Eric Nay

Eric has been a full-time professor at OCADU teaching jointly in the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Faculty of Design since July 2006, joining after two decades of architectural practice and teaching internationally. Eric is also a faculty member at Mt. Allison University in New Brunswick where he teaches courses in human geography in the Department of Geography and the Environment. Eric is also a frequent visiting lecturer in history and theory of architecture and urban design at the Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Design at the University of Toronto, from where he holed his PhD. Eric is a practitioner, architectural historian, design theorist and innovative educator with a focus on the critical history of modern architecture and contemporary environmentalism seen through a post-colonial lens, which includes internationally grant-funded work in critical heritage as well as design pedagogy. Recent funded research includes working with ICOMOS Germany; developing innovative geography pedagogy for Mt. Allson University (2022- present); working with the Irish Architecture Foundation in Dubin designing curricula and teaching workshops for secondary school teacher training; and most recently working with colleagues at the Research Center for Indian Ocean Island Countries, School of Foreign Languages, South China University of Technology, whom I have been working with for more than a decade. My 2018 PhD dissertation at the University of Toronto (Nay, Eric. Canonizing Le Corbusier: The Making of an Architectural Icon as Colonial Hegemony. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2018). Eric has taught a broad range of architectural history and theory courses, environmental design studios, and many other broader humanities courses. Eric has now taught or held visiting research positions at more than a dozen universities and institutions worldwide over the past three decades including posts in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. His ongoing research continues to explore how design, sustainability, and social justice intersect in the built environment, materially, through policies and in the imaginary. His work has been published in Folk, Knowledge, Place (China), docomomo (US), ICOMOS (Germany), Ediciones ARQ (Chile), Spool (Netherlands), Alternatives Journal (Canada), Open House International (UK), et.al. with edited books as well as book chapters appearing in multiple publications, many of which were funded by organizations like the Graham Foundation and others including Miller, James and Eric Nay. “Architecture and the Rights of Nature” in Dialectic VIII: Architecture and Citizenship. Decolonizing Architectural Pedagogy. San Rafael: Oro Editions. 2020. 46-54; Nay, Eric M. “Sociologically Reframing Le Corbusier: Settler Colonialism, Modern Architecture and UNESCO.” In Putting Tradition into Practice: Heritage, Place and Design, Springer International Publishing, 2017, pp. 1365–70; and Makakavhule, Kundani, Karina Landman, et. al. Decolonising the Built Environment: Process, Product, and Pedagogy. Routledge, 2025.