The Architecture of Place: In Conversation with Safoura Zahedi

The Architecture of Place: In Conversation with... is series of interviews between design practitioners, scholars, and educators. The latest iteration of the series, from February 2025, features conversations with artist Minty Sainsbury, architect and artist Safoura Zahedi, and architect and educator Sara Bega.

Each talk gives speakers the opportunity to discuss their areas of practice or study, ranging from topics as diverse as place-making and urban development to traditional and vernacular architecture, and field questions from the audience.

The Architecture of Place series is a collaboration between the ICAA, INTBAU, and The King's Foundation.

In this installment of the winter 2024-2025 Architecture of Place series, Canadian architect, artist, and educator Safoura Zahedi discusses her career and the role of architecture and sense of place in her practice with artist Minty Sainsbury.

Safoura Zahedi is an architect, artist, and educator based in Toronto, Canada. Her interdisciplinary creative practice combines art and architecture, craft and technology, spirituality and materiality, with a focus on using geometry as a spiritual design tool to create spatial experiences that expand perspectives and inspire connection.

Safoura’s cross-cultural approach to geometry reinterprets historically 2D geometric patterns into 3D spatial experiences and public art using innovative computational tools and digital fabrication techniques, as featured in The Globe and Mail, Azure, Dezeen, and Designlines magazines and recognized for innovation by Canada’s 2024 Women’s Empowerment Awards. Zahedi lectures on design and digital fabrication at the Toronto Metropolitan University and on the history of Islamic geometric arts and architecture at the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts in London.

Before founding her eponymous studio, Safoura spent nearly a decade leading award-winning projects for Canadian architecture firms Moriyama and Teshima Architects and Superkül, winning international competitions on cultural projects such as the Dubai Archaeology Museum in the UAE and constructing new-build educational buildings like the Mulroney Institute of Government at St. Francis Xavier University, as well as interior renovations to iconic landmarks including Toronto’s CN Tower.

Presented as part of The Richard H. Driehaus Curricula for the Built Environment at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. The ICAA is very grateful to The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation for its generous support of this program.

Tags: architecture of place, recorded event, architecture of place in conversation with, world of classicism, sustainability