Competition jury

Taylor Stocks (they/he) is an artist, activist, and researcher whose work sits at the intersection of gender and illness. Taylor was the Chair of the Inclusion Advisory Committee for the City of St. John's and has worked on many equity projects including current research on gender-diverse patients with inflammatory bowel disease. As a trans person with ulcerative colitis, washrooms are a key point of advocacy for Taylor and they recently released their Washroom PSA, featuring his drag king alter ego, Dr. Androbox.

Elaine Chau (she/her) joined WORKSHOP in April 2016 and became a Principal in 2023. She is involved in all stages of the design and construction process and has played a key role in a range of complex non-market housing and high-profile civic projects. Currently, she is the project architect for a Passive House retrofit to a senior’s apartment and a new 40-unit transitional housing building. Elaine is interested in bridging the gaps between design, construction, and the user experience. She cares about building spaces informed by community engagement, knowledge-based practices, and iterative thinking. She strives to create spaces that are universally accessible and gives agency to the people who use them.

Nyasha Harper-Michon is an 'Archtivist’ focused on accelerating the transition towards equitable, just, resilient, and regenerative cities and communities. Her expertise spans sustainable cities, strategic development, relationship building, and thought leadership namely as a LinkedIn Top Voice Green. She most recently served as the Director of Programs at CP Planning, a Toronto-based non-profit focused on affordable housing and equitable land use for marginalized communities.

Nyasha currently serves on the boards of 8-80 Cities and Passive House Canada, nonprofits dedicated to equitable, sustainable urban development and climate-resilient building standards, respectively. Her career also includes founding board membership with WomenMakeTheCity, advising on DEI for the City of Amsterdam, and roles at international architecture firms, like UNStudio. A speaker at events such as the World Congress of Architects Copenhagen and the Smart City Expo World Congress Barcelona, she’s also collaborating with UNESCO Green Citizens, and featured in UNESCO Courier, UN-Habitat and on the UN Forest Podcast.

Naomi Adiv (she/her) is a multi-disciplinary urbanist, with a focus on public spaces. She has published journal articles and presented widely on urban swimming and bathing; the politics of public space, and the infrastructure of play in cities. She is a member of the editorial board of the online journal, Metropolitics;; and the University of Toronto Mobilities Network. Naomi has taught urban geography, planning, and politics for over a decade at urban universities in New York City, Portland, OR, and Toronto. Currently at the University of Toronto Mississauga, she teaches courses on urban politics, and runs the political science internship program. Dr. Adiv earned her PhD in Geography in 2014 from the CUNY Graduate Center.

Christopher (he/him) is the co-founder and Creative Director of Department of Unusual Certainties (DoUC). A designer and educator with a background in urban planning and design. Chris co-founded DoUC to pursue projects that ask questions about our everyday existence and help foster curiosity in others about the world around us, manifesting over the years through work that spans: experience design, digital design, social engagement, strategy development, education and urban design. Christopher is a professor at George Brown College where he teaches across different programs at the School of Design, in subjects that vary from Strategy to Prototype design. He is also an instructor and sits on the adjudication board for the Design for Change MA program at IADT in Dun Laghoire. Christopher also holds the position of Director of Programming for HXOUSE, a globally recognized and globally focused think centre. As Director of Programming, Christopher works with the team to design and facilitate educational programming working with both private and public partners across HXOUSE’s different programming pillars.

Hannah Leyland (she/her) is a registered Architect with the Architectural Institute of British Columbia (AIBC). Hannah is a managing principal at Leyland Architecture Inc. which focuses on both single-family homes and community minded projects. Hannah holds a Masters of Architecture from the University of British Columbia, a Bachelors of Science (Quantitative and Population Health) from Simon Fraser University, and a diploma from the Design Discovery Program at Harvard University. Along side an interdisciplinary team, Hannah provided an architectural lens to the “The Safer Bathroom Toolkit”, sponsored by University of Victoria and Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. Findings were later published in The Canadian Journal of Public Health.

Reza Nik (he/they) is the founding director of SHEEEP - a licensed architect, artist, educator and a community builder based in Toronto, Canada. Reza has a background in Art History and he is an Assistant Professor in the Teaching Stream at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture where he has been teaching since 2017. Disrupting the traditional architectural processes and institutions is at the forefront of his pedagogy and practice. In 2024 he co-founded SHEEEP.school as a collectively run alternative space for the exchange of knowledge. Prior to founding SHEEEP, Reza worked with experimental practices like Coop Himmelb(l)au in Vienna & with various more traditional architectural studios in Barcelona, Buenos Aires & Toronto along with design-build projects in India and Argentina. The social impact of Architecture is something he has been investigating for over a decade. Reza is also one of the founding members of the Toronto chapter of the Architecture Lobby, an organization advocating for labor rights for architectural workers and encouraging more critical discourse within the profession.