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c-url closed its doors in 2025
Carleton University
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The Carleton Urban Research Lab (c-url) at the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism supports design-based thinking and collaborative projects centred on water, cities, and equity.
The Carleton Urban Research Lab was housed within the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism from 2017 to 2025. Their founding mission was to promote creative design thinking and to support research, teaching, and imagination around the Lab’s three central themes — water, cities, and equity.
Challenges around globalization, urbanization, climate change, infrastructural failures, mass migration, ecosystems degradation, and energy use increase the need for integrated thinking, which equally values ethical imagination and embodied knowledge alongside quantifiable research data. We continue to advocate for the importance of locally grounded imaginations in the face of global systemic failures.
C-url hosted its first symposium and workshop, Fluid Infrastructures, in 2017. With assistance from partners in the National Capital Commission and the help of visiting designers and researchers, students investigated Ottawa’s past and present relationship to its river through tours, lectures, discussions, and design workshops. In 2018, the second c-url symposium, Working Waterfronts // Freshwater Fictions, brought together international students and experts to envision urban waterfront redevelopment around the issues of infrastructure, environment, and equity. For almost a decade, the Carleton Urban Research Lab was able to engage in work based on ethically grounded knowledge and collaborative research and design projects.
Researchers
Divyashree Macheri Yathiraj | Research Coordinator
2024 – 2025
Divyashree Macheri Yathiraj is a researcher with a 5-year professional undergraduate architecture degree and four years of experience as a practicing architect in Bengaluru, India. She is beginning a Graduate Diploma in Architectural Conservation (GDAC) at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism. Divyashree will be supporting urban equitable design research for c-url.
Dominic Massé| Special Project Assistant
2024 – 2025
Dominic Massé is a third-year Urbanism student at the Carleton’s Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism. He has earned a college degree in 3D Animation and Computer Modeling and worked in the field of digital design for two years before returning to school. He is assisting c-url with Planning for Perth and other projects.
Julianna Avramidis | Special Project Assistant
2024 – 2025
Julianna Avramidis is an undergraduate 3rd-year Bachelor of Architectural Studies student in the Urbanism concentration, with a background in Architectural Technology. She is drawn to the intersection of architecture and social geography and seeks to understand how past architectural practices have contributed to current issues. She is working towards a design future that fosters more welcoming and equitable spaces. She is assisting c-url with Planning for Perth and other projects.
Baljot Jagdev | Research Fellow
2023 – 2024
Baljot Jagdev is an undergraduate 3rd-year Bachelor of Architectural Studies student in the Urbanism concentration. She has an innate passion for understanding the ways in which cities are planned, designed, and function. She is particularly interested in the intersection of urbanism and holistic design, as well as the role of urban design in shaping community identity and fostering social cohesion. Additionally, she provides research and administrative support.
Marly Margharious | Research Fellow
2022 – 2023
Marly Magharious is an undergraduate 4th-year Bachelor of Architectural Studies student in the Urbanism concentration. As a LEED GA, she has a passion for understanding sustainable design networks and currently provides research support to Associate Professor Bonier on Amphibious Architectures.
Andrea McIntosh | Research Fellow
2021 – 2022
Andrea McIntosh is a proud member of Fisher River Cree Nation and currently an Intern Architect at Farrow Partners located in Toronto, ON. She is interested in the coexistence and mutual flourishing of architectural, neuroscientific and indigenous perspectives of health and well-being. Andrea provided research support for the Gendered Design in Steam (GDS) research project, and teaching support for Assoc. Prof. Bonier’s Cities course.
Fiki Falola | Research Fellow
2019 – 2021
Fiki Falola completed an Honours Bachelor of Arts at the University of Toronto in Architecture Studies (history and theory concentration) alongside Philosophy. She is currently in the Azrieli School’s M.Arch. program and provides research support.
R. Ian Dayagbil | Research Coordinator & Technology Tutor
2018 – 2021
Romano Ian Dayagbil finished his B.AS in 2018 with a concentration in Urbanism. He has helped coordinate the 2018 Summer Cities symposium and provides educational and research support.
Felix Mayer | Research Fellow
2019 – 2020
Felix Mayer completed his B.EDS degree with a major in the architectural cooperative program in 2017 at Dalhousie University. He provided research and other support while completing his M.Arch. degree.
Update: Felix currently lives in Calgary, Alberta, where he works at McKinley Studios as an Intern Architect registered with the Alberta Association of Architects. In 2023 he co-published an article titled Defining Wilderness: the evolution of Banff National Park.
Madelaine Snelgrove | Research Fellow
2019 – 2020
Madelaine Snelgrove is an undergraduate 4th year student in the Urbanism concentration, with previous education at Selkirk College in British Columbia. She provides research and administrative support.
Update: Madelaine Snelgrove recently completed her Master of Landscape Architecture at UBC and is currently working for Public Grounds Landscape Architecture in Vancouver, BC as a landscape designer.
Charles-Étienne Déry | Research Fellow
2018 – 2019
Charles-Étienne Déry is an undergraduate 4th year student in the urbanism concentration. He has assisted with the Summer Cities event and continues research & project support.
Viktor Ivanovic | Research Fellow
2018 – 2019
Viktor Ivanovic worked for c-url as an undergraduate student in the urbanism concentration. He assisted with the Summer Cities Symposium and provided general GIS support to the research lab.
Update: Viktor is now studying at the University of Montréal, completing a master’s degree in urban planning. In future work, he will be focused on bridging the gap between architecture, urban design, and city planning.
Andrea Tamayo Bernal | Research Fellow
2017 – 2018
Andrea Tamayo Bernal worked with c-url as a 4th year student in the urbanism concentration. She assisted with the Shifting Frames and the Fluid Infrastructures events.
Co-Directors
Catherine Bonier | Associate Professor
Catherine Bonier teaches courses in architectural and urban design, research, history, and theory. Her research spans from historical analysis to futuristic visions, and centers on the shaping of the built environment around water, technology, and ideas of health and balance. Bonier earned both her professional MArch and her PhD in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in History from Harvard College. Her dissertation addressed historical ideas of equilibrium and democracy and their relationship to urban water, infrastructure, and environment.
Professor Bonier’s current work centers on design’s role in fostering the intertwined desires for resistance, resilience, and delight, both in creative visualizations and in contemporary urban projects. She is co-director and co-founder of the Carleton Urban Research Lab (c-url) with Professor Ozayr Saloojee. C-URL is engaged in collaborative interdisciplinary research, teaching, and design centered on 3 themes — water, cities, and equity.
Ozayr Saloojee | Associate Professor
Professor Saloojee previously taught at the University of Minnesota’s College of Design, where he was Associate Professor of Architecture with affiliate faculty status in Landscape Architecture and Religious Studies. Before moving to Minnesota in 2005, he studied, taught and practiced architecture here in Ottawa, receiving his B.Arch and Post-professional M.Arch (Theory and Culture) from Carleton University. He completed his PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture under the supervision of Dr. J. K. Birksted and Dr. I. Borden.
Professor Saloojee teaches courses in architectural design, urbanism and history that focus around themes of infrastructure, post-coloniality, and alternative urban futures. His research and academic interests include work on politically contested terrains, resiliency and adaptive infrastructures and landscapes through the intersection of architecture, landscape and cultural geographies. He continues to work in partnership with colleagues at the University of Minnesota and remains involved in a number of interdisciplinary, multi-partner collaborations, including the Great Lakes Design Lab (directed by Professor Karen Lutsky). Here in Ottawa, he partners with Professor Catherine Bonier on our newly established Carleton Urban Research Lab (C-URL) at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism.
Research Partners
