Lisa has been nominated for the 2007 National Newspaper Award in the category of Arts and Entertainment writing in Canada. She has won this same award for the past two years. Click on the Awards button for more information.

Lisa's most recent work for The Globe and Mail is available below. Many of the full articles include links to photos in the gallery.

To read Lisa's columns about what have been referred to as the four "cutural superbuilds" in Toronto click here.

CITYSPACE: AVANT-GARDE GARDEN FESTIVALS: LES JARDINS DE MÉTIS, LES JARDINS ÉPHÉMÈRES

• July 12, 2008: At the stunning Jardins de Métis in the Gaspésie and in the heart of Quebec City, the garden designs being presented this summer are defined by their playful irreverence and dark irony. So much for the peony. (more)

CITYSPACE: PUG AWARDS: THE CITY SPEAKS

• May 31, 2008: Putting buildings in the paws of the people: to name a developer responsible for the most despised structure is part of the fun (more)

CITYSPACE: ARCHITECTURE: NICKEL CITY

• May 24, 2008: Engaging the true north, charred and pitted: Plans for an architecture school, a sports complex and an arts centre could transform life in the mining town (more)

TOURISM: ICONIC POSSIBILITIES

• April 26 2008. Our city needs a booster shot of imagination: three masterworks of architecture - Old City Hall, Maple Leaf Gardens and Ontario Place - have been set adrift in the city's downtown. Lisa Rochon considers the options (more)

CITYSPACE: IN CHICAGO, GENIUS WITH A TWIST

• April 19 2008. The proposed 150-storey Chicago Spire promises to throw an architectural curve into a city that has always paid strict homage to the straight line. (more)

CITYSPACE: ARTISTIC COLLABORATIONS

• March 29 2008. An artist's touch: design inspiration (more) (photo)

CITYSPACE: TINTING THE SKY TO DEATH ONE TOWER AT A TIME

• March 15 2008. Ubiquitous green glass has doomed our city buildings to darkness (more)

CITYSPACE: ASYMPOTE: CONSTRUCTING THE IMPOSSIBLE

• February 16 2008. From Manhattan to the Middle East, visionary developers are lining up to get a piece of Canadian architects Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid (more) (photo)

SAVING THE WORLD, ONE BUILDING AT A TIME

• January 13, 2008. Most of the world's architects are trained in the Western world, but most of the work that needs urgent doing is located in the developing world, especially areas ravaged by wars and natural disasters. Within these wastelands, there's a role for architects, though few dare to go there (more) (photo)

CITYSPACE: LANDMARKS, PINNACLES, PASSAGES

• December 29 2007. The CN Tower got leap-frogged, the Royal Ontario Museum got crystallized, Vancouver got a little more playful, and some architectural masters were lost forever (more)

WHY IS HOSPITAL DESIGN SO UNHEALTHY?

• December 15 2007. Architects are being asked to work as foot soldiers to major developer consortiums whose interest is turning an offshore profit, not inspiring human-based design (more) (photo)

A YEAR BEFORE LIFTOFF, GEHRY'S AGO ALREADY SOARS

• December 1 2007. The truth about the redesign of Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario is already plain to see: one year away from being completed, the Frank Gehry redesign is a staggering success (more)

IT TRIES, BUT DETROIT SEEMS DOOMED TO FAIL

• November 3 2007. Despite some determined signs of hope, the city remains in free fall 40 years after the riots that tore it asunder (more)

THE NEXT VERY, VERY BIG THINGS

• October 13 2007. Big is the new kind of architecture, designed to please a new class of billionaire titans. Extreme architecture appeals to the Versailles in every wannabe king: A penthouse on the 100th floor, where Marie Antoinette deserved to live. Up high, next to heaven (more)

MY PILGRIMAGE TO A MODERN MASTERPIECE

• Dhaka, Bangladesh, October 6, 2007. In a country ground down by poverty, newly ravaged by floods, and living under military rule, Louis Kahn's masterwork, the National Assembly of Bangladesh, remains a monumental meditation on humanity, with the power to move both body and mind (more)

CITYSPACE: THE AGA KHAN AWARD

• Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 15, 2007. Celebrating great design across the Muslim world: winners range from a Singapore residential tower that keeps out monsoon rains to a hand-built rural Bangladesh school (more)

Crystal scatters no light

• June 2, 2007. It's hard, aggressive and in your face. It cantilevers dangerously over the street, shifting the ground from under our feet. Do not expect shelter from the $135-million Michael Lee-Chin crystalline addition to Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum by Daniel Libeskind. Expect the exaltation of one architect, one man, one individual. Expect the stuff of Libeskind: an exile, a brilliant thinker, a marketer with a silver tongue (more)

CITYSPACE: SAVING MURAD KHANE

• May 26, 2007. Afghanistan's other casualties: an unusual young Scot is involved in a heroic effort to preserve the heritage of battered historic Kabul (more)

CITYSPACE: Sustainable Development in New Orleans

• May 11, 2007. Greenola could become a template for sustainable communities along the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast (more)

CITYSPACE: A Vision for Toronto's Western border

• April 21, 2007. Imagination still has a fighting chance in the City of Toronto. Ideas are being floated around for the creation of gateways to the city, and the initial design for a flotilla of 24 stainless-steel masts by Sweeny Sterling Finlayson & Co. Architects deserves our attention (more)

Room for all faiths

• March 17, 2007. An ethereal new space at the University of Toronto invites people of all beliefs to worship under the same onyx sky (more)

Nathan Phillips Square

• March 3, 2007. Square needs design edit. While most of the finalists pay tribute to the follies of the past, a New York plan bravely moves forward (more)

Time to build outside the box

• January 11 2007. With a new planner at the helm, Vancouver has a chance to shake up the way it builds. And as the 2010 Olympics loom, there's a new sense of urgency (note this is an updated version of the original that appeared in print) (more)

A sense of place emerges

• December 28 2006. There were iconic buildings and tall towers aplenty, but the year belonged to small statements attempting to stem the tide of sameness (more)

Top 10 of 2006: KPMB

• December 19 2006. The work of this firm triggers new optimism in an architecturally ordinary city like Toronto. (more)

CITYSPACE: 48 Abell

• 26 November 2006. Toronto is growing up urbsurd. This city likes to boast about its West Queen West arts district. Too bad it is unwilling to protect it. (more)

The Stones Of Banff

• 7 September 2006. I never wanted to be a mountain climber. Never wanted to walk a narrow ledge with nothing to cling to but a crumbling rock wall and thin air. Stupid, I know. (more)

CITYSPACE: Toronto's Waterfront

• June 8 2006. A Dutch treat at water's edge. West 8's winning design is a marvel of clarity and credibility. But is the city prepared to pay for it? (more)

Building the future of design

• March 20 2006. Today's young architects are gutsy and inventive -- generating new ways of building with daring shapes and fresh approaches to traditional materials. So why is it, LISA ROCHON asks, that their best ideas so rarely make the leap from blueprints to bricks and mortar? (more)

There's no there there

• May 22 2003 In the final part of a series on place and placelessness, LISA ROCHON laments that Toronto's new Dundas Square fails on many levels as a public space. (more)