Forum Lecture: Re-collection(s): Past-to-Present
Monday, September 29, 2025 from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm
- In-person event
- Ottawa Art Gallery , Ottawa , ON , K1N 0C5
2025-2026 Forum Lecture Series
Speaker: Russell Acton, Founding Principal, Acton Ostry Architects, Vancouver, BC
Free and open to the public
Presented by the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, with the support of the Ottawa Regional Society of Architects (ORSA), Ottawa Architecture Week, and ULI Ottawa.
Re-collection(s): Past-to-Present features a selection of academic, professional, and personal works that reflect forty-plus years of making architecture, highlighting memories of how connections, transitions, and ways of thinking evolved that informed works of the past up to the present day—and how they might influence future undertakings.
Russell Acton is a graduate of the Carleton University School of Architecture and founding principal of Acton Ostry Architects (AOA), a leading Vancouver-based practice recognized for the design of engaging, eloquent, and inspiring buildings that embody a consideration of design that is without willful extravagance.
Over the years, a careful and considered design approach was developed, with a blend of poetry and pragmatism that breathes life into even the most prosaic of building programs, enriching the everyday experience of architecture.
Acton was the principal architect for the groundbreaking, 18-storey, Brock Commons Tallwood House at the University of British Columbia, which at the time of its completion was the world’s tallest contemporary wood building. He was also the AOA principal architect for George Brown College’s Limberlost Place, which opened earlier this year. The international competition-winning tall wood building was undertaken in collaboration with Moriyama Teshima Architects.
AOA has received over 150 local, provincial, national, and international design awards.
The Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism gratefully acknowledges the support of the Forum Lecture Founding Sponsors:
- Arcadis
- Charlesfort Developments
- Provencher_Roy
- Hobin Architecture
- Merkley Supply
- Trinity Group
Note to practitioners: All Forum Lectures count toward in-person, structured learning, per OAA and OAQ requirements.