It is with great sadness that we share the premature passing of our partner from Laurentian University, Professor Shannon Bassett. On behalf of the partnership, the steering committee and the project director extend our heartfelt condolences and honor her memory.
Please find below an obituary written by her friend and colleague Terrance Galvin:
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of colleague and professor, Shannon Bassett, in Ottawa on December 26, 2024. Shannon joined the McEwen School of Architecture faculty in 2018, having studied architecture at Carleton and urban design at Harvard University. She worked in architecture offices in Dublin, in Ottawa – including the National Capital Commission – and in Boston with Moshe Safdie and Associates. With expertise in both architecture and landscape architecture, Shannon taught full-time at the State University of New York in Buffalo and at the University of SouthFlorida in Tampa before returning to Canada to join our faculty. Throughout her career, Shannon specialized in landscape urbanism and landscape ecologies as integral aspects of architecture and urban design. Her creative thinking and unbounded energy were known to undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty alike.
In addition to teaching, Shannon was heavily engaged in mentoring young female architects through co-founding ‘Building Equality in Architecture North’ BEA(N). She travelled the globe extensively for research, fostering opportunities for projects or competitions with students. A bibliophile with an encyclopedic mind, Shannon generously distributed references to her many students. In 2016, she edited and published “(Re)Stitch Tampa– Designing the Post-War Coastal American City Through Ecologies.” When she fell ill, Shannon was pursuing doctoral studies at Laurentian University (LU) and was also a Laurentian member of our pan-Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant on raising the bar on quality in the built environment. She will be deeply missed by our Sudbury community.
Please click here to acces her obituary published by Canadian Architect: https://www.canadianarchitect.com/in-memoriam-shannon-bassett/
