Linda Zhang

Linda Zhang is a registered architect (OAA, AIA), interior designer (NCIDQ), drone pilot (RPAS advanced operations) and co-founding principal at Studio Pararaum (Toronto—Zürich). She was a Dean’s Merit Scholar at Harvard University GSD where she received a MArch I AP with distinction, the James Templeton Kelley Thesis Prize and the AIA Henry Adams Certificate. She completed her BScArch with honours at McGill University Peter Guo-hua Fu SOA where she was the recipient of McGill Alumnae 75th Anniversary Scholarship, the Faculty of Engineering Scholarship, the Murdoch Laing Design Competition (third prize), the Philip J. Turner Prize, and the Steel Structure Education Foundation Scholarship.

Zhang's design-research proposes the process of making as a form of cognition; production as thought—thinking always translates into making and making into further ideas. Through this process, her work explores how community memory, cultural heritage, and identity can be embodied through emergent technologies (including VR, AR, machine learning, robotics and 3D scanning), lived experience (affect theory), matter (ceramics), and material processes (slip casting).

She is a 2022 Artist-in-Residence at the EKWC (European Ceramic Work Centre), 2022 Toronto Metropolitan University Library Research-in-Residence and 2021-2022 visiting scholar at NYU’s A/P/A Institute. Previously, she was the recipient of the 2019 Multicultural Fellow at NCECA (National Council on Education for Ceramic Arts), 2017-2018 Boghosian Fellowship at Syracuse University SoA as well as 2017 Fellowship at the Berlin Center for Art and Urbanistics. She received the 2022 TMU Social Innovation and Action SRC Award, 2020 Toronto Excellence Award (Rising Star), 2021 TMU Provost's Award for Teaching Excellence (Innovation) and the 2021 TMU Dean's Scholarly Research and Creative Activity Award. As the NPI, she currently holds the 2020 Government of Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Exploration Tri-council Fund and the 2021 SSHRC Exploration Fund. Prior to joining Waterloo Architecture, Zhang was an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and Syracuse University.

Her work has been exhibited and presented internationally in Canada, China, Germany, Korea, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, including the London Festival of Architecture, Milan Architecture Design Expo, The Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Toronto Offsite Design Festival and the Canadian Centre of Architecture.

• ARCH 193 - Design Studio
  • Taught in 2024
• ARCH 212 - Digital Fabrication
  • Taught in 2023, 2024
• ARCH 393 - Option Design Studio
  • Taught in 2024
• ARCH 684 - Special Topics in Architecture
  • Taught in 2023

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.