Anne Bordeleau

Professor and Director

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Anne Bordeleau is the Director of the ASAU. She is an architectural historian and a registered architect in Quebec (OAQ). She was awarded a PhD from the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies (University College London, UK) after receiving her professional degree and Masters in the history and theory of architecture from McGill University (Montreal, Canada). Her publications include writings on the temporal and mnemonic dimensions of materials, drawings, maps, buildings, and architecture more generally. She is the author of Charles Robert Cockerell, Architect in Time: Reflections around Anachronistic Drawings, and co-author of the book and exhibition The Evidence Room, presented at the 15^th Venice Biennale, Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto) and Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, DC).

Dr. Bordeleau’s research interests include the epistemology of the architectural project, and multiple dimensions of the relations between architecture and time considered historically, socially, materially, and environmentally. Her teaching, research and practice have moved between different times and places, including nineteenth-century architectural history and theory, the question of the preservation and communication of meaning through architecture, concerns pertaining to rural architecture in contemporary China, as well as historical and theoretical considerations of casting as a practice. She is fundamentally interested in architecture as a cultural and relational act, a commitment that informs her research as much as her approach to education.

In her different roles across multiple organizations in Canada and beyond, she has been looking at the ways in which our education and organizations frame architecture’s role in society more broadly. As Chair of the Canadian Council of University Schools of Architecture (2017-2022), she promoted collaborations across the twelve accredited programs of architecture in Canada, with initiatives that included the Pan-Canadian Lecture Series on Global Perspectives, contributions to the Canadian Architecture Forum on Education, workshops on how work towards justice and equity informs our teaching, research and service, and a collaborative project addressing how accessibility is integrated within architecture schools’ facilities and curricula. In her former role as O’Donovan Director of the School of Architecture of the University of Waterloo (2016-2022), she participated in significant initiatives to support gender balance, Indigenous ways of knowing, racial equity, community engagement and climate justice. She is committed to foregrounding the role architects have in relation to social equity and environmental justice, and she engages architecture as a discipline that carries great potential as well as responsibilities.