You are now in the main content area

Yew-Thong Leong

Yew-Thong Leong
Associate Professor
BArch, OAA, FRAIC

Areas of Specialization

Professional practice

Conservation and preservation

Architecture and urbanism

Education

Year University Degree
1986 Pratt Institute BArch

Selected Courses

Course Code Course Title
AR8104 Seminar in Contemporary and Future Practice 
ASC 752 Business Practices in the AEC Industry
ARC 720, ARC 820 Architecture Studio

Spotlight

Frank Lloyd Wright has legions of fans, and Yew-Thong Leong is one of them. As a teen, he discovered the architect’s most famous project, the private home known as Fallingwater. “It fascinated me,” he says, “and it inspired me to pursue this profession.” Today, Leong’s portfolio is full of successes and collaborations with world-renowned architects. Including Wright himself.

From 2017 to 2021, Leong will be leading a once-in-a-lifetime project: reconstructing Wright’s Banff National Park Pavilion. Completed in 1914, the structure succumbed to the ravages of flooding and frost, and was torn down in 1939. To bring it back to life, Leong and his team (which includes six other Toronto Met professors and several grad and undergrad students) will need to make some improvements to the original design. A new foundation is a possibility, as are other structural changes. But Leong will do everything he can to ensure that all modernizations are true to Wright’s vision, right down to replicating the fieldstones' exact sizes and shapes. “As a heritage preservationist and a fan of Wright’s, I have a moral responsibility to get it right.”

Yew-Thong Leong

“Architecture is not meant to be treated as a museum piece. It’s meant to be liveable.”

Selected Works

  • College of Fellows, Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Inducted 2015
  • Asian Heritage Award, 2013
  • PUG X Awards Nominee (Life Sciences Building, York University), 2012
  • Structural Innovations - Ontario Concrete Awards (Life Sciences Building, York University), 2011
  • Y.T. Leong, et. al. “The Design Approach to Rebuilding Frank Lloyd Wright's Banff Pavilion”, 2018.  Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver
  • Y.T. Leong, et. al. “Working with Wright: RE-Creatives and RE-Creating the Banff National Park Pavilion”, 2018, Banff Sessions 2018, Alberta Association of Architects
  • Y.T. Leong, et. al. “Rebuilding the Frank Lloyd Wright Pavilion: A Collaborative Approach”, 2018.  Twelfth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices, ELISAVA Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, Barcelona
  • Y.T. Leong, “Practice Management:  Technology and Information Management”, 2017, Ontario Association of Architects
  • Y.T. Leong.  “Coding National Architectural Identities:  Is There a Canadian Architectural Identity?”, 2012, Tongji University, Shanghai
  • Frank Lloyd Wright’s Banff Pavilion Revival Group
  • Conference Chair, Architectural Research Center Consortium Conference, Toronto 2019
  • Editorial Board, Canadian Handbook of Practice, 2018 - Present
  • Jury, WAN Awards – Wood in Architecture, 2018
  • ssg architecture inc.