“I’m going to say there has never been a minute on this earth that Olivia wasn’t creating something,” says Siobhan BARRY’91 of her younger sister by 18 months, Olivia BARRY’93, before adding, “Well, both of us, but I think we have different areas.”
Call it hyperbole born from admiration—and from knowing someone as long as these highly accomplished, creative women have known each other. Like typical siblings, Siobhan and Olivia can relate to and laugh over shared experiences, which include a variety of vivid memories from their years at Branksome before the family moved to Toledo, Ohio, in 1987. Art classes taught by Judith Phelan remain crystal clear; ditto heading home together via ferry, since they lived on the Toronto Islands.
Today, they lead distinct lives that overlap through their creative ambitions. Throughout an animated joint interview via video, their respective backdrops reveal how their everyday environments diverge. Siobhan, who oversees major hospitality projects as a design director and principal at Gensler, among the world’s leading architecture and design firms, appears in a standard meeting room in Manhattan. Olivia, who conceives award-winning industrial light designs and abstract “ceramic paintings,” connects from her home in Tarrytown, New York, which includes an adjacent studio.
Leaf wall sconce, an example from the award-winning Mirror Moon series, and
Scroll Luminaires wall sconces.
They are in “Shuv” and “Liv” mode—their sisterly sobriquets—as they reminisce over the fashion catalogues they made as young girls, fuelled more by their imaginations than television, and collaged fabric tote bags they assembled as young women sharing a loft in New York City’s East Village.
While they were at Branksome, their father, Christopher, worked as a mechanical engineer; his expertise was architectural glass (hence the move to Toledo, known as the “Glass City”). Their mother, Elizabeth, primarily looked after the family but also spent around 10 years as the office manager for the late renowned architect George Baird and would collaborate on cookbooks with his wife, also named Elizabeth, who has authored several. They describe her creative capacities with wonderment. “Before there was Martha Stewart, our mom was in that vein of entertaining. Just put creativity into everything,” says Siobhan.
They credit both parents for encouraging their individual creative potential (even their older brother Keith ended up an artist and illustrator) at different moments in their lives. While at the University of Guelph, initially thinking she would study fine art, Siobhan had a phone call with her mother during which Siobhan ran down a list of other studies and landed on landscape architecture. “She was like, ‘You’ve never liked plants in your whole life and Olivia loves plants. Wrong daughter!’ But then she said, ‘What about architecture?’” Siobhan eventually transferred to the University of Waterloo, known for its architecture program.
Olivia notes that she never aspired to be an engineer like her father but took an interest in how he could assemble things mechanically; she wanted to explore this alongside her interest in art. Only when she moved to New York after art school did she rule out industrial design. She reached out to Eva Zeisel, the renowned “grand dame of ceramics,” and ended up working with her for 13 years. And since she could also freelance, Olivia worked with designer Isaac Mizrahi’s studio during the peak era of Target—affectionately referred to by fans as “Tar-zhay,” said in a French accent—introducing chic, ultra-affordable fashion and home décor.
“Olivia kind of bent my trajectory with the whole New York thing,” explains Siobhan, who went to visit her sister after graduating from architecture school and ended up moving in. The way they tell it, this was a period when they dove into scrappy creative projects together while also forging their own skills. It sounds like they also had a lot of fun.
“If we wanted to go out clubbing one night, we would walk to the fabric store and buy something, go home and make something to wear,” says Siobhan, marvelling at the memory. “We had these stations around our loft for all our projects; and one time, I brought a guy home and he said in a way that was not complimentary, ‘Do you guys make everything?’ And we were like, ‘Yes, actually we do.’ And I love that.”
Not that they were able to live off these hustles. About their line of bags, cleverly named Take.Out, Olivia muses, “Well, the sales end of our business was not our specialty, but we carried them everywhere and people would see us with them and then maybe commission us.”
“The culture of design is, generally, a place where ideas lead. I’m an architect working in the interior design industry, which has had generations of female leaders.” – Siobhan BARRY’91
Gradually, however, their careers began to take shape. Siobhan teamed up with one of her University of Waterloo friends who was launching an architecture firm that specialized in nightclubs, a lucrative niche in New York as the 1990s rolled into the early 2000s. The business expanded—and expanded to strip clubs, a detail she wasn’t sure should be included here but that makes for a lively twist, especially when she got around to telling her mother. Her reply? “Oh wow. Exciting!”
There were, in fact, some valuable learnings. Siobhan says she began to realize, especially once she joined Gensler in 2018, that the elements that go into engaging people in their environments could be applied to a broader range of experiences—including spas, airline lounges and blockbuster-style restaurants such as STK. Considerations such as light and music may vary, but the effectiveness of these spaces can often be distilled down to how they make people feel. “I want to do a TED Talk one day on the design of strip clubs and cancer hospitals,” she says with a laugh.
Olivia, meanwhile, moved to Tarrytown in 2018 and two years later launched her own studio, Olivia Barry / By Hand (available at Hollace Cluny in Toronto). Whether in the form of folded leaves or curving scrolls, her sconces meld sculptural simplicity with soft, ambient illumination. She also creates paintings in glazed clay that nod to the Renaissance tondo, or circular canvas, while introducing gestural brushwork with the glazes. Her Mirror Moon series, which received a 2024 NYCxDesign Award (her second), is at once visually arresting and poetic owing to the backlit bronze with a metallic ceramic surface.
“When I was studying industrial design, there were only two other women in my year, and one female professor, who taught alongside her husband. Nowadays there are equal numbers of women in these programs, if not more.” – Olivia BARRY’93
The design is also an example of the sisters’ creative worlds converging in a more current context. Anyone who visits the Gensler-renovated American Airlines / British Airways first-class lounge in Terminal 8 at JFK will find 17 Moons by Olivia adorning the walls, thanks to Siobhan’s direction.
Siobhan recently completed another substantial project: the Ra Ra Room, an Art Deco–inspired supper club run by the Mario Carbone’s Major Food Group within the Phoenix sports and entertainment arena. “It took me back to the night club days where things went very fast, but this time we’re doing it at a $20-million scale,” she says. “And it was just such a delight getting to experience the opening.” And in January, she celebrated the star-studded unveiling of musician Jon Batiste’s Jazz Club at Baha Mar in the Bahamas.
Despite their busy lives, the Barry sisters say they never feel far apart (they also regularly visit their mother, who still lives in Toronto). Olivia, who is married to architectural photographer John Muggenborg, has kept her Brooklyn apartment because it may prove useful if her 10-year-old daughter eventually decides to have her own New York experience. Siobhan lives nearby with her husband, James Thomas, who worked as a fashion designer and now makes vibrant contemporary art.
Given their respective successes, one might wonder whether the sisters encountered challenges as women in their fields. Siobhan notes how the world-renowned architect Brigitte Shim set a positive example early on, as she was part of George’s Baird’s practice. Plus, she says, “the culture of design is, generally, a place where ideas lead. I’m an architect working in the interior design industry, which has had generations of female leaders.”
Olivia has noticed the gender gap flattening. “When I was studying industrial design, there were only two other women in my year, and one female professor, who taught alongside her husband,” she says. “Nowadays there are equal numbers of women in these programs, if not more, so it’s very satisfying to observe that shift.”
Whatever lies ahead in their careers, the sisters have stayed true to their creative instincts, positively impacting—and brightening—people’s environments along the way.
Photo: (top) (left) Siobhan oversees major hospitality projects as a design director and principal at Gensler, one of the world’s leading architecture and design firms. (right) Olivia conceives award-winning industrial light designs and abstract “ceramic paintings” in her home studio in Tarrytown, New York.
