Lisa Moffitt

Lisa is an Associate Professor at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism. Her design, research and teaching question how architecture materially alters, impacts, and constructs new environments in light of climate change. Lisa founded her design practice, Studio Moffitt, in 2008 after working as Senior Designer at PLANT Architect, Inc. in Toronto and offices specializing in affordable housing and straw-bale construction in California. She has worked on a range award-winning projects including the Governor’s General Award of Excellence-winner Nathan Phillips Square Redevelopment Project and the Ontario Association of Architect’s first sustainable exemplar, the design-build, off-grid House on Limekiln Line.

Lisa is currently working on a SSHRC funded research grant entitled Earth Work: Architecture's Regenerative Material Models in collaboration with Professor Boyle looking at the potential of rammed earth.

Lisa completed a PhD Architecture by Design exploring the use of physical environmental models such as wind tunnels, water tables, and filling tanks—which simulate airflow—as multi-scalar passive design tools. These devices enable exploration of a range of concerns about building environmental mediation, including thermal comfort, flow visualisation practices, and passive and hybrid climate control strategies in buildings. She also works with materials such as salt, sand, plaster, steel, and graphite, to question the role of authorship in the formation of complex material systems as they weather and change over time. She has published widely on these topics, including in Landscape Research, Technology | Architecture + Design, Journal of Landscape Architecture, Architectural Research Quarterly, and Architecture and Culture. She has recently completed a book titled Architecture’s Model Environments as part of UCL Press’s Design Research in Architecture series.