Quick Facts
- Based: Toronto, ON
- Years Active: 18+
- Projects Completed: 140+
- Heritage Restorations: 37
- Specialty: Sustainable Urban Design
Who I Am (No Fancy Talk)
Hey there - I'm Xandra, and I've spent nearly two decades convincing buildings to tell better stories.
Look, I didn't start out wanting to be an architect. Growing up in Montreal, I was that kid who'd wander through Old Port for hours, staring at century-old brick facades while my friends hit up the shops. Guess I was a bit weird. But those buildings - they had this presence, y'know? Like they'd seen things and had opinions about 'em.
Fast forward through architecture school at McGill (where I probably drank way too much coffee and slept way too little), and I found myself stuck between two worlds. One side had these gorgeous heritage buildings crumbling from neglect. The other had new developments going up that'd be outdated in 20 years. Neither made sense to me.
That's when it clicked - what if we stopped treating old and new like enemies? What if the materials, techniques, and soul of historic architecture could inform how we build for the future? Not in some cheesy copy-paste way, but genuinely learning from what worked for centuries.
The Philosophy (Without the Pretension)
I believe buildings should earn their place. Every structure we put up changes the landscape forever - that's a responsibility I don't take lightly. Whether I'm restoring a 1890s warehouse or designing a new mixed-use space, the question's always the same: will this matter in 50 years?
Sustainability isn't a trend for me - it's common sense wrapped in urgency. Our grandparents built things to last because they had to. Somewhere along the way, we forgot that. I'm just trying to remember.
