Tarisha Dolyniuk

For over 20 years, Tarisha has created environments that transcribe ideas of community, health, and wellness into built form, always with the goal of enhancing the identity of a place and its people. Registered as both an architect and an interior designer, she takes a holistic approach to interiors architecture, integrating it with architecture, urban and landscape design, environmental graphics, and accessible design. Tarisha’s work has been instrumental to MJMA’s success in redefining public and campus buildings as places that offer a variety of opportunities for individual growth and social interaction.

Tarisha develops systems, details, finishes, materials, and furniture that are both functional and creatively responsive to each community’s characteristics and needs. She recognizes that recreation and aquatic facilities are high-traffic spaces, and pays close attention when specifying and detailing materials in order to deliver cost-effective, easy to maintain solutions. Having spent much of her youth as a synchronized swimmer, Tarisha knows the importance of air quality, humidity control, and chloramine management as fundamental factors that affect athlete health and staff comfort, while appreciating how light, materiality, and spatial clarity shape how these spaces feel and endure. Her work is grounded in resolving these technical challenges while creating highly accessible environments that go beyond code. Projects like YMCA GTA’s Facility Accessibility Design Standards, the Cooper Koo Family Cherry Street YMCA and the Rick Hansen Gold-certified UBC Aquatic Centre have all benefited from Tarisha’s deep knowledge of recreation interiors.

Tarisha presents regularly at the annual conference of the Ontario Library Association (OLA) and helps the organization plan its Library as Place conference. Her OLA talks have addressed the role of colour in library architecture, and the paradigm shifts that have occurred in all aspects of library design due to major events like the recent pandemic. As MJMA’s Library Specialist, she is proud to contribute to the development of these public spaces that play such an essential role in building community cohesion.

Tarisha has a Bachelor of Environmental Design from the University of Manitoba and a Master of Architecture from the University of Toronto, for which she received several prizes, including the RAIC Award of Excellence. She joined MJMA in 2012, becoming the Director of Interiors, to becoming a Partner in 2020.