mentoring network.

Barry Johns FRAIC (HON) FAIA

‘Our collective survival as a profession must include moving beyond our traditional role of building designer and service provider. It is incumbent upon us all to engage with society at a deeper level around the issues that face us – from climate change to social justice. We are ethically trained, experienced and capable of discourse that touches the human spirit – including contributing to the making of public policy to ensure resilient cities, re-wilding our eroding natural landscapes, promoting and finally building an environment of health, wellness, beauty and peace’.

 Barry Johns is an architect in Edmonton, Alberta. His firm has received more than 100 design awards for its work across many sectors since 1981. He was the Chancellor of the College of Fellows, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada from 2011 – 2017 and the Director of Practice for the Alberta Association of Architects from 2015 – 2019 and a AAA Member of Council from 2020 - 2022. His career began with Arthur Erickson in Vancouver and spans private practice, teaching and public service. He is the first international recipient of the Leslie M. Boney medal from the American Institute of Architects where he is an Honorary Fellow, for outstanding service to the profession. Barry is currently completing a Doctorate of Design (DDes) at the University of Calgary, examining the housing crisis in Canada. A monograph entitled Barry Johns Architects, was published by TUNS Press in 2000 and a new eBook on the firm’s later work is available at www.bjalstudio.ca.

Maya Mahgoub-Desai

‘Architecture has a role in social justice by creating environments that help citizens emerge from a state of inequity and providing processes whereby diverse citizens are participants and collaborators in creating those environments.’

Maya Mahgoub-Desai is an Associate Professor and the current Chair of Environmental Design at OCAD University, teaching in both Environmental Design and the Graduate Design for Health program. Maya’s current research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC / CRSH) and the Government of Canada’s Sustainable Development Goals Program and investigates themes related to health and the built environment, human-environment behaviour, and access to equitable and inclusive education. As the Senior Urban Designer & Planner for Moriyama Teshima Architects, Maya has led several urban and peri-urban campus, community and municipal plans focusing on community health, sustainable development, and a collaborative engagement process. Her portfolio includes serving as a subject matter expert for Waterfront Toronto; developing master plans for Qatar's Education City, Surrey City Development Corporation, and the Town of Whitby; and campus plans for the University of Lethbridge, Wilfrid Laurier University, and Conestoga College.

Safoura Zahedi

Safoura is an Architect with experience on a diverse range of projects, including residential, commercial, institutional, cultural, and civic buildings. Her independent work operates at the intersection of art and architecture, exploring geometry as a universal design language and digital fabrication. She is highly committed to the design community and acts as Programs Coordinator at the DesignTO Festival and Executive Committee member at BEAT (Building Equality in Architecture Toronto), where she co-founded the annual BEAT Forum, devoted to addressing issues of diversity and inclusion in the design and architecture industry. In addition, Safoura has guest lectured at the University of Toronto Daniels School of Architecture and is a sessional lecturer at the School of Interior Design at the Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University).

Carlo Parente

Carlo Parente is a licensed architect and educator who has designed projects in North America, Europe, and Asia. His community-focused work is guided by a holistic approach, which integrates performance-based design, new technologies, theory, and culture. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Architectural Science at Toronto Metropolitan University, where he teaches studios and core curriculum courses.   
                       
Prior to establishing an independent practice, Parente was a senior designer at leading firms in Chicago and in his native Toronto. He has led the design process for small- and large-scale residential buildings, commercial office towers, master plans, and educational and community-based projects, among other project types.  Parente sits on the executive board of the Chicago Architectural Club, where he formerly served as co-president.

Jeff Geldart

Jeff Geldart believes having a thorough understanding of the client’s goals and objectives is critical to developing a design that best meets their needs and expectations. That understanding becomes the root of any great piece of architecture. If the building does not meet the needs of its occupants, then the rest is superfluous.

Throughout his professional career Jeff has worked with both institutional and private sector clients. Some of his more notable institutional projects have included work with Wentworth County and Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. One Developments, Lifetime Developments and Kylemore Communities are among his residential accomplishments. This broad and range of experience has allowed him to enhance his drive for achieving design excellence while at the same time rigorously working to consistently meet schedules, budgets, and ultimately project execution.

Jeff demonstrates a phenomenal capability technically, aesthetically, and managerially on his projects. Since joining Diamond Schmitt in 2019, Jeff has worked as the Senior Architect on the Ottawa Public Library and Library Archives Canada Joint Facility and the Okotoks Arts and Learning Campus in Alberta. Jeff is currently based in Calgary.

Kristen Korneinko

‘To me, architecture has powerful potentials in both social and planetary justice. Actualizing these potentials means dismantling racial, gender, worldview, and (human) species power structures by finding humanity within our profession and how we walk in the world’.

Kristen Kornienko, MLArch, PhD is a co-founder of 1955 Creative Collaboration, an experimental collaborative in Kliptown, Soweto, South Africa. 1955 is the brainchild of a group of long-time friends and colleagues who continually learn from each other in grappling with their passions for art and socio-spacial equity justice. Creative activism has become central to her work and self-reflection on the power dynamics within our white social constructs focusing on their violence and impact on cultural and racial identities, everyday lives, and the spaces we inhabit. It has grown out of years of relationship building with fellow (human) beings and the land. It includes such practices as: documentary filming as urban study methodology; exploring radical shifts in design language; including all beings as design stakeholders; just positioning of chairs around the design table; co-producing across disciplines; innovating with waste as material use and re-use; leveling infrastructure access; community initiating; co-thinking/designing across worldviews through drawing; remaining quiet.

She is a faculty member in architecture and landscape architecture as well as the coordinator of the Global Studio at the RAIC Centre for Architecture at Athabasca University in Canada, a Fulbright Fellow South Africa, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Built Environment Studies, Wits University, Johannesburg.

A call to action: I'm a fifth-generation white settler living on traditional lands of the Secwepemc Nation (in British Columbia, Canada). These lands were stolen without treaty through land appropriation in the mid-1800s during colonization and remain unceded to this day. Thus, I am a squatter on these lands, yet I benefit from the intergenerational wealth and stability of land ownership. I’d like to acknowledge and thank the ancestors and people of the Splatsin, Neskonlith, and Skwlax Bands for their ongoing inclusive activities towards our healing and conciliation, and in the defence of the land, water, and creatures of this region. I commit to contributing with humility and creativity.

Chibuzo Ohaneje

How architecture needs to change to serve a more just built environment. 

‘Architecture is one of the oldest professions in the world, as old as civilisation itself. It is the art and science of the design and construction of buildings crafted towards occupation by man and his furniture.

Over the years, the trade has been thought across boundaries trying to adopt a design uniformity across the globe. This however has been done to the detriment of so many things, considering many factors. 

Architecture is an art that represents the people's lifestyle and works optimally based on the location it is practiced in. A design uniformity or let me say a DOMINANT WESTERN OR EUROCENTRIC PEDAGOGY OR SCHOOL OF THOUGHT DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD AND DOESN'T CONSIDER EQUITY AND JUSTICE.

I believe architecture should be location specific to portray not only an ethnic group or location way of life, but also to make the whole process Green and Sustainable by using the local materials found in that local. Thus, to make change architecture to serve a more just built environment, a whole shift should be adopted to consider the profession in these 5 lenses developed by the Community Planning and Design Initiative Africa founded by Nmadili Okwumabua. These 5 pillars of Afrocentric Architecture surprisingly applies to any other Architecture all over the world, but in this instance, it considers every person's peculiarity. They have been perfected in the works of Arc. Chibuzo Ohaneje, Arc. Umar Farouk Umar, Arc. Fawaz Adelaja, Arc. Ikechukwu John Godspower, Arc. Amina Mamko, Arc. Aisha Aminu and a whole lot that have been moulded by the organisation. The 5 Plilars are:

1. Aesthetics and Form

2. Materials and Sustainability

3. Culture and Lifestyle

4. Process and Cost (and/or Community Engagement)

5. Spirituality and Philosophy.

These elements vary a lot even within people in a community, and is the perfect guide to an Architecture that consider people holistically without imposition of a specific school of thought to a zone, creating more damage that it is building user-friendly communities. African Architecture for instance has been almost buried all these years, in favour of an architecture that is alien to the continent, providing more user gaps than it is serving it's people, whereas it's traditional architecture was so rich and fitted the every day use of our ancestors 

The TIME TO ACT IS NOW!’

 Chibuzo Ohaneje is a Nigerian licensed architect with a penchant for Afrocentrism rooted in African belief systems. He is a graduate of the Federal University of Technology, Yola and the University of Uyo, where he received his bachelors and master’s degrees in architecture. In 2019 he achieved full class status in ARCON - Architects Registration Council of Nigeria, and in 2021 was inducted as a full member of the Nigerian Institute of Architects.

Trained in architecture from an all-Western pedagogy, he connected the dots back to his cultural roots in 2020, during a full immersive internship with CPDI Africa – Community Planning and Design Initiative Africa.  He is fully bilingual as he has both French and English certificates to prove his fluency in both languages.

Architect Ohaneje’s love for both art and architecture manifested from his earliest days as a young scholar, earning him winning positions in arts, graphics, and design competitions. It was his excellence in mathematics and physics that served as a catalyst for his interest in architecture, the latter being a combination of the arts and sciences. Observing architecture as both a creative and problem-solving tool, he applies its functional, material and technical elements to transform bare land in into sustainable built environments.

He worked with FOVAK Consultants from 2008 to 2015 and was part of the design and supervision team of the Ibom e-Library, one of the 3 Electronic libraries in the world. He gathered experience in all aspects of predesign, design as well as post design services up to the production of As-built drawings. Being part of the Consulting team on the project and having extensively worked on it gives him an edge in the area of Project Management.

Enrique Mora

Enrique is an Ecuadorian Architect. He holds a Master in Architecture and Criticism. Also has a master degree in Advanced Architectural Design from the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. He currently works as a professor at Universidad Católica de Guayaquil. Where he is a founder member of the Social Housing Laboratory in Guayaquil. His research interests and his work as investigator has been focused on informal settlements, incremental housing and participatory design processes.

Enrique leads his architecture practice since 2009. His project Casa Convento has been distinguished as Awarded Work at the 10th Ibero American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism in Sao Paulo in 2016. First national and international Prize at the XIX Pan American Architecture Biennial of Quito in 2014. He has been a guest speaker and teacher at several national and international workshops and his work has been published in different architecture magazines.

Francesco Mancini

Associate Professor Francesco Mancini is an Italian registered Architect serving at Curtin University. As Deputy head of the School of Design and the Built Environment. Francesco holds a PhD and a post-doc in Architecture. He is the principal investigator in research projects concerning housing and urban sustainability and has published on urban transformations, morphology and building typology.

Francesco strengthened his scholarship on the impact of collaborative learning in Architectural Design and Education through a record of teaching grants and awards, publications in the field and presentations at international conferences.

Francesco is a member of the Australian Architecture Accreditation Review Panel, the Board of Architects of Western Australia and Advance HE fellow.

James Delaney

The architects and designers of today grew up playing with LEGO and wooden blocks, and I have no doubt that many of tomorrow’s creators will have experienced Minecraft in their childhood. Block By Block is not only engaging youth and improving public spaces, but also inspiring the next generation of creators in communities around the world.”

James is the founder and Managing Director of BlockWorks, a collective of designers, artists, and developers from around the world with a shared passion for Minecraft. BlockWorks has grown from an informal group to a global design studio that has pioneered the use of Minecraft as a design tool with film studios, marketing firms, and educational institutions. In 2016, James published Beautiful Minecraft, a compendium of stunning artworks built in the game by the BlockWorks team.

James joined the Block by Block Board in 2019, bringing his architectural background and understanding of the Minecraft community to help Block by Block connect with this unique global network of creators and players. He has participated in Block by Block projects in Surabaya and Addis Ababa and helped prepare the Minecraft assets for workshops in Beirut and a presentation at Habitat III in Quito. He also serves on the Communications Committee.

James graduated with a degree in Architecture from Cambridge University and pursues a particular interest in the correlation between architecture and video games. He is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and has given talks at the International Spatial Development Forum, The Bartlett School of Architecture, and the British Library, among others. James enjoys traveling; when in new cities he looks for hidden public spaces to explore.

Douglas MacLeod

‘Design is the means by which people interact with their physical environment and each other. As virtual worlds become more important, design will only play a larger role in all our lives.

Architecture must change to become more inclusive and diverse. We need to remove systemic barriers to architectural education and licensing. In particular we need to create a new curriculum which moves beyond the traditional western canon to include new perspectives and we need to make our education system more flexible and accommodating to all students.

The profession is not asserting itself in creating a more just built environment. Architecture is deteriorating into decoration for developers. Architects must resist developments which are not sustainable; which don’t bring value to existing community; and which segregate people along racial and/or economic lines.

Architecture defines the framework and structure of our society and as such it can be socially just or, conversely, it can enforce existing barriers to social justice’.

Dr. Douglas MacLeod is the Chair of the RAIC Centre for Architecture at Athabasca University – Canada’s first online architecture program. The Centre currently serves over 600 students in 16 countries and continues to enhance the quality of architectural education in Canada.

MacLeod is a registered architect, a contributing editor to Canadian Architect Magazine and the former Executive Director of the Canadian Design Research Network. He is also a former Associate with Barton Myers Associates, Los Angeles.

He led pioneering work in virtual reality at the Banff Centre and is recognized as an expert in e-learning, sustainable design and virtual design. He has degrees in Architecture, Computer Science and Environmental Design and has taught at universities and colleges throughout North America.

Veronica Madonna

‘Architecture and the built environment have a multi-faceted impact on our social, economic, environmental, and cultural systems. As architects, we have a great responsibility to create buildings rooted in our communities shared values. As we face many challenges today, we must work towards design principles rooted in a holistic philosophy that gives more than they take and that is not only physically resilient but also healthy and equitable for the people and communities they serve’.

Veronica Madonna is an Assistant Professor at the RAIC Centre for Architecture at Athabasca University, and an award-winning architect with nearly twenty years of professional experience leading innovative and sustainable building designs across Canada. At the center of her practice and research are considerations for regenerative design, mass timber advancements, and equity-centred training and education.

Before establishing Studio VMA, Veronica worked as a Principal for Moriyama & Teshima Architects, a leading architectural firm in Canada. Veronica led the ground-breaking project The Arbour at George Brown College - a Tall Wood Building, designed to Net-Zero Emissions standards. Veronica was also the Principal-In-Charge of Design on the Honey Bee Research Centre, a mass timber, low carbon building dedicated to the education and research of honey bees' health and wellness. The award-winning design is inspired by the critical role that honey bees have in food production's overall stability on a mass agricultural scale and, as a result, includes an expansive pollinating and editable roofscape that becomes part of the centre's learning experience. Her work has been published in various journals and has won multiple awards, both locally and internationally. 

In 2020, Veronica Madonna was recognized for her outstanding contributions to the field of architecture and was awarded a Fellowship from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Henry Tsang

Henry Tsang is an architect and assistant professor at the RAIC Centre for Architecture at Athabasca University. His design, teaching and research work explores the intersections between sustainability, health, and culture in the built environment.   

He is currently working on several sustainable and regenerative projects, which include the design of a new zero-carbon building for the Calgary Japanese Community Centre, the development of an AI-integrated micro-credential course on energy-efficient buildings, and research in sustainable rural and regenerative communities in Canada. Many of his research papers are published in scholarly journals, and he has also been invited to speak at international conferences, including UNEP, TEDx, the Bow Valley Sustainable Building Summit, as well as universities worldwide. He has also held a professorship at Keimyung University in South Korea, and the position of director of the Sustainable Architecture Technology Program at Herzing College. As one of the founding members and former Vice-President of the Living Building Challenge Montreal Collaborative, he has been influential in the advocacy and development of LBC in Canada.   

Tsang is a certified LEED Green Associate and WELL AP, and he has practiced professionally with design firms in Montreal and Tokyo. He completed his B.Sc.Arch., M.Arch. at McGill University, and Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo as a Monbukagakusho Scholar in Japan. He is the recipient of the 2015 Educator of the Year Award by the National Association of Career Colleges, 2020 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence, and two 2021 Construction Canada Emerging Leader Awards.

Trevor Butler

Trevor is qualified as an Architectural Engineer (Mechanical & Civil) with over 28 years of experience in the AEC industry - leading the delivery of projects with a strong focus on sustainable and regenerative design. He takes a whole systems approach to design and development to ensure that fully integrated solutions are achieved.

His creative and detailed approach to design and analysis enables the performance of innovative engineering solutions to be proven as a significant step towards net-zero energy and regenerative buildings.

Trevor has worked with the RAIC Centre for Architecture at Athabasca University since 2014. He has been full-time faculty since November 2019, where he provides specialist knowledge on green buildings to the student body.