Student Wins Canada Green Building Council Scholarship for Sustainable Design and Research

Master of Architecture student Olive Lazarus has won the 2025 Canada Green Building Council Scholarship for Sustainable Design and Research for his master’s thesis, which includes a deep analysis of straw as a building material.

The RAIC Foundation awarded the $5,000 scholarship for the thesis titled Biography of a Bale: Local Material Narrative as Architectural Practice. Lazarus’s thesis advisor is Assistant Professor Jerry Hacker.

“I hope this thesis can contribute fruitfully to the body of design literature which advocates for the use of bio-regional materials in the built environment as well as that which advances a narrative-centered framework for understanding ecological conditions,” says Lazarus.

“Ultimately, I want this research to provide a stepping-stone for architects and design students interested in working towards ecologically resilient futures by fostering a deepened familiarity with the material-production systems they rely on.”

Lazarus is in the final year of the three-year Master of Architecture program at the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism at Carleton University. Fall will be his last semester.

“This was a clearly articulated and beautifully illustrated submission: developing a methodology for the identification and use of hyper-local materials in design and construction,” said the three-member award jury.

“The process of developing a material biography can inform design in a very meaningful way, supporting the creation of a robust local economy,” they noted. “The abstract relationship we typically have with materials specification has been replaced with spatial storytelling and material biographies.

“While the material choices explored are location specific; the methodology is potentially transferable across Canada, maximizing its impact.”

Jury members:

Roxanne Gauthier — EVOQ in Montreal, Que.

Joanne McCallum — mcCallumSather, Hamilton, Ont.

Franc D’Ambrosio of DAUSTUDIO, Victoria, B.C. 

The CAGBC Scholarship was established to promote and encourage sustainable research and design in Canadian schools of architecture. It is open to full-time registered in a master’s degree program leading to a professional degree in architecture or the RAIC Syllabus. Students are nominated by their school.

Lazarus is the second winner in a row from Carleton University. The 2024 CAGBC Scholarship for Sustainable Design and Research went to Frangiscos (Frank) Hinoporos.

Abstract
Biography of a Bale: Local Material Narrative as Architectural Practice
Olive Lazarus

Today, most architectural design operates by abstracting materials from the actors entangled within their histories of extraction and production. From residents evacuated due to forest fires, to exploitative working conditions in mines, or the degradation of air quality for communities living near plastics manufacturing facilities – these third parties are classified as “externalities” by classical economic theory, rendering them irrelevant to a material’s value.

Since the Brundtland Report of 1987, architects have gradually been introduced to a wide range of quantitative, metric-based analysis mechanisms for integrating environmental ethics into the design process.

Common and familiar examples include green building certificates such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

These programs can successfully contribute to a reduction in construction emissions, but they can also disincentivize architects from more holistically familiarizing themselves with the externalities implicated in their design choices.

These tools rely on generalized metrics such as Life Cycle Analysis (LCA’s) to abstract materials from lived realities and by doing so they fail to challenge one of the most egregious facets of industrialized architecture.

In this thesis, I draw on the works of (various authors) as I attempt to develop a “material biographic” approach to material analysis as an alternative to the standard, metrics-based models for environmental evaluation in architectural design.

This approach uses spatial storytelling to reckon with the many actors, agents, systems, and conditions implicated in a materials supply chain from extraction to disposal.