Lori Riva

Areas of Expertise:
Contemporary and modern design, architecture, and urbanism; design and experience of cities and the built environment; care practices in design; sustainability pedagogies; Generative AI in teaching and learning

Lori Riva (she/her) is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream with a focus in design theories, contemporary architecture and urbanism, visual culture, as well as Environmental Design thesis in the Faculty of Design. She earned her PhD from the McGill School of Architecture, and MArch from the University of Toronto. Since 2008, Lori’s work with OCADU students has shaped her interest in the design and experience of the built environment. Her pedagogical approach, which is also embedded in her research activities, includes care as its central tenet and is framed as design justice, accessibility and inclusion, sustainability and ecological thinking and building class community. In 2020, Lori’s teaching was recognized with a Non-Tenure Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Lori is currently engaged in several ongoing research projects. As one of the inaugural 2023-2024 Sustainable Futures Fellows, her course “Urban Life: Art and the City” is the site for research into how counter-mapping can be used as a pedagogical tool to deepen student understanding of urban ecologies. Her pedagogical research also includes a study on Generative AI in teaching and learning with co-investigator Emilie Brancato. Their project explores how increased transparency and openness is key to the success of co-creating critical AI literacy for faculty and students. This emerging research extends Lori’s service work on the impacts of Generative AI on teaching and learning as co-chair of the Generative AI Community of Practice, and as a member of the AI/ New Technologies- International Networking Group International Community of Practice, as well as OCADU’s AI Advisory Panel.

In 2024, Lori is piloting a study with Michelle Miller, “Caring Futures in Canadian Art and Design Education” in which participants will codesign a fictional future university organized with care as its central tenet. Planned as a multiyear study, this project imagines how effective theories and practices of care can transform our spaces, relations, policies, and systems. Inspired by her teaching, Lori’s contribution to this research stems from her aspiration to motivate her students to think, act and make with care.

Recent Presentations

"Careful Metaphors: Considering Care in Art and Design Education" (with Michelle Miller and Travis Freeman). Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design Meeting, Cincinnati, OH. (November 2023)

"Inquiries into Student Learning through Sustainable Futures Pedagogical Research" (with Travis Freeman, Christina Halliday, Victoria Ho, Julia Rose Sutherland, Natalie Waldburger). Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design Meeting, Cincinnati, OH, November 2023.

"Navigating Generative AI in Art and Design Education: Policy, Pedagogy and Creative Practice" (with Emilie Brancato and Adam Tindale). Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design Meeting, Cincinnati, OH, October 2023.

"Engaging with ChatGPT: Critical AI Literacy in the Art History Classroom" (with Emilie Brancato). Universities Art Association of Canada Annual General Meeting. Banff Centre for the Arts, AB, October 2023.