Shannon Bassett

Biography

Shannon Bassett, MAUD, BARCH

Shannon Bassett is a Canadian-American architectural and urban designer. Her research, teaching, writing and practice operate at the intersection(s) of architecture, urban design and landscape ecology. She is the Advisory Chair and Co-Founder of BEA(N) - Building Equaltiy in Architecture North

https://www.beanorth.com

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Her writing on both China’s explosive urbanization and its changing landscape, as well as shrinking cities and the post-industrial landscape in North America, has been published in Topos, Urban Flux, Landscape Architecture Frontiers Magazine (LAF) and Canadian Architect. 
 
Her design work and research has been exhibited both nationally, as well as internationally, including at the Hong Kong Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture (2012) and was featured in the ensuing book publication, “Learning from Tri-ciprocal Cities: The time, the place, the people”, published by ORO Editions. https://www.amazon.ca/Learning-Tri-Ciprocal-Cities-Anderson-published/dp/B016N4OVG0

Her work has also been displayed at the BUGAIK International Architectural Exhibition (Busan Ulsan Gyeongnam Chapter of Architectural Institute of Korea). She was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant for (Re)Stitch Tampa. Ensuing from this research platform was the publication, “(Re)Stitch Tampa: Designing the Post-War Coastal American City through Ecologies", published by ACTAR. 

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https://issuu.com/actar/docs/_re_stitch_tampa

 Her architectural and urban design practice has included designing an urban design masterplan and study for an urban artist colony on a 42-acre site, the Village of the Arts in Bradenton, Florida, as well as a series of speculative design studies for the City of Tampa Riverwalk for the City of Tampa. 

Shannon has taught at the University at Buffalo, the University of South Florida and Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. She has practiced architecture at award-winning firms in both Boston and Ottawa. With the National Capital Commission in Ottawa, Shannon worked as a Junior Architect for the Official Residences Section and as a  Junior Urban Planner for the Long-Range Planning Division for community outreach on several high profile urban design projects, including the LeBreton Flats Redevelopment and Confederation Boulevard. She was appointed by the Mayor of Ottawa and Ottawa City Council to serve as an Advisor to the City of Ottawa Planning Adivsory Committee. Shannon is specifically advocating for the implentation of green infrastructure and design excellence for the proposed future Masterplan 2031 for the City of Ottawa. She serves as an Elected Board Member of the Building Techology Educator's Society, and an appointed member on the Sustainable Built Environment Committee (SBEC) for the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA), as well as a Senator on the Laurentian University Senate. In 2011 she was awarded the Pullara Award by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for her demonstrated leadership and service to both the profession and the community.

Shannon has lectured internationally, including in China, India, South Korea, and the US. She has run design research studios in China, collaborating with the Tongji College of Architecture and Urban Planning, the Tianjin School of Architecture, and the Turenscape College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Peking University in both Beijing and Anhui province, with a focus on rural urbanism of Village planning or “rurbanism”.  She served as an elected two-term board member of the International Association of China Planning (IACP) from 2011 to 2015. She is an Invited Professor every summer to the Busan, South Korea,  International Architectural Design Workshop (BIAD) CAMPUS - Asia Program, Department of Architecture, Pusan National University. This annual International Summer Architecture and Urban Design Workshop is funded by the Korean Government as a  Korea UNESCO ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) Official Project assigned by the Korean National Commission of UNESCO. ​ 

 http://eng.biacf.org/?d=work&f=work

Shannon is currently collaborating with the  Delhi School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) on the conservation and urban redevelopment of the old walled city of Delhi, "Reducing Risk, Raising Resillience: Recovering the Public Spaces of Shahjahanabad through Participatory Conservation and Ecological Urbanism". This research is supported with an Insight Development grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Resarch Council of Canada. She also served as an Invited Critic to the Bhopal SPA for a landscape studio focussed on the preservation of Sacred Groves in India as protected cultural landscapes.

She was a graduate Teaching Assistant to Dr. Mona Serageldin at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. While at the GSD, she worked as a Research Assistant for Dr. Serageldin at the Centre for Urban Development Studies (CUDS). This included researching for a chapter on municipal financing in “Financing Urban Shelter: Global Report on Human Settlements 2005 for the United Nations Human Settlements Programme". 

She is fully billingual - English and French - (Ontario Secondary School French Immersion Diploma - Glebe Collegiate Institute, Ottawa, ON), and speaks rudimentary Mandarin.

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Education

Masters of Architecture in Urban Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design and Bachelors of Architecture with Distinction, Carleton University School of Architecture (Professional Degree)

Academic Appointments

Assistant Professor of Architecture, McEwen School of Architecture, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

On The Web

https://www.beanorth.com