About Lisa Rochon

Be equitable. Be light. Be magic.

Using her unique knowledge base as architecture critic and cultural commentator for The Globe and Mail, CBC Radio, Canadian Art, Architectural Record, and Metropolis Magazine, Lisa Rochon brings an expertise for architecture and knowledge of the best, most innovative players to any conversation with her clients. A team player with experience working in creative collaborations, she also leads peer reviews with respected colleagues to advance and refine design - as in the Design Committee organized for the Canadian Canoe Museum. An author of non-fiction (Key Porter) and fiction (HarperCollins), she interprets complex and creative ideas using accessible and poetic language.

About the Founder 

Lisa Rochon is a bestselling author, a city builder, architectural advisor and Founder of Citylab. Through public space initiatives, she works to revitalize neglected parts of the city and empower communities through amazing, equitable design. As design director for the $65-million Canadian Canoe Museum, she  engaged design leaders from both the indigenous and non-indigenous communities in Canada to advance and refine the museum's programming and design.

For more than a decade, as the award-winning architecture critic for The Globe and Mail newspaper, she defended and championed the cause of inspired, innovative architecture from Toronto to Medellin to Copenhagen to New York.  A public speaker and commentator on media, Lisa is the author of UP NORTH: Where Canada’s Architecture Meets the Land (2005).She has contributed numerous essays and articles for books and journals such as Alphabet City, Canadian Architect and Architectural Record (NYC). She is the two-time winner of the National Newspaper Awards and the recipient of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada's Award for Journalism.

In 2018, she joined the McEwen International Advisory Board for Laurentian University's McEwen School of Architecture. She serves as a Nominator for the International Aga Khan Award in Architecture for the 14th cycle (2017 - 2019). As design jury chair for the international competition, Winter Stations, she helped to organize the temporary pop-up reinventions of the lifeguard stands along the eastern beaches from 2015 - 2018, and during the global pandemic when the need for public art joy was high, she returned to serve on the Winter Stations jury. Lisa serves on the Fort York Precinct Advisory Committee, and previously served as a board member on the Fort York Foundation, advocating for the 43-acre urban oasis and birthplace of Toronto. In 2012, she co-founded The Friends of the Beach Parks to enhance and animate the parks along the eastern beaches in Toronto. In response to Black Lives Matter and the cries among Indigenous people to be heard, she launched a competition with fellow jury members Ginetta Peters, a landscape architect, and Sapphira Charles, a Black architect, which commissioned major wall murals within the historic Leuty Boathouse in the eastern Beaches to be painted by the celebrated artists Chief Lady Bird and Jacquie Comrie. For years she has worked to advocate for the community of Regent Park, coordinating corporate social responsibility partnerships, and leading a yoga and wellness program for women who have settled there from around the world.

Lisa holds an M.A. in Urban Design Studies from the University of Toronto.  Before that, she studied international relations at Sciences Po in Paris and modern art at L’Ecole du Louvre.  Her honours degree in journalism and French was completed at Carleton University, Ottawa.   She is a Senior Fellow at University of Toronto’s Global Cities Institute. Since 2010, her achievements have been chronicled in the Canadian WHO'S WHO.

Photography Credits (From top to bottom): Agnes Wywrot, Khristel Studios