My interest
My interests in architecture span the range from large-scale urban design to the human scale of materiality and detail. As an architectural educatur and experimental designer I believe that quality urban design is about understanding buildings, places and spaces not as isolated elements but as integrated parts of the macrocosm and microcosm of the layered temporal urban experience. The vitality of the city therefore comes from the building up of new ideas upon the existing cultural systems and urban fabric.
Professional
Adriana Ross has been an instructor at the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism for more than a decade. She teaches design studio and courses in the theory and practice of architectural representation, drawing, and multi-media. She was among four teachers at the Azrieli School named a Favourite Faculty member for the 2021-2022 academic year. Her popular elective course, An Introduction to Drawing: Seeing through the Hand, attracts more than 100 students each year, from over 25 different academic departments. Adriana also teaches at Algonquin College. Adriana’s research, teaching, and original work show how sensitivity to historical meaning and social conscience can enrich contemporary methods and design. Her award-winning work has been exhibited and published internationally, and she is co-author with Marco Frascari of the 2012 book Drawing in the Silence. Her drawings and writing about ecclesiastical architecture explore new uses for historic buildings. The paper, Comatose and Ricorso: Reawakening the Covenant Church, was published in the Int|AR: Interventions Adaptive Reuse journal. Adriana is interested in ephemeral structures. She has made and documented physical constructions that engage the scale of the human body in settings subject to the seasons. A resulting article, The Girl with the Secret Face, appeared in the international architectural journal DOMUS in 2014. Adriana earned her bachelor and master’s degrees in architecture at Carleton, where she received numerous awards, including the RAIC Student Medal for outstanding achievement.