Reza Aliabadi (born 1974), known as RZLBD, is a Canadian artist and architect of Persian origin. He is the founder and principal of Atelier RZLBD, an art and architecture practice based in Toronto, named after a pseudonym he adapted that reflects his interest in abstraction and reduction. His repertoire of work extends to making arts, crafting objects, designing buildings, curating installations, and publishing a zine called rzlbdPOST.
His work has been distinguished with numerous accolades, exhibited in many venues, and celebrated in more than 100 print publications. In 2017, RZLBD was selected among the top emerging design talents in Canada. In the same year, the UK publisher Artifice released a monograph, RZLBD Hopscotch, that recognizes Aliabadi’s selected built projects by collecting essays, project profiles, and annotated drawings. In 2020, Actar published a pocket-size manifesto, The Empty Room, in which Reza explores the idea of emptiness as the essence of architecture. His most recent book, 100 Rooms, is a sequel to that title by the same publisher. In 2023, he was appointed as the inaugural Vignelli Center Designer in Residence to begin the conceptualization, planning, and determining of the overall thematic direction of the RIT Outdoor Museum project.
Josh Owen is a designer and professor of Industrial Design at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. His work has been featured at the Venice Biennale and is in the permanent design collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, Chicago Athenaeum, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal, National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Taiwan Design Museum, among others. Significant manufacturers in the U.S. and Europe produce his home/design, furniture, and office products, which are regularly featured in design books, periodicals and in critical design discourse. Owen’s “Build” and “Meta” design academic projects have successfully pioneered integrated practice pedagogy for the field of Industrial Design.
R. Roger Remington is the Vignelli Distinguished Professor of Design Emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. He is an experienced teacher, scholar and author with critical interests in graphic design history, research, archiving and interpretation of historical documents.
