For Janet Li, the 2025 ALCTF winner of the architectural conservation award, pursuing a career in heritage architecture was natural.
Part of the attraction was marrying function and history. “In heritage projects, the focus is on context – what already exists and how can we preserve it to pass it down for the future,” she said. “I love that grounding principle. Our work is not just coming out of nowhere. It includes learning about existing people and how they want to live.”
Li’s award-winning project was titled ‘Façadist Toronto: Heritage at Face Value’. It is a critique of the increasingly common practice of the preservation of the exterior walls of historic structures while constructing entirely new and much larger buildings behind them.
Li was born in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China and moved to Toronto at age five. She grew up in Mississauga, attending Port Credit Secondary School in a family of engineers. “My mom trained as a civil engineer in China and dad was a mechanical engineer. But when we came to Canada they shifted. Mom stayed home and now is working as a real estate agent and dad works as a truck driver.” Li’s younger brother has just started studying engineering at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Li was accepted in the architecture program at University of Waterloo. The five-year program included both classroom lectures and industry co-op placements.
“When I started, all I wanted was to finish and work as an architect,” she said. “Through co-ops, I discovered heritage architecture.” Her placements included Taylor Hazell in Toronto.
Li said students had a lot of choice for co-ops. “I had friends who did architecture co-ops in fashion or real estate.” Co-op placements were arranged through a University of Waterloo portal. Li did six placements, all in Toronto except one in Hamilton before graduating in 2021 “right in the middle of CoVID”.
Li’s award-winning project was titled ‘Façadist Toronto: Heritage at Face Value’
She followed up with her Master’s degree in Architecture and since 2023 has been employed at EVOQ Architecture, a leading Canadian architectural conservation firm, in their Toronto office since graduating. “I am an intern architect right now, working on my licensure.” Over the past two years, she has worked on various projects including infrastructure renewal at Hart House (mechanical, electrical) – “their steam system is at the end of its life, they’ve been using it for more than one hundred years so we’re introducing modern AC, heating and other mechanical upgrades in phases because Hart House has to remain open to users”.
Other Toronto conservation projects in her portfolio to date include Osgoode Hall, Union Station and the Provincial Legislative Assembly. The goal is, Li said, “making older buildings more livable.”
“I wanted to cross artistic and science sides, to marry the two,” she said. “I considered being an engineer as I was good at math. But I enjoy creating drawings, working visually and the larger sense of enjoying architecture’s scope of understanding community and culture and tying that to something tangible. I love imagining how to use the space.”
One of the current challenges in architecture, is making buildings more livable given climate changes and global warming. “Historically, we’ve focused on heating in Canada,” she said. “How can we design more adaptable spaces and rely less on systems. In many tropical countries, people have found ways to build vernacular architecture – using cross ventilation, and other ways to help cool spaces which don’t rely on electrical systems.”
Given she has already worked on some of Toronto’s key heritage properties, her wish list for future projects is impressive: Buckingham Palace or the Vatican. Li has not ruled out teaching or heading up her own firm one day. She also noted there is a shift in the profession with more women becoming architects. In her class of 70 students, 80 percent were women. And her boss at EVOQ is also a woman. Couple this with the growing field of architectural conservation in Canada, and the sky is the limit.