Jay Levine

Background

About Jay Levine

Driven by my commitment to doing work that matters, I founded NXL’s predecessor firm over 30 years ago. Today, we are one of Canada’s leading designers of high-tech research and manufacturing facilities in science and technology. I began my career in 1986 working with my architect father designing industrial buildings. One of my first projects was for a pharmaceutical company, and I was immediately hooked on the challenge of very complex projects. From there I started NXL and worked tenaciously to build it from the ground up. Whether it’s a clean laboratory for vaccine research, a cannabis processing plant, or a university teaching facility, we design workplaces that are easy to navigate, that promote health and wellbeing, and that encourage collaboration. I pride myself on my ability to make connections and solve puzzles, building intuitive spaces that optimize the flow of people and materials. This concept is critically important in the spaces we design, which necessarily involve a great deal of technical complexity as well as stringent compliance and safety requirements. Our clients handle dangerous materials, high-tech components, and sensitive equipment, and they look to us to ensure all the elements of their work are elegantly integrated into a complete, high-functioning system that’s designed for growth. I am particularly passionate about the concepts of air quality and directional air flow, issues that were thrust into the public consciousness when COVID-19 hit. I believe we are at an important moment in architecture right now, where designers of public buildings are going to start taking cues from the design of laboratories and clean rooms—areas of NXL’s deep expertise—to help make it safe for people to be indoors together again. Never settling for the status quo, I have high expectations for excellence, and I thrive on working with high-calibre people. I inspire my team always do their best work and to continually ask “how can we do this better?”