Architect Alex Josephson, co-founder of Toronto studio Partisans, spoek to Dezeen in a live Screentime talk sponsored by Enscape as part of Virtual Design Festival.

Toronto-based architect Josephson spoke to Dezeen's founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs about the work of Partisans, the studio he co-founded alongside Pooya Baktash and Jonathan Friedman.

Amongst the studio's recent projects is The Orbit, a futuristic masterplan for the rural Canadian town of Innisfil that includes drone ports and infrastructure for autonomous vehicles.

Last year, Partisans collaborated with Google's urban planning wing Sidewalk Labs to create a prototype for a 'raincoat' that extends from a building's facade to protect the pavement in front of it in harsh weather.

The prototype was developed as part of Google's recently abandoned plan for Sidewalk Toronto, a smart city proposed for Toronto's waterfront.

Partisans also created The Grotto, a wooden lakeside sauna with a burnt-timber exterior and a cavernous cedar interior, located on the shore of Lake Huron, north Toronto.

The studio is also behind the mahogany interior of Toronto's Bar Raval, which references Barcelona's art nouveau pintxos bars.

Other creatives featured in our Screentime series include dean of the Pratt Institute School of Architecture Harriet Harriss, trend forecaster Li Edelkoort, UNStudio founder Ben van Berkel, The World Around curator Beatrice Galilee, filmmaker Gary Hustwit and British-Israeli architect Ron Arad.

This Screentime conversation is sponsored by Enscape, a virtual reality and real-time rendering plugin for architectural design programme Autodesk Revit.

Virtual Design Festival is the world's first online design festival, taking place from 15 April to 30 June. For more information, or to be added to the mailing list, contact us at [email protected].