Professors Marco Polo and Colin Ripley at Toronto Metropolitan University to research and document Canada’s Centennial projects as part of the exhibition Architecture and National Identity: The Centennial Projects 50 Years On. His interest in research has continued at Giaimo, where he has led a number of initiatives, presenting his findings at conferences for the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals and the National Trust. His commitment to design excellence is evident in the number of award-winning buildings he’s contributed to, including the Conestoga College Student Recreation Centre (MJMA), Allandale Train Station (ERA Architects), and South House (Giaimo).

Mitchell is currently a member of the Ontario Association of Architects, the Toronto Preservation Board, and The Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals.

Shawn Micallef is the author of Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness, Full Frontal TO: Exploring Toronto’s Vernacular Architecture and The Trouble With Brunch. The updated edition of Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto was released in May 2024. He’s a Toronto Star columnist, instructor at University of Toronto, a Senior Fellow at Massey College and a co-founder of Spacing magazine.