Lisa Landrum

Lisa Landrum is an educator, architect, scholar and creative researcher dedicated to advancing social justice, cultural meaning and mythopoetic imagination. She is Associate Dean Research and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Landrum earned a professional B.Arch. from Carleton University, and an M.Arch (post-professional) and Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory from McGill University, where she worked with Dr. Alberto Pérez-Gómez. She is a registered architect in Manitoba and New York State, an executive member of Building Equality in Architecture (BEA) Prairies, and a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Her scholarship on architecture’s bonds with drama, democracy and philosophy is widely published, including chapters in several books: Reading Architecture (2019), Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture (2017), Chora 7 (2016), Architecture’s Appeal (2015), Architecture as a Performing Art (2013), and Architecture and Justice (2013). She coedited Narrating the City (2021), and is currently co-editing a book entitled Theatres of Architectural Imagination.

Theatrical imagination has animated her architectural research for 20 years – ever since participating in a drama workshop in 2001, while practicing as an architect in New York City. That workshop at the New School for Social Research was led by John Murphy, who trained with l’Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq and performed with the Swiss theatre. company Mummenshanz. During her doctoral research on the roots of architectural agency in Greek drama, Lisa participated in acting classes with Complicité in London, Omnibus Théâtre Corporel in Montréal, and a Corporeal Mime Workshop with Thomas Leabhart in Paris. Since 1997, Lisa has collaborated with her partner Ted Landrum, creating group costumes and installations enacting the ‘body politic.’ This work has been exhibited at many venues, including the Confabulations Symposium, Winnipeg’s A2G Gallery, New York City’s Halloween Parade and Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Urbanism/Architecture Bi-City Biennale
in Shenzhen, China.