Issued For Construction

Tara Fingold is the founder and principal designer of Tara Fingold Interiors (TFI Design Group), a Toronto residential design studio she established in the late 1990s. Tara grew up in the city, the daughter of an English immigrant who built his own contracting business from nothing, and she spent her childhood tagging along on his job sites, absorbing how he managed trades, clients, and a small team he treated like family.

After an ...

Greg is a partner at Patkau Architects in Vancouver, one of Canada's most internationally recognized architecture practices. Born and raised on Vancouver's North Shore, Greg came to architecture by an unconventional path: he first completed a philosophy degree, worked through a career counseling process, and only decided to pursue architecture after visiting the Seabird Island School and speaking with practitioners he found in the ...

Joel Loblaw is the founder and principal of Joel Loblaw Inc., a Toronto based landscape design and build studio launched in 2011, and a longtime friend of the show. Born in Chicago, Joel moved to Toronto with his family at age five and grew up in the city's Beaches neighbourhood, where camping trips to Algonquin Park starting at age ten rooted a lifelong connection to the outdoors, one he still returns to through backcountry canoe ...

Will is the National Director of IDS (Interior Design Show), Canada's leading design show, spanning editions in Toronto and Vancouver. Born and raised in North London, Will grew up immersed in the design world. His parents founded a corporate identity studio that grew from a handful of people to roughly 250 employees, working with clients like British Airways and Royal Mail, with offices in London, Amsterdam, and New York.

Will stud...

Sean Lawrence is a founding partner of Kohn Partnership Architects (KPA), a Toronto-based practice he established in 2002 alongside, the now retired, Harry Kohn. Born and raised in Toronto, Sean traces his interest in architecture to childhood, when his family commissioned a country home from a Toronto architect and he watched an idea move from sketch to built reality. He began his architectural studies at Carleton University befor...

Tim Ng is the founder and CEO of AdHoc Studio, one of the top rendering and visualization companies in North America, and the founder of Blackline, a leading sales and marketing CRM platform built for the new development and pre-construction industry. Born and raised in Toronto's North York neighbourhood, Tim grew up immersed in real estate. His father was among the first pre-construction condominium brokers in Toronto, drawing on ...

Elaine Molinar is a Partner and Managing Director for the Americas at Snøhetta, the international architecture, landscape, and design practice. Born in El Paso, Texas, she grew up in a household shaped by craft and problem solving. Her father, a pharmacist, was also a self taught woodworker and photographer, and her grandfather had worked in a railroad steel yard, building his own tools. Her mother taught her to sew, embroider, and...

Colette van den Thillart is an interior designer born in Orangeville, Ontario, who grew up in Mississauga. She traces her passion for design to childhood, including a bedroom she designed herself at six or seven, with grass green shag carpet, daisy wallpaper, and yellow curtains, later recreated and shared on Instagram. She began her career after a two year diploma at the International Academy in Toronto, working first for a small ...

Daniel Baumann and Vanessa Kassabian are the two leaders running Henning Larsen's New York studio, and their combined story runs from childhood living rooms all the way to construction sites around the world.

Vanessa grew up in a matriarchal household in San Antonio and Houston, patching drywall and hanging blinds long before she ever set foot in a drafting class. That class, in middle school, was the first of many steps that carrie...

Emma and Darcy are the founding principals of & Daughters, a Vancouver based architecture and interior design studio established nearly a decade ago. The two met during their first week in the Master of Architecture program at the University of British Columbia's School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, where a shared preference for desks near natural light placed them side by side in studio. They developed a close fr...

Thomas Gluck was born in New York City and grew up immersed in architecture. His father, Peter Gluck, graduated from Yale in 1962 and founded the practice now known as GLUCK+ in 1972. As a child, Tom watched his father build models out of basswood and cardboard.

His mother taught modern Japanese history at Columbia University, and the family lived in Tokyo for periods during his childhood. At sixteen, through a connection his fathe...

Sheree Stuart is the founder and principal of Sheree Stuart Design, a boutique interior design studio based in Toronto. Raised in Kilworth, a small community outside London, Ontario, Sheree began her career as a Chartered Professional Accountant with Deloitte, where she spent years working in strategy for the firm's global middle market initiative, traveling extensively across Europe, Asia, and North America. She later earned her M...

Kim Yao is a principal of Architecture Research Office, a New York City firm she joined in 1997, later becoming partner. Born in Portland, Oregon, she grew up in nearby Lake Oswego, the youngest of three children of a pediatric neurologist who immigrated from the Philippines and a nurse of Irish descent. She played soccer and basketball and rowed in college before discovering architecture at Columbia University, then earned a Maste...

Born in Toronto and the eldest of three girls, Kim grew up between an orthopaedic surgeon father and an artist mother, a pairing she credits for both her creative instinct and her exacting standards. She earned an honours degree from Queen's University, where she studied politics and wrote a thesis on peacekeeping, then spent nine months travelling and diving through New Zealand, Australia and Southeast Asia. Early roles in finance...

Christine Lolley is the principal and co-founder of Solares Architecture, a residential architecture practice in Toronto. She grew up in Puslinch Township, south of Guelph, Ontario, the daughter of a family doctor and a father who built a software company for the equipment rental industry. She has an older sister, Sarah, and a younger brother, Peter.

Christine studied architecture at the University of Waterloo, earning undergraduate...

Clarisa Llaneza is the founder and principal designer of Clarisa Llaneza Studio, a Toronto based interior design practice known for high end residential and commercial work.

Born and raised in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in a family of eight siblings, Clarisa grew up immersed in nature and creativity, spending her early years sketching, painting, and building forts on her family's property. Her mother, a trained architect, en...

Theodore Oyama, also known as Theo or Ted, is a Montreal based architect and founder of oyama, an architecture and design practice established in early 2021. Born in 1989 and raised in Montreal's West Island suburbs, Theodore studied architecture at McGill University, earning undergraduate and graduate degrees. He spent a semester on exchange in Brussels and traveled through Romania on a school scholarship, visiting the towns where...

Matt Davis, Allen Chan, and Anwar Mekhayech are the founding partners of DesignAgency, a multidisciplinary design studio based in Toronto with additional studios in Barcelona, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.

The firm's European expansion began through a chance meeting in New York between Mekhayech and private equity investor Josh Wyatt, who was launching a hospitality fund in the United Kingdom. That connection led to DesignAgency...

Philip Evans is a Principal at ERA Architects, a Toronto based heritage and adaptive reuse practice with studios across Canada. He was born in Newfoundland, descended from generations of shipbuilders from the Notre Dame Bay and Greenspond areas, and moved with his family to Ontario as a young child, eventually settling in Brampton, where he attended Mayfield Secondary School's visual arts program.

Evans studied architecture at the U...