Firm Description

JA Architecture Studio is a Canadian practice based in Toronto and lead by a Iranian-Canadian duo, an architect and a landscape designe, that combines the rootedness of a local architecture firm with the broad interests of an international design studio. From small to medium sized buildings that confront detail-level building constraints to ambitious international competitions that draw upon the collective repertoire of the discipline, the trajectory of the practice is based on a method of simultaneously working at the opposing ends of the professional spectrum. Taken as a whole, the studio’s work invests in larger questions of the discipline–namely how iconographic, geometric, formal, and tectonic pursuits relate to broader contexts such as contemporary art, politics, construction, landscape, and urbanism.

By engaging in thoughtful design conversations ranging from the role of public art internationally with curators, to the wood joinery of a three legged chair with local furniture makers, and the virtues of renaturalizing urban plots with neighbours, the studio aims to investigate the core of architecture by operating at numerous points around its periphery, connecting the themes and interests within the studio with those of the world at large. This approach was not chosen for its assurance of success but as a means for investigating the merit and relevance of JA’s ideas across a wide variety of scales and contexts. JA’s work has been published widely and exhibited both nationally and internationally.’