ABOUT
Piper Bernbaum is a registered intern architect and adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo, Canada, teaching design studio as a part of the undergraduate program in Cambridge, Ontario and in Rome, Italy. Piper received her Bachelor of Architectural Studies (2013) and Masters of Architecture (2016) from the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. She is the recipient of the 2017 Canada Council for the Arts Prix de Rome for Emerging Practitioners, and is currently pursuing her research in Canada and abroad.
During her undergraduate career, Piper worked at Atelier Jean Nouvel in Paris, Sauerbruch Hutton in Berlin, and Kohn Pederson Fox Associates in New York City. A recipient of an SSHRC grant, Piper continued her studies in the Masters program at the University of Waterloo, earning her M.Arch degree with a commended thesis documenting and analyzing the spatial practice of the Jewish Eruv, the plurality of urban realms, and the multiplicity of space. Piper received the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada’s Student Medal for her thesis work and for the highest level of academic excellence, as well as the Governor General’s Gold Medal for Academic Excellence upon graduation.
Piper has focused primarily on teaching, research and exhibition work in the architectural field, with an emphasis on the considerations and constraints of social and spatial plurality in contemporary and historical urban space. She was a team member of the University of Waterloo’s submission to the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, The Evidence Room, and, following, worked with Musealia Entertainment of San Sebastian, Spain, to design and build models for their upcoming travelling exhibition on the history of Auschwitz, opening in Madrid in 2017. Continuing the work on The Evidence Room, Piper was the project manager for its second installation at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, Ontario which is open from Summer 2017 to Winter 2018.
Piper’s area of interest has always been on the appropriation of space through design, where architecture is an apparatus where people are the constituents and the subjects of making. Interested on the informal definition of space, Piper has travelled for her research and design work to Europe, the Middle East, North America and the Arctic, watching for the intersections of law and architecture. The recipient of the 2017 Prix de Rome for Emerging Practitioners from the Canada Council of the Arts, Piper will research the architecture and ideologies of a post-nation-nation, traveling across Canada, to Israel, Poland and the East Coast of the United States to continue her research on the Eruv.