Dyonne Fashina is the founder of Denizens of Design, a Toronto based interior design practice working across hospitality, commercial, and cultural projects. She grew up in Hockley Valley, just north of Orangeville, on a seven acre property with a creek connected to the Nottawasaga River. Her earliest creative experiences came from working with clay found along the creek, forming objects by hand, which established a lasting connection to materiality and making.

Fashina pursued art from a young age, including weekly watercolour classes beginning at age twelve, and that medium continues to inform her work today. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts at Western University before earning her interior design degree at Ryerson University, now Toronto Metropolitan University. While in school, she worked at Fleur de Lis, developing a strong foundation in millwork and detailing, and later held roles at Retail Environments, Stantec, and Quadrangle.

After navigating layoffs early in her career, she set out to build her own stability and began working independently. Her first major commission was a one hundred suite hotel in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Since then, her practice has grown through long standing relationships and direct outreach. Denizens of Design is known for a collaborative model that brings together architects, engineers, fabricators, and makers as needed. The studio operates from a shared workspace with architect Paul Raff, fostering cross disciplinary exchange.

Her work with the Food Dudes includes cultural and museum dining projects at the Gardiner Museum, the McMichael, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Evergreen Brick Works, and the Alton Mill Arts Centre, where she has helped develop flexible hospitality environments that support both daily use and events. Outside of practice, she is an avid traveler and lifelong musician who sings regularly at karaoke. She has also referenced a childhood photo, often shared on Instagram Stories, showing her in a bright green snowsuit while supervising her brother’s early building projects.

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Stefano Pujatti is an Italian architect and designer, born in Budoia near Pordenone in northeastern Italy, north of Venice. He grew up in a rural environment close to a NATO base, an experience that exposed him early to international culture and different perspectives. From a young age he was drawn to construction, farming, and horses, beginning to ride early and maintaining a lifelong connection to horsemanship.

He studied architecture in Venice, where he was educated within one of Europe’s most rigorous academic environments, and later completed a master’s degree at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. His education placed him in contact with influential figures and movements shaping late twentieth century architecture, including deconstructivist practices and frequent lectures and reviews by architects such as Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid. These experiences shifted his approach toward physical experimentation, model making, and a direct engagement with form and space.

Early in his career he worked in Los Angeles, including model work connected to Gehry’s office, before returning to Europe to work with Professor Gino Valle. He later established his own practice, taking on public commissions at a young age, including cemetery and crematorium projects that were built early and helped define his professional trajectory. His work has ranged from landscape integrated public projects to housing, industrial buildings, and interior and product design.

Based in Torino, he has also maintained a long standing professional presence in Toronto since 2014. During this period he taught for two semesters at the University of Toronto and completed early Canadian work such as the York Marble offices. His practice continues to operate across Italy and Canada, shaped by a belief that design is a way of thinking rather than a fixed scale or typology, and by a strong sense of responsibility toward clients and collaborators who place their trust in his work.

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Ashley Botten is a Toronto based interior designer and the founder of Ashley Botten Design. Raised in Toronto’s Lawrence Park neighbourhood, her earliest connection to design began in childhood through an intuitive relationship with space, furniture arrangement, and atmosphere. That sensitivity was shaped by time spent rearranging her bedroom, careful attention to objects and materials, and frequent exposure to hotels through her father’s career in the hotel industry, which began with Four Seasons. Early experiences at landmark Toronto properties, including the Inn on the Park, further influenced her appreciation for hospitality, environment, and spatial feeling.

During her teenage years, Botten lived in Boston’s Wellesley Hills while attending high school. Entering a small community at grade nine, the experience challenged her sense of identity and social belonging, while also expanding her understanding of cities, culture, and place. She returned to Toronto for grade eleven, maintaining strong ties to the city while developing a growing interest in fashion, styling, and personal expression through clothing.

After high school, she drove across Canada and spent a winter skiing in Whistler before relocating to Vancouver, where she worked at Benetton. In her early twenties, she returned to Toronto to formally study interior design at the Academy of Merchandising and Design, completing the program part time while working. There, she discovered a strong connection to the technical aspects of design, including space planning, proportion, scale, and code, which became foundational to her practice.

Her early professional career included hospitality focused work and a formative period in television production with HGTV, contributing to shows including Savoir Faire, Room Service, and Design Inc. In 2008, she founded Ashley Botten Design, initially focusing on furniture based projects before expanding into full scale residential interiors. Her practice grew through long standing client relationships and word of mouth referrals, leading to projects across Canada, the United States, and Europe. Alongside interiors, furniture continues to play a central role in her work, shaping the language and identity of the studio.

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Robert Micacchi is an architect from Woodstock, Ontario, and the founder of Micacchi Architecture, based in Toronto. The son of an engineer in the forestry equipment industry and a kindergarten teacher, he was drawing floor plans from an early age, inspired by technical drawings brought home from work and by the modernist home of a local architect in his neighbourhood. With Italian family roots and a nonna who encouraged his sense of craft and elegance, he stayed focused on architecture through school.

He completed his architectural education at the University of Waterloo, drawn to the program for its co op structure and a term in Italy. Micacchi’s early career combined work terms with office experience in London, England, and later roles at Architects Alliance, KPMB, Diamond Schmitt, and Hotson Bakker Boniface Haden Architects and Urbanists, as well as formative years with Prish Jain at Tact. His thesis explored mid rise housing and the forces that shape cities, from policy to economics. Before launching his own studio, he sought guidance from mentors including Steven Teeple and Richard Wengle.

Since establishing his practice, Micacchi has led projects that range from house renovations and new builds to the repositioning of older apartment buildings by adding new units. One of his early independent projects moved from renovation to a full rebuild, navigating a Committee of Adjustment approval with extensive variances and neighbourhood support. His work also includes an administration building in Turkey developed for a large factory campus, featuring courtyards, expansive glazing, and a custom stone facade system. Today, he leads a team of six and continues to pursue housing typologies that balance proven performance with elegance. His work is also shared visually on Instagram.

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Tommy Smythe is a Toronto born interior designer and former television host whose work is defined by authenticity, personal narrative, and a deep belief in the power of environment to shape daily life. Raised in Toronto, he spent his school years in the city, summers in the Muskoka Lakes, and winter holidays largely in Palm Beach, experiences that exposed him early to contrasting lifestyles, architecture, and cultural rhythms. Encouraged by his mother to pursue creative outlets and influenced by his grandmother, a Toronto interior designer who trained in New York later in life, Smythe was designing his own bedroom by age eight, selecting wallpaper, fabrics, lighting, and furniture that foreshadowed the work he would later become known for.

In the early 1990s, he moved to London on a working holiday permit, beginning his career in television as a production secretary on Ring My Bell, the first British phone in chat show, produced by World of Wonder. Living in Brixton during a formative cultural moment shaped by the height of the AIDS crisis, Smythe was immersed in a creative community that demonstrated how art, design, and media could be lived professions. He returned to Toronto when his father became ill and worked in hospitality at the CN Tower during its transition to fine dining, refining a service driven sensibility that would later define his client relationships.

Smythe pursued hands on mentorship rather than formal design education, training under Youssef Hasbani of L’Atelier and learning the art of mixing periods, materials, and styles. He later worked with Sarah Richardson in a collaboration that brought him into the public eye and connected his design philosophy with international audiences. After a second chapter in television supported by Marilyn Denis, he stepped away from broadcasting in 2020 and co founded TOM Design Collective with Lindsay Mens and Kate Stuart. Based in Liberty Village, the studio operates as a collaborative, non figurehead practice focused on longevity, integrity, and creating homes that genuinely reflect the people who inhabit them.

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Brad Bradford is a Toronto city councillor and an urban planner by training. He grew up in suburban Hamilton, raised by his single mother alongside two siblings, and later moved to Hespeler, a community within Cambridge, Ontario, where he finished high school. An active kid, he spent much of his childhood figure skating at the Dave Andreychuk Mountain Arena and Skating Centre, training and competing at a high level. He also played rugby, including at the University of Guelph and with club teams.

Brad describes himself as an unfocused high school student who barely made it into university before finding confidence and academic momentum once he applied himself. He studied environmental studies and completed an internship at the Canadian Urban Institute while attending York University. He later earned a scholarship to pursue graduate studies in urban planning at the University of Waterloo, where he was part of a small cohort and served as president of the Canadian Association of Planning Students. During that time, he helped organize a national student conference in Waterloo, where he met architect Craig Applegath, who became a long term mentor.

He began his professional career at DIALOG, working in a multidisciplinary environment and contributing to planning projects across Canada. His graduate research focused on how land use decisions shape community energy demand, with an emphasis on district energy. That work led him to Boston, where he spent roughly three years working in district energy policy and traveling internationally, including to Dubai.

Brad later returned to Toronto to work in municipal government in the office of chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat. That experience led him to enter elected office, and he now represents Beaches-East York on Toronto City Council. He has said he plans to run for mayor in 2026.

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Jessica Nakanishi and Jonathan Sabine are the founders and principals of MSDS Studio, a Toronto based multidisciplinary design practice working across interiors, furniture, lighting, and product design. Jessica grew up in Mississauga, Ontario, and traces her early material curiosity to building alongside her father in millwork settings. She later worked at the skate shop West 49, where assembling skateboards became an early lesson in parts, tolerance, and hands on construction. Jonathan grew up out west in Canada and was drawn early to drawing, making, and the mechanics of how objects come together, interests that later shaped his studio work.

Both studied at Sheridan College, with Jessica in interior design and Jonathan in furniture design and build, and they first knew of each other there before reconnecting in Toronto through overlapping neighborhoods and creative circles. Their practice spans work at the scale of small objects through to large offices and homes, and they have designed during Toronto’s tech office boom, including early work for Shopify. MSDS also develops products for international manufacturers, working in a licensing model and building relationships through exhibitions and design weeks in Toronto and abroad, including presentations in Sweden and work produced with Danish partners.

Their work includes Boulevard, a perching oriented seating system developed for +Halle through a brief shared with Form Us With Love and Nick Ross. Outside the studio, Jessica paints and gardens, and that interest has extended into landscape input for residential clients. Jonathan cycles, boxes, and plays chess with their son. During the conversation, they noted sharing process and finished work online, including references to Instagram, and Jessica referenced a painting based on a photograph she took during a visit to Hancock Shaker Village, which was discussed in connection with liner notes.

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Jon Cummings is a Toronto based architect and educator who grew up in the suburbs of Toronto, Ontario. After early interests in drawing, painting, sculpture, and ceramics, his path toward architecture deepened through travel and close study of the built environment, including formative time in Italy and exposure to historic and contemporary works.

He studied architecture at the University of Waterloo, completing multiple co op terms in Canada and abroad, including work experiences in Peterborough, Boston, New York, Dublin, and Toronto, as well as time in Los Angeles at Morphosis. After a solo backpacking trip across Europe, he pursued graduate studies at the University of Toronto and contributed to an architecture exhibition led by professor John McMinn that was installed at the Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Cummings spent more than a decade at architects Alliance in Toronto, gaining end to end experience across project phases and building types. In 2021, he founded his own studio, Jon Cummings Architecture, also known as JC A, based in Toronto. His practice focuses on residential work at multiple scales, including renovations, new builds, multiplex housing, and accessory dwelling units, alongside public sector and campus renovation work. He is interested in contemporary architectural language, local sustainable materials, and the expressive potential of structure, mechanical systems, and light as visible parts of how buildings are made.

Curated Podcast Sponsors:

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To connect with our sponsors, email me: jonathan@waldenhomes.ca

⁠Behind the Build Instagram