Kai Wood Mah
architect / design historian / professor
I am an architect with the Ordre des architectes du Québec and a design historian.
My work explores site-specific politics of postcolonial situations as they manifest in contemporary design, architectural practices, and material cultures. I rely heavily on archival and fieldwork, using design, drawing, and performance to respond to critical contemporary issues.
I have long committed to examining childhood vulnerabilities by unsettling nineteenth-century fabricated childhoods and educational institutions as a built settler colonial project. The historical work grounds current, multi-year funded collaborative research and design projects to prototype early childhood education centers for township communities in South Africa and improve housing and services for refugee youths in Toronto.
Social Scientist Patrick Lynn Rivers and I co-direct the design research practice a.field. Learn more about our projects ︎.
Pre-order our new book, Situated Practices in Architecture and Politics ︎.
I am based in Montréal and Cape Town and, when in Northern Ontario at the McEwen School of Architecture, I teach future architects ︎.
architect / design historian / professor
I am an architect with the Ordre des architectes du Québec and a design historian.
My work explores site-specific politics of postcolonial situations as they manifest in contemporary design, architectural practices, and material cultures. I rely heavily on archival and fieldwork, using design, drawing, and performance to respond to critical contemporary issues.
I have long committed to examining childhood vulnerabilities by unsettling nineteenth-century fabricated childhoods and educational institutions as a built settler colonial project. The historical work grounds current, multi-year funded collaborative research and design projects to prototype early childhood education centers for township communities in South Africa and improve housing and services for refugee youths in Toronto.
Social Scientist Patrick Lynn Rivers and I co-direct the design research practice a.field. Learn more about our projects ︎.
Pre-order our new book, Situated Practices in Architecture and Politics ︎.
I am based in Montréal and Cape Town and, when in Northern Ontario at the McEwen School of Architecture, I teach future architects ︎.