Architecture as Social Form is a research– and design–driven exhibition in the form of an experimental usable space. From the research phase through to the practical employment of the design, both users and producers of the built environment are encouraged to conceive of expanded possibilities for prescribed spaces. Architect/artist Céline Condorelli approaches Hart House, a Gothic Revival building and social-hub established on the University of Toronto campus in 1919, as a test–site. Located in a common room, Condorelli's intervention will be utilized through day–to–day activities as well as social events, clubs meetings, and public programs. Condorelli's crossdisciplinary work develops possibilities for “supporting” the work of others and new forms of political imaginary, while also making broader inquiries into forms of commonality and discursive sites. Hart House's profile brings to mind exacting associations, the boundaries of which are tested through Architecture as Social Form.

Céline Condorelli works in the interstices between art and architecture. Her projects combine multiple methodologies, such as 'supporting' the work of others, developing new forms of political imaginary and alternative forms of commonality, as well as inquiring into existing and fictional realities. The resulting projects merge exhibition, politics, fiction, and the role of public space within a nexus of urgent current concerns. Condorelli has taught and presented in numerous capacities around the world and is currently a Professor at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan. She is a founding member of a collective that organizes Eastside Projects, a new public art space for the city of Birmingham. Ongoing long–term projects include 'Support Structures' with artist/curator Gavin Wade. Condorelli's work has been included in Creative Time's Living as Form, New York (2011); Fun Palace, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010); and the GIL Biennial (Ghuang Zhou, Shanghai and Beijing, 2007), among many others.

Su-Ying Lee is curator–in–residence at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. She is interested in testing the conventions of exhibition making and the way in which art performs in nontraditional locations. Recently, Lee curated The Good Host (2011), a multi–site exhibition that addressed issues of agency, as well as Under New Management (2010), a continuously transforming exhibition in a retail space. Previously, Lee was assistant curator at the Art Gallery of Mississauga where she produced two major projects: Explorers and Dandies in an open letter to Canada Post: Frederick Hagan & Kent Monkman, a project involving an indigenous, queer perspective on nationhood; and The Rug: Harrell Fletcher and Wendy Red Star, a project that investigated free trade.

Barbara Fischer is the executive director/chief curator of the JMB Gallery and senior lecturer in curatorial studies at the University of Toronto. She was the commissioner for the Canada Pavilion at the 53rd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, and has held curatorial positions in galleries and museums across Canada, including the Walter Phillips Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Power Plant. She has curated solo exhibitions of major Canadian artists, as well as the internationally circulated exhibition General Idea: Editions, 1967–1995. Fischer is the recipient of the 2008 Hnatyshyn Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art.

The mandate of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery is to organize and present exhibitions of contemporary and historical Canadian, as well as exhibitions of international art. As part of its role within Hart House, the gallery's mandate is to engage broad and diverse audiences for all its programming, and to create year–round public access to contemporary art. The gallery also has a mandate to organize outreach education programs, including lectures, panel discussions, screenings, readings, and performance–based works consistent with exhibition and collecting mandates. The gallery was officially instituted in 1974, in response to a growing art collection that had been gathered since the early–twentieth century.