Detroit Mercy’s School of Architecture & Community Development (SACD) will host Egest Gjinali and Colleen Lashuk from 4:30-6 p.m. Monday, March 30, for the next installment of its lecture series with a presentation titled PIVOT Coopérative d’Architecture.
It’ll be held in the Loranger Architecture Building Exhibition Space. All are invited to this event.
This lecture explores what it means to build an architectural practice grounded in collective responsibility, democratic governance and care for existing social and built environments.
Founded in Montreal in 2017 as Quebec’s first worker-owned architecture cooperative, Pivot operates through shared decision-making and collective stewardship of the practice. Authority and responsibility are distributed among its members, shaping both how projects are designed and how the office itself is run. This structure encourages long-term engagement with partners and a design process rooted in dialogue, negotiation and participation.
Using the work of Pivot Architecture Cooperative, the lecture frames architecture as a practice of repair—working with existing buildings, institutions and communities while exploring how to operate within and transform the processes shaping our social and built environments. By presenting projects such as social and cooperative housing, community facilities, shelters and cultural spaces, the lecture demonstrates how architectural work can respond to complex social conditions and underserved communities. The speakers will reflect on practicing architecture as a cooperative, and how shared governance influences the design process and promotes participatory design.
Gjinali is a co-founding architect of Pivot Architecture Cooperative. Trained at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, he began his career in Switzerland before relocating to Montreal, where he helped establish the cooperative model that structures the practice today. Gjinali has also represented Albania as co-commissioner of its national pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. His work brings an international lens to questions of socially engaged architecture and the role design can play in supporting communities.
Also a co-founding architect at Pivot, Lashuk’s training bridges architecture and anthropology. With deep roots in community housing work, she has spent her career designing alongside people whose needs are often overlooked, including communities living with mental health and disability-related challenges. A skilled facilitator, Lashuk has developed methods for drawing non-architects meaningfully into the design process, treating community input not as consultation but as a core design tool.