Maya Przybylski

Maya Przybylski is O’Donovan Director and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo, where she co-founded the DATAlab research group. She holds an M.Arch from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design—earning the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Medal—and a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Toronto.

Research Focus

Maya’s scholarship integrates architecture with software engineering to interrogate how data abundance and computational design transform architectural theory, methods, tools, and outcomes. Her SSHRC-funded “Soft Materials” project (2018-) develops architecture-specific approaches that weave sociocultural agency into the technical capacities of data-driven design. Her design work fuses software, data, hardware and physical materiality to envision citizen-oriented, software/data-enabled cities.

Awards & Recognition

• Sandford Fleming Foundation Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2018)
• University of Waterloo Faculty Award (2019)

Teaching & Advising

Maya has taught core and advanced design studios and research seminars including:

• ARCH 193 – Design Studio
• ARCH 484 – Architectural Research
• ARCH 684 – Special Topics in Architecture
• ARCH 693 – Thesis Research & Design Studio II

She is currently accepting applications from graduate students interested in computational design, data ethics, and experimental material systems.

Editorial Leadership

Maya is a founding editor of the bracket book series, co-editing bracket [On Farming] (2010) and bracket [At Extremes] (2015), both supported by the Graham Foundation for the Arts.