July2025 // Ozayr and Zannah Matson (University of Colorado Boulder) co-presented a session on Journals, Scholarship and Publishing at the Built Environment Dean’s Advancing Change Summer Fellowship Program at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. An enormous thank you to Thaïsa Way, for the invitation to join this wonderful conversation with the remarkable 4th cohort of Fellows.
May2025 // Ozayr’s poem, “the Little Things,” originally featured in the journal Janus Unbound (Vol 3, No. 2, 2024, Memorial University) was selected for inclusion in the 2026 volume of Best Canadian Poetry (Biblioasis Press), edited by Mary Dalton.
March2025 // Ozayr and colleage, Professor Zachary Colbert, exhibited their sabbatical research projects at Carleton University’s Lightroom Gallery, in a shared exhibition titled “Field Notes from Elsewhere.” The exhibition explored how architectural media can generate new understandings of place. Professor Colbert’s work (“The Law of the River and its Architectures”) reinterprets iconic landscapes to reveal the entangled processes of imperial property formation, Indigenous dispossession, and environmental inequity. Architecture and urbanism, as their primary expressions, are deeply implicated in these transformations. Through architectural drawings, photographs, video, archival material, and personal fieldwork, Ozayr’s work (“An Argument for Unknowing I and II) reexamines the analytique—a drawing problem rooted in the Beaux-Arts method—seeking to destabilize its conventions and open new ways of seeing and representing place as an anticolonial practice. Thank you to the School of Architecture and Urbanism for hosting the work, and to the brilliant staff of the Digifab lab (Steve, Luis and Brant) for their help in preparing materials, and to Kyle Bustin for his careful installation of the work.
December2024 // Thank you to Jerry Chow, Nicholas Frayne as co-editors, and the Scroope team, for the invitation to contribute to Volume 33’s issues, titled “Disenclosure,” through the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. Ozayr’s essay – titled “Apostrophe Ess: Meditations on Writing and Editing During a Genocide,” – was part of a series of invited texts by a wonderful group of scholars such as Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Samia Henni, Yasmeen Lari, Chris Cornelius, Caroline Collins and K. Wayne Yang, Ajay Manthripragada, Christian Nakarado, Annette Spiro, Flora Samuel, Ghania Khan and many others. The issue is open access here.
November2024 // Ozayr was one of the keynote speakers for the AIA-Minnesota 2024 Convention, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with a talk titled: “Form Follows Pipelines: The (continued) Weaponization of Architecture.” Thank you to Daniel Green AIA, Deanna Christiansen Hon. AIA, and Madelyn Sundberg, AIA, for the invitation to participate.
October2024 // Ozayr participated in Professor Nora Akawi’s “Directions and Methods in Critical Studies in Architecture,” seminar at The Cooper Union, in conversation with students along with presentation on writing as a spatial and critical practice titled, “But First, a Bird.” An enormous thank you to Professor Akawi, and to her phenomenal students, for the time and space to be dialogue with all of you!
September2024 // Ozayr presnted a lecture and joined a panel discussion at the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture, with Chani Haouzi (Founder and Principal of Architecture for Public Benefit) , and Chiyi Tam (Toronto Chinatown Land Trust), themed around a topic of Home/Migration, for the inaugural lecture of the the School’s annual Arriscraft Lecture Series. Thank you to Professor Linda Zhang for the invitation to join this conversation. Ozayr also served as an M.Arch thesis external examiner (thank you for the invite to be part of that conversation, Professor Lola Sheppard), and a guest critic for a student of Professor Tara Bissett.
September2024 // Ozayr participated in a public event at Temple University’s Tyler School of Architecture in Philadelphia, titled “Spatial Practice Within Contested Geographies,” with Professor Nora Akawi (The Cooper Union), and Professor Rania Ghosn (MIT). Ozayr’s presentation was titled “Delta Airlines Stole My Bags,” and was a reflection on the (Im)possiblities of writing during a genocide. Thank you to Professor Jeffrey Nesbitt and Professor Taryn Mudge (Temple University) as our hosts, and to Professor Billly Fleming (Penn) and Ivonne Santoyo-Orozco (Bard College) for the organizing and moderating!
September2024 // Ozayr participated in an invited panel discussion for Professor Franca Trubiano’s PhD class at the Weitzman School of Design in Philadelphia, on Publishing and the Journal of Architectural Education, with co-presenters McLain Clutter (University of Michigan, and Executive Editor of the JAE), Professor Zannah Matson (University of Colorado-Boulder, and JAE board member), and Professor Caitlin Blanchfield (Princeton University and JAE Board Member).
September2024 // Ozayr gave a presentation to Professor Jennifer Newsom’s design studio (Material Cultures of Land and Liberation) at Cornell University. His talk was titled: A Case for Countering, and focuses on ideas and possibilities for architectural drawing as a practice of critical re-positioning. Thank you, Professor Newsom, for the invitation (it was great!).
August2024 // Ozayr will travel to Washington DC, as an invited participant for Dumbarton Oaks’ hosting of the Dean’s Equity and Inclusion Initiative Summer Fellowship program. Thank you to Professor Thaïsa Way, for the very kind invitation to be part of these conversations.
July2024 // Ozayr’s official promotion to Full Professor kicks in on the 1st of July. Thank you to the external examiners for their careful, thoughtful, and generous review of the promotion dossier!
June2024 // Ozayr delivered a lecture titled “Enacted Otherwise” at the Lebanese American University’s School of Architecture and Design, in Beirut. Enormous thanks to the School’s Dean, Dr. Elie Haddad, staff and faculty for their generous welcome and hosting in Lebanon.
May2024 // Ozayr delivered a lecture titled “A Positional Cartography” at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Architecture + Urban Planning and the Peck School of the Arts.
April2024 // Ozayr delivered a lecture at the University of Virginia’s 2024 Howland Symposium, presented by the A-School. His lecture was titled “My God. It’s Full of Stars and Earth: An Incomplete Theory of Particulate Worlds in 3 parts.” Ozayr was 1 of 2 invited lectures – with Professor Danika Cooper from Berkeley – who were also in conversation with faculty and students on the theme of the symposium, “Particulate Matters.” An enormous thank you to Professor Erin Putalik for the invitation to join the symposium, and for the generous hosting.
March2024 // Ozayr’s text “The Little Things,” will be be included as invited piece of poetry in an upcoming issue of Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies, published by Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. A huge thank you to Dr. Andreae Callanan, the poetry editor of Janus Unbound, for the very genous invitation to contribute the work. It’s an enormous honor to have this work in the issue – particularly when associate editors include, among others, Tahrir Hamdi and Ilan Pappé.
March2024 // Ozayr has been invited to contribute a text to the upcoming issue of the student journal, Scroope 33 (edited by Jerry Chow and Nicholas Frayne) at the University of Cambridge. The issue theme takes a prompt from Achille Mbembe’s notion of “Disenclosure,” and Ozayr’s essay is a reflection on the personal, social and spatial implications of writing during a genocide.
March2024 // Ozayr participated in the JAE (Journal of Architectural Education) Theme Editors Forum – a special conference session at the ACSA Conference in Vancouver – with upcoming issue theme editors Billy Fleming (University of Pennsylvania), who will be guest editing, with Rania Ghosn from MIT, the issue titled “Worlding. Energy. Transitions”, and Neeraj Bhatia (CCA, San Francisco) + Zannah Matson (UC-Boulder) + Brittany Utting (Rice Unviersity), who will be guest editing (with Jane Mah Hutton from the University of Waterloo), the next issue titled “Architecture Beyond Extraction.”
February2024 // Ozayr (as Associate Editor of Design for JAE), participated in a talk on academic publishing with Professor Swati Chattopadhyay (University of California Santa Barbara), and Professor Thaïsa Way (Harvard University) for the current cohort of Fellows for the Dean’s Equity and Inclusivity Initiative at Dumbarton Oaks.
February2024 // Ozayr presented a talk at SUNY University at Buffalo’s “Foundation of Design Justice,” class (taught by Professor Yutaka Sho from Syracuse, and Professor Samendy Brice from UB), titled “Vitrines and Violences: The Colonial Footprints of Museums.”
January 2024 // Ozayr presented a talk titled “______Enacted Otherwise,” at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, for the “Talks on Urbanism” series through the Department of Urban Planning and Design.
December 2023 // Ozayr published an essay, titled “Hit and Run, a Fable of Gallows, Gardens and Grief,” for issue #65 (December) of The Avery Review – an online journal dedicated to thinking about books, buildings and other architectural media The Avery Review is a project of the Office of Publications at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation.
October 2023 // Ozayr was invited to deliver the Roetzel Family Lecture in Religious Studies at the University of Minnesota. His lecture, on the spatial implications of violence, was titled “The Urban Afterlives of Religion, History and Language.
September 2023 // Ozayr will be delivering a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design, on September 27th, as part of their lecture series. More information can he found here.
September 2023 // Ozayr’s contributed a short text to the new book, “Media Provocations on Architecture,” published by Set Margins’ Press (Amsterdam) and co-edited by Ian Callendar and Annie Dell’Aria. An extension of the 2023 Media Architecture Biennale, the invited piece reflects on HiLo/YOW+’s shortlisted proposal for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. It was lovely to represent the work of a brilliant team – including Blair Satterfield and Thena Tak (UBC), Piper Bernbaum and Suzy Harris-Brandts (Carleton) and Jon Ackerley and Lee Patola UBC). The book can be found here.
September 2023 // Ozayr will be teaching at McGill University’s Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture this fall, as a course lecturer for the ARCH 685 – Contemporary Theory 2.
August 2023 // Ozayr (as Associate Editor of Design for the Journal of Architectural Education) participated in the Mellon funded Dean’s Equity & Inclusion Initiative panel discussion and Q&A , on publishing, with colleagues Nancy Levinson (Editor, Places Journal) and Swathi Chattopadhyay (Founding Editor of Platform + editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians – JSAH) and Dr. Thaïsa Way at Dumbarton Oaks, and their 2023 Summer Institute.
June 2023 // The HiLo/YOW+ collaborative (Piper Bernbaum, Suzy Harris-Brandts, Ozayr Saloojee, Blair Satterfield and Thena Tak) authored a paper titled “Speculations on the Power of Redefined Typologies,” which Professor Harris-Brandts presented at the 2023 Weaving Worlds Conference at T.U Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. Thank you Suzy for representing the team!
June 2023 // Ozayr, and colleague Professor Piper Bernbaum, authored a paper titled “Minimum Requirements,” which Professor Bernbaum presented at the 2023 ACSA/EAAE Teacher’s Conference (“Educating the Cosmopolitan Architect,” in Reykjavik, Iceland.
June 2023 // Ozayr delivered one of the keynote lectures at the 2023 Media Architecture Biennale in Toronto, Canada. A week-long event (both online and in-person), MAB23 aims to offer a platform for communities of research and practice concerned with media and the built environment, bringing together students, academics, and professionals from architecture, art, design, urban planning, media and communication, urban informatics, and public policy. For more information, see here.
May/June 2023 // Ozayr taught a 3 week workshop, titled “Speculative Landscapes,” with Professor Vincent Debritto from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Landscape Architecture, in Istanbul, Türkiye. The workshop focused on ways of analyzing and reading Istanbul’s urban environments through drawing. The program included an introductory workshop, led by Istanbul Technical University’s Dr. Bihter Almaç, and included lectures and field visits by Murat Germen (Sabanci University), Dr. Zafer Yenal (Boğaziçi University), Murat and Alexis Şanal, Dr. Carole Levesque (Université Quebec à Montréal – Center de Design), Serkan Taycan (Istanbul / Ottawa) and more. MLA and M.Arch Students from ITÜ, Carleton and the University of Minnesota participated – and a huge thanks to all those who participated and supported the program.
March 2023 // The HiLo/YOW+ collaborative (Piper Bernbaum, Suzy Harris-Brandts, Ozayr Saloojee, Blair Satterfield and Thena Tak) authored a paper and presentation on our shortlisted Venice Biennale project, titled “-Post-,” which Ozayr and Thena presented at the CA2RE Conference at the Aarhus School of Architecture.
January 2023 // Ozayr delivered a paper at the 2023 Colonial/Postcolonial Landscapes Conference, held at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, titled “Reefs, Seams, Divides, Repairs: Future Archeologies of Johannesburg.”
September 2022 // Ozayr presented a paper titled “An Argument of Unknowing” at the Drawing Conversations Conference at the École de Design at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Thank you to Carole Levesque and Thomas-Bernard Kenniff, for all the organization and hosting!
August 2022 // Ozayr (as Associate Editor of Design for the Journal of Architectural Education) participated in a discussion and Q&A with colleagues Nancy Levinson (Editor, Places Journal) and Swathi Chattopadhyay (Founding Editor of Platform + editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians – JSAH) and Dr. Thaïsa Way at Dumbarton Oaks.
July 2022 // Ozayr participated in the “Collectivized Pedagogies” conversation at the Architecture Lobby NY’s “Architecture Beyond Capitalism School.” Many thanks to Qulian Riano for the invitation to join that discussion!
June 2022 // Ozayr’s chapter “Sacred Space in 19th Century Cape Town: Mosque, City, Landscape and a Radical Empiricism of the Spatial,” was published in the Oxford Handbook on Sacred Space, edited by Dr. Jeanne Kilde (London: Oxford, 2022). Thank you Jeanne, for the wonderful invitation to participate in this project.
June 2022 // One of Ozayr’s drawings – of the Réal Alcazar in Seville – was a Finalist in the “Hand Drawing” Category at the Kenneth Roberts Memorial Drawing Competition. You can see winners and finalists here
May 2022 // Ozayr participated in three presentations at the Association for Collegiate Schools of Architecture’s Annual Meeting. He presented a paper focusing on his 2020 and 2021 graduate design studio work “Deep Dust/The Killing Dark” at a session titled Design: Critical Positions, Design in Situ. He also presented his winning Creative Achievement project (“Worthy Curricula”) that described the Graduate Options studios at the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism in the Pedagogy: Alternative Educational Modalities session. He also took part in a panel discussion on the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE). He joined Nora Wendl (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque), David Theodore (McGill University), Yoonjee Koh (Boston Architectural College), Cruz Garcia (Iowa State University), and Igor Marjanovic (Rice University) for a conversation about the nature of a post-pandemic journal.
April 2022 // Ozayr and Jamie Vanucchi (Cornell University) were awarded a Graham Foundation for the Arts Grant, for their upcoming book project “Design Research for Uncertain Futures.” You can see information about the project here.
April 2022 // Ozayr was an invited M.Arch thesis reviewer at the Rhode Island School of Design (invited by Professor Jess Myers); at the Royal College of Art in London (invited by Professor Elise Hunchuck), and at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning (invited by Professor Emmanuel Admassu)
March 2022 // Ozayr served as a co-moderator (with Jaliya Fonseka) and respondent, in the “Praxes of Care: Action,” lecture at Waterloo University’s School of Architecture, with Jelisa Blumberg and Curry Hackett, from Dark Matter University.
January 2022 // Ozayr was part of the HiLo/YOW+ Collective, shortlisted to curate Canada’s contribution to the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. HiLo/YOW+ is a collaborative stretched across Turtle Island and links colleagues at UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and Carleton University’s School of Architecture and Urbanism. We are: Blair Satterfield and Thena Tak (HiLo) and Suzy Harris-Brandts, Piper Bernbaum and Ozayr Saloojee (Carleton University). Congratulations to the winning team – Architects Against Housing Alienation! We’re rooting for you in La Serenessima, next year.
January 2022 // Ozayr is part of a cross-Canada team that was awarded a SSHRC Connection Grant to host a series of workshops and symposium titled “Towards Equity in Architecture.” The team includes Carleton faculty: Piper Bernbaum, Natalia Escobar Castrillon, Anne Bordeleau (Waterloo) and Lisa Landrum (Manitoba). Lisa is also the Principal Investigator of the grant.
January 2022 // Ozayr’s submission “Worthy Curricula” was awarded one of the 2022 ACSA Creative Achievement Awards. You can see more about the award, and other winners, here.
December 2021 // Ozayr participated in M.Arch Thesis Reviews at McGill University. Thank you Professor Theodora Vardouli, Andrew King and David Theodore, for the invitation to join these conversations.
November 2021 // Ozayr participated in M.Arch reviews at the University of Colorado-Denver and at the Ohio State University. Thank you Professor Marc Swackhamer (UC-Denver) and Professor Karen Lewis (OSU) for the opportunity to join your studio discussions!
October 2021 // Ozayr participated in studio reviews at City College of New York (The Spitzer School of Architecture), at the University of Miami Florida, and at the University of British Columbia. Thank you Professor Jelissa Blumberg (CUNY), Professor Shawna Meyer (UM-Florida) and Professor Thena Tak (UBC) for the generous invitations!
September 2021 // Ozayr, Nora Wendl (University of New Mexico) and Michael Monto (ACSA) were awarded a Graham Foundation grant, for the JAE Fellows project. The Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) recognizes the need for the structural support of Black, Native/Indigenous, and other people of color in architectural discourse. The creation of four yearlong Fellowships supports BIPOC writers and designers, who may work as individuals or as part of a collective and who do not have full-time affiliation with a university. Fellows propose the scope of their work and are selected by a jury of peers. JAE encourages the expansion of architectural discourse by Fellows and offers editorial and design support for their engagement with nontraditional presentation methods, including primarily visual work, collectively authored work, documentary work, and other writing genres. You can see more about the first cohort of JAE Fellows here, and information about the award here.
July 2021 // Ozayr participated as a respondent for a workshop with the Disembodied Territories project (directed by Dr. Menna Agha from Carleton University, and Dr. Sara Salem from the London School of Economics). Fun fact – the cover image for the DT website splash-page is the work of Daniel Effah – a recent graduate of Carleton University’s School of Architecture and Urbanism. Daniel’s thesis was co-advised by Ozayr and Professor Menna Agha. You can find a copy of Daniel’s thesis here.
May 2021 // Ozayr joined undergraduate reviews at the University of Virginia’s Architecture school for end-of-term conversations. Thank you Professor John Comazzi, for the invitation and the very generous hosting!
April 2021 // Ozayr participated in M.Arch Thesis reviews at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, and for M.Arch studio reviews at the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you Professor Cyrus Peñarroyo (Michigan) and Professor Andrew Lucia (Penn) for the chance you join you and your students and colleagues in conversation.
December 2020 // Ozayr’s Winter 2020 M.Arch Design Studio, “Deep Dust / The Killing Dark,” on labor, extraction and landscape transformation in Johannesburg’s mining landscapes was awarded one of the 2020 Architect Magazine Studio prizes, alongside other winners from Cornell University, City College of New York, Columbia, Cal-Poly and UVA. More information can be found here.
December 2020 // Ozayr participated in M.Arch design reviews at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and at the California College of the Arts. Thank you Professor Jennifer Newsom (GSD) and Professor Janette Kim (CCA) for the generous invitation!
November 2020 // Ozayr and Jennifer Newsom (Dream the Combine / Cornell University) were featured in conversation on Yale University School of Architecture’s Paprika! podcast, to talk about ethical practice in architecture, designing with empathy, kindness and generosity and more. Thank you Paprika! crew for this lovely opportunity to be in conversation with all of you.
September, October + November, 2020 // Ozayr presented some ongoing drawing research, titled “An Argument for Unknowing” at the University of Minnesota in September (Professor Daniela Sandler); the University of Pennsylvania, in October (Professor Sean Burkholder) and the University of Denver-Colorado in November (Professor Marc Swackhamer). Thank you to these wonderful colleagues for their invitations to join their classes.
May 2020 // Ozayr participated in a roundtable discussion with Karen Lutsky (Minnesota) and Sean Burkholder (The University of Pennsylvania) on the Great Lakes at the University of Minnesota’s “Learning from the La
April 2020 // Ozayr gave a lecture titled “Pathogens: Pathways + Portals: Ethical Imaginaries and Worlds Beyond Fomite Normals” at Cornell University’s Department of Landscape Architecture. Thank you Professor Jamie Vanucchi for the invitation to join your students!
March 2020 // Ozayr was invited to lead a 10 day drawing workshop with graduate students in Landscape Architecture from the University of Minnesota. Titled “Hack/Splice,” this workshop explored drawing in situ in a field tour across Andalusia – at sites in Cordoba, Granada and Seville. Thank you to Professor Vince Debritto for this incredible opportunity, and to a brilliant and engaged group of students, too.
March 2020 // As part of an NSF grant through SESYNC, Ozayr and colleagues Dr. Zoe Todd (Carleton), Karen Lutsky (Landscape Architecture, University of Minnesota), Émélie Desrochers-Turgeon (PhD Candidate, Architecture, Carleton University), Bill Snow (Stony Nakoda Nation, Alberta), and Janelle Baker (Athabasca University)
Ozayr Saloojee 