Michael Piper

Background

About Michael Piper

Michael Piper is an Assistant Professor of urban design and architecture and director of the Master of Urban Design program at the University of Toronto. His research and teaching focus on the relationship between design, equity, and political-economic contexts with particular attention on the social and formal transformation of North American suburbs. He is a co-founder and director of tuf lab, a research group that brings together urban design and urban planning faculty at the UofT to explore difficult problems of contemporary urbanization. The group’s research contributes analysis of built form to social, political, and economic knowledge about cities. Piper is also a founding partner of dub studios, a design studio with offices in Toronto and Los Angeles where he manages urban design projects. Current projects and coursework focus on imagining more just and equitable housing scenarios for North American single-family suburbs and cultural spaces of citizens underrepresented in mainstream design and planning. https://tuflab.ca/Home