Draft:Lisa Rochon

Lisa Rochon is a bestselling Canadian author, an award-winning architecture critic, and a city builder.

Early life and education
Rochon was born and raised in Oakville, Ontario. She attended Maple Grove Elementary School where her story writing began in Grade 2. She later moved to Toronto as a teenager.

Career
For more than a decade as the award-winning architecture critic for The Globe and Mail, Rochon defended and championed the cause of inspired, innovative architecture from Toronto to Mumbai, Copenhagen and New York. She has contributed cultural commentary in English and French to CBC Radio and Radio Canada, organized conferences such as Revell Toronto Helsinki (2010) and contributed numerous essays and articles for books and journals such as Alphabet City (MIT Press), Canadian Architect, Architectural Record (NYC), and The Brick. She taught courses about the history of architecture at the University of Otago in Dunedin from 1995 to 1997.

Following 9/11, Rochon launched a graduate seminar “Post-Crisis Scenarios” at University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

Rochon travelled across Canada to experience all of the buildings in her non-fiction book Up North, Where Canada's Architecture Meets the Land (Key Porter, 2005) that argues passionately for the significance and unique genius loci of modern Canadian architecture. She has delivered many public lectures about architecture, place vs placelessness and spoken about cities that inspire or oppress. She has spoken about her own literary fiction for the Arts and Letters Club, the Italian Cultural Institute, the Heliconian Club and in NYC following the death of urban activist Jane Jacobs. One of her career highlights was working alongside Jacobs to lead the citizen lobby to try to stop the demolition of the Ontario Place revolving outdoor amphitheatre (1971) designed by Eberhard Zeidler. Another was travelling to Dhaka, Bangladesh during an unexpected state of emergency to experience the National Assembly by Louis Kahn wandering its monumental spaces during a power black-out.

Her debut book, Tuscan Daughter (Harper Collins), was released in 2021 to critical acclaim and was translated into Italian and Serbian.

Harper Collins signed Rochon for her forthcoming novel about a monumental theft, cruelty and love set in 20th-century Paris. It is set for publication in 2026.

Between 2016 and 2019, Rochon served as chair of the international architecture selection committee and design director for the Canadian Canoe Museum.

In 2018, she joined the McEwen International Advisory Board for Canada’s newest school of architecture.

In May, 2024, she announced the Lisa Rochon Bursary Scholarship for newly accepted female or Indigenous students beginning an undergraduate program at McEwen School of Architecture.

In June, 2024, she is launching the Tuscan Creative Lab, a multi-disciplinary artists’ residency set within an olive grove near Siena and Florence. Inaugural guests include the acclaimed violinist Isabella Perron (Toronto) and the innovative lighting artist Jason Krugman (Brooklyn).

Rochon has served 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. Rochon 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 co-produced Red Embers, a series of 13 cedar gates featuring large banners by Indigenous women artists from across Turtle Island. In 2021, she co-produced major wall murals within the historic Leuty Boathouse in the eastern Beaches painted by the celebrated artists Chief Lady Bird and Jacquie Comrie.

Since 2010, her achievements have been chronicled in the Canadian WHO'S WHO.