For the past eight years, Rei TASAKA’97 has been one of the visionaries revitalizing the relationship of Canada’s largest metropolis to its vast southwestern extremity, Lake Ontario. That meeting point was much vilified in the 1990s and early 2000s as a “wall of condos.” Now, as senior urban design manager, planning and design, at Waterfront Toronto, Rei is passionate about her mission to continue transforming the Ontario capital into a world-class waterside city.
Japanese-born Rei, whose CV includes an impressive roster of domestic and international projects, has contributed to—among other things—Waterfront Toronto’s redevelopment and design of the Central Waterfront and the Port Lands, both former industrial areas, with a focus on how to create what she calls “remarkable urban landscapes that welcome both residents and visitors.” Because she happens to reside in a condominium near the Jack Layton Ferry Terminal with her Norwegian-born husband, Rune, she is intimately familiar with what it’s like—and what it could be like—to live near the lake.
Her job, says Rei, involves “how our waterfront is going to be envisioned in the future, both near and long term: What are these blocks and the density and the parks going to look like, and how do we manage the planning and design teams to create great public spaces and neighbourhoods? So, I work with design consultants and local developers, but also with municipal, provincial and federal agencies. The job has myriad complexities but also many, many rewards.”
Rei is part of a vast group engaged in one of the biggest engineering projects underway in North America: the Port Lands Flood Protection and Enabling Infrastructure Project, a $1.25-billion endeavour that will revitalize 800 acres of flood-prone land. To be completed in 2025, it includes creation of the new, 54-acre Villiers Island right downtown, in a channel of Toronto’s landmark Don River. She leads the urban design work for the island, focusing, she notes, “on carving out a huge chunk of the current landfill called the Port Lands and renaturalizing the Don to the way it used to flow, and in the process creating an entirely new piece of land surrounded by parks, nature and art trails, a children’s playground, canoe and kayak launches, and, overall, a new community with places to live and work.”
Chloe Catan, until recently the public art program manager for Waterfront Toronto, recalls working with Rei during Catan’s four and a half years at the agency. “I experienced first-hand her inspiring ability to see the big picture, create frameworks and lead a team of people to deliver a complex project,” says Catan. “She also has a knack for making work enjoyable, as she’s charismatic, collegial and very smart. The thing about her is that she’s so committed and delivers to such a high standard that everyone wants to work with her.”
Rei says her love of art (especially the work of Marc Chagall and Edvard Munch) and, eventually, architecture and urban planning, were ignited during her time at Branksome. She started there in Grade 5—immediately after she, her mom, her late elder sister, Mai TASAKA’95, and her younger brother, Yu, moved to Toronto for her father’s work as an insurance executive. Before Grade 13, she took part in a one-month summer term to learn about art in Siena, Italy. It was a life changer, Rei says. “My focus then was actually more on fine arts, but I felt like I was Italian in my past life—I was thrilled by the art and architecture, not to mention the food.”
She considered a career as an artist—she loved drawing and painting people taking part in everyday activities—or as a set designer, having had some practice at Branksome. But a friend suggested she consider a career in architecture. Her focus shifted further beyond fine arts during her subsequent studies for bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture at the University of Waterloo, which attracted her in part because of its fourth-year undergrad program in Rome.
It was in the Eternal City that she acquired a fascination with cities and waterfronts. She went on to do her master’s thesis on how to revive the riverside spaces in Tokyo. “The complexity of Tokyo’s urban waterways was truly my switch from architecture to urban design,” she recalls.
After her time at Waterloo, Rei devised several master plans for the Thames River in London. She also worked on resettlement projects in Tanzania and Albania, and on land development in Jordan. Back in Toronto, she created designs for city streets, such as the Six Points Interchange in Etobicoke, and for numerous new communities in formerly rural Ontario areas. As someone who loves teaching, Rei has also been a sessional course director at the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University for nearly a decade, working with young planning students on reimagining various sites in the city.
“I work with design consultants and local developers, but also with municipal, provincial and federal agencies. The job has myriad complexities but also many, many rewards.”
Shahid Mahmood has been a friend since 2015, when, as head of the planning practice at Toronto’s Moriyama Teshima Architects, he hired her to be design manager for Education City, a 12-square-kilometre campus in Doha, Qatar, that would host multiple universities. “We were required to stitch together some of the world’s leading educational institutions, including Cornell and Carnegie Mellon, as well as cultural sites, along a tram corridor, and with a soccer stadium being built to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup,” recalls Mahmood, now manager of corporate projects for the City of Brampton. “It was a demanding job that required a talented, resilient project manager—someone who could manage a team with over 80 subconsultants in multiple time zones.”
Rei was that person, Mahmood says. “Places of beauty are made when memories, stories and personal perceptions converge. Rei, fuelled by her love of travel and experiencing new things, had the ability to bring all this together. Master planning is so much more than blocking generic rectangles on a plan. It is about engaging with people to build an intersection of the physical world with that of the experiential.”
Away from work, Rei and Rune, an investment professional whom she married in October, enjoy golf and more travel—they regularly visit her parents, now based in Tokyo, and his in his native Trondheim, another waterfront city. She also loves hosting dinners, her artistic impulses apparent in the attention she pays to the aesthetic presentation of what she’s serving, whether it’s a sashimi platter or eggplant with ginger.
Eating good food and sharing it with others is something she acquired from her family—it’s equated with “home” and Japanese culture, she says—and is a sort of tribute to her much-cherished sister, Mai, who enjoyed food and travel while working on building equity and economic strength in developing countries with a Japanese foundation. Mai died four years ago from sudden heart failure. Rei still does personal creative projects for friends or family. “I do want to start painting again,” she says. “It allows me to immerse myself both in memory and anticipation of something new.”
When she’s not enjoying downtime, Rei is bolstered by the excitement of working on Toronto’s waterfront renaissance. After years of taking on numerous international projects, she says, “it’s such a privilege to be part of something this monumental in the city where I’ve spent most of my life.”
