Olivier Vallerand is an architect, historian, associate professor and head of the interior design program at the École de design de l’Université de Montréal, which he joined after a post-doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley and an early professorial career at Arizona State University. His research focuses on the relationships between personal and collective identifications and the use and design of the built environment, on heritage and the memorialization processes of marginalized populations, and on feminist and queer approaches to design pedagogy.
Olivier is currently completing research on the HIV/AIDS epidemic and its impact on design (subsidized by the Fonds de recherche du Québec), which will be the subject of an exhibition in three public spaces in Montreal in 2025-2026. He has begun a research-creation project entitled “Materializing the built history of LGBTQ communities in Quebec, projecting their future” (Fonds de recherche du Québec), and is co-researcher on “The social experience of public toilets in Ville-Marie: enjeux, affects et stratégies d’inclusion des personnes marginalisées“ (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, principal investigator: Maria Nengeh Mensah, UQÀM) and ”Des-ancrage – Des-encrage: De l’écran à la carte, queeriser l’espace par les marges” (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, principal investigator: Joëlle Rouleau). For several years, he has been developing a research-teaching collaboration with Architecture sans frontières Québec, Professor Carolyne Grimard and various Montreal community organizations working with people experiencing homelessness. With the Queer Educators in Architecture Network, Olivier is also currently preparing a special issue of Charrette magazine on queer pedagogies in architecture and design.
His book Unplanned Visitors: Queering the Ethics and Aesthetics of Domestic Space, winner of the IDEC Book Award 2021 and ASID’s Joel Polsky Prize 2022, presents the first history of the emergence of queer theory in architectural discourse. His research has also been published in the Journal of Architectural Education, Interiors: Design | Architecture | Culture, Somatechnics, Inter art actuel, The Educational Forum, The Plan, Captures: figures, theories and practices of the imaginary, RACAR, la Revue du CREMIS, Nouvelles pratiques sociales, Jeunes et société, Les politiques sociales, Genre Éducation Formation, Reflets: revue d’intervention sociale et communataire, among others, as well as in the collective works Interior Urbanism Theory Reader (Routledge), Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art: Sexuality (MIT Press), Contentious Cities: Design and the Gendered Production of Space (Routledge), Global Encyclopaedia of Women in Architecture (Bloomsbury), Queering Architecture: Methods, Practices, Spaces, Pedagogies (Bloomsbury), Dynamiques de genre : la place des femmes en architecture, urbanisme et paysage (Parenthèses), Santé LGBTI: les minorités de genre et de sexualité face aux soins (Bord de l’eau), Making Men, Making History: Canadian Masculinities across Time and Place (UBC Press) and the German Architectur Annual 2023 (Deutsches Architekturmuseum/DOM). He is a regular contributor to Canadian Architect and Dwell.
Finally, Olivier’s research in architecture and design is strongly influenced by his volunteer involvement as research coordinator at GRIS-Montréal since 2009. In this capacity, he coordinates and mentors a team of volunteers and employees who have developed recognized expertise in community-based research on the use of testimonials to demystify sexual and gender diversity, and on young people’s attitudes towards sexual and gender diversity. As principal researcher, Olivier is currently coordinating GRIS projects funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada and the Quebec government’s Fight Against Homophobia and Transphobia program.