The Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) has named Susan Speigel as its president for 2021–22.

The Toronto-based architect was acclaimed to the position on January 21. She has been involved with the OAA for nearly 30 years. She helped to plan the OAA’s first conference in the middle 1990s and sat on the first committee for the Ontario Association for Applied Architectural Sciences. In 2019, she ran for OAA Council, joining several committees and eventually serving as senior vice president & treasurer.

“A few years ago, I wouldn’t have imagined I would find myself in this wonderful role,” she said. “I’m honoured, excited and eager to get to work.”

Speigel’s career has spanned more than 30 years and five cities, including Sudbury, Ottawa, New York and Neuchâtel. She currently serves as the founder and president of Susan Speigel Architect Inc., a multidisciplinary design firm based in Toronto, and which focuses on architecture, landscape and urbanistic public realm projects for non-profit organizations, the public housing sector and private residences.

Speigel is also an educator at the Institute Without Boundaries through George Brown College School of Design, where she works at the intersections of architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism, activism, community, ecology and academia.

Speigel has performed extensive work with social housing and community spaces. Her firm has modernized more than 250 projects for the Toronto Community Housing Corporation and Peel Living and Woodgreen Community Living, and she has led research in support of mobile-home parks as affordable housing models. Since 2017, Speigel has also been the Professional Advisor and Acting Architect for the Thunder Woman Healing Lodge—Toronto’s first Healing Lodge and transitional housing for Indigenous women in conflict with the law, which is slated to begin construction this spring.

Speigel says the OAA Council represents an opportunity to bring about positive change through policy development and purposeful engagement with a new generation of architects entering the profession. As OAA President, she is committed to promoting inclusive architecture and to making space at the table for new perspectives.

“There are tremendous shifts emerging in the world that demand our attention and meaningful action,” she says. “I am energized by out-of-the box and daring thinking; by people with the foresight to envision something marvelous and the gumption to make it happen. In order to meet the numerous challenges before us, we need fresh new voices, and there is much we can do to make the profession more inviting and welcoming.”