Archives: Doctorants (doctorant)

Thesis project title: Reevaluating the Social Value of Architecture in the Public Realms through Inclusiveness and Environmental Justice

Conventional architectural practices have long been criticized for their poor consideration of users’ inclusion in the process, disregard of social dimensions, negligence of autonomy, and altogether for their inability to integrate participatory practices. Despite the introduction of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations in 2016, most professionals still focus on environmental and economic sustainability only. The main value system is currently oriented towards mere beautification and formal representations that often escape the user’s lived experience. This resistance jeopardizes the social value of architecture while bottlenecking overall sustainability. Generally, in the built environment, design value is widely accepted to be the sum of environmental, economic, and social value. We now need to question by saying ‘A whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’ While environmental value is generally measured in embodied and operational carbon or sometimes with the addition of biodiversity, there are several recognized methods for measuring economic value. Although architects often do not like to see themselves as an increment of economic gain, they create a huge amount of social value that they very often fail to record. Moreover, there are no agreed measures of social value. Until this social value is expressed in a format that can be fed into policy and procurement, it will remain ignored, leaving economic and environmental value as the sole dominant currency of built environment transactions. While the SDGs are a universal call to action, social value is a tool that is more local and individual. The definite objectives of this research are –

1. To examine the evolution of social value in contemporary design and architectural value systems
2. To analyze public architecture in diverse urban contexts, for design parameters, from inclusiveness and environmental justice approach.
3. To develop a ‘social value index’ for inclusive architecture based on the performance of design parameters.

Thesis project title: Architecture for Health: Measuring the Therapeutic Quality of Architectural Space in Hospitals

In recent years, the field of design has been producing more and more projects focused on health, healing, and well-being (Cooper and Tsekleves 2017). The therapist’s cap seems increasingly to be slipped over the head of the architect, who is the main producer of the places where we live, work, care and entertain ourselves. The general research problem is the relationship between architecture and therapeutic care. Hence our research questions: to what extent can architecture contribute to therapeutic care in hospitals? And what are the post-occupancy approaches that seek to measure the therapeutic quality of a hospital space?

The aim of this research is to highlight the best therapeutic assets of three hospital building projects in Canada, and to develop a grid for measuring the therapeutic quality of a hospital architectural space.

Firdous Nizar is a third-year PhD student investigating the quality of lived experiences in cities from the perspective of gender and safety. She has a Bachelor’s in Architecture and Urban Design from National Institute of Kozhikode, India and a Masters in Design from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

Thesis project title: Equitable Cities: Addressing Women’s Access to Public Spaces

Her research lies at the intersection of urban design, intersectional feminism and architectural quality and tries to unpack the social and structural factors that affect feeling of safety and security in urban public spaces. Her research seeks to address equitable access of women to public spaces in the city in relation to UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 Agenda and gender-sensitive urban policy. Her research explores inclusive access and rights to the city for women in Canadian metropolitan cities such as Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto by assessing urban policy and the UN SDGs, particularly Goal 5 on Gender Equality, Goal 10 on Reducing Inequalities and Goal 11 on Sustainable Cities and Communities.

Paloma Castonguay-Rufino is a doctoral student in architecture at the Université de Montréal, interested in the challenges of conservation and rehabilitation of built heritage. With a bachelor’s and master’s degree in architecture from Université de Montréal, Paloma is convinced that contemporary architecture is relevant when it engages in a dialogue of reinterpretation of what is “already there”. She completed her internship with a firm specializing in heritage conservation, where she was trained in traditional construction techniques, particularly masonry. Paloma is currently exploring various heritage-related issues as part of a thesis entitled “The rehabilitation project as support for a comparative and objective method for assessing the heritage value of industrial architecture in a Canadian context”. In this research, she postulates that some of the objectives of sustainable development are cross-cultural frameworks conducive to a better definition of industrial heritage, in the light of European theoretical and conceptual methods.

Thesis project title: The Rehabilitation Project as a Support for a Comparative Method of Objectifying the Heritage Value of Industrial Architecture in the Canadian Context

Aristofanis Soulikias is an architect and film animator.  He is a PhD student at Université de Montréal, in the Individualized Program in Architecture, under the supervision of Dr. Carmela Cucuzzella and Dr. Jean-Pierre Chupin, pursuing an interdisciplinary research-creation study with the title: Sensing the city: revealing urban realities and potentials through handmade film animation, which aims at evaluating the tactile qualities of crafting film-animation with regard to the possibilities of imagining but also perceiving the haptic and temporal nature of architecture – given the increasing presence of stop-motion techniques due to adapted digital technologies.  His research is conducted through experiments in drawn and paper-cut silhouette animation that are impressions of architectural and urban spaces as lived and “animated”.  His theoretical framework lies on studies on cinema and architecture, artisanal animation practices, and the importance of the human body in making and experiencing architecture.

He holds a B.Sc and a B.Arch from McGill University, an MA in Building Conservation from the University of York, UK, and a BFA, Major in Film Animation, from Concordia’s Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.  His graduation film, Last Dance on the Main, was selected by TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten for the year 2014.  During his initial stage of his PhD studies at Concordia University, he was the recipient of the Jorisch Family Artist Residency in Salzburg, Austria and for the academic year 2022-2023 he was named Public Scholar, assigned to promote his research and his institution to the general public through a series of public events and publications.  His research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Mohsen Rasoulivalajoozi est un étudiant en doctorat inscrit au programme individualisé de l’Université Concordia. Il mène une recherche interdisciplinaire sur “Le rôle de l’anthropologie médicale dans les projets de conception médicale et les systèmes de soins de santé”. Il a fait ses études supérieures à l’université de Téhéran et a obtenu sa maîtrise en design industriel (design médical) à l’université de Téhéran (UT) avec un mémoire intitulé “Interactive Foot Orthosis (IFO) for People with Drop Foot”. Grâce à sa licence en communication visuelle (Université des arts de Téhéran) et à sa maîtrise, il a acquis de l’expérience dans la rédaction de documents dans les domaines du design graphique et industriel. En outre, il est membre du comité consultatif de rédaction de la Cambridge Scholar Publishing et a travaillé comme chercheur dans le domaine de la conception de produits orthopédiques à l’université de technologie d’Eindhoven (TU/e). Ses intérêts de recherche comprennent la conception médicale, l’anthropologie médicale, la méthodologie de recherche en conception de produits, la communication visuelle et l’analyse visuelle en conception.

Gabriel Peña is an artist, architect and lecturer, currently pursuing a PhD in Humanities at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, at Concordia University. His research ‘After Transparency / The sensorial, and spatial affects of glass atmospheres’. His research is a re-evaluation of glass properties such as reflection and its interplay with transparency as a medium to construct atmospheres that modify the perception of the built environment.

Gabriel holds a Bachelor in Architecture from the Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León and a Masters degree in Collective Housing from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. After his masters, he has specialized into to the perceptual dimension of domestic and the built environments through his artistic practice. He has taught architecture studios at UDEM, CEDIM and UANL. Grantee from the Empresa Municipal de la Vivienda de Madrid, FONCA Young Creators / National Trust for Culture and the Arts Mexico, Arquetopia and CONACYT / National Council for Science and Technology. He has exhibited work at Museo Metropolitano de Monterrey, Jardín de las esculturas Xalapa, Galeria Conarte Monterrey, Mexico National Library, Gallery 2 CRGS, FEMSA XII art biennale and Desai Matta Gallery San Francisco.

Under the supervision of Cynthia Hammond, Marcela Torres Molano’s doctoral research focuses on the history of socially engaged art in Colombian public spaces, from the decades of internal conflict to the recent post-conflict era.

Under the supervision of Ipel Türeli, Ayca Koseoglu’s research is concerned with the spatialization of social movements in Istanbul from 1960s to 2010s. She looks into various forms of civil protests to investigate the role of public space activism practices in transforming physical space by making it come alive, or changing its meaning, function or form.

Under the supervision of Cynthia Hammond, Greg Labrosse’s research focuses on sites of informal learning and cultural production in the city of Cartagena, Colombia. Specifically, He aims to explore the ways in which these sites provide vulnerable children and youth a space for self-expression and exploration, as well as a place where they can form new narratives of their communities, which are often portrayed as violence-ridden.