This event is a collaboration among BEAT, the Daniels Faculty Committee on Diversity and Equity and the Graduate Architecture Landscape and Design Student Union (GALDSU). It is open to Daniels Faculty students and registration is not required.
The speakers will address the following questions:
What in your career so far has surprised you?
What do you hope to do that you haven't done yet?
What have been the greatest career challenges you have experienced?
Featuring:
Kyra Clarkson is the Principal of Kyra Clarkson Architect Inc. and co-President of MODERNest Inc.
Kyra has been practicing architecture since 1995. She founded her eponymous architecture practice in 2007. Her firm specializes in house projects both renovation and new construction. The work of the office is characterized by a clean modernism with a commitment to warmth, the importance of daylight and connections to the outdoors.
In 2011, Kyra and her husband launched MODERNest Inc., a development venture building architect-designed homes in downtown Toronto. In reaction to the typical neo-traditional homes being built in the city, they saw the need for high-quality, honest, and inspiring homes that express a modern spirit.
MODERNest Inc. has built six houses to date, and has been recognized in several publications, including Canadian Architect, The Globe and Mail, Monocle Magazine and Dwell.
Kyra holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto (B.A., 1991) and a graduate degree (M. Arch., 1995) from Yale University. She worked for ten years in New York with Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, and joined Shim-Sutcliffe Architects when she moved back to Toronto in 2005.
Beth Kapusta is a Principal of Brook McIlroy. Throughout thirty years in the design field, Beth has left a mark on Toronto’s urban landscape through her advocacy for design excellence, undertaken in her many roles as a critic, consultant, and strategic advisor. In 2013, she founded Metrolinx’s Design Excellence program as the organization’s first Chief Design Excellence Officer, charting a vision to elevate the quality and customer focus of design across the provincial agency’s transit projects. She also provided design excellence consulting to TTC and Regional Express Rail.
In addition to transit, she has provided strategic consulting for competitions and awards that have shaped the urban realm. As an architecture critic, she has written extensively on architecture, sustainability and design for publications from Huffington Post to the Globe and Mail. She began her writing career as an editor at Canadian Architect, overseeing its award-winning redesign in 1993. She received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Waterloo.
Kate Nelischer is the Assistant Dean, Academic and Outreach Programs at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. She is also a PhD Candidate in Planning at the University of Toronto, where she studies the governance and public-private partnership structures associated with the Google/Sidewalk Labs plan for Toronto's Quayside neighbourhood. Kate previously worked in urban planning and community consultation for the City of Toronto, the City of Brampton, and local firm The Planning Partnership. Kate regularly writes for a number of urban-focused publications, including Spacing, SITE, and Ground Magazine. Since 2013 she has been a Director of the National Board of YWCA Canada, the country’s oldest multi-service women’s organization.