Part-Time Instructors
At DAS, our part-time instructors are leaders in the architecture, building science and construction project management professions. They run active practices, consultancies and organizations, and are dedicated to providing you with an immersive, industry-relevant and leading-edge education.
Dr. Maziar Asefi, MArch, PhD, MRAIC, PMP
Asefi has over 17 years of experience in teaching design studios, transformable and interactive architecture, and advanced structures. He has authored seven books and has registered three patents in the field of transformable and kinetic architecture.
Reza Assasi, Ph.D., M.Arch2, M.Arch, OAA
Reza holds a PhD in Architecture History and Theory from McGill University and is a licensed architect in Ontario. He brings over two decades of experience in architectural practice and teaching, with expertise spanning architectural history, theory, design, practice, and architectural technology.
Megan Cassidy, OAA
As both a director at Casson Hardware and an architectural practitioner, Megan Cassidy is deeply committed to both the urban scale and the detailed intricacies of design objects. Megan is active in the local design community, contributing as an educator, mentor, and visiting guest critic at design schools throughout Canada. She is a registered architect in Ontario.
Branislav Folic, MArch, PhD.
Branislav has nearly 20 years of experience integrating education, research, and practice. As co-founder of Folic Architects, he led diverse teams on residential and commercial projects in Belgrade, focusing on context, sustainability, and resilience. Now based in Ontario, he is collaborating to address the missing middle housing issue, drawing on his European experience.
Noheir Elgendy, MSc, PhD
Elgendy is an architect with 17 years of experience teaching architecture and urban design. Her areas of expertise include sustainable design, urban regeneration and participatory planning. Her research focuses on urban justice, forced migration and inclusive urban policies.
Julie Ourceau
Ourceau is an architectural designer, a landscape architectural intern, and part of the PLANT Architect Inc. studio. Her areas of expertise include institutional architecture, urban sustainable design, public realm landscape projects, and visual arts explorations. She has been teaching at TMU since 2008.
Robert Coelho, BTech, MArch, LEED AP, MRAIC
Coelho’s area of expertise is in cohousing and multi-unit, mixed-use design. He is a principal associate at Edward Wojs Architect.
Michelle Grant, BSc, BArch, MArch, OAA, LEED BD+C
Grant is a partner at simonjames. Her design interests focus on phenomenology and the perceptual experience of built form.
Javeriya Hasan, PhD
Dr. Javeriya Hasan's educational background spans the thematic areas of building science, building envelope assessments, civil and structural engineering. Her work in the industry involves investigations relating to building envelope and structural failures.
Omar Ha-Redeye, PhD
Omar Ha-Redeye is an experienced lawyer who has worked in the not-for-profit, private, and public sectors. He has a wide range of corporate, litigation, and advisory experiences, and has taught at TMU for over a decades.
Stanislav Jurković, BES, MArch, OAA, MRAIC
Jurković is a principal at uoai, a multi-disciplinary practice with an emphasis on architectural design and public art projects.
Joanne Lam, BES, MArch, OAA, LEED AP
Lam is a founding partner of Picnic Design, a practice that ranges from interiors to architecture to master planning. She has a particular interest in mixed-use, multi-unit co-living projects.
Ted Landrum, MArch2, BArch, BSc (EnvDesign)
Ted Landrum has taught architecture since 2006, following many years professional architectural experience in New York City, Montréal and Ottawa. Ted has taught design studios at all levels, plus courses on lighting, masonry, drawing and theory. He is a frequent guest critic and widely published "Archi-Poet".
Pierre-Alexandre Le Lay, BSc, BArch, MArch, OAA
Le Lay is an architect with RAW Design. His work focuses on the design of urban, mixed-use developments and public art installations.
Christine Leu, BES, MArch, OAA, MRAIC
Leu is an architect, educator, and founding partner of LeuWebb Projects, a creative endeavour that enriches public realms.
Scott Sørli, BASc, BArch, MArchSci, MRAIC
Sørli’s transdisciplinary practice concerns itself with the moments when form and matter engage the political and economic forces that produce the city.
Garth Norbraten
Norbraten has been a practicing architect since the 1990s, with experience in residential, cultural, industrial and institutional projects. His interests include the fit of the new with the existing, and the architecture of Japan, Finland and Sweden.
garth.norbraten@torontomu.ca
Ivan Martinovic, Dipl. Eng, Arch, OAA, FRAIC
Martinovic is a principal of Archdesign Architects. His expertise in practice is in the areas of contemporary residential design, production of contract documents and contract administration. His teaching interests concern the areas of design theory, universal design and principles of resilience.
Letzai Ruiz, PhD
Dr. Letzai Ruiz is a researcher in the Building Energy and Indoor Environmental (BEIE) Lab and the Centre for the Sustainable Built Environment at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD in Construction and Architectural Technology from the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) in Spain. She has over 15 years of experience teaching and conducting research. Her areas of expertise focus on sustainability, energy efficiency in buildings, indoor environment, co-benefits of residential retrofits, and life cycle assessment of housing and neighborhood.
Vis Sankrithi, BArch, OAA, MRAIC
Sankrithi is an architect overseeing the planning, design and construction of several significant academic building and infrastructure projects at the University of Toronto. He is interested in understanding architecture in relation to broader social, political and environmental contexts.
Joey Giaimo, B.Tech (Arch.Sci), M.Arch, OAA, MRAIC, CAHP
An architect and educator, Giaimo brings more than 25 years of experience in the architecture and heritage professions, including an extensive portfolio in integrating design and heritage conservation. He founded his eponymous practice in 2015 with an approach to architecture that sources the value of existing and heritage buildings and places. The practice’s work has been published, awarded, and presented at numerous conferences, including the National Trust for Canada, Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, and the Association for Preservation Technology. At DAS, Giaimo lectures on heritage conservation, and teaches undergraduate and graduate level design studios with an emphasis on conservation and adaptive reuse.
Erik Skouris, M.Arch, OAA, MRAIC
Erik is Anishinaabe Ojibwe, member of the Michipicoten First Nation, and is registered with the Ontario Association of Architects. He is interested in Healthcare and Sustainable design solutions and believes that Indigenous peoples have an important contribution to make with respect to how we engage the natural world through art, architecture, and planning.
Recognized for his talent and versatility as a designer, Erik’s experience crosses many typologies and sectors, inclusive of healthcare, post-secondary education, urban based Indigenous not-for-profit housing providers, and chiefs and councils through their ‘on’ reserve developments.
Erik has been equally active outside of practice. He is a Member of The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Indigenous Task Force on Architecture, representing the Greater Toronto Area. The core purpose of the ITF is to foster and promote Indigenous design and architecture in Canada in rural, Métis, and Northern communities, First Nations, and urban spaces, and to advocate with and on behalf of Indigenous communities. The RAIC and the ITF strongly believe that architecture is a public-spirited profession with an important role in reconciliation – addressing injustices by giving agency back to Indigenous people.
Dr. Celeste Alvaro, PhD
Celeste Alvaro, PhD is an experimental social environmental psychologist, part time faculty in the Department of Architectural Science at Toronto Metropolitan University and founder of Methologica (external link) - a collaborative engagement, user experience, ethnography, design research and evaluation lab that is focused on the application of established quantitative and qualitative research methodologies in creative ways to capture the direct and indirect effects of the built environment on users. Her overarching aspirations are to optimize the human condition by design.
Dr. Alvaro earned her doctorate at Simon Fraser University followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Atlantic Health Promotion Research Centre. She was on faculty at Simon Fraser University, Dalhousie University, Bridgepoint Collaboratory for Research and Innovation and Toronto Metropolitan University where she created an interdisciplinary architecture and the psychology of design for wellbeing lab, secured significant research funding – leading engagement, ethnography, and the post occupancy evaluation of Bridgepoint Hospital (with Cheryl Atkinson and project architects). Celeste, and her animated cadre of field agents, have since been engaged directly by clients as well as architecture and design firms to lead this scope from visioning to design development to post occupancy across a variety of built environment contexts.
Driven by curiosity, vibrant cities, and neighbourhoods, you will find Celeste where life happens. She has published in leading peer review journals with recognition for her collaborative engagement, research, and outputs locally, nationally, and internationally. She created A Day in the Life of the SpacesTM and the Concept Mapping Field GuideTM to drive measure development – especially “fuzzy concepts”. Captivated by the intersection of creativity, artistic expression and social science, Celeste continues to develop a visual approach to representing the human x built environment interaction via collaboration with architects, artists, photographers, and videographers to Capture HappeningsTM.
Lauren Black, BSc, BAH, LLB, LLM, CIPP/C
Lauren is a lawyer with over 2 decades of experience in the areas of legal compliance including risk management, governance and contracting, as well as legal strategy and the enforcement of rights in complex disputes - with a focus on achieving effective and positive resolution. Currently, Lauren works as the General Counsel at VHA and is a member of their senior management team. In this role, she is accountable for managing the organization's legal function, privacy office and risk management program as well as helping to define and attain its strategic initiatives and broader organizational goals.
In addition to her involvement with DAS, Lauren has also acted as the supervising lawyer for numerous students in TMU’s Law Practice Program.
Kevin Stelzer, B.ES, B.Arch, OAA, MRAIC, LEED AP BD+C, BSSO, CPHD
Stelzer is a principal with ENFORM Architects. He focuses upon zero carbon design. He has worked extensively with industry leadership including the CaGBC, OBEC, WGBC, and the UN SBCI. He sits on the Waterfront Toronto Design Review Committee.
Mark Tholen, BEDS M. Arch AKNW MRAIC DGC
Next to industrial design, movie set design and event space design, Mark has extensive experience in designing large scale award-winning institutional buildings with complex, innovative structural and phenomenological significance as well as residential projects from houses, tiny homes to school bus conversions. His teaching essentially exemplifies the comprehension of traditions and historic principles with critical contemporary and future interpretations, always with a strong design-build vision from analog to digital and robotic fabrication; fundamentally combining art and science in architecture.
Fan Zhang, OAA, M.Arch, B.Eng
Zhang is an architect and the founder of AwAwDe. Her diverse portfolio includes projects ranging from single-family homes to institutional complexes. Through her experience working and living in various countries and cultures, Zhang has developed a great passion for the cross-discipline of vernacular architecture and modern social communities.