About Stephen Verderber

Stephen Verderber is an award-winning scholar/researcher, and Registered Architect (US) whose core focus is architecture, design therapeutics and health. He is Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, and in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, in Canada. He is Director of the Centre for Architecture, Design + Health Innovation at the U. of Toronto, and is a principal of R-2ARCH. He is widely published and his books include Healthcare Architecture in an Era of Radical Transformation (2000), Compassion in Architecture: Evidence-Based Design for Health (2005), Innovations in Hospital Architecture (2010), Innovations in Transportable Healthcare Architecture (2016), Innovations in Behavioral Health Architecture (2018) and Thinking While Doing: Explorations in Educational Design-Build (2019).

Ben J. Refuerzo is an award-winning principal in the firm R-2ARCH and Professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the US, where he also serves as an Associate Dean for Diversity. His numerous North American awards include an Honor Award from the Society of Architects, three national Progressive Architecture awards, an Architectural Design award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), and two American Institute of Architects (AIA) design awards. His community-building, evidence-based contributions focus on social, cultural and behavioral factors and their translation into planning and design considerations. The outcome of this work largely consists of user-attuned buildings for oppressed and underrepresented populations.