WINNER OF THE RAIC’S 2025 PRIX DU XXE SIECLE The 1913 Grand Falls Post Office still remains in the town. Photo courtesy Grand Falls-Windsor Heritage Society LOCATION Grand Falls, Newfoundland DESIGNER Anglo-Newfoundland Development Co. Grand Falls is remarkable for being among the first—possibly the first—garden cities created outside the United Kingdom at the beginning of the twentieth century. Designed and built by members of the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Co. between 1906 and 1909, the town has a layout inspired by Ebenezer Howard’s pioneering theory of 1898, with separate residential, commercial, and industrial zones, and suburban housing lots organized along a series of sweeping curvilinear streets meant to integrate scenic views and landscape into the urban experience. Spearheaded by brothers Alfred and Harold Harmsworth, owners of a U.K.-based publishing empire, Grand Falls is a spectacular example of how industrial development and emergent planning theories guided the creation of paternalistic Canadian resource towns in the early decades of the twentieth century, when industrial entrepreneurs seized upon planning as a way to forge a stable and passive workforce by protecting workers’ health and enforcing social standards.  The original town plan includes separated residential, commercial, and industrial zones. Photo by Robert E. Holloway, courtesy Grand Falls-Windsor Heritage Society The city’s progressive appearance and factory wages made it the envy of people across Newfoundland. The AND Co.’s state-of-the-art pulp and paper mill was among the first land-based industries to develop in Newfoundland following the completion of an inland railway in 1898. The company also built shops, clubs, churches, schools, and a hospital for its workers, along with an abundance of greenery in the form of athletic fields, parks, and gardens. Company housing in Grand Falls was modelled on that in Letchworth Garden City (the world’s first garden city, built 1903-05), where the Harmsworth’s Daily Mail sponsored a Cheap Cottage Exhibition that challenged British architects to create low-cost workers’ housing using industrially produced materials and based on the latest sanitary science. Similarly, workers’ housing in Grand Falls was arranged along wide streets with front and rear gardens and featured modern amenities, like indoor plumbing and electricity. The company also directed all aspects of social life in Grand Falls, sponsoring picnics and sports teams and banishing alcohol. Workers’ housing on Monchy Road was arrayed along wide streets with front and rear gardens. Photo courtesy Grand Falls-Windsor Heritage Society In addition to many surviving examples of the townsite’s original housing stock, several heritage structures remain in place, including Grand Falls House (a Tudor Revival residence built for Alfred Harmsworth in 1909), the Grand Falls Post Office (completed in 1913), and portions of the original AND Co. Pulp and Paper Mill (completed in 1909 and permanently closed in 2009). Tudor Revival residence was built for company co-founder Alfred Harmsworth. Photo courtesy Grand Falls-Windsor Heritage Society Expert Panel Comments Bernard Flaman :: Grand Falls represents one of the earliest professionally designed company towns in Canada. It is not a work camp, but aspires to be a real community and is based on Garden City planning principles promoted by Ebenezer Howard. Company towns resulted from an economy of resource extraction and could be found across Canada. Other examples are Kitimat, British Columbia (1951), Uranium City, Saskatchewan (1956), Flin Flon, Manitoba (1927), Batawa, Ontario (1939) and Arvida, Quebec (1927). Recognizing Grand Falls broadens the time frame for the Prix to an earlier part of the twentieth century and also recognizes an important urban design project. The pulp and paper mill was a state-of-the-art factory with modern machinery, wide-spanning steel trusses, and abundant daylight. Photo courtesy Grand Falls-Windsor Heritage Society Dustin Valen :: Grand Falls is a stunning example of how transnationalism shaped Canadian cities and the experience of industrial labourers at the beginning of the twentieth century. Equally stunning is how little is known about this company town today, despite the many other celebrated examples of Garden City planning across this country. The project’s imagined role in striking a harmonious relationship between industry and labour while bettering the circumstances of workers is a timely reminder of how twentieth-century planning reforms allowed for degrees of social control through means virtually synonymous at the time with industrial and social modernity. Inderbir Singh Riar :: The visionary British planner and reformer Ebenezer Howard’s influential Garden City proposal for self-contained settlements, first outlined in 1898, arrived in less than a decade to Grand Falls, Newfoundland. Grand Falls, like earlier paternalist-capitalist efforts such as Lever Brothers’ Port Sunlight outside Liverpool and the Cadbury family’s Bourneville near Birmingham, took salubrious housing as means to improve workers’ lives and morals. The consequent company town, predicated on functional zoning and picturesque residential districts, sought the modernization of every aspect of life, from industrial production and social responsibility to cultural life and familial duty. The result deserves recognition not only as a model for much later efforts such as Alcan’s Kitimat in British Columbia, but as an expression of how yearnings for the simultaneous reform of industry and society fuelled the resource economy across the Americas. As appeared in the May 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post 2025 RAIC Awards: Original town site of Grand Falls appeared first on Canadian Architect.

WINNER OF THE 2025 RAIC ARCHITECTURAL JOURNALISM AND MEDIA AWARD Spaces for gathering always imply or set up a performance. A ceremony, theater or music, a display, a dance, an encounter, a conversation. Great spaces amplify the power and effects of these expressions. What makes some spaces so well loved as to become icons while others fail to move us? How might architecture engage the body and trigger the senses? How does architecture create these enduring, embodied memories? We connect through our senses to the world around us and to each other. Detail, often seen as the dry, technical side of architecture, serves the sensory experience. Architecture is never one design; it’s a layering of many small decisions, details, and concepts that together engage the entire body and trigger the senses. These smaller designs—these nuts and bolts—and the way they build up into the experience of space, are the subject of this book. — Excerpt from Set Pieces, “A Way In: Introduction” by Matthew Lella  Photo courtesy Diamond Schmitt Architects TEXT Lisa Landrum Performance spaces are among the most rewarding to design and enjoy. They are invigorating catalysts of democracy and culture; creative hubs of spectacle and catharsis; and critical forums of reflection, empathy and imagination. They induce personal reveries and social revolutions. Possibilities thrive! Set Pieces celebrates architecture’s capacity to intensify the intimacy, immensity, and diversity of theatrical and musical experience. Designs of whole halls are presented with an immersive prelude of auditoria images, and an expository appendix of plans and sections. Yet, as its title suggests, Set Pieces concentrates on performative parts. Its 15 fragments refer to 15 elements designed by Diamond Schmitt Architects for 11 performing arts projects in nine different cities in Canada, the United States, England, the Netherlands, and Russia. As “pieces,” these elements are both material components within larger works and intricate compositions in themselves. These pieces include sonic ceilings, luminous surrounds, spiralling stairs, and interconnected rooms, all finely crafted to resonate with good vibes and synaesthetic effects. Sensuality abounds. Set Pieces also delves into the play of technical, material and metaphoric associations. Readers are led backstage into the processes and workshops where these pieces were conceived and fabricated. A chapter on Ottawa’s National Art Centre shares the rationale of the Timber Cascade that envelopes the original concrete building with an airy new skin. Like the 1969 landmark, the 2017 addition of glass, mass timber, and triangulated coffers draws its lofty and geometrical inspiration from tetrahedral kites. A chapter on the Tornado Staircase for Buddy Holly Hall in Lubbock, Texas, spirals into complex geometries of not only the corkscrewing steel stair, but a multiple-vortex twister that devastated Lubbock in 1970. Alluding also to Buddy Holly’s transcendent energy and ultimate demise in a weather-induced aviation accident, this coiling piece of vertical circulation connects audiences to four levels of seating and socializing, while meaningfully embodying musical fervour and cosmic fate. A customized system of variable and fixed acoustical reflectors, positioned above an existing thrust stage, was developed for Memorial Hall on the campus of Marlborough College in the U.K. Photo courtesy Diamond Schmitt Architects Other chapters describe the acoustically attuned millwork of Sine Wave in New York’s David Geffen Hall; the aural optimization of a Sound Cloud, which also conceals a fresh air plenum, in London’s Memorial Hall; and intertwined stories of flying canoes and logging industries in la chasse gallerie of Montreal’s La Maison Symphonique. Toronto chapters emphasize more civic settings. City Room at the Four Seasons Centre becomes a mediating space between opera and street; and Room for Everyone at the Daniels Spectrum aims to reflect in its facade the diversity of the Regent Park communities it celebrates and serves. Packing a plethora of delights, this book also assembles a plurality of voices. Principal architects are joined by a chorus of savvy virtuosos: set designer Mimi Lien; director, playwright and performer Robert Lepage; classical music critic Justin Davidson; acoustic scholar Kate Wagner; and experimental composer Robert Gerard Pietrusko. Their intervening essays and interviews bring profound depth and detail to the architecture of performance. In all, Set Pieces presents architecture as a harmonic coalescence of sonic, spectral, spatial and social elements, together striving to inspire, fulfill and delight society as a whole. Encore! The auditorium of Montreal’s Maison Symphonique is clad in Quebec beech wood, shaped with curved walls and balconies to optimize acoustics. Photo courtesy Diamond Schmitt Architects Jury Comment :: Set Pieces is a beautifully crafted exploration of performance space architecture that bridges technical expertise with human experience. Through clear language and compelling imagery, it engages both architects and the public. Particularly relevant post-pandemic, it offers valuable insights into the cultural role of performance spaces while sharing practical design solutions. The thoughtful integration of sensory elements, geometry, and materiality creates an illuminating resource. The jury for this award included Jessie Andjelic, Chris Cornelius, Camille Mitchell (FRAIC), Maya Przybylski, and Terrence Smith-Lamothe (MRAIC). CONTRIBUTORS Diamond Schmitt: Don Schmitt, Matthew Lella, Gary McCluskie; Justin Davidson, Music & Architecture Critic for New York Magazine and Curbed; Kate Wagner, Architecture Critic for The Nation & Journalist; Robert Lepage, Playwright, Actor and Director; Mimi Lien, Set Designer; Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Designer & Composer, Associated Professor at University of Pennsylvania | CONCEPT Paddy Harrington and Jennifer Sigler | EXECUTIVE EDITORS Brian Sholis and Jennifer Sigler | MANAGING EDITOR Javier Zeller | GRAPHIC DESIGN Cristian Ordóñez for Frontier, Toronto | COPYEDITING Brian Sholis | PROOFREADING Keonaona Peterson | PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR BIRKHÄUSER Ria Stein | PRODUCTION Anja Haering, Amelie Solbrig As appeared in the May 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post 2025 RAIC Awards: Set Pieces—Architecture for the Performing Arts in Fifteen Fragments appeared first on Canadian Architect.

WINNER OF THE 2025 RAIC ADVOCATE FOR ARCHITECTURE AWARD The pool at the UBC Museum of Anthropology was not completed because of site stability issues, although it was filled temporarily for Arthur Erickson’s 80th birthday in 2004. Wosk’s donations enabled the pool’s permanent reinstatement in 2010. Photo by Christopher Erickson, courtesy Arthur Erickson Foundation Dr. Yosef Wosk—a scholar, educator, author, businessperson, art collector, explorer, rabbi, peace activist, and philanthropist—has made numerous contributions to British Columbian, Canadian, and international culture. His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including Officer of the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia, Freedom of the City of Vancouver, honorary doctorates from Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University, and internationally, the Culture Beyond Borders Medal from the United Nations. A defining characteristic of Wosk’s work has been his deep and longstanding commitment to the improvement and conservation of the built environment of Canadian communities and landscapes. Working quietly and behind the scenes, he has seized opportunities for engagement and support in multiple areas of architectural, landscape, and urban design culture. His lifelong interest in architecture and landscape architecture reflects a concern for his fellow citizens, and a fundamental belief in the power of our buildings and landscapes to not simply accommodate society—but to also transform it.  The resource centre at the VanDusen Botanical Garden is one of hundreds of libraries worldwide supported by Wosk. Photo Nic Lehoux, courtesy Perkins & Will Buildings and Landscapes Some of the most visible of Wosk’s contributions as an advocate for architecture are his interventions in new and existing buildings and landscapes. A recent example is the Yosef Wosk Library & Resource Centre at the VanDusen Botanical Garden (Perkins+Will Architects with Cornelia Oberlander Landscape Architect, 2011), the largest publicly accessible botanical and horticultural library in western Canada—and just one of the hundreds of libraries that Wosk has initiated, organized, and/or funded all over the world.  Wosk contributed a major grant to Bing Thom Architects in 2008 to encourage them to proceed with their master plan for the Shanghai 2010 World Exposition, and he supported the transformation of the Bing Thom-designed Simon Fraser University Surrey Campus. In appreciation for Yosef being the first to make a major donation to the project, The Yosef Wosk Learning Commons was dedicated in the new university library. Many of Wosk’s interventions enable the completion of the designers’ original vision. Wosk worked to reinstate the reflecting pool at the UBC Museum of Anthropology (Arthur Erickson Architects with Cornelia Oberlander Landscape Architect, 1975) and contributed to the building’s six-year-long seismic upgrade (Nick Milkovich Architects, 2024). A fundamental element of the original vision of the design team led by Arthur Erickson and Cornelia Oberlander, the reflecting pool was never completed because of concerns related to the stability of the site, and although the pool was filled, temporarily, for Erickson’s 80th birthday in 2004, it was not until 2010 that it was finally reinstated, thanks to Wosk.  Equally transformative was Wosk’s support of the magnificent roof garden addition to the Vancouver Public Library (original building by Safdie Architects with Downs Archambault & Partners, 1995; addition by Safdie Architects, DA Architects, and Cornelia Oberlander Landscape Architect, 2018). Yosef was the catalyst, patron, and a member of the steering committee of the 15-year project to complete the redevelopment of the top two floors and the roof garden of the library. The completed project includes a room and adjacent garden named the Yosef Wosk Poets’ Corner and Poets Laureate Garden. A Founding Pillar and first Lifetime Friend of the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, Wosk was the most generous individual donor to the Save the Buildings Fund, and a significant donor to Old School, a unique continuing education certificate program that brought homeowners, contractors, labourers, architects and engineers back to school to learn heritage conservation. Education Working closely with Indspire and the Arthur Erickson Foundation, Wosk created the Erickson-Wosk Indigenous Scholarship in Architecture and Landscape Architecture, which improves the pathway to university studies for Indigenous students and commemorates Arthur Erickson’s sensitivity to Indigenous knowledge and building traditions. Mike DeGagné, President and CEO of Indspire, recognized the award as “…a significant step in supporting First Nations, Inuit and Métis architecture and landscape architecture students to achieve their potential through education and training. They can in turn enrich their communities and create positive change in Canada.” Several years ago, Wosk also offered the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) financial assistance with several initiatives, one of which was the installation of a grove of ginkgo trees in the UBC Botanical Garden. The school has accepted Wosk’s proposal for the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander Ginkgo Grove—for Cornelia, the ginkgo was a model of endurance and adaptability—and will match his donation. Wosk’s longstanding and ongoing relationship with SALA has generated numerous other transformative collaborations over the years, including the Design Discovery Indigenous Recruitment Strategy, a multi-year effort designed to attract Indigenous high school students to studies in architecture and landscape architecture, and generous support for SALA’s Arthur Erickson Lecture Series. Arthur Erickson’s home and studio, restored to the Arthur Erickson Foundation with the support of Yosef Work. Photo by Simon Scott, courtesy Arthur Erickson Foundation Research, scholarship, and design excellence For decades, Wosk has supported architectural research, scholarship, and design excellence in quiet, behind-the-scenes ways. Hundreds of events and publications in design and other disciplines—journal articles, monographs, academic presentations—are the direct result of Wosk’s encouragement and financial support. Many of Wosk’s own publications reveal his architectural insight and sensitivity. Other initiatives that have been supported, and in some cases enabled, by Wosk’s generosity include research and publications by architectural historians and critics Robert Lemon, Trevor Boddy, Hal Kalman, Robin Ward, Robert Reid, Don Luxton, and many others. Launched in 2019 in collaboration with the Vancouver Heritage Foundation, the Yosef Wosk Publication Grant Program supports research and publication in a variety of media on Vancouver’s heritage places, their conservation, and related topics. A recently announced initiative, developed in collaboration with the AIBC, SALA and Simon Fraser’s City program, is the Bing Thom Award for Architectural Excellence. Created at Wosk’s urging and managed by the Architectural Foundation of BC, the Bing Thom Award will be completely supported with Wosk’s 10-year commitment to cover all expenses.  Arthur Erickson’s home and studio, restored to the Arthur Erickson Foundation with the support of Yosef Work. Photo by Simon Scott, courtesy Arthur Erickson Foundation In 2023, Wosk contacted the Arthur Erickson Foundation with an interesting offer. Aware of the financial burden associated with the outstanding mortgage on Erickson’s iconic House and Garden, Wosk committed to make a generous contribution toward the mortgage, with the request that a viable plan to discharge the entire debt be developed and implemented immediately. Galvanized by Wosk’s intervention, the Foundation responded and by the end of the year had secured the funds to not only eliminate the mortgage debt, but also to seed Phase 2 of a longer-term fundraising plan to restore the House and Garden.  Advocate for Architecture Yosef Wosk’s record of Advocacy for Architecture is long, diverse, and compelling. It is an ongoing history of selfless philanthropy, strategic patronage, and inspired insight in relation to the opportunities created and enabled by his encouragement and generosity. A humanist with an uncanny ability to intervene at the right time and in the right place, he is committed to the well-being of society, and has used his knowledge and material resources to improve our landscapes and gardens, cities, and buildings at every level of the complex processes that shape our environment. Yosef Wosk has served our profession and this country with passion, commitment, and distinction, and will continue to do so with undiminished enthusiasm and grace for years to come. Jury Comments :: Dr. Yosef Wosk has significantly contributed to architecture in Western Canada through decades of advocacy, philanthropy, scholarly initiatives, and direct commissioning of built works. He is a champion of the public arts whose sustained efforts in education, research, and design excellence have strengthened architecture’s position in Canada. Dr. Wosk’s commitment to architectural advancement, both practical and academic, exemplifies the qualities this award seeks to recognize. His inspiring contributions leave a lasting impact on the built environment. The jury for this award included Jessie Andjelic, Chris Cornelius, Camille Mitchell (FRAIC), Maya Przybylski, and Terrence Smith-Lamothe (MRAIC). As appeared in the May 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post 2025 RAIC Awards: Dr. Yosef Wosk appeared first on Canadian Architect.

WINNER OF THE 2025 RAIC RESEARCH & INNOVATION IN ARCHITECTURE AWARD As one of ten test cases for their research, LGA Architectural Partners submitted a building permit application and alternative solution 
to the City of Toronto for a three-storey small apartment building proposed to be constructed with a single exit stair and an elevator opening into the exit. ARCHITECT  LGA Architectural Partners The Single Exit Stair Building Code research project explores innovative alternatives to the Canadian building code requirement for two exit stairs in multiplexes and small apartment buildings. Through pilot projects, prototypes, and extensive review of local and international building codes, research led by LGA Architectural Partners demonstrates that single-stair alternative solutions (SSASs) increase the feasibility, affordability, accessibility, sustainability, and design flexibility of missing middle housing, while achieving the safety objectives of the building code. By advocating to remove barriers to missing middle housing, the research advances the goals of the National Housing Strategy, the CMHC Housing Accelerator Fund, and newly adopted zoning laws that encourage construction of such buildings in urban areas across Canada. Over the last four years, the project has evolved greatly in scope. Building upon the foundational research and findings of then-McGill student Conrad Speckert’s graduate thesis (secondegress.ca), the work has shifted from ideation to real-world implementation. LGA designed six prototypes for single exit stair building designs at three, four and six storeys in height, using typical residential lot sizes across Canada. To ground the research, LGA designed six prototypes for single exit stair building design at three, four and six storeys in height, using typical residential lot sizes across Canada. Each small apartment building design includes a comparison with prescriptive egress requirements as a measure of floor area efficiency, construction cost, and rental income. The prototypes illustrate the architectural aspects of single exit stair building design as it relates to relevant requirements within Part 3 and Part 9 of the National Building Code. The purpose of the prototypes is also to demonstrate the relatively small scale of such buildings, and to help inform cost/benefit and fire safety analyses. Some key takeaways from the development of the prototypes include noting that the implementation of SSASs in small apartment buildings enables more bedrooms, more access to daylight and fresh air, and more accessible suites within the same height and area. Providing upgraded life safety systems like an automatic sprinkler system, smoke-sealed doors and advanced fire alarms makes a three-storey building with a single exit stair comparatively safer than a same-size building with two exit stairs designed to the prescriptive code. Moreover, SSASs make it easier for small-scale buildings, such as multiplexes, to integrate accessibility features like elevators, in circumstances where stacked townhouses would otherwise be constructed. Each of LGA’s six prototype designs includes a comparison with prescriptive egress requirements as a measure of floor area efficiency, construction cost, and rental income. Another significant portion of the research project involved developing a series of single stair pilot projects to test the approvals process across the country. LGA collaborated with nine other architects and building code consultants across Canada to develop site-specific single stair alternative solutions. Each team scaled, replicated, and adapted the concept for different types of multi-unit residential buildings, ranging from three to six storeys in height, and submitted designs to local authorities for review. Each proposal included additional fire and life safety measures to meet the same level of performance and acceptable risk as the minimum prescriptive requirements for buildings of the same height and classification. Arguably, the project’s largest impact has come from industry-focused education and knowledge sharing. Through dissemination of SSAS research at numerous presentations, conferences, and panel discussions nationwide, LGA has contributed to a better understanding of Canada’s objective-based building code, and encouraged the careful use of innovative design strategies to increase housing supply. The impact of this research and knowledge sharing has already been felt. Transformative policy changes and building code amendments have been initiated across Canada. In April 2022, LGA and David Hine Engineering submitted a request to the Canadian Board for Harmonized Construction Codes (CBHCC) to introduce single exit permissions for up to three and six storeys. This work was funded by a CMHC-SSHRC Balanced Supply of Housing grant. The proposal has been analyzed by CBHCC, and the topic has been prioritized for the 2025-2030 code cycle of the National Building Code of Canada.  Meanwhile, in British Columbia, a building code update was approved in August 2024, allowing small-scale multi-unit housing of up to six storeys to be constructed with a single exit stair. Other provinces such as Alberta and Ontario, as well as officials at the City of Edmonton and City of Toronto, have prepared feasibility studies and expressed an interest in potential code reform. The next five years is anticipated to see significant use of single stair alternative solutions, until prescriptive regulatory dependencies are updated across Canada. The lessons learned from the pilot projects, prototypes and related research also indirectly support the code development process. This trajectory is similar to the recent adoption process for mass timber across Canada, beginning with performance-based alternative solutions that informed corresponding building code changes. Jury Comment :: This meticulous study of single exit stair building code reform presents a transformative approach to addressing Canada’s housing challenges. Through richly documented research and elegant visual presentation, the project demonstrates a comprehensive understanding of current barriers to housing supply. Working at the system level, this initiative promises far-reaching impacts on missing middle housing morphology across Canada. The thorough analysis and detailed solutions position this work to meaningfully influence future building codes. To learn more about this project, visit www.singlestair.ca.  The jury for this award included Jessie Andjelic, Chris Cornelius, Camille Mitchell (FRAIC), Maya Przybylski, and Terrence Smith-Lamothe (MRAIC). PROJECT TEAM AND COLLABORATORS LGA Architectural Partners, Haeccity Studio Architecture, AIR studio, Kelvin Hamilton Architecture, 5468796 architecture, Invizij Architects, SvN Architects + Planners, mcCallumSather, Office Ou, Lateral Office, Ha/f Climate Design, GHL Consultants, Celerity Engineering, LMDG Building Code Consultants, Vortex Fire Consulting, David Hine Engineering, NSP Consultant, Vermeulens, Urban Formation, City of Edmonton, Vancouver Urbanarium As appeared in the May 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post 2025 RAIC Awards: Single Exit Stair Building Code Reform appeared first on Canadian Architect.

WINNER OF THE 2025 RAIC ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE AWARD The 5468796 team on the bridges connecting 90 Alexander in Winnipeg to the heritage warehouse it wraps around, 100 Alexander. Photo by Stationpoint Photographic Origins and Outlook 5468796 Architecture was established in 2007 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Treaty 1 Territory, by Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic. Hurme first came to Canada from Finland as a high school exchange student and temporarily returned to her birthplace for studies at Helsinki University of Technology, before completing Bachelor of Environmental Design and Master of Architecture degrees at University of Manitoba. There, she met Radulovic—a Bosnian Canadian who had begun his architectural education in Sarajevo and Belgrade before entering the University of Manitoba M.Arch program—and Winnipeg native Colin Neufeld, who joined 5468796 in 2008 and become the firm’s third partner. Hurme and Radulovic both worked at Cohlmeyer Architecture prior to founding their own practice, which they named after its registration number. From its inception, two tenets have informed the studio: that the art of city-building has been lost, and that there has been a diminished focus on creating buildings that define cities. The practice’s response has been to build cities, one project at a time, and, through design activism, cultivate a culture of architecture against ambivalence. Pumphouse, a project at the edge of Winnipeg’s Exchange District, preserved a historic structure by suspending commercial spaces within it and adding residential blocks to two sides. Photo by James Brittain Throughout its first decade, 5468796 focused on the “missing middle” of multi-family housing. “We didn’t actively pursue this type of work, but rather, it was a result of our choice to stay in the city at a time when many of our colleagues left for greener architectural pastures,” the firm states. Winnipeg has helped shape what the practice calls the “innate frugality” of its interventions—a process of “shaving off the excess to create projects without extraneous or decorative elements.”  Finding room for innovation, uniqueness, and delight within limitation has remained a central objective, even as the studio has expanded into different typologies of building and practice. On some projects, it has had to write its own brief. That was famously the case with Pumphouse, a mixed-use and adaptive reuse project on Winnipeg’s riverfront. The historic James Avenue Pumping Station was slated for demolition after 14 failed attempts to revive it by various design firms in the city. 5468796 developed an unsolicited conceptual design paired with a financial pro forma, and presented the business case to an existing client. This combination eventually led to the building’s successful preservation, and new life. In a recent Canadian Architect article about Pumphouse, Trevor Boddy describes Winnipeg as “one of the coldest architectural laboratories in the world, and a comparatively underfunded one.” He adds that “the difficult discipline of working there has honed 5468796’s brilliance.” The practice’s work has been peer-recognized by organizations including the RAIC, Canada Council for the Arts, Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, Architectural League, and the World Architecture Festival. 62M makes use of an unusual site by lifting 40 residential units on 35-foot stilts. The pie-shaped layouts provide the widest possible perimeter for glass with the smallest amount of exterior envelope to construct. Photo by James Brittain Everything is an Opportunity Especially in privately developed, multi-family housing, architecture is expected to bend to the pressures of net-to-gross floor area ratios, backed by outdated zoning and code conditions. 5468796 understands these constraints, dissects them, and develops a tailored understanding of challenge and opportunity in response to each project’s financials, site, and program. It is only then, the studio believes—once the project has been designed in a spreadsheet—that architecture can resist the pressures of convention.  Acute technical knowledge and robust experience have taught 5468796 to “speak developer,” while producing architecture of consequence. This involves gaining clients’ trust by supporting new ideas with a clear understanding of their impact on the bottom line and ROI. Open-air corridors in multi-family housing, for example, might not be the obvious choice for Winnipeg’s climate. However, 5468796 has deployed this strategy because it reduces building area, which in turn reduces the amount of material required, the project’s embodied energy, and the volume of conditioned space, while enabling through-units and a unique type of shared communal space. Colloquially known as the UFO building, 62M organizes apartments into raised circular floors that are simply framed with dimensional lumber atop pre-cast concrete piers. 62M takes the study of building floorplate efficiency, and the relationship between the hallway length and primary windows to the extreme of pragmatism, allowing this to fully guide the building design. The James Avenue Pumping Station rehabilitation was unlocked through the strategy of using the capacity of the existing gantry crane structures to support a new floor above the heritage-protected pumping equipment. This enabled the creation of new revenue-generating commercial spaces that share views of the historic infrastructure. Holistic, Necessity-Driven Innovation 5468796’s holistic view of practice encompasses all aspects of the architect’s role as it intersects with politics, economics, civic governance, social activism, and other forms of cultural and scholarly research. With the Prairies’ limited resources, innovation comes from a deep understanding of the available trades, materials and building traditions, and then sourcing (sometimes unusual) low-impact materials and construction methods. Inventing custom building systems with off-the-shelf materials is in the practice’s DNA. At 90 Alexander in Winnipeg, a new-build and adaptive reuse 206-unit housing project, the practice created an innovative modular cladding system using local sheet metal flashing trades. A field of individual repeated members permits concealed mechanical exhaust grilles, offers strictly functional exterior drainage, snow shedding and UV shielding, all while creating an overall moiré effect with deep articulation exposed at windows and corners—at a fraction of the budget expected for custom detailing. The mass timber Bond Tower aims to forward the use of advanced wood construction techniques in Winnipeg. Adaptability, Resilience and Shifting the Status Quo 5468796 believes that buildings must be adaptable and resilient to be considered sustainable. On Calgary’s Parkade of the Future, the studio challenged itself to answer the question: as means of transportation evolve, how can parkades follow suit? This 510-stall garage’s design facilitates conversion to office, light industrial, or residential use. Its ellipse encloses a street-wide interior courtyard; an imperceptibly shallow 1% slope creates an ‘infinite’, ‘flat’ floor plate; ceiling heights clear 14 feet; and the universal load-bearing capacity creates opportunities for gradual or wholesale changes, at low cost. Clipped onto the floor plates, the exterior guard shroud of recycled and recyclable raw aluminum is fully removable and reconfigurable. The building in fact gained an office tenant near completion, thereby validating its intended adaptability. As a collaborator on the Bond Tower, a mixed-use building in downtown Winnipeg, 5468796 strives to advance the adoption of heavy timber construction techniques in Canada by pioneering Building Code Classifications for seven- and eight-storey buildings and assembly ratings of 1.25 to 1.5 hours to align Building Code expectations with the constraints of mid-rise construction. Hybrid office space on its first two floors will house 5468796’s office and support spaces for two affordable housing agencies. Advocacy and Activism From the practice’s early years, it has been a force for positive change. Winnipeg’s Welcome Place, completed in 2010, offers shelter and transitional services to Manitoba’s new refugees. On a quiet residential street in an inner-city neighbourhood, the building is designed to address residents’ fragile psychological and emotional state and ease the transition to a new, supported life in Canada. The residential units are sheltered behind heavy walls with deeply set, porthole-like windows that provide occupants with discrete outdoor views, while minimizing views in. In 2024, 5468796 received funding from Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada’s Research and Knowledge Initiative for Shared Ground, an applied research initiative dedicated to developing more affordable housing on social purpose infrastructure in Winnipeg. Aiming to create a methodology that other Canadian communities can replicate, Shared Ground enables the practice to offer services pro bono to those who need it most, while providing social purpose organizations with the knowledge and tools they need to determine if their land and building assets can support an affordable housing development. One Bucket at a Time comments on the use of painter’s buckets to claim public parking space in Mexico City, where they enable local entrepreneurs to generate revenue. The installation repurposes buckets to create new public space. Photo by Jamie Navarro Knowledge Sharing  5468796’s partners have teaching engagements with the University of Manitoba, Daniels School of Architecture, Lansdcape, and Design in Toronto, University of Montreal, University of Calgary, College of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and Art, Architecture and Planning at Cornell University in New York. Migrating Landscapes, co-curated by the studio with Jae-Sung Chon, was, Canada’s official representation at the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture. It explored the settling-unsettling dynamic of im/migration, featuring video narratives and scale models of dwellings by young Canadian designers.  Publishing, grant-funded research and development, and exhibitions remain important spheres of 5468796’s activity. The four-volume publication platform.MIDDLE: Architecture for Housing the 99% (Arquine, 2023) grew out of a symposium that 5467896 co-hosted in 2019 at IIT’s College of Architecture. Drawing on the studio’s built works, urban designs and community projects, the volumes assemble a toolkit of strategies for high-quality, attainable, accessible and affordable multi-family housing. The annual Table for 1200 takes place outdoors in different downtown Winnipeg locations, and is a fundraiser for design advocacy. Photo by Stationpoint Photographic A Seat at the Table “We need to be present where decisions are being made, and relentlessly advocate for design and architecture as something that defines culture, rather than being seen as an addition to it,” 5468796 writes. Johanna Hurme is President-Elect at the RAIC and past Chair of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce. As part of the Manitoba Association of Architects’ Council, she initiated and led a task force aiming to reform the RFP process throughout the province. Sasa Radulovic participates in the University of Manitoba’s Partners Program, an initiative to cultivate dialogue between the university and professional practice. Through self-initiated projects, the studio has increased design exposure and built city identity. Table for 1200 expanded on the practice’s Professional Prix de Rome in Architecture project Table for 12, turning into a design and dining event for 1,200 people that has become an annual fundraising event for design advocacy over the past 12 years. “Better Office” Initiatives “A healthy practice enables greater leverage for the firm to do good for our community,” 5468796 writes. The firm’s 12-pronged “better office” strategy, in place for more than a decade, starts with a Fair Workplace Policy, along with 1.5x overtime pay, benefits, and annual RRSP matching. It also includes 100% transparent finances, an employee-run donations strategy, and social, con-ed and recreation budget, as well as an Incentive Plan that allows all employees to actively contribute and share in the financial success of the company, equally. The firm is committed to providing a minimum 10% increase in average pay annually, and has hosted a biennial collective social and architectural trip, with past destinations including New York, Chicago, Banff, Mexico City, Santiago, and upcoming this year, a trip to Ireland. Finally, the firm’s Sabbatical Program provides every employee who has spent 10 years in the office a three-month paid sabbatical leave, allowing for a creative “brain break.” From Architecture to Strategy 5468796’s projects challenge architecture and architects to reconceive themselves as strategy and strategists. A strategist’s role includes concern for making good spaces for people, both inside and outside of the program; being environmentally sustainable; finding the right partners and partnerships; operating in political and financial realms; and meeting the challenge of affordability—all while keeping the project on time and on budget. 5468796 Architecture operates on the belief that architecture is not a zero-sum game, but rather that a thriving office culture and financial success go hand-in-hand with high architectural ambition. Jury Comment :: 5468796 has consistently demonstrated an inventive and unique approach to architecture, rethinking principles while navigating financial constraints and aesthetic ambivalence. The firm’s creativity extends beyond the physical resolution and explores areas of new housing typologies, alternative practice models, and unconventional means of community engagement. They have significantly changed the face of architectural practice, showing dedication to accessibility for different clients and project budgets. Their flexibility, ingenuity, and perseverance have made otherwise impossible projects a reality. As energetic advocates for the profession, they explore political, philosophical, and social dimensions while maintaining craft and expression. 5648796 fosters a strong architectural community while remaining humble with international recognition. Their creativity and resilience sets a precedent for emerging firms. The jury for this award included Peter Braithwaite (MRAIC), Jamie Fobert, Eric Gauthier, Carol Phillips (FRAIC), and KaaSheGaaBaaWeak | Eladia Smoke (FRAIC). As appeared in the May 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post 2025 RAIC Awards: 5468796 Architecture appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Several Canadian architecture and design firms have announced the promotions of members of their staff. Each of these individuals have made contributions to the firms, and are being recognized for their hard work, experience, and talent. The following are a list of recent promotions. Daphnee Van Lierde and Nicolas Demers-Stoddart. Photo credit: COEX Architecture COEX Architecture COEX Architecture has announced the arrival of architects Daphnee Van Lierde and Nicolas Demers-Stoddart, formerly of Provencher_Roy, who will lead the architectural practice founded in 2002. Their arrival is part of a wider strategy to develop the architecture firm. Both represent a new generation of leaders who are committed to design excellence, collaboration and social responsibility. With almost 20 years of experience, they have each contributed to various civic and institutional projects of varying scales throughout the province of Québec and across Canada, including high visibility projects such as the reception pavilion of the Québec National Assembly in Québec City, which was a winner of a Governor General’s Medal in Architecture in 2022, the new Alexandra Bridge in Ottawa, the renewal of the Portage III federal offices in Gatineau, and the Réseau Express Métropolitain (REM) in Montréal. From left to right: Martin L’Hébreux, Project Director; Mathieu St-Amant, Creative Director; Patricia Pronovost, President and CEO; Anne Carrier, Senior Strategic Advisor. Photo credit: Jodi + Alex ACA Anne Carrier Architectes (ACA) will now be led by Patricia Pronovost, Martin L’Hébreux, and Mathieu St-Amant. The firm will rely on the expertise of these three architects who together bring almost 50 years of experience within the agency. Trained and inspired by founding architects Anne Carrier and Robert Boily, they are carrying forward this legacy while bringing new energy to the practice. Anne Carrier remains involved as senior strategic advisor. Her vision and expertise will continue to guide the firm, ensuring the continuity of its identity. Image credit: R&P Reich&Petch R&P has announced the appointment of four new principals: Cathy Lazo, Peter Lam, Gonzalo Martinez and Niki Reich. R&P was founded in 1987 by Tony Reich and Whit Petch with a goal to build a legacy design firm dedicated to conceiving and delivering Experience Environments and Architecture that could change the way people see and experience the world. The new principals will continue to contribute their talents and shared values of creativity, innovation and collaboration in building the future of R&P. Image credit: Kollectif Vlan Vlan, a firm specializing in landscape architecture, urban design, and land planning, has announced that landscape architects Mira Haidar and Jean-Marc Pommier are becoming partners, joining founders Micheline Clouard and Julie St-Arnault. Their leadership, expertise, and strategic vision enhance the firm’s growth, and these appointments mark a significant milestone in Vlan’s evolution as it continues to expand across Canada. The contribution of Pommier and Haidar as partners reinforces the firm’s commitment to excellence in design. The post Architecture and design firms announce promotion of staff members appeared first on Canadian Architect.

WINNER OF THE 2025 RAIC RESEARCH & INNOVATION IN ARCHITECTURE AWARD To offset 100% of its energy use with site-sourced renewables, the facility supplements its rooftop photovoltaics with open-loop geo-exchange heating—a first for a City of Toronto facility. ARCHITECT MJMA LOCATION Toronto, Ontario In 2017, the City of Toronto commissioned MJMA to design the Western North York Community Centre, a Net Zero Energy Aquatic Facility. As a demonstration project, the design aimed to validate the latest Toronto Green Standard near-zero emission goals for city-owned facilities, setting the standard for future recreation centres.  Across building typologies, aquatic and arena facilities are amongst the highest energy consumers. A high proportion of this energy is used to sustain interior environments that require specially treated air, water, and ice—delivering consistent, comfortable environments under tightly regulated standards, regardless of outdoor temperatures. Delivering buildings which will outperform existing high performance standards requires a reconsideration of best practices, in order to make way for even better outcomes. Sustainability Diagram Meeting the Challenges of Designing a Net Zero Energy Community Recreation Centre To become one of Canada’s first Net Zero Energy Aquatic Facilities, the project was required to offset 100% of the building’s energy use by site-sourced renewable energy. This was a significant challenge because of the limited size and linear configuration of the site.  Industry best practices for Net Zero Energy quickly proved to be inadequate for the Western North York Community Centre. Even after minimizing energy loads through effective heat recovery systems and the deployment of passive design strategies, the long, narrow site limited the ability to install enough solar photovoltaics to balance the energy ledger—a common approach for Net Zero Energy projects.  Initial studies made clear that providing on-site, low-emission heat and energy would be the only way to bring about significant emission reductions. The search for clean energy landed two possibilities beyond the closed loop geo-exchange study that the City required: biomass heat and power generation, and open loop geo-exchange heating. Although the biomass study had promising results, the challenges of finding a consistent supply and the need to restructure city operations for the regular maintenance of the system made it unviable. Investigations into geological potential proved far more successful. The site’s proximity to the Humber River hinted at a buried bedrock valley that supports a large aquifer running through the site. This aquifer, with its substantial size, suitable composition, and stable below-ground temperature, provided ideal conditions for tempering water and air, greatly reducing the energy required for operations. This system is modelled to reduce energy demand by over 46.7%, outperforming closed loop and air source heat pump system models in both energy reduction and long-term investment value. The implementation of this system will be the first in the City of Toronto’s portfolio and represents an entirely new approach for the City to consider when developing new projects. A New Modus Operandi to Achieve Sustainable Performance While energy modelling provides a projection of possibilities, long-term performance depends heavily on the client’s operation and maintenance teams. Introducing changes to facility operations was essential. To support this shift, MJMA initiated and led collaborative discussions with staff and consultants, building tours, peer interviews, and industry presentations, enabling the City to better understand the value of implementing new systems including automatic pool covers, a low-energy pool water filtration system, and natural ventilation options for non-aquatic spaces. This extensive engagement, which was beyond the design team’s scope, was a critical step to convincing the City to rethink standard procedures and adopt improved practices—with an eye to the potential use of these systems for future recreational facilities. The design team developed a low-carbon concrete mix for pool tanks to reduce the project’s upfront carbon. Addressing Whole Life Carbon At the time of the design, there was little reliable data about reasonable upfront carbon (also known as embodied carbon) limits for a large community centre. MJMA’s in-house life cycle analysis helped focus on specific products and producers, allowing a greater degree of control for the upfront carbon included in MJMA’s specifications. Collaborations with local steel and concrete suppliers helped establish lower carbon limits than the industry average, resulting in a custom specification tailored to the Ontario construction market. Efforts focused on the aquatic hall, where significant opportunities for improvement were determined. By working with structural engineers Blackwell, pool building experts Acapulco, and local concrete suppliers Innocon, the team identified areas where efficiencies in materials could be achieved and construction standards to reduce waste could be implemented. This led to the project adopting a revised lower-carbon concrete mix for pool tanks. These innovations mean that there is now an alternative to the long-standing industry specification for concrete pools. For specialized buildings like community recreation facilities, gathering detailed, typology-specific data is essential to create realistic, yet aspirational, benchmarks for reducing embodied carbon. In Spring 2023, the studio initiated an internal embodied carbon benchmarking study, focusing on the recreation facility typology. The study aimed to supplement findings from the 2021 TAF (The Atmospheric Fund) primer, which analyzed 544 life cycle assessments of Ontario buildings. The primer proposed regulatory reduction targets and policy recommendations based on its review. MJMA’s research yielded benchmarks specific to recreation facilities, offering a more ambitious goal for this typology than those suggested in the TAF primer. Feedback collected through an extensive community engagement process resulted in the inclusion of a community ‘living room’—a central gathering space that includes a snack counter, gallery wall, and gaming garage. Practicing Whole Life Carbon Reduction Strategies In addition to its upfront carbon benchmark study, MJMA has undertaken a comprehensive analysis of their entire interior assemblies library and an initial study for mechanical systems in aquatic halls. MJMA’s Embodied Carbon Research Team manages and updates material libraries, addressing construction challenges and building social networks to share findings that support broader adoption across the studio’s projects and the construction industry. This research has allowed the studio to develop a process to conduct Life Cycle Analyses that can be scaled throughout project teams, ensuring that the discussion around carbon becomes more holistic and a critical part of the design process. Demand for ever-better energy performance has led MJMA to collaborations with Toronto Metropolitan University and mechanical engineers AME. Together, they have worked to model Passivhaus Pool standards (which were developed for more temperate climates) against current best practice. The data will provide evidence for how industry standards might be adapted or improved. Sharing Knowledge MJMA’s research has highlighted systemic changes needed in the building industry to effectively reduce CO2 emissions, particularly in upfront carbon. Part of the challenge is the scarcity of Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for many materials, which are not yet standard in manufacturing. Since Life Cycle Assessments depend heavily on EPD data for accurate and consistent estimates, it is essential for architects to communicate demand and findings to manufacturers. Clear market and policy signals are necessary to encourage investment in product testing and certifications. Collaboration and knowledge-sharing across all construction-related groups is vital. To foster this, MJMA’s research findings have been disseminated through workshops, lectures, and publications across North America and Europe. Participation in over a dozen conferences and regular presentations to students further ensure that insights are shared with designers, collaborators, students, and academics. This openness reduces duplicated efforts and, hopefully, fosters inspiration and collaboration. In the context of the global climate crisis, architects need to champion sustainable, resilient design in a manner that acknowledges each project’s unique environmental, economic, and social context. This includes investing in research initiatives that give the industry a better understanding of the whole life carbon impact of projects, and where innovation can make change for the better. MJMA’s aim is to continually work towards higher standards so that they can continue to act as trusted advisors to clients to respond to the evolving challenges posed by climate change. Jury Comment :: This innovative research establishes crucial benchmarks for Canada’s first Net Zero Energy aquatic facility, addressing a significant gap in building performance data. The project expertly balances technical innovation, including embodied carbon standards, with practical solutions for moisture, materials, and operational challenges. Presented in an elegant, accessible way, this project and work demonstrate an admirable commitment to knowledge sharing and will serve as a valuable model for future community recreation facilities across Canada. The jury for this award included Jessie Andjelic, Chris Cornelius, Camille Mitchell (FRAIC), Maya Przybylski, and Terrence Smith-Lamothe (MRAIC). CLIENT City of Toronto, Parks, Forestry & Recreation; City of Toronto, Children Services | ARCHITECTURE MJMA Architecture & Design | LANDSCAPE MJMA Architecture & Design | INTERIORS MJMA Architecture & Design | SIGNAGE, WAYFINDING & EXPERIENTIAL DESIGN MJMA Architecture & Design | LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS AND EMBODIED CARBON RESEARCH MJMA Architecture & Design | CHILD CARE DESIGN Bortolotto Architects | STRUCTURAL Blackwell Structural Engineers | MEP Smith + Andersen | CIVIL EMC Group Ltd. | GEO-EXCHANGE ENGINEERING Salas O’Brien (fmr. Beatty Geothermal Consulting) | PHOTOVOLTAIC ENERGY SYSTEM Zon Engineering Inc. | ENERGY STRATEGIES AND MODELLING Footprint | COMMISSIONING CFMS Consulting Inc. | BUILDING ENVELOPE COMMISSIONING RDH Building Science | TRAFFIC IMPACT HDR Inc. | BUILDING CODE David Hine Engineering | TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS Autocase | BIOMASS Suthey Holler Associates, CBER, ENVINT Consulting As appeared in the May 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post 2025 RAIC Awards: Western North York Community Centre appeared first on Canadian Architect.

WINNER OF THE 2025 RAIC INTERNATIONAL PRIZE The restoration of the 23-kilometre-long Meishe River corridor has alleviated flooding and water pollution caused by sewage in the tourist city of Haikou, in south China. Photo courtesy Turenscape In recognition of the pressing planetary urgency of climate change, the RAIC’s Resolution for Urgent and Sustained Action on Climate and Ecological Health, and the RAIC 1.5°C Climate Action Plan, the 2025 theme for the RAIC International Prize is Climate Action. The 2025 Prize seeks to recognize an architect, a practice, or an architecturally focused group that exemplifies design excellence in climate action and regenerative development and design.  This year’s International Prize recipient is Beijing-based Turenscape, led by Dr. Kongjian Yu. Turenscape has profoundly shaped the urban landscape of more than 250 cities globally through over 1,000 projects. Guided by their philosophical foundation of “Nature, Man, and Spirits as One,” Turenscape seeks to promote harmony between land (Tu) and humanity (Ren) and to create sustainable environments for the future. As part of the Haikou Meishe River Restoration, a terraced wetland park provides natural filtration for urban water runoff. Photo courtesy Turenscape Turenscape’s foundation and body of work resonated with the selection committee, who noted that Turenscape “celebrates beauty and ecology, drawing lessons from natural systems to develop holistic responses that regenerate degraded urban ecosystems, increase resilience to flooding and sea level rise, cultivate natural habitats in urban areas, and create inspiring spaces that foster human reconnection to our natural world.” Turenscape’s portfolio of work aims to redefine the fields of urbanism and landscape architecture through projects that foster a deep and lasting connection between communities and urban ecologies, allowing both to flourish over time. Their work addresses the interconnected contemporary challenges of climate change, ecological degradation, and urban expansion.  Benjiakitti Forest Park, created on the site of a former tobacco factory in downtown Bangkok, absorbs stormwater and provides the area’s largest public recreational space. Photo courtesy Turenscape/Arsomslip As cities around the world struggle to respond to the escalating challenges of climate change including urban flooding and sea level rise, Turenscape has gained international recognition for the Sponge City concept. Sponge City designs draw inspiration from natural water flows and traditional methods for managing water during the monsoon season in rural China. This nature-based approach focuses on ecological restoration to support the natural cycles of water flow and absorption. By doing so, these designs improve urban resilience, alleviate flood risks, reduce urban heat island effects, and offer low-carbon solutions that enhance biodiversity, air quality, and urban aesthetics. Additionally, they offer inspiring places for community to reconnect with urban ecologies and contribute to broader urban climate adaptation efforts.  In 2013, Turenscape’s Sponge City vision was adopted as a national policy in China, prioritizing large-scale nature-based infrastructures. Key features of this approach include wetlands, greenways, parks, canopy tree and woodland protection, rain gardens, green roofs, permeable pavements, and bioswales. This work sets a powerful precedent for designing with water as a living system, rather than treating it as a threat. What stands out is its scalability and adaptability: it goes beyond a theoretical concept and is now shaping urban planning policies. Nanchang Fishtail Park is a flood-resilient forest with raised boardwalks in Nanchang, China. Photo courtesy Turenscape The interconnected climate and biodiversity crises necessitate architectural strategies that enact forms of “radical repair” beyond the building and hard infrastructures. As built environment professionals, we must design urban environments that promote the healing of the land and support the ongoing flourishing of life. Where life does not flourish, we ultimately cannot thrive. Sponge Cities set a precedent for practices worldwide, showcasing how water can be skillfully celebrated as a creative resource, the foundation of living systems, and an invaluable natural asset. Turenscape’s Sponge City work offers a model for transforming our understanding of living in harmony with nature in a changing climate. Their work celebrates beauty and ecology, drawing lessons from natural systems to develop holistic responses that regenerate degraded urban ecosystems, increase resilience to flooding and sea level rise, cultivate natural habitats in urban areas, and create inspiring spaces that foster human reconnection with our natural world.  Dr. Kongjian Yu advocates rethinking our relationship with water and land, promoting blue-green urban ecotones that adapt to the increasing severity of disruptions to Earth’s water cycle caused by human-induced climate change. Sponge City design offers a rapidly scalable, nature-based, and carbon-positive alternative to traditional, carbon-intensive, gray infrastructure solutions for climate change adaptation. Yu’s work integrates ecology, culture, and beauty, serving as an inspirational model for architects, urban planners, and landscape architects globally.   RAIC International Prize Honourable Mentions Photo by Ana Dermer / Woolly Lemon Creative Te Uru Taumatua, Te Wharehou O Tūhoe Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Aotearoa (New Zealand) Designed by Jasmax, Te Uru Taumatua is one of the most culturally and environmentally progressive buildings in Aotearoa, demonstrating a powerful fusion of Indigenous leadership, sustainability, and architectural excellence. Grounded in mana motuhake (sovereignty), it prioritizes Indigenous agency through co-governance. Its climate-positive strategies, net-zero systems, and circular material economy reinforce ecological reciprocity, while fostering social equity through local employment and upskilling. Photo by Ziling Wang DnA Design and Architecture China DnA Design and Architecture’s work, led by Xu Tiantian, celebrates the concept of architecture as acupuncture, where minimal interventions create maximum impact. DnA’s designs promote adaptive reuse and long-term sustainability by tapping into the community’s own cultural and physical resources. DnA contributes to placemaking that embodies temporality, simplicity, and playfulness, evoking a much-needed sense of ‘solastalgia’. Photo by Nasjonalmuseet / Ina Wesenberg Joar Nango Norway Joar Nango’s work redefines architecture through Indigenous innovation, ethical practice, and climate-conscious design. Nango advances reconciliation by reclaiming Sámi architectural identity and fosters social justice through community-driven spaces. His fusion of tradition and experimentation sets new benchmarks for climate-responsive, sustainable, and decolonized design.  Photo courtesy NLÉ NLÉ Lagos, Nigeria / Amsterdam, Netherlands NLÉ, led by Kunlé Adegyemi, addresses the urgent challenges faced by megacities in the global south, particularly in relation to rapid urbanization, climate change, and an unpredictable future. The selection committee wanted to recognize NLÉ for achieving maximum impact through minimal means, while promoting community engagement and empowerment, local materials, learning from local practice, simplicity in design, and adaptability. Photo courtesy Salima Naji Salima Naji Morocco Salima Naji’s work demonstrates how architecture can act as a campaign for building conservation with an environmental focus. It showcases the potential for an architecture of raw and bio-sourced materials and place-informed design, while rethinking the interface of ecology and culture.   The 2025 selection committee, chaired by Jason Robbins (PP/FRAIC, MAA) and co-chairs of the RAIC Committee on Regenerative Environments Mona Lemoine (FRAIC, Architect AIBC) and Joanne Perdue (FRAIC, Architect AAA, LEED Fellow), also included international design and industry professionals Afaf Azzouz (PEng BEMP), Dr. Harriet Hariss (Ph.D., RIBA, Assoc. AIA, PFHEA), Whare Timu, and Beatrice Galilee (Founder and Executive Director, The World Around). The diverse group was selected to reflect the intenational scope and ambition of the prize, ensuring a robust and insightful selection process. As appeared in the May 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post 2025 RAIC International Prize: Turenscape appeared first on Canadian Architect.

RAIC 2025 Gold Medal winners Shirley Blumberg and Marianne McKenna, centre, with Thomas Payne and Bruce Kuwabara. In the foreground is a model of the group’s competition-winning design for Kitchener City Hall in 1988. Photo KPMB Archives What is Canadian architecture? It’s a question that has real urgency in the face of threats from our southern neighbour. There isn’t a single aesthetic answer. But when you look to process and values, clearer themes emerge. Canadian earnestness and honesty come forward in how we make architecture. Canada’s architects work hard to understand the context of projects—the geography and site, the economic parameters, the relevant codes and zoning, the communities that will inhabit a building—and to provide the best possible solution. These may seem like universal goals, but they’re not to be taken for granted as we reflect on the recent starchitect era that privileged flash and ostentation. This year’s RAIC award winners showcase these values at work. The Gold Medal winners, Shirley Blumberg and Marianne McKenna, are founding partners of KPMB, a firm that has built its sterling reputation on high-quality, context-driven work. Marianne has an exceptional talent for transforming institutions with landmark projects that are tightly woven into the urban fabric—think Concordia’s business school in downtown Montreal, or Toronto’s Koerner Hall. Shirley’s advocacy mindset has played out in projects ranging from affordable housing to pro bono work with Indigenous communities. KPMB founding partner Bruce Kuwabara speaks to the genius of collaboration that both enable, partner Paulo Rocha reflects on their impact for the next generation of leaders in the office,  and colleagues testify to McKenna and Blumberg’s profound impact on Canadian architecture—and beyond. The Architectural Practice Award winner, 5468796 Architecture, celebrates working in constrained situations. Their recent Pumphouse succeeded in redeveloping a heritage site where more than a dozen before had failed, by crafting a novel architectural approach—and financial case—for its adaptive reuse. Sometimes rules and regulations can pose considerable barriers to building affordably and sustainably, but the Canadian approach isn’t to break those rules—it’s to change them. That’s what LGA Architectural Partners is doing with their research on single stair building code reform, an effort that garnered them an RAIC Research and Innovation in Architecture Award. Another Research and Innovation Award went to MJMA for their work on designing Western North York Community Centre as a net-zero energy building. Aquatic centres typically consume high amounts of energy, so reaching this goal—on a tight site to boot—involved patiently and persistently searching for ways to reduce and offset the operational and embodied carbon of the building, including pioneering a first-in-Toronto approach to geothermal exchange. The three Prix du XXe siècle winners remind us how deeply rooted a Canadian approach to architecture has been. The early-20th-century town of Grand Falls, Newfoundland was possibly the first garden city built outside of the U.K., and aimed to provide healthy, progressive living and working conditions for factory labourers. In 1958, architects Jean Emberley Wallbridge and Mary Louise Imrie, partners in life and work, created a modernist home and studio attuned to its natural setting in Edmonton—exemplifying the possibilities of both building with modest means, and of career success for a same-sex couple even in a more conservative period of Canadian history. And in another diversity success story, the RAIC’s prizes recognize Canada’s first known architect of Japanese descent, Kiyoshi Izumi, who crafted a psychiatric hospital profoundly attuned to the needs of patients—going so far as to take LSD himself to better understand the experiences of the mentally ill. The RAIC’s Advocate for Architecture Award celebrates a largely unsung hero: Dr. Yosef Wosk, a philanthropist with a longstanding commitment to improving Canadian buildings and landscapes. Wosk’s committed patronage underscores the notion—shared by many Canadian architects—that architecture can have a profound impact on the everyday lives of people and communities. This year’s RAIC Architectural Media and Journalism award goes to Diamond Schmitt Architects’ book Set Pieces: Architecture for the Performing Arts in Fifteen Fragments. The documentation of this body of work demonstrates the international presence and impact of Canadian architectural expertise. This issue also highlights the work of two global figures whose work resonates deeply with Canadian values. RAIC International Prize winner Turenscape, led by Kongjian Yu, is a Chinese landscape practice that has pioneered the idea of “sponge cities” that naturally regulate and absorb stormwater. His late Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, who won the RAIC’s Gold Medal in 2013, sponsored a series of major architectural projects in Canada because he recognized the power of Canada’s pluralistic society. Canadian architects experience first-hand that diverse viewpoints, multifaceted user groups, and complex sites can make projects challenging—but that these conditions can also give rise to the best projects. And through the painstaking process of dealing honestly with complexity, Canadian architects aim to shape a better world, one building at a time. As appeared in the May 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine The post 2025 RAIC Award Winners: A showcase for Canadian architecture appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Shirley Blumberg collaborates with Paulo Rocha at the KPMB office in Toronto. Photo by Maris Mezulis For nearly 30 years, it has been an immense privilege to work alongside Shirley Blumberg and Marianne McKenna, two of the founding partners of KPMB Architects. From my early days as a 22-year-old graduate to my progression as Partner, the mentorship and leadership they have provided has profoundly shaped my career and personal growth in architecture. Shirley and Marianne’s guidance has been crucial to the success of every project we’ve collaborated on. They have an extraordinary ability to blend creativity with pragmatism, raising the quality of our work across diverse projects. Their insightful direction has been invaluable. They have consistently challenged me to ask deeper questions, to explore beyond the obvious, and to continuously push the boundaries of what is possible. Their commitment to excellence, attention to detail, and understanding of context has led to designs that are functional and inspiring. At a time when diversity and equity are central to every conversation, I’ve had the unique privilege of working in what feels like an anomaly in the broader field. At KPMB, where a diverse leadership team includes two visionary women at its forefront, their leadership has shown how diverse voices contribute to creating stronger, more innovative solutions. Shirley and Marianne’s contributions to the profession have been transformative, offering a much-needed fresh perspective in a field long dominated by men. Together with the rest of the leadership team, their work exemplifies the power of inclusivity, demonstrating how it can humanize the practice and drive meaningful change. Both Shirley and Marianne have shown the importance of excellent communication, meaningful client relationships, and staying true to one’s values. Working at KPMB, under their leadership, has been an enriching experience that has shaped my evolving perspective on architecture. They have greatly impacted Canadian architecture through their extraordinary projects and their unwavering dedication to inclusivity, sustainability, and community. I speak for all the partners at KPMB when I say that working alongside Shirley and Marianne has been a rare and rewarding experience—one that continues to inspire and challenge the boundaries of architecture. The 2025 RAIC Gold Medal is a fitting recognition of their extraordinary contributions over the course of 40-plus years.  Congratulations, Marianne and Shirley.  Paulo Rocha is a Partner at KPMB Architects. As appeared in the 2025 RAIC Gold Medal issue of Canadian Architect magazine (May 2025) The post 2025 RAIC Gold Medal: Passing the torch appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Bruce Kuwabara, Marianne McKenna, and Shirley Blumberg at work at KPMB’s former office on King Street West in Toronto in 2017. Photo courtesy KPMB As co-founders of KPMB Architects, Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg have shaped the trajectory of our practice and profoundly influenced the architectural landscape in Canada and beyond.  Together with Thomas Payne, Marianne, Shirley, and I launched Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects in 1987, following our first collaborations as associates at Barton Myers Associates. Marianne and Shirley brought intelligence, judgment, balance, perspective and other critical skills to our fledgling practice, particularly in the areas of project stewardship and mentoring. I am deeply grateful to Marianne and Shirley for their support of my own RAIC Gold Medal. As the 2006 recipient, I was—and continue to be—uplifted by Marianne and Shirley’s support and encouragement, and our joint commitment to the professional craft of architecture and our firm’s focus and contribution to public life.  As individual architects, Marianne and Shirley have flourished and grown as leaders and role models in the field, achieving consistent design excellence. All this while advocating for and working to advance women, equity, and social justice in the profession. Each has achieved a remarkable balance of work and life.  Together, we have developed a model of practice based on the genius of collaboration. Our work is focused on inspiring, shaping, and advancing architecture for a better world: one that is more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Our buildings are recognized for how they respond to social, environmental, and urban contexts. In their work, Marianne and Shirley have created lasting value, sparked vibrant conversations, and formed juxtapositions between new and existing buildings. Together, they have competed successfully against firms that continue to be led by a singular (usually male) architect, or a group predominantly made up of men.  When I graduated from the University of Toronto 1972, not one of the four women in my first-year class completed the program. The number of women entering the field today has dramatically increased to the point that some schools have a ratio of 70% female and 30% male students. We now see generations of Canadian and international women architects like Marianne and Shirley celebrated in exhibitions, symposia, and publications. It is about time.  Both Marianne and Shirley are members of the Order of Canada, recognized for their extraordinary contributions to the nation and as Canadians who desire a better country through architecture. While previous pairs have received RAIC Gold Medals, Marianne and Shirley are uniquely positioned here. They equally exhibit a visionary approach to architecture that demonstrates pragmatic vision, a relentless commitment to excellence, deep collaboration, and responsible design.  It is my honour to congratulate Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg on receiving the Gold Medals in 2025 from the RAIC. The celebration of this partnership—one I am immensely privileged to witness daily—re-writes the history of collaboration in architecture in Canada, sends a timely message to the profession and the world, and sets a new precedent for our profession. Each has achieved a remarkable balance of work and life. As appeared in the 2025 RAIC Gold Medal issue of Canadian Architect magazine (May 2025) The post 2025 RAIC Gold Medal: The Genius of Collaboration appeared first on Canadian Architect.

“I think you can’t be complacent as a citizen,” says Shirley Blumberg. It’s an ethical stance that she has brought to her work on projects at all scales at KPMB, as well as to pro bono advocacy initiatives. Here’s our interview with 2025 RAIC Gold Medalist  Shirley Blumberg. Shirley Blumberg and then Governor General of Canada, David Johnston, upon receiving her Order of Canada recognition. Photo by Sgt Ronald Duchesne, Rideau Hall, OSGG Elsa Lam: Why don’t we start with your upbringing in South Africa? Shirley Blumberg: I was born in Cape Town, South Africa, which is stunningly beautiful. South Africa had a very robust tradition of modern architecture, courtyard houses and terraces, because of the Mediterranean climate in Cape Town. And my parents had commissioned an architect to design a home—which was completed apparently just in time for when I was born—on the mountain side, overlooking the ocean with a huge terrace with colours painted on it. And because I was a third child, they just left me out on the terrace. So my infancy was spent surrounded by colours and in the open, which was just fine with me. EL: What did your parents do? SB: My mom came to Cape Town as a 12-year-old, in the mid-1930s, from Belarus. My dad’s parents had immigrated from Lithuania before the first World War, but his dad had died and his mother was very poor, running a grocery store in Johannesburg.  My dad didn’t have the opportunity to go to university. He fought with the South African forces, and when the veterans got a certain sum of money, and he opened a furniture store and eventually ran a couple of furniture stores. My dad used to make these trains out of tin cans—he drew and he was always really good with his hands. And he had a workshop at the lower level, off the garage. That was my happy place—to hang out in the workshop with my dad.  Growing up in South Africa had an indelible impact because of apartheid. It was very personal for me. Dora—who I call my African mother—came to work for my family when she was 22 and I was two. And her daughter, Wilma, was the same age as me. They lived in a little flat at the garden level. And so Wilma and I grew up playing together as kids. And I would go to my white school, she would go to her coloured school. And she came first in class, and I came first in class, and every afternoon we played together. And then Wilma started failing when we got to adolescence. And I thought, what happened there? I saw her hanging around with an older guy on the corner, and Dora sent her back to the country town they were from. She was really very smart, and she became a teacher, which is the highest thing you could do at that time within the apartheid system as a Black person. And that was so shocking to me.  I did my first year at the University of Cape Town and was very active. It was a liberal university, and we were very involved in demonstrations and marches, and running away from Afrikaners wielding cricket bats, stuff like that. There were spies at the university. You couldn’t talk freely. There was censorship—you could hear the clicking on the phones. It was very much an unjust government and a controlling state. It was very serious business to oppose the party: people were getting killed, having their arms blown off, et cetera. All the student leaders got what they call “banned,” had their passports taken away, and they were under house arrest. That’s why I do the social justice projects and why I do the advocacy, because I think you can’t be complacent as a citizen. In South Africa, you could not be on the fence. It was so polarizing, but it also made you feel alive, too. Your life had a real sense of purpose. And Canada’s facing that, now, because things were always absolutely fine here, but it’s not anymore. EL: Tell me about coming to Canada. SB: We left South Africa to go to England, and it was the oil crisis. People were working four-day weeks by candlelight in London. We were there for a year, and then we emigrated to Canada. It was 1973: you had Expo 67, you had Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada looked like Nirvana. I absolutely did not want to go to the U.S. because I knew about the South and their racist laws.  EL: How did you decide that you wanted to be an architect? SB: My sister encouraged me, because I really loved drawing and I loved reading. I loved English, history, math, science, geography, everything—I was one of those. And she said, it’s perfect. I knew nothing about it, but I loved it. At university, there were very few women in the class, no female professors, even here at U of T. I never dreamt it was possible to have this life.  A photo of Barton Myers’ office from 1978, including Shirley Blumberg, seated at left. Photo from KPMB Archives EL: There were also not many female practitioners at that time. SB: There were only about five women in my class when I graduated. And then Barton Myers was great, because it was like the youth investment program. Barton is such a great architect, and he would spend a lot of time mentoring us, and he threw us into the deep end. It was a small office, and we did everything. So we were very fortunate that way—we learned so much. And then it was like the coach leaving the team. He went to L.A. and he tried to convince some of the associates to go with him, and none of us wanted to go. At that time, we were playing in an architectural baseball league. We called ourselves the L.A. Dodgers. He was not amused. So one day, it was Barton Myers Associates. The next day it was Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, and we started with 16 people. It was kind of amazing. EL: Tell me about the structure of the firm and how that’s evolved. SB: We looked and tried to find some kind of model. We were coming from the Barton model—the white male practitioner, very high at the top and very hierarchical. And there was the model of the husband-and-wife practice, of course, but we weren’t that. We truly believed we were better together than as individuals, and we wanted to work in a collaborative way. And we were very proud of being Canadian, and we wanted to stay in Toronto and do great architecture from here. The previous generation was not as collegial as we thought was appropriate, so we wanted to change that as well. And we wanted to raise the culture of architecture in Toronto, and across Canada, if we could.  Canada, when I came in the seventies, it was so aspirational. In the early eighties we felt that there was a lot that was really positive about the country, about how diverse it was.  Led by Shirley Blumberg and Bruce Kuwabara, King James Place in Toronto is an early adaptive reuse project that won the firm a 1992 Governor General’s Award of Merit in Architecture. Photo courtesy KPMB In the beginning, I worked quite a lot with Bruce. But the wonderful thing about architecture—it is a very long apprenticeship, but eventually you find your own voice. There’s enough elasticity in our firm for each of us to flourish. While Marianne and I have different focuses, the three of us absolutely share the same values.  We were very clear: no bread-and-butter work. Every project counts. Every seven years, we would say what we wanted to achieve in the next seven years. We said we wanted to do institutional work, academic work. We wanted to work in the States. And it worked. We also realized very early on, we’re not for everybody, so we stopped competing with firms who would lower their fees, or do work that was just not great quality. We tried to position ourselves in the world of architecture at a certain level. And if you think of that, you go there. As partners, we are a bit like siblings, but we’re very complimentary to each other. We all have different skills and talents, but we’re all very much focused in the same direction, which doesn’t mean we don’t disagree. I think one of the reasons we’ve been partners for so long is we are perfectly comfortable arguing with each other, but then we always talk things through. We’ve never voted on a decision. We’ve always talked it through, and I think that’s really healthy. Shirley Blumberg leads an engagement session with stakeholders from Princeton University. Photo courtesy KPMB EL: Can you give me an example? SB: Years and years ago, we got an invitation from Monsanto to compete for designing some kind of office building for them. We all used to meet on a Monday morning, and everyone was so excited. And I said, whoa, there’s no way we’re going to work for a company like that. I feel if we don’t hold to our values, then all the work we’ve done falls apart.  EL: Sometimes, your advocacy work also affects the project work your firm could potentially get, like with the Monument to the Victims of Communism in Ottawa. SB: Yes, I was on the jury. It turned out the site was right in the judicial precinct—it was the remaining open site right next to the Supreme Court. When I realized what exactly was going on—it was highly politicized—it was so appalling that I resigned from the jury, and contacted [Ottawa architect] Barry Padolsky, who arranged for me to speak to a reporter from the Ottawa Citizen.  I told Marianne and Bruce, look, I have to do this. This is outrageous. We’ll never get work from the Harper government, but we shouldn’t work for them anyway. They said, okay, there she goes again. We eventually won, and got a court injunction to prevent the monument from being built. EL: Speaking of advocacy, tell me about the foundation of BEAT (Building Equality in Architecture Toronto). SB: It’s always bothered me that there’s so few women in architecture: we were 50% in the schools at that point, back in 2015, and much lower in the profession. So I started talking to the young women in the office. Then I reached out to Betsy Williamson and said, I think we need to do something. I’d gotten the right person. So we started with doing a seminar with visits to offices in the afternoon—and it just grew like Topsy.  I remember the second year of BEAT, all of a sudden it was embraced. The Dean at U of T was talking about women in architecture. And then someone—I had no idea who she was—stood up and spoke about BEAT. And I thought, there you go. That is perfect. I don’t even know who this person is, and she’s talking about this organization. It was so embraced by young people. It was fantastic. And then of course, it spread to other chapters across the country, and you guys are keeping it going.  EL: We’re trying to carry the flame. [Lam is Vice Chair of the BEAT Advisory Board.] SB: It’s awesome. We wanted it to be relevant to each generation. The rule was “no whining.” Instead, we would do things that would be instrumental in changing things. And it seemed to give students and young women such confidence and networking. We women don’t network. We’re too busy, right? I just hope it stays that kind of grassroots volunteer group, being relevant to the issues we’re facing. Two Row Architect and KPMB, with Shirley Blumberg’s leadership, partnered with Fort Severn First Nation—Ontario’s northernmost community—to design a concept for durable, sustainable, and culturally appropriate housing as part of the National Research Council of Canada’s “Path to Healthy Homes” program. Rendering by Two Row Architect and KPMB EL: You’ve also done research on building for Indigenous communities in the North. SB: Canada seemed like the anti-South Africa, until I learned about the Indigenous situation. And that was shocking to me—the first time the conditions of living in the North hit the newspapers. Just before that, I had learned that after the Second World War, when the Afrikaner government set up the apartheid system, they came to Canada: a model was the Indian reservation system in Canada. Doesn’t that chill the blood? That really got my attention.  I started reading up and I was just appalled that this could happen in a country like Canada. So I reached out to [Indigenous architect] Brian Porter, and I said, as a leading practice, KPMB needs to try and do something to improve the situation with the skills that we have. Brian was very open to doing research together. I said to my lovely partners, Marianne and Bruce, I’m doing this research, and of course it’s pro bono. This was way before the overwhelming interest in the Canadian North.  I also got Transsolar involved, because the technical conditions of the North are so challenging, and Alex Lukachko from RDH for building envelope, Dave Bowick for structure. And I was even speaking to Morten Schmidt from shl about Greenland. That research went on for about three years. And then this opportunity came up: the NRC [National Research Council] asked David Fortin to organize Indigenous architects to design housing for different regions. Brian and I saw that as an opportunity to do something with our research.  We were assigned Fort Severn, which is the northernmost community in Ontario. The chief, Paul Burke, said they needed a duplex unit, which consisted of a family unit and a single unit, which could be for an elder or a couple‚ or a single man. So that’s what we designed. The community had skills for light wood trade, and they have large stands of tamarack. So the idea was they would use the local materials and try and set up a way to manufacture this.  The houses are where the people have parties, they’re social centres. Quite often people will sleep over if it’s late into the night. There’s a loft that would be flexible and the kids could play there, you could work, have additional bedrooms if you need.  The connection to the land was so important. We designed completely in accordance with natural forces and Indigenous ways of knowing. For example, all the bedrooms are on the north side, all the living rooms on the south where the sun is during the day. We designed it so that the west winds would scour where the entrances were and keep the snowdrifts from building up. And conversely, in the summer when you’ve got all these bloody mosquitoes, you want the breeze to come through. The section was really tough to figure out, and this is where a lot of the hard research happened from our wonderful engineers to prevent humidity build-up, and mould and so on.  Led by Shirley Blumberg, 150 Dan Leckie Way was planned and designed to fill a need for family-centred affordable rental housing in the rapidly developing Railway Lands West precinct of Toronto. Photo by Tom Arban EL: I’d like to circle back to your core project work at KPMB. When I look at the firm’s project list, it’s not completely obvious who would take on which projects—for instance, there’s some housing projects that each partner is doing, and academic work, and institutional work. You’ve done a lot of the Princeton work, but it’s not like you do all of the university work in the office. SB: No. And that was another important point—that we wouldn’t be pigeonholed. We’ve always worked collectively. As we’ve grown larger, now we have Phyllis [Crawford], who is the managing partner, and more organization, because we have to be more efficient. But it also kept us on our toes, that healthy tension. We didn’t want to be slotted into “I do hospitals and you do theatres” or any of that. I’ve done a lot of galleries. So has Bruce. I’ve also done social housing, and now Marianne has done housing with Kindred Works.  EL: In additional to the social justice work, tell me about other moments that have felt to you like pivotal moments in the practice, or for your role within it. The Lawrence Heights multi-unit, mixed market and social housing residential development, designed by Shirley Blumberg, comprises two large mixed-use sites that are located on either side of the Allen Expressway and the University subway line at Yorkdale Station in Toronto. The pair of medium-rise developments is sited strategically to form a distinctive gateway to the renewed neighbourhood. Photo by Michael Muraz SB: I’m very interested in the urbanization of the suburbs. When we did Lawrence Heights, it was very suburban with just drive-through roads, townhouses, towers, and things like that. What we decided was the opportunity—and TCH [Toronto Community Housing] and Context, who was the developer, were totally on board with this—was that we would use this project to change the secondary plan. That was a huge amount of work, but we did manage to completely change it and create this intimate mews aligned with roads, as well as linear parks, pathways and more intimate public spaces, and linked, connected landscape space. So you can actually walk to the mall and the shops and so on.  The idea of the intensification of the suburbs is about giving people choice. If you only have single-family homes, where are people going to go when they’re retired and the children have left? Where are young people going to live if they want to stay in the neighbourhood?  That kind of work is very interesting, because it doesn’t matter if you live in the suburbs or in a city in an urban situation—everyone wants connectivity. Everyone wants denser, walkable, safe communities. And that’s what Lawrence Heights is trying to do. Ponderosa Commons at UBC, a project led by Shirley Blumberg of KPMB with hcma architecture + design. Photo by Martin Tessler I’m the loaves and fishes person. I love tight budgets. It makes you really think. I loved working at UBC, doing the student housing, Ponderosa Commons [in joint venture with hcma architecture + design], for an absolute pittance. There was no money. Actually pulling that off was great—working almost like a master builder with the construction manager. We met with every trade to figure out how we could design to afford this. And that was a revelation. At the time, academic was $400 per square foot, and housing was $250 [per square foot]. Our budget for phase one was $210 [per square foot] and phase two was $185 [per square foot]. We had the art school in phase one, and half the education department in phase two, and we did it. So that was very interesting. That was like a “Horton Hears a Who” moment for me, just working with contractors. Why wouldn’t you? And then you learn from them. You want to do precast? Do three stories high; repeat, repeat, repeat. You want to use wood? Don’t sand the wood, just do roughsawn. That saves a little bit. So all of that, we did. The Fort York Public Library was another one. The librarians were amazing. That was during the time of [then Toronto Mayor] Rob Ford. Remember when the Ford brothers said there are more libraries than Tim Horton’s in Toronto, and that’s a bad thing? That was only $5 million. We knew we couldn’t go above, because otherwise it would be cancelled by the mayor. I actually love that—with very few resources, to be able to do stuff that has such an impact.  The Harrison McCain Pavilion is a small addition that completes the expansion of Fredericton’s Beaverbrook Art Gallery. The pavilion is a multi-functional space—open to all, free of charge—accommodating art exhibitions, gallery and community events, a café and fireplace seating area, reception/ticketing, and a shop. Photo by doublespace photography At Beaverbrook, the chair of the board rang me up and said, do we want to do this tiny little project, and there really is no budget? Are you interested? I said, yes, absolutely. I knew the Beaverbrook because I’d been there quite a while before, and I was blown away by their collection. And Fredericton is remarkable because it is the provincial capital, and they have such a rich heritage of civic and residential buildings that are pretty well untouched. So I based it very much on that, and also the curve of the road and the river. They loved the idea, and we built it. It’s amazing. It’s really created a wonderful social hub in the city and the social centre. It was published in South America, North America, the U.K. and Europe, including in Domus— which thrilled me because all my architectural life, Domus is so extraordinary—this tiny project.  I asked a young guy from the Architects’ Newspaper, why is there so much interest in the States in this? And he said, we have nothing like this, and we need it: this kind of small space, you don’t have to pay, it’s open to the public for the good of the community.  One of my favourite quotes is from Thoreau: “to affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts.” Isn’t that beautiful? EL: It is.  SB: The other big shift for us is the climate crisis. We started KPMB Lab quite a while ago. When our Lab director Geoff Turnbull left, and I bumped into Alex Lukachko, he became our new Lab director. He wanted to coach architects how to up their game, to make every project count in terms of mitigating the climate emergency. We’ve really focused, and the Lab is embedded in all our projects—we take this very seriously. We do a lot of research with other firms, and agencies, and universities and so on. But it’s not an academic thing—everything’s actionable in our work. We’re trying to persuade all our clients to optimize or to minimize carbon. KPMB Architects, led by Shirley Blumberg, and Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker Architecture won the international design competition for a new building for the Montreal Holocaust Museum. Rendering by Studio Sang EL: Would you like to say a few words about the Montreal Holocaust Museum? SB: The Montreal Holocaust Museum is the most personal of my projects, because it’s my history. We won the international competition working with Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker. The wonderful thing was you don’t just sit down and start sketching a Holocaust museum. It was 77 years after the end of World War II. Most Holocaust museums try to replicate Auschwitz, but how can you possibly represent the Holocaust? It was just so overwhelming and so horrific.  What do you do now? Because now we’re, again, in a time of great uncertainty. I called up almost immediately [Holocaust expert and architectural historian] Robert Jan van Pelt, and he said, “you do know, Shirley, that you cannot represent the Holocaust in architecture?” And I said, “I’m so glad you said that, because I think that’s absolutely hubris to imagine that you ever could.”  And so it’s a totally new paradigm. The content, all the really horrific stories, all of that is in the exhibitions. The building is very much rooted in Montreal—in the morphology, the structure of the city—with light shafts that mark the lot lines and local materials: Quebec stone, white oak from Quebec. The building offers respite as you move through. And as you circulate through the public spaces, you see the seasons changing, and have access to natural light. That’s been very exciting and an incredible experience for me. I’ve always wanted to do a spiritual project. It’s the closest I’ve come to that. EL: Do you have any final thoughts? SB: I think it’s an extraordinary time for architects. We have never been as relevant. We can actually be truly instrumental with climate change, resource depletion, equity. So I think it’s a very exciting time for architecture in a very bleak moment. It becomes more important than ever. Gone is deconstructivism, gone is postmodernism—imagine, things have meaning! And that’s in the end what you’re looking for, right? Meaning in your work and in architecture.  The question always is, in the end: what can architects do for society? Each generation of architects should respond to their times—that’s what we do. We work in a synthetic way using design thinking—taking two opposing ideas and reconciling them so it becomes a third thing. It’s a pretty interesting way of working, and we need that.  In architecture it takes forever to find your own voice. It’s such a long apprenticeship. That’s why they say it’s an old person’s profession. Architecture keeps you humble if you’re doing it properly, I think—because it’s always challenging. As appeared in the 2025 RAIC Gold Medal issue of Canadian Architect magazine (May 2025) The post 2025 RAIC Gold Medal: Ethics in Action appeared first on Canadian Architect.

KPMB is one of Toronto and Canada’s leading design practices, a firm of influence and action. The four founding partners—Bruce Kuwabara, Thomas Payne, Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg—were senior associates in the studio of Barton Myers Associates. In 1984, Myers opened an office in Los Angeles, and in 1987 relocated his practice there to focus on American projects. Remaining in Toronto, the new KPMB partners became the joint venture associates to finish the work begun by Myers on the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Phase 3 expansion, which opened in 1993.  The KPMB founding partners in 2001. Photo by Michael Rafelson Barton Myers had been a forceful personality and a strong influence during his relatively short interlude as a Canadian architect. After immigrating from the U.S., he first partnered with Jack Diamond from 1968 to 1975, and was known for a strong sense of urban context and activism. These themes endured in KPMB, which from the beginning upheld the importance of cities, often through creative adaptive reuse projects. What set the new firm apart was a finesse in detail and a flair for design innovation. These qualities informed their winning submission in a national design competition for Kitchener City Hall—their first major commission independent of Myers.  Myers’ signature love for overarching roofs with villages of program below and preference for high-tech architectural expression (what Shirley Blumberg calls “Kahnian planning with Eamesian expression”) were soon supplanted by KPMB’s more situational, materially refined design approach. KPMB would quickly develop a reputation for quality with carefully detailed, elegant materials (wood, steel, glass), highly articulated and often sculptural stairs, and strategic transparency to support signature social spaces. These“city rooms” were at the heart of many of their projects, focusing the spirit of a project—and its highest purpose in the city—in a single space. Shirley Blumberg, Bruce Kuwabara, Thomas Payne, and Marianne McKenna at Woodsworth College in 1993, following the completion of the addition of new facilities and a courtyard to the University of Toronto institution. Photo from KPMB Archives KPMB’s ascendency as an important design practice in the late 1980s and early 1990s is interesting firstly for its timing: the recession of that period devastated architectural practices across the country. However, early on, KPMB’s win of the Kitchener City Hall competition would allow them to survive and expand against the prevailing economic cycle. The firm was also quick to establish their design credentials by a steady accrual of competition wins and awards that laid the groundwork for a natural expansion into the university and corporate sectors, providing further resiliency.  The firm started out with around 16 people, including the four partners. While with Barton, Shirley had led the firm’s work for Hasbro headquarters; her strong credibility with the client brought its second phase to KPMB. Shortly thereafter, a KPMB team led by Shirley won a competition for the Design Exchange, and after that, the firm clinched a number of “cultural renaissance” projects initiated in Toronto and supported by generous government funding: Canada’s National Ballet School (2005), the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art (2006), and the Royal Conservatory of Music (2008).   Shirley Blumberg at the site for the Design Exchange, Canada’s design museum, as showcased in NOW Magazine. Photo by Laurence Acland Each partner would carve a personalized trajectory based on their connections, talents and affinities. Bruce Kuwabara, a third-generation Japanese Canadian from Hamilton, was a gifted all-rounder with exceptional design skills who quickly insinuated himself into Toronto’s cultural scene. Thomas Payne, hailing from Chatham, Ontario, and a partner until launching his own practice in 2013, brought East Coast academic connections that would translate into a series of notable educational projects. Yale-educated, Montreal-born Marianne McKenna was a natural strategist, comfortable in the complexities of adaptive reuse cultural projects, with a knack for place branding. Shirley Blumberg, whose activist leanings saw her immigrate from Cape Town, South Africa, would pursue and design social justice-inscribed projects. The ethnic diversity and gender balance of KPMB’s founding partners was a differentiator of their emerging brand, in a time when very few architectural practices were led by women or non-white men. KPMB’s collaborative model was such that individual partner’s design predilections are discernible in their projects, yet a common and identifiable attention to quality and detailing remains a backbone to the practice.  Shirley Blumberg, Thomas Payne, Marianne McKenna, and Bruce Kuwabara gather around a 1988 model of the upcoming renovation and expansion to the Art Gallery of Ontario. The firm would go on to become one of Canada’s most internationally recognized and widely published architectural practices, earning hundreds of global awards, including 18 Governor General’s Awards in architecture, and delivering more than 31 million square feet in projects that run the gamut from educational, healthcare, and scientific research spaces to arts and culture, government, corporate, hospitality, recreation and mixed-use developments.  Marianne McKenna delivers a keynote address after receiving an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College. Photo courtesy Swarthmore College  M: Soft Powerbroker In what may have been an early predictor of the precocious soft power for which she would be known, Marianne McKenna met Barton Myers in 1980 at a lecture in Montreal, and over the dinner that followed, accepted a job offer with one condition: to be made an associate in one year. Seven years later, she became the M in KPMB, one of four scrappy “all for one, one for all” partners sharing an ethos that was entrepreneurial, competitive and grounded in mutual respect.  McKenna remembers hiring young actors to be receptionists to rhyme off the difficult string of names (the brand went by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg before eventually evolving to its abbreviated KPMB moniker). The dynamic practice would capture the imagination of Toronto mainstream and architectural press alike, with features in magazines like Chatelaine and Toronto Life central to their emerging identity and sense of their own brand. McKenna’s brand-within-the-brand was as a lead-by-example feminist with a gift for strategy, a bottomless work ethic and infinite energy for high-quality design. The adaptive reuse office conversion for Tudhope Studios was led by Marianne McKenna in 1987. Photo by Wolfgang Hoyt One of McKenna’s first notable projects was the adaptive reuse office conversion for Tudhope Studios in 1987. This project came about because Tudhope shared office space on the third floor of the same King Street building that was home to KPMB’s studio. KPMB’s work in restoration and adaptive reuse was unusual for the time: it diverged from the typical approaches of either a straight-up conversion of warehouse spaces, or the “facadism” of propping up historic facades and inserting an entirely new building behind them. Instead, it introduced a hybrid of respect for the old and a strong sense of the new—a sophisticated vision of architecture as an extension of brand identity. New stucco panels layered upon the old building and then unified by colour made this project perfect for a highly visual client conscious of brand image, as well as of the importance of design to attract both clients and creatives. McKenna’s cultural interests aligned well with the “cultural renaissance” projects that were being funded in Toronto in the wake of the recession of the early 1990s. Her design tenacity and unrelenting drive for excellence is perhaps best exemplified in the Royal Conservatory of Music—arguably one of Toronto’s best loved cultural venues. This project would span nearly a decade, and culminate in the addition of two great city rooms to KPMB’s growing list: the delicate strategic renovation of the Conservatory’s Mazzoleni Concert Hall, and the architectural and acoustical virtuosity of the 1,135-seat Michael and Sonja Koerner Hall, beloved by musicians and music lovers alike. For her dedication to the project, Marianne was named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Conservatory. For the renewal of the Minnesota Orchestra Hall, in Minneapolis, Marianne McKenna added a new entry and reimagined the lobby, doubling the average floor area for each patron. Photo by Nic Lehoux She would also steer the design of Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis (2013), a project that has proved a catalyst for local downtown revitalization and the dramatic expansion of the orchestra’s audience. Then in 2015, McKenna was approached to “improve everything, change nothing” at one of Canada’s most storied, revered—and possibly most neglected—performance venues: Toronto’s Massey Hall, originally constructed in 1895. The meticulous renovation of the original performance hall would also see a seven-storey addition of two new venues and suspended exterior walkways that tie them together.  McKenna’s leadership has extended to notable educational projects in the U.S. and Canada, including Concordia University’s competition-winning integrated vertical campus in Montreal (in joint venture with Fichten Soiferman et associés architectes, 2009), the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (2017), and the restoration and expansion of the Jenny Belzberg Theatre at the Banff Centre For Arts and Creativity (2020).   Several of KPMB’s best known educational projects showcase Marianne’s specialization in restoring urban fabric and her place-branding abilities. This includes The Brearley School in New York, a vertical campus housing a private day school containing academics, performance and science. The School’s generous central space evokes Rome’s Spanish Steps: it’s a natural hybrid of the enigmatic stair and the city room of the KPMB signature. Greencedar Commons in Toronto’s Woburn neighbourhood is one of many rental residential projects by Kindred Works, the world’s first comprehensive portfolio converting under-utilized properties into an ecosystem of homes across Canada that are attainable and climate-responsive. The portfolio is stewarded by Marianne McKenna. Rendering by Studio Sang Most recently, McKenna leads Kindred Works, a national multi-residential program with the goal of building beautiful, sustainable and attainable rental housing, incorporating carbon-reduction features like mass timber, geothermal heating and cooling, and passive solar strategies. McKenna’s role as a board member for the province of Ontario’s transit agency is a prime example of her powers of architectural persuasion at the scale of the city. Working in a time in which multi-billion-dollar transit investments included UP Express and the Eglinton Crosstown, but had little design ambition, Marianne galvanized the board of directors to create a small but powerful design excellence team. This team—which I headed as its founding Chief Design Excellence Officer—was charged with elevating the level of design and architecture on the customer-facing parts of transit, by focusing the brand and changing underlying determinants of quality, like procurement. The end result saw an unprecedented leap in the quality of design during Marianne’s six-year tenure. McKenna serves on the advisory board of the McEwen School of Architecture in Sudbury, where she received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 2017. In 2019, she was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women by the Financial Post and one of Azure’s 30 outstanding women in architecture and design. In 2021, she was named one of Toronto Life’s 50 Most Influential Torontonians, and became the first woman to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Design Futures Council. She continues to lead and provide mentorship on significant projects like Equitable Bank in Toronto, the competition-winning Arts Common Transformation in Calgary, and, coming full circle, her alma mater Yale’s Dramatic Arts Building. In 2022, Shirley Blumberg participated in the Candian Centre for Architecture’s residency program Find & Tell to explore the architectural practice of John C. Parkinthrough his drawings, photographs and textual records. Photo courtesy Canadian Centre for Architecture B: Social Justice Leadership Shirley Blumberg grew up in the apartheid-era culture and politics of Cape Town, having been a youth activist for racial equality. She briefly moved to London, where she married her British boyfriend. At 21, she came to Canada out of a desire to live in a place that was not culturally divided, attracted to what she called “the relatively European culture and diversity of Toronto.”  When she began her architectural degree in South Africa, Shirley’s education had been devoid of professional female role models. She finished her education at the University of Toronto, under the directorship of Peter Pragnell, in an educational milieu little more gender-balanced than the one she had left behind. She was one of five female graduates, and throughout her architectural education there were no female professors, and only one female guest critic. George Baird proved an influential thesis advisor—Shirley’s thesis involved redesigning the Union Station train shed, establishing a lifelong interest in architecture’s capacity to shape public space. Marshall McLuhan acted as a thesis reviewer—his insights into the differences in the Canadian sense of private and public space had a lasting impact on Blumberg’s thinking. Blumberg saw gender and social justice advocacy as lifelong callings, and this coloured her career as an architect and an influential member of the profession. Social justice causes she has championed range from affordable housing to advocating for the preservation of threatened buildings and sites.  Seeing echoes of the apartheid system she had left behind reflected in residential schools and in the wake of the suicide crisis in Attawapiskat First Nation—which identified housing and overcrowding as a contributory factor—Blumberg joined forces with Two Row Architect to led an Indigenous housing prototype for Fort Severn, the northernmost Indigenous community in Ontario. The team was part of a National Research Council initiative called Path to Healthy Homes that produced a best-practice manual for architects and engineers working with Indigenous communities; KPMB and Two Row focused on a simple, stick-frame duplex designed to foster close extended family structures and to be easily constructible with local building techniques. In 2014, on the eve of her investment as a Member of the Order of Canada, Blumberg felt compelled to pull together women in the architecture profession for a proactive, networked approach to addressing gender challenges in the architectural profession. While the graduation rate from professional schools had been well over 50% female for several years, the number of female architects was around 23%, with fewer still partners in architectural firms. With a strong cohort of like-minded colleagues, BEAT (Building Equality in Architecture Toronto) was born as a grassroots initiative to promote equality for women in the profession. It focused on activities like organizing industry talks, social events and female-led site visits, supporting symposia at schools, and promoting mentorship and role model opportunities for women in the profession to connect. Today, there are chapters across Canada, and Blumberg continues to sit on the Advisory Board. After Toronto’s Dominion Foundry was threatened with demolition, Shirley Blumberg was part of a team that put together a design concept for retaining the buildings while adding affordable and market housing to the site. Rendering by Norm Li Blumberg recently rallied a pro bono effort to defend a significant heritage project threatened with destruction, the Toronto Dominion Foundry complex. Blumberg championed a better idea by donating time and proactive ideas to demonstrate how leading with good design could avert the wholesale destruction of the irreplaceable buildings, and advocacy efforts were able to divert demolition.  Ottawa is a city where Blumberg’s activism and architecture are showcased, both involving sensitive sites close to the parliamentary precinct. The conversion of the former Canadian War Museum on Sussex Drive to the Global Centre for Pluralism—an institution dedicated to advancing respect for diversity worldwide—involved rehabilitating and stabilizing the historical building and carefully revealing the original structure within, with a trademark KPMB “city room” breaking the back wall to establish a link to the Ottawa River. Ottawa’s Global Centre for Pluralism opened up the former War Museum to connect the city to the Ottawa River. Photo by Adrien Williams After being invited to be a jury member of a competition for a memorial to the victims of communism in Ottawa, Blumberg resigned from the jury and publicly challenged the politically motivated siting of the monument—part of the Harper government’s ploy to win votes from Polish and Russian voters from western Canada. An influential piece in the New York Times and a legal injunction ensued, leading to the project’s suspension just before the 2015 federal election. For one of the rare Canadian international competitions of the last decade, Blumberg convened a team for the Holocaust Museum competition in Montreal including renowned Holocaust scholar Robert-Jan van Pelt, urban culture expert Sherry Simon, and joint venture architects Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker. Their architectural approach would avoid a literal paradigm of replicating aspects of Auschwitz to instead create a gentle, serene place of rooted materials and choreographed light—an austere transparent ground plane with a solid stone building poised above, quietly defying gravity. Shirley considers the project one of the highlights of the later part of her career. Led by Shirley Blumberg, the Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building and the Louis A. Simpson International Building saw Princeton University’s former Frick Chemistry Laboratories fully renovated with strategic new additions. Photo by Adrien Williams Coda  In the family tree of Canadian architecture, KPMB’s dominant design genes carry through into architectural firms its alumni have established. This includes a who’s who of Toronto-based influential female-partner-led firms—Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, Dubbeldam Architecture + Design, Superkül, Gow Hastings Architects, Jill Greaves Design, StudioAC, Akb Architects, Studio VAARO, Deborah Wang—as well as notable Canadian-based firms such as TaylorSmyth Architects, Omar Gandhi Architects, Anthony Provenzano Architects, Drew Mandel Architects, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, AXIA Design, and accomplished architecture-adjacents like furniture designer Andrew Jones, visual content expert Norm Li, and designer/artist Michael Awad. Bruce Kuwabara, Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg are all recipients of the Order of Canada. In 2021, the firm announced an expansion of its leadership team, many of them with multiple decades of experience at KPMB. Kuwabara, McKenna and Blumberg remain active as founding partners. The 143-person studio remains located in Toronto, having expanded to include seven new partners. As appeared in the 2025 RAIC Gold Medal issue of Canadian Architect magazine (May 2025) The post 2025 RAIC Gold Medal: Charting the Course appeared first on Canadian Architect.

“What I’m into,” says Marianne McKenna, “is architecture as a game-changer for the institution you’re building for.” Her community-centred work has created Positive, lasting change for clients in Toronto, Montreal, New York City, and beyond. Here’s our interview with Marianne McKenna. Elsa Lam: Tell me about your early life and what brought you to architecture. Marianne McKenna: It was inherent in my upbringing that the girls and the boys in my family got the same education, and the expectation was that when much is given, much is expected. There was an expectation to be a major contributor: either you were a contributor as a kind of genius, or you would organize genius. The history of my family is more about organizing genius—making sure that you were the kind of leader that could take brilliant people, and bring them together around an objective. And they knew how to lead. My brother’s an internationally famous cardiologist, my father was a research gastroenterologist, but also a professor of medicine, my grandfather started a pharmaceutical company when he was a poor boy from the Quebec countryside.  In 2023, Marianne McKenna became the first woman to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Design Futures Council. Photo courtesy Design Futures Council EL: And you were growing up in Montreal as well, where certainly the kind of cause of women’s rights was much more in the air. MM: When I was growing up, I was the only girl on the ski team with all the French boys. I didn’t even notice I was the only girl. Afterwards I thought, where are the girls? They said, oh, the girls are at home taking care of their fathers or sweeping. So we came out of mediaeval times quite quickly, but then, you still changed your name [when you married]. You didn’t inherit in the same way. So it had a bad start—but the history of women’s rights in Quebec in the last 30 years has been astounding.  In 1967 when I was just in high school, there was Expo 67, there was the CIBC building by Peter Dickinson. My father would drive us around and say, “Look at the city, how it’s changing.” He’d take us up on the Bonaventure Expressway, sometimes in our pyjamas.  But growing up as an English Canadian in Montreal, it was clear at a certain point, I thought: this is not my battle, you’re not going to be successful. It was the first year of the cégeps, and my father said, “I don’t recommend going to the first of the cégeps because you don’t know what it is. Go somewhere more established, you’ll know what you’re getting, and you’ll get a great education.” My brother was already an undergraduate at Yale, so that’s where I went. In 2001, Concordia University held a design competition to rehouse three major faculties—Engineering, Computer Science, Visual Arts, and the John Molson School of Business—on either side of Guy Street. This initiated the first phase of its long-term vision, led by Marianne McKenna, to create Le Quartier Concordia. In a second phase, Marianne McKenna led the win of another design competition for the university’s John Molson School of Business. Both projects were completed in joint venture with Fichten Soiferman et associés architectes. Photo by Tom Arban EL: Eventually, you did go back to Montreal with the Concordia project. MM: The Concordia project, and the McGill project, let me feel like I was going home. Every three or four years, Bruce, Shirley and I would ask, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I’d like to work back home in Montreal.” And they said, “That’s never going to happen, kiddo.” I said, “You don’t know that.” And then one of them said, “Well—target an English-speaking university.” When we won the Concordia competition, there were five firms, four Quebec, and then us from Ontario. It was an undeniably great scheme. We won fair and square. EL: That project at Concordia was a game-changer for that whole part of the city.  MM: Parents say very proudly to me, “My son goes to Concordia.” In the old days, you’d say, “because he works a day job,” or “because he’s blue collar” or what not. It’s given the whole university a prestige. What an incredible thing that architecture can change image, identity status, the way people feel, the way it brings communities together. So that’s really what I’m into—architecture as a game-changer for the institution that you’re building for. The 2008 TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, including the 1,135-seat Koerner Hall, is the final phase in KPMB’s 1991 master plan for Canada’s premier music and arts educator, the Royal Conservatory of Music. Photo by Tom Arban EL: Here in Toronto, I wanted to talk about Koerner Hall. I only realized recently that when you did that project, you had been involved with the Royal Conservatory of Music for decades. So that building didn’t come out of nowhere. Can you tell me a bit more about that story and your involvement? MM: When my son was four, he began doing his violin lessons there. He came home and had a stomachache, because he wouldn’t go poop. I asked why, and he said, “Have you seen the washrooms?” Anyway, we began with renovating the washrooms, and just continued working.  We did a roof renovation in the late 1980s—they only had the money to do half the roof. EL: And you also did a master plan at some point as well. MM: We did a master plan which was quite different, where we had two wings of performance and academic. It was an iterative process—they didn’t have the money, but they didn’t even know they didn’t have the money.  It’s been a fantastic relationship with Peter Simon. He had just arrived as President and I took the master plan to him. He said, “What’s this?” I said, “You have to get your board to approve it.” He said, “Why?” And I said, “Because if you have an approved master plan, you’ve got status and we can take it to the City and show the City. Otherwise you have no status.” So they had that when the University of Toronto, in the early nineties, was trying to develop the stadium site, and they wanted to reduce the development rights on all but four or five of their own properties, including the ROM and the Royal Conservatory.  It’s about having a voice, feeling that along with these clients of yours, you’re part of a dynamic organization that can actually transform a building. When the Koerner Hall project started, Peter Simon said, “I want three things. I want amazing acoustics. When the cameras turn on the stage, I want people to say, that’s that hall in Toronto. And I don’t want the ceiling to look like a gym—no perforated metal deck.” And then he was like: “You got it. You can do this.” I’d never done a hall ground-up in my own city. It was pretty amazing. I was confident, but not that confident. Again, any of us are part of a larger team. We’re just those organizing-genius people that see who has great talent, then bring them into your orbit, help to develop some of them. EL: KPMB has a reputation of fostering all of these great architects who have gone on to do their own thing, but also being very generous about that. MM: That’s me. It’s really important to actually encourage and support them. You’ve seen all the people that have catapulted out of here. Those are the people that we trained, and we’re seriously attached to in a way. I call them alumni. These guys make us look good. And it makes better architecture in the city that we have been in. It was no threat to us, and there was no harm in getting more voices for great architecture and planning in the city. So it’s been about being able to sustain this incredible organization over almost 40 years, without losing the culture by losing those people. EL: I’m interested in trying to tease out a little bit what that dynamic is like between the three partners. I get the strong sense from Shirley that she’s very much the social justice voice in the partnership.  A café occupies the atrium connecting Koerner Hall to the legacy heritage building at the Royal Conservatory for Music. Photo by Tom Arban MM: I’m about community. My citation for Order of Canada was about building community—from your family, through to other families, and your neighbourhood, right through the culture. How can you use that architectural spirit of problem-solving to sustain great culture and great ideas?  Now we’re seeing how an idea can flip. I’m working in the States too. I’m thinking about how to balance what we say and do, how not to lose our values in the face of this, but how not to get kicked out of the country—to still have your integrity and your values and to share them with other people in a way that’s not confrontational. I’m so impressed with Canada—because coming from Quebec, you could think that, okay, Canada says one thing, and the Quebecers will go the other way. We could have fractured into all the pieces of a country. But instead there’s been this incredible movement. And when I heard Quebec say, “We’re in,” I was just like: “Wow, this is the national spirit, they actually recognize that what we have is so unique.”  I feel like it’s a very big opportunity. It could be terrific for art. I’m interested in institutions like the Royal Conservatory of Music, like the University of Toronto, or the colleges and the smaller schools, and how they are the foundations of our society. How do you make those into the glue that build better communities around them? It is about creating spaces that transform how people live in those buildings, how they work in those buildings, how they engage each other.  Look at the lobby of the Royal Conservatory. If you put high-top tables down that lobby at intermission, people gravitate to them, even if they don’t buy a drink. And I said to the Massey [Hall] people, you should do that. Otherwise, people go in there, they line up at the bar and then they don’t know what to do with their bodies. Creating places where bodies come together is one of those things—whether it’s great corridors that have high-top tables in them, or desks so you can pull out your laptop, or you can hang out somewhere, in the café at the Conservatory. Places where you feel at home with others. They call it the “third place,” but I don’t think of it that way—it’s just that you feel comfortable in your city, being with other people who may not look like you or talk like you. I love riding the subway. I think it’s those systems—the systems and the institutions, and green spaces—are what make the city exciting. When we built the conservatory, we decided to put furniture in the plaza on Bloor Street. And they were saying, “Why would you do that?” And I said, “So people will hang out there.” And of course the maintenance guys didn’t want to lock it up every night. I said, “Well, lock it up every night—is that such a big deal?” They said, “People will steal the chairs.” I said, “Then we’ll replace them.” It was about making it so people feel comfortable—because the threat is a discomfort with each other, and the uncomfortable identification of others as different. That’s what Trump is doing—is making the differentiation. And we have just blended, particularly Toronto—we don’t see colour or nationality, other than as an asset that gives us better food, better music, more contact, more diversity. That’s exciting. We live in an international city, unlike many cities in the world.  Marianne McKenna at the construction site for the revitalized Massey Hall. Photo by Jag Gun EL: Tell me about cultivating the next generation of leaders at your office. MM: That’s a big thing for us, to have new partners who bring different perspective. I mean, they’ve worked with us for 15 or 20 years, but they don’t want to be us. I’m a very optimistic person, I think it could be great. I can feel it happening that you have your partners taking initiatives that you think are smart. They are beginning to demonstrate that they can get out there, get the work, do it, stick with it. And so I’m beginning to see the apple hasn’t dropped too far from the tree.  I think we [as the founding partners] have taken the time and not been impetuous like some other firms I know where they just said, okay, on that date, I’m leaving, pay out, goodbye. For us, it’s been slow—and we haven’t been pushed to get out, and they seem to like us when we’re here. And I’m kind of incredulous that it actually is such a positive experience. There’s a realignment of how younger partners are going to work in this practice and deliver value, because we bring so much value. We bring 38 years of value, when these are guys who did buildings for us who never looked up—now suddenly they’re learning how not to miss the nuance, how to make sure we get the second phase, and all these things. And it’s maybe not exactly the way I would’ve done it, but I think it’s actually pretty good, and the work looks good in the end.  EL: It circles back to what you were saying about being tactical in terms of how you use your voice. And it sounds like I’m hearing a lot about being tactical in how you communicate, and how you listen, and how you cultivate relationships with a very long-term horizon in mind. MM: It comes back to people. Who are we building for? We get those extraordinary clients who are not entirely sure how to do it, but they know they want to change. They have something great, but they need to build a ballet school around it, or they need to build a Royal Conservatory around this idea, and change their institutions that may have been there for a long, long time. Marianne McKenna was the partner-in-charge for the Grand Valley Institution for Women, a correctional facility that provides a residential environment and aims at opening new life pathways for incarcerated women. Photo by Steven Evans EL: I’m wondering if you could speak a little bit about one of your very early projects, the Grand Valley Institution for Women. MM: Yeah. Who wants to do a prison? Amanda Sebris [now KPMB’s Director of Business Development Strategy] comes along with this RFP and says, this is a really interesting program. This is about creating choices. If you look at the profile of federally incarcerated women, the average age was 24, and 85% of them were accessories to men’s crimes. They were taken from across Canada and put in the Kingston penitentiary. It’s really unfair. This was a program to build five institutions across the country—regional institutions that could change the world for these women. I did things in my youth that if I had been caught, I would’ve probably gone to jail, but I would’ve gotten bailed out—I know kids that were in that Concordia riot, and some of them didn’t get bailed out, Montreal girls.  So Amanda brought it to us, and it was embraced by the partners: to do a prison based on the program of creating choices. We did a village green-type space, then you have a bit of a roadway, then you have a sidewalk, then you have a path in, then you have houses with porches and living spaces. Typically with eight bedrooms, you’d have four at the ground floor and four up. And we said, no, four half-down, four half-up. Make it more equal. We put the laundry machine in the kitchen, because these are women who’ve never used equipment before. We were saying they would alternate the chores. So the kitchen was really important as the communal area. We were thinking deeply about these people who have not had privacy, not had their own room, in fact. We made a kind of a spiritual place because women heal together. Men heal on their own, they’ll go to the chaplain. Whereas women want to tell other women; they want to get things off their chest, and they want to do it repeatedly. So these communal spaces were more feminine. When I went back, the chef, the commissary, said, “I can’t even meet my budget with what they want me to buy.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, ”Well, they want pigs’ feet.” And it was really this interesting ethnicity of who was in the prisons, which you can read through this. One woman did the gardening and one woman did the cooking, they kind of divided that way. And they’d also began to work on the houses a little bit, attaching a fence to the side. The people who hired us said, “Of all the five centres, you’re the ones who when you came in and told us what you were going to do, and you actually did it.” And I think that’s a signature of KPMB—that you have a real narrative that tells the story of how people will live here. And then you deliver that, with modifications as you’re learning more. People relate to stories.  In Manhattan, Marianne McKenna led the team that designed and constructed the new 12-storey expansion for The Brearley School. The design is conceived as a mini-vertical campus for the all-girls’ school. Photo by Nic Lehoux EL: I’d also like to talk a little bit about Brearley School, as another explicitly feminist space. MM: My husband laughed at me and said, “It’s the Gossip Girls.” I said, “It’s not—lay off.” In fact, it is a private girls’ school in New York where 50 percent of the girls are on financial assistance. They may come from an hour away or more to get there. They’re looking for girls with curious minds. It’s very disciplined—they’re not out at Macy’s in the afternoon to get a new lipstick. It’s an interesting ethos.  The first two levels of the Brearley School act as a community hub where students, parents and teachers can gather formally and informally. Photo by Nic Lehoux It was a really complicated project, because they had an old building on the East River where girls used to come by boat and climb up the wall to get into the school, 120 years ago. And then they bought a site that was 80 steps away, but not contiguous—across the street. Who goes to the new building? They said, “We thought the middle school.” I said, “I think you should bring the little girls there, and also the senior labs—any technical space that you couldn’t do in the old building. Bring the little girls and let them aspire to be in the Hogwarts building. And also for parents coming in, they’ll know that their kids have great gyms, great art, maker spaces.” David Constable worked with me on the sustainability, so the building is totally green. I think it’s been very successful. The head of school called at the end of Covid, and she said, “We didn’t close one day. We’re the only private school in Manhattan that didn’t close a single day.” Who gets to build a new ground-up in Manhattan, 80,000 square feet on a corner lot? We were just very, very lucky. At the Kellogg School of Management, a project stewarded by Marianne McKenna, the interior is connected through pathways and terraces that facilitate circulation and visual transparency. The five-storey LEED Platinum building provides a variety of signature classrooms and convening spaces for all scales of learning and collaboration. At its heart is Gies Plaza, a three-storey atrium and meeting place for students, faculty, and visitors. Photo by Bruce Damonte EL: One last question. I’m hoping to circle back to the beginning, when you were talking about working in the States. How do you retain your values, but communicate them in a way that allows you to work in the States at this moment? MM: When we did the Yale interview, we did a land acknowledgement—they’d never seen it before. I said, “Let me explain to you what it is, what it means in our day, in our time, in this place where we haven’t seen a Mohawk in 50 years. It is about respect for the land, about respect for community, and it’s about thinking seven generations. Don’t think about only your children, your grandchildren who are going to go to Yale—think about seven generations and what that building means in the city.” Subtly as the world has changed, Canadians had a certain authority and voice, and they were interested in a way—maybe it was post-Trump term one—to actually understand what another country like Canada might be doing, interested in hiring Canadians, for the values that you bring.  I think it’s a challenge to influence in the most positive way and to establish that we are to be respected, that we have a sovereign nation, that we are a certain culture, and that we respect each other, and we acknowledge and benefit from the knowledge of each other.  Marianne McKenna with then Governor General of Canada David Johnston, upon receiving her Order of Canada medal. Photo by Cpl Roxanne Shewchuk, Rideau Hall, OSGG EL: Do you have anything else to add? MM: One of the things that happened at the beginning [of KPMB] is we worked together, and then slowly we worked apart. I really struck out early, beginning to do my own projects and get other partners off it. And that’s been very successful for me, because I work at a different pace. But I wanted to do it, and I also wanted to be consultative: I’ll make the decision, but let’s talk about my idea, your idea, how you make those ideas work together.  To me, this is the fulfilment of the whole practice. The four of us who started out together said: instead of dividing up tasks between design, production, marketing, finance—the boys would’ve happily put us in finance and management—Shirley and I both said, I want to do my own projects. And so we’ve all worked together to do that. There’s a kind of cross-pollination that happens, and not only from looking at the work and competing with each other to do something different. So that’s been the full evolution of the 38 years to see that.  I think we’ve each fulfilled our mandate. Shirley has launched off, has found the link to her personal and professional childhood reasons. Bruce, being Japanese, is now going to do the Japanese Canadian Monument in Victoria, BC. I’ve been able to go back to Montreal, and to go back to Yale where I was a graduate student, and where my family went to school. If you live long enough and you keep practicing at what you do and just get better, the apotheosis of that is that you become a distinct individual in a group. I’m incredibly proud of that.  The Gold Medal is a wonderful acknowledgement. Things like this elevate the platform for you to do more—not less, not retire. I feel it’s an incentive. When I got the Order of Canada, Cornelia [Oberlander] said, “You must wear it [the pin].” She said, “It gives you courage.” So I think about it sometimes—I walk into a meeting and think, okay guys, here is what we’re going to do. And I have the courage to launch off and bring people together to share ideas. As appeared in the 2025 RAIC Gold Medal issue of Canadian Architect magazine (May 2025) The post 2025 RAIC Gold Medal: Community Champion appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Credit: Michael Elkin Photography The University of British Columbia has officially opened the Gordon B. Shrum Building, the new home for the School of Biomedical Engineering (SBME), and Canada’s first purpose-built facility for biomedical engineering. Designed by Canadian architecture firm Patkau Architects, the building will provide a home for SBME, replacing its previously scattered locations across UBC’s Vancouver campus. The building, named in honour of the philanthropic legacy of Gordon B. Shrum, will bring together researchers, students and industry partners under one roof to advance biomedical research, education and innovation. The five-storey, 158,000-square-foot facility includes specialized labs, collaborative research spaces and teaching facilities to support biomedical engineering and life sciences innovation. Researchers will be able to use the space to develop new medical devices, artificial intelligence-driven diagnostics and lifesaving treatments, while students will gain hands-on training experience. SBME Director Dr. Peter Zandstra (right) with students in his lab. The $139.4-million project was funded through $25 million from the Government of British Columbia, $114.4 million from UBC and over $30 million in philanthropic support for SBME from donors, including the Gordon B. Shrum Charitable Fund, the Conconi Family Foundation, United Therapeutics Corporation, Dr. Jim McEwen, and Paul and Nicole Geyer. “We are grateful to the Government of British Columbia and our generous donors for helping make this building a reality,” said UBC president and vice-chancellor Dr. Benoit-Antoine Bacon. “B.C.’s life sciences sector has emerged as a global leader, and the Gordon B. Shrum Building will play a central role in supporting critical research and the next generation of biomedical engineers who will fuel the sector’s continued growth and bring innovative health solutions to Canadians.” The building’s visual centerpiece is a four-storey mural by biomedical artist Jen Ma. The artwork represents the multiscale nature of SBME’s research, illustrating how biology, medicine and engineering intersect—from molecular to cellular to systems levels—to advance human health. A mural by biomedical artist Jen Ma complements airy common spaces where UBC students, faculty and staff can connect and collaborate. “The School of Biomedical Engineering has been transforming health care through cutting-edge research, education, and partnerships since it was established in 2017,” said SBME director Dr. Peter Zandstra. “This state-of-the-art facility allows us to take our work to the next level—creating an environment where our faculty and partners can collaborate seamlessly and create transformative new health technologies.” The new facility includes biomechanics labs, the Conconi Family Biodevice Foundry, state-of-the-art digital labs, wet labs, and the Jim McEwen Zone for Innovators, Creators, and Entrepreneurs. Philanthropic support is also enabling SBME to recruit research expertise through the Sir Magdi Yacoub Professorship in Tissue Regeneration, made possible by a donation from the United Therapeutics Corporation. This position will drive collaborative research, education and training in cell differentiation and tissue regeneration, with the goal of making transplantable organs and organ alternatives accessible to everyone who needs them. The post UBC opens Patkau-designed Gordon B. Shrum Building appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Phyllis Lambert CC GOQ FRAIC FRSC RCA Founding Director Emeritus, Canadian Centre for Architecture   I am totally delighted that Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg have been honoured as joint recipients of the 2025 Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Gold Medal, the highest award honouring the contribution of architects to our society. Founding partners of KPMB Architects, they have profoundly contributed to architecture that enriches the public realm. Marianne McKenna has continuously emphasized the role, needs and pleasure of the user and the public with sustainability, tradition, and innovation, in designing for the most positive impact on the urban and natural environment. At her highly accomplished Royal Conservatory Koerner Hall, outstanding acoustics are achieved with the innovative use of natural materials, creating an extraordinary environment for the audience. Similarly, the trajectory through the existing neo-Romanesque building, arriving at the glass wall lobby and its privileged view, add to this very fine experience. At McGill University, McKenna has created dynamic spaces for interaction and collaboration, embodying her belief that the spirit of a building resides in its social spaces. Shirley Blumberg’s impactful work centres on social justice and the urban context’s role in fostering community. Blumberg has designed affordable housing projects for several communities. Projects such as affordable housing for Toronto Community Housing and prototypical housing for the Indigenous community of Fort Severn further demonstrate her commitment to equitable design. Blumberg’s winning submission for the Holocaust Museum in Montreal, soon to be in construction, will add a much-needed sensitivity and a place of discourse around prejudice and its effects on community. A leader of BEAT (Building Equality in Architecture Toronto), Blumberg champions equity and diversity in the profession. In 2022, Blumberg was in residence at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), exploring new readings of our holdings that highlight the intellectual relevance of John C. Parkin’s role as a proponent and key actor in the modernization of Canadian cities in the 1950s and 1960s. Although I have noted only a few of the projects in the wide-ranging work of Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg, both have served on numerous juries and delivered lectures worldwide, earning widespread recognition for their transformative contributions. Together, they have redefined architecture, seamlessly blending visionary design with social responsibility, and continue to shape Canada’s architectural future. Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe FRAIC, OC, RCA, Hon. FAIA, OAA Principals, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects 2021 RAIC Gold Medal Winners Shirley Blumberg and Marianne McKenna have built an exemplary body of built projects—the work of their firm, KPMB, has been recognized by 18 Governor General’s Medals for Architecture and many other professional accolades. As two of its founding partners, McKenna and Blumberg have become inspirational architects for an entire generation. Through the years, the balance created by the founding partners has been advanced and made richer as their practice has developed and matured. Our profession still lacks equity and diversity, but co-recipients Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg have worked tirelessly towards building a more inclusive architectural practice. In order to do so, they have designed and redesigned their practice itself. In 2024, the KPMB studio, under the direction of McKenna and Blumberg, created a flattened boardroom to provide a democratic and safe space where every team member is heard. Both McKenna and Blumberg have taken the opportunity to support the strengths of their unique model of practice, understanding that broad diversity and gender balance contribute to more inclusive architecture. They have a hand in reevaluating the kinds of projects KPMB will take on, ensuring alignment between the firm’s values and its work. The result is a compassionate and inclusive KPMB studio culture, committed to creating thoughtful, meaningful, and regenerative architectural solutions that contribute to a future world that we all want to live in. Some 25 years ago, Marianne McKenna led KPMB’s first federal government commission—a women’s prison with a social justice agenda to transform the model from punishment to creating choices for women to transform their lives. This foundational project for their young firm demonstrated that they could realize a complex institution that had a positive impact on many lives. In 1997, KPMB Architects received a Governor General’s Award of Merit and an AIA Honor Award for the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario: a recognition that good design can aid in changing lives. The projects Marianne McKenna has chosen to tackle have resulted not only in designing buildings, but also in transforming cultural institutions. She has worked with the Royal Conservatory of Music for over two decades, resulting in a vital music campus for education and performance: its showpiece, Koerner Hall, is widely recognized as one of the finest musical venues in North America. Marianne McKenna also led the recent restoration and transformation of Massey Hall, working with heritage consultants GBCA Architects, and has ensured that this fine space will continue to be a mecca for our community. Shirley Blumberg has led social justice-oriented projects within the firm, working on prototypical housing for the northern Indigenous community of Fort Severn in collaboration with Brian Porter of Two Row Architect, affordable student housing on the UBC Campus in joint venture with hcma, and numerous projects for Toronto Community Housing. She was a founding member of Building Equity in Architecture in Toronto (BEAT), promoting equity for women and minorities in the profession through action-oriented initiatives. The recognition of Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg as co-recipients of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Gold Medal acknowledges the contribution of two pioneering female practitioners who have worked tirelessly—in tandem and individually—to transform our profession and redefine contemporary practice in Canada. Deborah Berke FAIA, LEED AP Dean and J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture, Yale School of Architecture 2025 AIA Gold Medal Winner It gives me great pleasure to congratulate Shirley Blumberg and Marianne McKenna on being named the joint recipients of the 2025 RAIC Gold Medal. They and their firm, KPMB, are supremely good architects and they are also significantly good people. This matters. Wherever they build, McKenna and Blumberg’s work is driven by their admirable principles to create inclusive, accessible, sustainable, and community-based architecture. They design thoughtful buildings for people in a wide range of project types from museums to performing arts centres, hospitals, universities, office towers, residential buildings, and religious institutions, to name a few. Their work elevates the human experience, creating places of purpose and cultural significance. In my role as the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, I invited Marianna McKenna to be the Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor in 2016, a position intended to bring top talent and international faculty at the school. Others who have held this position include David Chipperfield, Zaha Hadid, Tatiana Bilbao, and Brigitte Shim. It was her first ever advanced studio at Yale and was wonderfully received. The quality of work was impressive, as was the student engagement to the subject matter. Ms. McKenna gave a lecture at the school titled “Urban Good” to a packed auditorium. It was a superb talk, illustrating KPMB’s built work, and raising important questions about community and advocacy. Sarah Polley OC Filmmaker and writer First things first. You don’t mess with Shirley Blumberg. I mean, truly. Do not mess with this woman. Whether she is advocating for equity and inclusivity, or showing fierce loyalty to her loved ones and those she works with, she has an incomparable fight in her that makes her astounding accomplishments unsurprising to anyone who knows her well. I am not in the world of architecture myself. From the outside, it is always moving to me that, with all of the prestigious work she has done over the years, what Shirley is clearly most proud of are the projects with a social justice focus. I have seen her sit on the floor with my children for hours, building structures out of magna tiles, describing what it means to her to have designed affordable housing projects for the Toronto Community Housing Corporation, giving my kids a sense of what it means to have purpose in one’s work.  Shirley has a deep sense of duty to what she loves and she shows it with all of her awesome strength and force of will. As a neighbour, she might suddenly appear in your house with a vat of homemade soup if you are ill and organize a medical appointment you’ve been putting off. (God help you if you don’t go.) Shirley brings this focused, active love into her work, consistently finding the path to contributing to the social good. Her advocacy and deep principles manifest a toughness that gets the impossible done, time and time again.   Meryl Streep Actress Half a century ago, my graduate school roommate, Marianne McKenna, and I sat at our tiny kitchen table in New Haven. She was pursuing an M.Arch at the Yale School of Art & Architecture, and I was getting an MFA at the Drama School next door. She taught me a lesson about collaboration in art and acting, which marked my life and work ever since. The conversation was about dreaming a building into being and the responsibility in that act. Marianne was showing me a book by Robert Venturi, ‘Learning from Las Vegas’, explaining the idea of context in design: How will a new building speak, visually, to its surroundings? Is it listening to the community into which it intends to plunk itself? Is it a good neighbour?” I thought about where we sat, on the top floor of a (probably) 19th-century, three-story small brick house close to the campus. A few blocks down Chapel Street, Louis Kahn’s monumental minimalist steel-clad Yale Center for British Art was under construction. Nearby, Marianne’s studies were conducted in Paul Rudolph’s brutalist, rough-edged concrete statement building, which sat next to the Drama school—squat and familiar in the faux Gothic style favoured by the Ivy League—which (I remembered as an undergraduate) was once the DKE fraternity house. What could we make of the conversation these entities were engaged in?  It was the first time I had heard the word “vernacular” used, not to refer to language, but to convey the integrated aesthetic of place: the context, the visual language of a neighbourhood, and the common contours of community. Marianne was thinking in a different way than some architects of that moment in time; less fixed on the stand-alone, look-at-me statement, she was expressing, in dreaming a building into being, the listening responsibility of that dream. The responsibility not only to make beauty, and/or maximum individual impact, but to design, in deliberate opposition to, or in lively agreement with, the existing context in mind.  For me, as an actor, there were so many parallels. There is the joke among actors that on reading a script, we all skip ahead to the pages where we talk, then rapidly flip through the next pages, “Blah Blah Blah,” till we get to ME! again… And as a young actor, filled with desire, energy, ideas, and feelings, it is easy to want to jump in and shine. But we learn well to know that the artists most alive to others are the most alive. Those who listen best, serve the story best. Their humility only burnishes the gleam of their gifts—those whose grace and fluid willingness to listen, as well as lead, only pull our attention to them more intently. You do not need to grab the spotlight; you just need to serve the story you are there to tell, and the spotlight will find you.  In the year of our conversation, 1975, there was scant evidence of a welcoming landscape for young women architects in the field. However, in a can-do atmosphere of optimism, Marianne’s cohort was arguably the breakthrough class. Within a few years of her graduation, she had begun the process of forming her own standalone firm of four partners: two women and two men of equal status and responsibility, practically unheard of at that time.   Today, that same, now celebrated, firm employs over 130 people in a rigorous practice whose commissions extend throughout Canada and the United States. Marianne has garnered over 75 important architectural awards, honours, citations, and now, the highest honour an architect can achieve in Canada, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Gold Medal. So, her work is not without ego—she is plenty bull-headed in pursuit of a point—but it is respect paid, respect earned.  Of her many and varied designs, one stands out, for me, aesthetically, materially, and even spiritually. Koerner Hall, at the Royal Conservatory of Music, is Marianne’s gift made manifest. The exterior causes no ruckus with its neighbors—behind an elegantly updated, deceptively well-ordered facade, lies the exuberant, sensuous beating heart of creativity. Inside, the curved and soaring wood-beamed ribs of the concert hall (as if from Jonah’s point of view inside the whale) unfurl sound in an unparalleled, artistic triumph.  Sitting next to her in the seats behind the orchestra one afternoon, we heard Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony, and I looked over at my friend and thought: this is Marianne—beautiful and restrained on the outside, inside, full-throated passion and artistic expression. SO CANADIAN.  I am in awe, and still learning from her. Congratulations to my splendid pal! Omar Gandhi NSAA, OAA, AIBC, FRAIC Founder, Omar Gandhi Architects In 2004, as an undergraduate student of the School of Architecture and Planning at Dalhousie University I had the honour of working at what was then Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects in their downtown Toronto studio at King and John Streets. I spent a portion of my co-op work term on the Concordia University Molson School of Business, led by Marianne McKenna. When I returned to the studio as a recent graduate four years later, I would join Marianne again as a junior member of her team working on the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre at the University of Waterloo. Both experiences were invaluable in my growth as an architect working on some of the best work produced in the country, listening, learning and growing under Marianne McKenna’s visionary leadership. Over a decade later, as the principal of my own Halifax-based firm, I had the opportunity to collaborate on the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia international design competition with Shirley Blumberg. It was both the experience of a lifetime, and a joy to watch and learn from Shirley. Her graceful command of the project as we worked through the competition process and eventual project (which we won) was, to say the least, inspirational. Together, Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg represent the pinnacle of architectural practice in Canada. Their unwavering dedication to innovative design, community engagement, and social equity not only enriches the profession but also serves as a source of inspiration for countless architects and designers. Recognizing them with the Gold Medal honours their individual achievements but also celebrates their shared vision for a better, more inclusive, and sustainable built environment. It is long overdue that we give credit where credit is due in the architecture profession, especially in Canada. Marianne and Shirley in their own rights are individually deserving of the RAIC Gold Medal. Their individual portfolios over the past four decades helped to shape Canadian architectural discourse. Too often do we dissolve the fair credit of female practitioners and highlight the accomplishments of their male counterparts. Two of the founding partners of Canada’s most illustrious architecture practice are women, and their accomplishments have inspired two generations of contemporary architects in Canada and abroad. Ken Greenberg CM FRAIC Principal, Greenberg Consultants The KPMB partnership occupies a particular place of esteem and respect among Canadian practices for combining a commitment to design excellence with public service, and Shirley Blumberg has played a major role in sustaining that dual focus. I have known Shirley for many years and through numerous collaborations. In all these situations, what has set her apart is her passionate dedication to architecture as a social art with obligations to society that go well beyond the programmatic requirements of a given project. Most notable examples for me include our work on Ottawa’s Global Centre for Pluralism for the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada, where, with Shirley’s expertise, we created a compelling vison that expressed the Aga Khan’s broad and generous ambition for a Rideau-Canal-to-Rideau-River public connection on the Ottawa River banks, which has catalyzed the ongoing work of the National Capital Commission. Another was our pro bono work on the Design Review Panel for Toronto Community Housing, overseeing the plans for the revitalization of Regent Park—and eventually all of the TCHC transformational projects in that area. Shirley had a penetrating way of seeing and seizing on the potential for architecture to enhance and enrich people’s lives in ways both large and small. Shirley’s strong commitment to place-making and design quality makes each of her architectural and urban design projects into compelling demonstrations of sustainability and effective city building. This dedication was always very much in evidence as her career and interests have continued to evolve, with an emphasis on the contributions that design innovation and research can make in addressing the global issues of environmental sustainability, social equity, and inclusion. It can be argued that both in Canada and abroad, her work exhibits a particular Canadian sensibility in reconciling these goals. Shirley is also rare among architects for her fearless principled advocacy. Her background in South Africa in the apartheid era has sensitized her to the need to speak out and make use of her talents and knowledge—again pro bono—where the public interest is challenged, and her values lead her into the fray. A notable example being her contribution, as part of a group of local experts, to generating a counterplan that successfully showed how the historic Dominion Foundry Buildings in Toronto’s West Don Lands, already partially under the wrecking ball, could be saved—and that contributed to the retention of those buildings.  Meg Graham OAA FRAIC Partner, Superkül If I had to pick one word that defines Marianne McKenna it is: fierce. She is a powerful advocate for her projects, her clients, and her staff, and I have been fortunate in my career to have been both a witness to—and beneficiary of—that strength of character.  As a project designer at KPMB, I can recall meetings I attended with Marianne where she literally stood up and fought for the good of a project. She was a model of professional fortitude and resilience, at a time when that wasn’t a buzzword.  I have been in rooms with her since, and nothing has changed: she continues to bring that same unflagging dedication and clarity of vision to every project she shepherds into the world. Her standards are high, her mind is incisive, and her spirit is deeply collaborative and generous. And she is a highly committed mentor and champion.  Over 20 years ago, when I was working at KPMB, I was accepted into the Master in Design Studies program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Part of my funding fell through at the last minute, and I was resigned to declining the offer of admission. When I asked the partners at KPMB if I could stay on working at the office, they instead surprised me by offering to loan me the money. It was an extraordinary gesture—and one that I will never forget.  The partners’ act in itself was equally transformative: it taught me a crucial lesson about what it means to invest in people, and how simple acts of kindness and support can change the course of people’s lives. With that gratitude still in my heart, I celebrate both Marianne and Shirley for this much-deserved recognition. Betsy Williamson OAA FRAIC Co-founder, Williamson Williamson Architects Nine years ago, Shirley and I met for lunch, and the topic quickly turned to recent efforts each of us had made reaching out to women in the architecture community regarding the lack of equity in the profession. She had recently been hosting regular meetings with a core group of women in her firm, digging into the issues of equity in her own office, and she understood that there was both a need and an appetite for change. She connected this work with a recent lecture series she had been a part of at Princeton and in about 20 minutes, we had a plan for the first BEAT event: a leadership seminar to be held at two architecture schools in Toronto where we could have frank conversations about equity in the profession, and then tour the young women and men through projects, connecting the conversations to real work. Shirley’s leadership in founding BEAT—Building Equality in Architecture Toronto—stands as a testament to her commitment to promoting equity in the profession. This grassroots initiative has evolved into a nationwide organization, with chapters from Atlantic Canada to the West Coast, that is committed to creating lasting systemic and transformational change, understanding that empowering women in the design community improves and enriches the practice of architecture, the quality of the built environment, and ultimately, the human experience. Shirley Blumberg’s influence extends far into the realms of academia, cultural institutions, social justice, and the broader architectural discourse. It is her work, however, with this grassroots organization that makes her extra special to our community. As a leader of the most influential architecture firm in Canada, her actions will be reflected and amplified by others. When BEAT was founded, no one else in Canada at her level of practice would have done this work. She has always been a leader in design and building, but, in addition to this, her work advocating for women in architecture will make a longstanding impact in our field. As appeared in the 2025 RAIC Gold Medal issue of Canadian Architect magazine (May 2025) The post RAIC 2025 Gold Medal: Fierce, Passionate, Visionary appeared first on Canadian Architect.

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The Postmark Hotel Revitalization Project, Newmarket, by Kirkor Architects (Image courtesy Ontario Heritage Trust) The Ontario Heritage Trust and the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario are celebrating the 2024 recipients of the Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Awards. These annual juried awards, administered by the Trust, aim to recognize people’s achievements across various pursuits in preserving and promoting Ontario’s heritage. There were a total of nine projects and eight individual recipients of the 2024 Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Awards. The recipients were recognized at a private ceremony on April 25, 2025, at the Legislative Building in Toronto, presided over by the Honourable Edith Dumont, Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, and John Ecker, chair of the Board of Directors of the Ontario Heritage Trust. Recipients of the Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation include Dickson Public School Adaptive Reuse, Cambridge, byJohn MacDonald Architect and Mark McInnis, the Postmark Hotel Revitalization Project, Newmarket, by Kirkor Architects, and the Pickering Museum Village Log Barn and Log House Restoration, by ERA Architects, Inc. Dickson Public School – Exterior (Rear), by John MacDonald Architect and Mark McInnis. Image courtesy of John MacDonald Other recipients of the Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation, which recognize innovative and impactful conservation projects including exhibitions, adaptive reuse and digital resources, include the following. Across the River to Freedom: Early Black History in Sandwich, Ontario North Star: A Portal for Black History in Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent Pathways to Reclamation: The La Cloche Cataloguing, Learning and Sharing Project, Northern Ontario The Mallorytown Glassworks Permanent Exhibit, Front of Yonge Townshi The Pickering Museum Village Log Barn and Log House Restoration, by ERA Architects (Image credit: Ontario Heritage Trust) Recipients of the Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Community Leadership, which recognizes institutions and initiatives that develop and enrich a culture of conservation in their community, include the following. The Maltese-Canadian Museum, Toronto The Markham Museum and the York Region District School Board Museum & Archives Individual award recipients include the following. Marie Carter, Richard Cumbo, Peter Handley and John Sabean each received a Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Lifetime Achievement, which have each given more than 25 years of volunteer service toward enriching heritage in their community. Regan Hutcheson received the Thomas Symons Award for Commitment to Conservation in recognition of his visionary stewardship of heritage in Markham for more than 35 years. Allison Leroux, Ellen Siebel-Achenbach and Grace Tan each received a Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Youth Achievement. Each will also receive the Young Heritage Leaders Scholarship, worth $3,500 toward their post-secondary education. The Young Heritage Leaders Scholarship is jointly sponsored by Canada Life and the Ontario Heritage Trust. For more information about each recipient of the 2024 Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Awards, click here. The post Recipients of 2024 Lieutenant Governor’s Ontario Heritage Awards announced appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Courtesy of the Sai-Chew family As every architect knows, architecture is a team sport, and few architects have been better team players than Dick Sai-Chew. As a job captain at Thompson Berwick & Pratt and later The Thom Partnership, he helped oversee the creation of some of the country’s most complex architectural commissions, including the B.C. Electric Building, Trent University, and Shaw Festival Theatre. Sai-Chew was born in Vancouver in 1928, and was raised by his father, a Chinese immigrant who worked as a chef. He never knew his mother. “He was a very loving father, but we never discussed my mother,” recalled Sai-Chew in a 2021 interview with this writer. “It was only years later when my wife, Susan, asked him point blank:  ‘What nationality was Dick’s mother?’ And it was then that he said, for the first time, ‘Oh, she was Swedish.’” He grew up in the city’s Chinatown district, at a time when the city around him was rife with racism. “The best thing my dad ever did for me, other than caring for me, of course, is take me to China when I was seven years old,” recalled Sai-Chew in a 2021 interview with me. “I had just started grade two and he took me to South China, to the Taishan District in Guangdong, where I met my relatives there and absorbed the culture.” He and his father stayed in China for three years. “To be of mixed race, you could always be torn: who are you? But I felt I was Chinese, and that’s because of my father taking me to China for those years, so I could speak Cantonese and the village dialect.” Courtesy of the Sai-Chew family Back in Vancouver, Sai-Chew finished his schooling, and found woodworking to be his favourite subject. “So I decided, without knowing what architecture was, that I would be an architect. Working with wood, with your hands and directly with the materials, that’s what appealed to me. I didn’t think about the design so much.” He enrolled in the University of British Columbia’s fledgling School of Architecture, then headed by its founding director, Fred Lasserre. But Lasserre, a Swiss-born European modernist, did not make a strong impression on Sai-Chew. “You could tell he wanted everything to be clean, in a grid, all boring as hell! That was not a design-inspiring attitude to instill in a young architect,” he recalled many decades later. After his 1952 graduation, his first job was with a local firm headed by an English architect.  “After a while, I thought to myself: This is a dead end, working in this atmosphere. Then I got a job with a structural engineer, who was a consultant to Thompson Berwick and Pratt,” Vancouver’s pre-eminent architecture firm. At the time, that firm was completing a transition from neoclassical architecture to European modernism endorsed by the two younger partners, Bob Berwick and Ned Pratt. Sai-Chew arrived just in time for the firm’s landmark commission to design first modernist high-rise in Western Canada: the 1957 B.C. Electric Building. Pratt consigned his star architect, Ron Thom, to lead the design of B.C. Electric, and Sai-Chew served as the job captain, working literally at Thom’s side during the two years from project conception to completion. With its then-groundbreaking 21-storey, 889-metre height and curtainwall façade, it required multiple teams of designers and engineers as well as a satellite office devoted exclusively to the project. The B.C. Electric garnered international acclaim for its design and engineering, its success made possible in part by Sai-Chew’s deft coordination of its numerous designers, administrators, and engineers. Working together on the B.C. Electric project helped forge a strong bond between Thom and Sai-Chew, who served as a quiet, competent, stalwart friend and colleague, often keeping things together on a project during bouts of Thom’s notoriously erratic behaviour. Like Thom, Sai-Chew appreciated Frank Lloyd Wright and made a pilgrimage to Taliesin West to experience first-hand Wright’s approach to the gradation of space and light. In 1960, Sai-Chew relocated with his wife to Montreal and became a staff architect for CBC, which was then in the process of building a series of local headquarters across the country. “CBC had tons of money, but no creative ambitions in terms of architecture,” he recalled. “But [the experience] wasn’t wasted for me. It was the opportunity to see Canada, of which I had no inkling.” Courtesy of the Sai-Chew family In 1965, when Ron Thom was grappling with the commission to design the Trent University masterplan and main campus, he pleaded with Sai-Chew to join his newly independent firm. Sai-Chew agreed, and he moved to Peterborough to oversee the huge multi-year project. He became a full-fledged partner in 1970. At the Thom Partnership, Sai-Chew played a key role in many of the firm’s most important projects, including the Prince Hotel and Metropolitan Toronto Zoo. He briefly moved back in Vancouver, from 1980-1982, during the firm’s temporary expansion into Vancouver. After Ron Thom’s death in 1986, he remained with the firm and its four surviving partners, who changed the name of the Thom Partnership to the Colborne Architectural Group. Although his tenure at The Thom Partnership was challenged by economic gyrations and Thom’s well-known struggle with alcohol, Sai-Chew never regretted his long tenure with the firm and its erratic leader. “There was a tendency to be completely dominated design-wise by Ron,” recalled Sai-Chew in a 2011 interview with this writer. “Having said that, I still feel that Ron had that ability to draw out the best in a person.” Dick Sai-Chew was predeceased by his wife Susan Sai-Chew (née Woo), and leaves his companion Sinikka Price, and his daughters Lydia and Trish. The post In Memoriam: Dick Sai-Chew, 1928-2025 appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Image credit: RAIC The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) has announced that Turenscape has been selected to receive the 2025 RAIC International Prize. The RAIC International Prize honours the belief that exceptional architecture can transform society by promoting humanistic values such as social equity, respect, and inclusiveness, and by creating environments for the well-being of all people. The prize recognizes international architects, practices, and organizations beyond Canada that exemplify the RAIC’s values of integrity, climate action, reconciliation, social justice, and innovation. Through this initiative, the RAIC seeks to elevate exemplary global practices within an identified annual theme of relevance within Canada’s architectural community. Turenscape, based in Beijing and led by Dr. Kongjian Yu, has shaped the urban landscape of over 250 cities worldwide through more than 1,000 projects. Guided by their philosophical foundation of “Nature, Man, and Spirits as One,” Turenscape seeks to promote harmony between land (Tu) and humanity (Ren) and to create sustainable environments for the future. Turenscape’s foundation and body of work resonated with the selection committee, who noted that Turenscape “celebrates beauty and ecology, drawing lessons from natural systems to develop holistic responses that regenerate degraded urban ecosystems, increase resilience to flooding and sea level rise, cultivate natural habitats in urban areas, and create inspiring spaces that foster human reconnection to our natural world.” This year, the RAIC International Prize Selection Committee has also recognized five other individuals, projects, and firms for the ways they address and respond to climate action. They include the following. DnA Design and Architecture – Xu Tiantian, China Joar Nango – Tromsø, Norway NLÉ – Lagos, Nigeria / Amsterdam, Netherlands Salima Naji – Morocco Te Uru Taumatua, Te Wharehou O Tūhoe, Jasmax -Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland, Aotearoa / New Zealand For more information, click here. The post Turenscape Announced as 2025 RAIC International Prize Recipient appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Bibliothèque Gabrielle-Roy by Saucier & Perotte Architecteces. Photo credit: Courtesy of Prelco Guardian Glass North America recently honoured the glaziers and fabricators who made several buildings possible at its 8th annual Commercial Project Awards event in Las Vegas. “Guardian Glass is honoured to work with the talented glaziers and fabricators who brought the architects’ vision to life in these projects,” said Alan Kinder, director of commercial demand creation, Guardian Glass. “Our 2025 winners are just a slice of the hundreds of projects our partners execute every year. Their talent and skill in delivering buildings clad in Guardian SunGuard high-performance coatings continues to impress.” The six regional winners, which included a Canadian project, were selected from 36 nominees by glass industry leaders including Tom Culp, energy code consultant, National Glass Association, Deb Levy, CEO, key media and research, Sara Neiswanger, associate director, industry engagement, National Glass Association, Ellen Rogers, vice president of editorial content, key media and research, and Max Perilstein, communication strategist, sales source consultants. Among the selections of the 2025 Guardian Glass Commercial Project Award Winners, was Bibliothèque Gabrielle-Roy by Saucier & Perotte Architecteces in Laval, Quebec City, which used SunGuard SuperNeutral 68 on clear. The judges said the project used “expansive use of glass that provides light and view important to the multiple functions of this building, along with an interesting glass terrace.” “The building’s signature element, the gold ceiling, was enhanced by the glass and the uniqueness of its application,” added the judges. For more information or to see the full list of projects that were honoured by Guardian Glass North America, click here.   The post Guardian Glass honours Canadian project at annual commercial project awards appeared first on Canadian Architect.

A mutual recognition agreement (MRA) was signed between the UK’s Architects Registration Board (ARB) and Canada’s Regulatory Organizations of Architecture in Canada / Regroupement des Ordres d’Architectes du Canada (ROAC) in Toronto on April 23, 2025. The agreement will go into effect on May 14, when eligible architects who are registered in the UK or Canada will be able to benefit from a streamlined process to practise their profession in the two countries, which will create new opportunities across the Atlantic. “The agreement opens significant new opportunities for architects in the UK and Canada to collaborate, building on the strong professional partnerships that already exist between the two countries. It will at the same time maintain the high standards the public have a right to expect. We are so very excited to see the new route open in May,” said Alan Kershaw, chair of the Architects Registration Board. According to the Architects Registration Board (ARB), in both Canada and the UK, an architect must be registered with the relevant professional regulator to practise architecture in the jurisdiction as well as to use the legally protected title. “Registration exists to ensure anyone calling themselves an architect has the appropriate skills, knowledge and experience, while meeting the required standards of conduct and practice,” says the board. Eligibility requirements include the following: Those who have obtained CACB-accredited qualifications, or who have achieved the same standard following certification, and who have additionally completed the Canadian experience requirement and licensing examination. Those in the UK who have obtained ARB-accredited qualifications and registered with the ARB. The agreement also includes those who have registered through passing the Prescribed Exam at Part 1 and Part 2 level and additionally completed a UK Part 3. The streamlined process will involve obtaining a letter of good standing from the regulatory body in the architect’s home country (ie from ROAC in Canada, or the ARB in the UK) and completing an approximately two-hour-long online or printed module highlighting differences in practice between the two countries. An ARB representative explained that applicants would be expected to know, for instance, that different cities in Canada have different planning regulations, but would not be not be tested on the content of those regulations, nor of the building code. The streamlined process applies to all areas of Canada, including Quebec, where there is no French language test as part of the process. From the Canadian end, the AIBC will be administering the process on behalf of ROAC. “This agreement further strengthens the longstanding and historic relationship between the UK and Canada, as Commonwealth partners,” said Ian R McDonald, chair of the Regulatory Organizations of Architecture in Canada/Regroupement des Ordres d’Architectes du Canada. ARB’s role in developing the MRA was in part supported by funding through the UK Department for Business and Trade’s Recognition Agreements Grant Programme. The ROAC’s role, through the Architectural Institute of British Columbia (secretariat for the MRA), was in part supported by the Province of British Columbia’s Credential Assessment Improvement Fund. Existing MRAs According to the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA), a similar MRA between Canada, Australia, and New Zealand came about because of the three countries’ participation in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Architect Project. All three countries maintain an APEC Architect Register of senior architects who have met specific criteria such as having at least seven years of senior experience. “As a result of the MRA, an APEC Architect in Australia or New Zealand is entitled to registration in Canada as of right, apart from being assessed about any aspects of the architectural process in Canada that is specific to Canada. The same applies for a Canadian APEC Architect applying for registration in Australia or New Zealand,” says the OAA. Since 1992, architects registered in one Canadian jurisdiction may also apply to register in other Canadian jurisdictions under the terms of the Canadian Reciprocity Agreement between the eleven Regulatory Organizations of Architecture in Canada (ROAC). The Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) has been closely monitoring Nova Scotia’s Bill 36, Free Trade and Mobility within Canada Act, 2025, intending to remove barriers to trade and investment between Nova Scotia and other reciprocal provinces and territories. It has written to the Ontario minister responsible, recommending that  “government could consider exempting Architects from this legislation as the profession already enjoys longstanding reciprocity across Canada.” There is also a reciprocal arrangement between Québec and France that allows individuals with licenses to practice a regulated trade or profession in either Québec or France to also work in the other jurisdiction. This agreement aims to facilitate the recognition and mobility of professionals between the two regions. Since 2014, a reciprocity agreement has been in place between architects in Canada and in the United States. The agreement between Canada and the UK was signed at a reception hosted by the British Consulate-General in Toronto.   The post Canada and the UK sign new reciprocity agreement appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Image credit: The Toronto Public Space Committee The Toronto Public Space Committee has launched a global design competition aimed at imagining the future of public washrooms in the city. The global design competition invites designers, architects, urban planners, and creative thinkers from around the world  to propose design ideas for inclusive and innovative public washrooms. The ideas competition aims to  advocate and spread awareness for the urgent need of a robust public washroom network in Toronto. Despite the necessity of public washrooms, the Toronto Public Space Committee notes that the city has a severe shortage, leaving many residents—particularly unhoused individuals, gig workers, families, and people with disabilities—without access to this urban infrastructure. As a result, this competition aims to emphasize the essential nature of washroom access in the city. Image credit: The Toronto Public Space Committee In this competition, entrants are being tasked to design a network of public washrooms for the City of Toronto that includes one single-user toilet washroom—designed to be flexible for installation at multiple sites—and one multi-user hub washroom sited at Dufferin King Parkette. It is seeking bold ideas that integrate spatial justice, accessibility, sustainability, and cultural inclusion. While Toronto’s South Parkdale neighbourhood has been chosen as the site for the multi-user washroom design, these washrooms should be flexible enough to be sited across a large diverse city, from urban to suburban centres. Image credit: The Toronto Public Space Committee The call for entries is open to all participants globally. All entries must be in English. There will be a non-refundable $25 entry fee to participate. All entries must be received with payment by 11:59 PM EST on May 27, 2025, to be eligible for judging. Image credit: The Toronto Public Space Committee The top three competition winners will receive a cash award, and have their work published in Toronto’s Spacing Magazine. Winners will be showcased along with selected entries in a public exhibition in Toronto this July. The first prize winner will be awarded $1,500 CAD, and the second and third prize winners will receive $500 CAD. Results will be announced July 10, 2025. For more information, click here.     The post Competition launched to imagine future of public washrooms in Toronto appeared first on Canadian Architect.

A cyclist rides in a bike lane on University Avenue in Toronto, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Laura Proctor Premier Doug Ford’s government has been ordered to keep its hands off three major Toronto bike lanes until a judge can decide whether a plan to remove them is unconstitutional. The injunction handed down April 22 was heralded as a win by the cyclist group challenging Ontario’s bid to rip up the lanes on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue. “It’s definitely a win for anyone who wants fact-based and data-driven decisions,” said Michael Longfield, Cycle Toronto’s executive director. “I hope this gives the province an opportunity to maybe pause and reverse this legislation and instead work on real solutions that will keep Torontonians and Ontarians moving.” A spokesperson for Ontario’s transportation minister said the government intends to respect the court’s decision. Design work will continue so the government can start removing the bike lanes “as soon as possible should the decision uphold the legislation,” wrote spokesperson Dakota Brasier. Ford’s Progressive Conservative government gave itself the power last year to remove 19 kilometres of protected bike lanes, over the objections of the city. It passed a law that also requires cities to seek provincial approval to install new lanes that cut into vehicle traffic. The province suggested that targeting bike lanes on the three major roadways would help reduce Toronto’s traffic congestion. Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Schabas, who heard a challenge of the law brought by Cycle Toronto and two cyclists, appeared to be skeptical of that justification. “There is evidence that their removal will have little or no impact on the professed objectives of the legislation as stated by the minister of transportation,” Schabas wrote in April 22’s injunction ruling. The ruling said despite the government’s claim that there was an urgent need to cut congestion, it presented no evidence about the process to remove the lanes or plans on what would go in their place. Not granting the pause would mean the government could try to dismantle the bike lanes before he has time to decide the case, Schabas wrote. “It is likely that the bike lanes are more easily removed than rebuilt or restored,” his ruling said. Those challenging the law argue that it violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that removing bike lanes puts lives at risk. April 22’s injunction ruling said the legal challenge raised “important and complex constitutional issues” and Schabas had not yet formed a “final view on the matter.” But the evidence before him after last week’s hearing, he wrote, is that removing the bike lanes could cause increased collisions, injuries and even deaths of cyclists. Ford’s recent re-election campaign included fresh promises to reduce traffic congestion in Toronto. He has cited the Bloor Street bike lane, not far from his own home, as part of what’s contributing to gridlock. Lawyers for the cyclists used the government’s own internal documents to poke holes in that argument last week. They presented internal ministry documents that stated the government’s plan may not reduce congestion. An engineering report commissioned by the government found any congestion benefits would be negligible or short-lived, a lawyer for the cyclists pointed out in court. The same report found bike lanes were predicted to reduce crashes among all road users by between 35 and 50 per cent. Schabas’s ruling said the government “relied on anecdotal evidence and the opinion of a real estate management professor who does not appear to directly address the key issue of whether removal of the bike lanes will in fact alleviate congestion.” The judge’s ruling said the government’s own internal advice suggested accident and injuries were likely to increase if the lanes were removed. — With files from Liam Casey. The post Ontario ordered to pause Toronto bike lane removal until Charter case decided appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Image credit: OAQ The Ordre des architectes du Québec has revealed the 18 finalists in the running for the People’s Choice Award at the Prix d’excellence en architecture. The Awards of Excellence in Architecture are a unique opportunity to raise awareness among Quebec residents about the importance of architectural quality. The project that receives the most votes will be announced on May 22, 2025, at a gala which will be held at Espace Saint-Denis in Montreal. This annual event is an opportunity to showcase exemplary architectural achievements and to recognize the contribution that architects and their clients make to the built environment. Four distinctions will also be awarded to individuals or organizations to recognize their contribution to the creation of distinctive, high-quality architecture. The jury for the 2025 Awards of Excellence in Architecture is chaired by architect Gabrielle Nadeau of COBE, Copenhagen. It includes architects Marianne Charbonneau of Agence Spatiale, Maxime-Alexis Frappier of ACDF architecture, and Guillaume Martel-Trudel of Provencher_Roy. Élène Levasseur, Ph.D., director of research and education at architecture of sans frontières Québec, also sat on the jury as a public representative. The following is a list of the finalists. Bibliothèque Gabrielle-Roy by Saucier + Perrotte Architectes et GLCRM Architectes Bibliothèque Gabrielle-Roy – Saucier + Perrotte Architectes et GLCRM Architectes, Québec (Capitale-Nationale). Photo: Olivier Blouin Nouvel Hôtel de Ville de La Pêche by BGLA Architecture et Design Urbain Nouvel Hôtel de Ville de La Pêche – BGLA Architecture et Design Urbain, La Pêche (Outaouais). Photo: Stéphane Brügger / Dominique Laroche Mellem Ville-Marie by ADHOC architectes Mellem Ville-Marie – ADHOC architectes, Montréal (Montréal). Photo: Maxime Brouillet Hôtel Lambert by Ruccolo + Faubert architectes Hôtel Lambert – Ruccolo + Faubert architectes, Montréal (Montréal). Photo: David Boyer / Sonders / Robert Bonazzuoli / Alessio Bernardi Habitat Sélénite by _naturehumaine Habitat Sélénite – _naturehumaine, Eastman (Estrie). Photo: Raphaël Thibodeau Le Binôme by APPAREIL Architecture Le Binôme – APPAREIL Architecture, Montréal (Montréal). Photo: Félix Michaud Site d’observation des bélugas Putep’t-awt by atelier5 + mainstudio Site d’observation des bélugas Putep’t-awt – atelier5 + mainstudio, Cacouna (Bas-Saint-Laurent). Photo: Stéphane Groleau Réfection d’enveloppe de l’Édifice du 1141-1145 route de l’Église by Lemay + ABCP architecture Réfection d’enveloppe de l’Édifice du 1141-1145 route de l’Église – Lemay + ABCP architecture, Québec (Capitale-Nationale). Photo: Stéphane Groleau École secondaire de LaSalle by Lemay, Leclerc, Prisme, in consortium École secondaire de LaSalle – Lemay, Leclerc, Prisme, in consortium, Lasalle (Montréal). Photo: David Boyer, Joël Gingras École du Zénith by Pelletier de Fontenay + Leclerc École du Zénith – Pelletier de Fontenay + Leclerc, Shefford (Estrie). Photo: James Brittain / David Boyer Coopérative funéraire la Seigneurie by ultralocal architectes Coopérative funéraire la Seigneurie – ultralocal architectes, Québec (Capitale-Nationale). Photo credit: Paul Dussault Le Paquebot by _naturehumaine Le Paquebot – _naturehumaine, Montréal (Montréal). Photo: Ronan Mézière Maison A by Atelier Pierre Thibault Maison A – Atelier Pierre Thibault, Saint-Nicolas (Chaudière-Appalaches). Photo: Maxime Brouillet Hôtel de ville de Montréal by Beaupré Michaud et Associés, Architectes in collaboration with MU Architecture Hôtel de ville de Montréal – Beaupré Michaud et Associés, Architectes en collaboration avec MU Architecture, Montréal (Montréal). Photo: Raphaël Thibodeau Nouveau Camp Mercier by Anne Carrier architecture Nouveau Camp Mercier – Anne Carrier architecture, Réserve faunique des Laurentides. Photo: Adrien Williams Coop Milieu de l’Île by Pivot: Coopérative d’Architecture Coop Milieu de l’Île – Pivot: Coopérative d’Architecture, Montréal. Photo: Annie Fafard École secondaire du Bosquet by ABCP | Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux | Bilodeau Baril Leeming Architectes École secondaire du Bosquet – ABCP | Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux | Bilodeau Baril Leeming Architectes, Drummondville (Centre-du-Québec). Photo: Stéphane Brügger BRUJ cabinets de curiosités by Studio Jean Verville architectes BRUJ cabinets de curiosités – Studio Jean Verville architectes, Québec (Capitale-Nationale). Photo credit: Maryse Béland, Maxime Brouillet, Antoine Michel The public can vote for their favourite finalist until April 25, 2025. For more information and to vote, click here. The post Finalists announced for 2025 Awards for Excellence in Architecture appeared first on Canadian Architect.

St. Lawrence Market visualization of the front and Jarvis street (Rendering credit: RSHP Architects) Toronto’s beloved St. Lawrence Market will celebrate the grand opening of its redeveloped North building next month. The design, by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and Adamson Associates Architects, was the winning entry in a 2010 two-stage design competition. It houses the established Saturday Farmers’ Market and Sunday Antique Market, along with court rooms for Toronto Court Services and administrative offices on the upper floors, and a 250-space underground parking garage. The complex replaces an existing one-storey building that was primarily used for weekend markets.   St. Lawrence Market North (Rendering credit: RSHP Architects) The St. Lawrence Market Complex has served as a City landmark for more than 200 years and remains one of the most valuable historical sites in Toronto. The new complex is designed around a covered street bookended by views to St. Lawrence Market’s south building, and to St. Lawrence Hall to the north. St. Lawrence Market exterior visualization at night (Rendering credit: RSHPArchitects) The redevelopment aimed to improve the utility of the complex for its vendors, visitors and shoppers, while contributing to the economic development of the area. St. Lawrence Market. Interior view of atrium looking toward St. Lawrence Market (Photo credit: The City of Toronto) St. Lawrence Market. Courtroom interior view. (Photo credit: The City of Toronto) Construction of the new market began in July 2019. The courts are currently open, and the Farmers’ Market has officially moved to this new location on Saturdays as of April 5, 2025. (The original St. Lawrence Market South building, open six days a week, will continue operating with its current vendors.) There is an official grand opening celebration planned for May 10, 2025.   The post St. Lawrence Market to celebrate grand opening of redeveloped North Building appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Image credit: Jardins de Métis After 25 years of journeying across Canada and England, the Blue Stick Garden, which was originally created in 2000 by CCxA’s founder, Claude Cormier, for the first edition of the International Garden Festival, has returned to the Jardins de Métis to be reborn as the Blue Stick Forest. The Blue Stick Garden is a pixelated metamorphosis of the garden’s famous Himalayan blue poppy. The rare poppy was carefully acclimatized and cultivated in Métis by garden founder Elsie Reford. Cormier’s installation now sits within a microforest made up of plant species from warmer climatic zones, which that encircle and permeate the array of 2,500 blue and orange sticks. This installation aims to juxtapose two temporalities: the annual blooming of the blue poppy, symbolized by the colour change of the sticks, and the life rhythms of forest ecosystems, which must adapt to climate change. The forest, inspired by the innovative planting methods developed by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, is made up of 1,800 densely planted trees, shrubs, and perennials ready to amplify their symbiotic properties. In the plantings, native plant families are joined by species suited to future conditions, presenting a genealogical portrait of an emerging forest in Eastern Quebec. Assisted migration of these plant species also embodies the garden’s heightened resilience and optimism, underscoring a collective responsibility to act for an increasingly fragile environment. Located near Elsie Reford’s vegetable garden—Reford’s original site for horticultural exploration and experimentation—the Blue Stick Forest stands as a tribute to Cormier. It aims to celebrate his practice rooted in innovation, experimentation, learning, and “serious fun”—a playful approach defining all his work. The Blue Stick Forest invites visitors into a ritual of annual visits to witness the transformation of the installation into a new experimental garden, commemorating the passion, and patience of visionary pioneers who have shaped Jardins de Métis as well as advanced landscape architecture practice today. It also symbolizes the commitment of new generations towards the future. The installation will open to the public on June 21, 2025, which is also the opening day of the 26th edition of the International Garden Festival. The post Blue Stick Garden Reborn as Forest at Les Jardins de Métis appeared first on Canadian Architect.

On Wednesday, April 16, Cycle Toronto’s legal challenge against the removal of bike lanes on three major roads in Toronto—Bloor, University, and Yonge—was heard in court. In the next few days, Judge Paul Schabas will decide on whether to temporarily bar the government from removing the lanes. He will render a final decision on the case in the coming months. The applicants in the case included grassroots advocacy organization Cycle Toronto, along with two cyclists who would be directly affected by the removal of the bike lanes: University of Toronto student Eva Stanger-Ross, who uses the lanes on her daily commute, and full-time bike delivery person Narada Kiono, who uses the lanes to do his work. They were represented by legal firms Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein and Ecojustice. Cyclists ride in a bike lane on University Avenue in Toronto on December 13, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Laura Proctor Cycle Toronto and the two cyclists brought a Charter challenge against the Province’s decision to remove the 19 kilometres of downtown bike lanes. They argue that the removal infringes the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—essentially, that removing the bike lanes will make the streets less safe for cyclists and other road users, depriving them of “life” and “security of the person”—rights that are guaranteed under the Charter. The current challenge only challenges the removal of the three named bike lanes, and not the other provisions of Bill 212. The bill, passed in late November of last year, requires municipalities to ask the Province for permission to construct future bike lanes in the cases where they would displace a lane of motor vehicle traffic. The bill also gives the Province the ability to review bike lane projects that began in the past five years, with an eye to possible removals. It additionally allows for the construction of Highway 413 to begin before completing Indigenous consultation or environmental assessment—a project that is anticipated to pave over 2,000 acres of prime farmland, open up land to sprawl, and drive pollution into watersheds. A cyclist rides in a bike lane on University Avenue in Toronto on Friday, December 13, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Laura Proctor Points for Cycle Toronto In order to support their case, the applicants presented a data-based analysis from civil engineering professor and infrastructure expert Shoshanna Saxe, along with reports supporting bike lanes from groups including theAssociation of Municipalities of Ontario, the Bloor Annex Business Improvement Area, the Ontario Professional Planners Institute, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, and the Ontario Traffic Council. A core idea is the established concept of induced demand: creating more space for cars, while alleviating congestion in the near term, will inevitably result in increased demand and a return to traffic jams. While the Crown suggested that supporters of bike lanes are “partisan,” the applicants aimed to show that there is a mainstream professional consensus that bike lanes are ultimately helpful for alleviating congestion. The applicants also pointed to a report by professional traffic engineers CIMA, commissioned by the Ontario government after introducing the bike lane removal bill, that concluded that removing the bike lanes would likely worsen congestion and lead to more collisions, causing cycling deaths along with greater rates of injury to cyclists and motorists alike. Internal government documents obtained as part of the court case, and submitted as evidence by the applicants, showed that in contemplating what provincial staff called a “pro-driver bill,” staff noted that a policy of removing bike lanes would offer “little to no alignment with other provincial initiatives” including policies around “cargo e-bikes, e-scooters, and safe active transportation.” It also noted that, ultimately, “this measure might not have the desired impact on reducing congestion.” Travelling south on Yonge Street at Scrivener Square. Photo taken October 11, 2021. (Photo via City of Toronto’s website) Cycle Toronto’s case seemingly fell on receptive ears: from the bench, Justice Paul Schabas showed familiarity with the Toronto bike lane network and the concept of induced demand, and grilled the Crown attorneys for failing to present robust evidence to support their side of the case. Schabas said that he found one of the analyses the government lawyers presented “odd,” and observed that another chart in their case seemed to show approximately the same travel times on Bloor from before and after the bike lanes were installed. One of the government’s key pieces of supporting evidence was a report from a collision reconstruction expert, relying largely on observational data. Judge Schabas said that he had problems with anecdotal evidence from both sides of the case, but found it particularly “surprising coming from the government.” When the issue of fire safety came up, for instance, the Crown relied on a letter from a former fire chief as evidence. The judge pointed out that if the government wanted to convince him to bike lanes led to increased travel time for emergency vehicles, they should have instead produced hard data from current fire department and emergency medical service departments—which they could readily obtain. Cycle Toronto’s Facebook page Deprivation—or a case of positive rights? The core of the issue may not be whether bike lanes are beneficial, but rather, a more technical issue of whether the Province has a right to remove them. This hinges on the question of whether the removal of the bike lanes deprives road users of life and the security of the person, or whether it is merely restoring the status quo situation before bike lanes existed. In the Province’s argument, cyclists do not have a Charter-protected right to protected bike lanes: after all, a decade ago, the bike lanes didn’t exist. In legal terms, cyclists don’t have a “positive right” to bike lanes. As Crown attorney Josh Hunter put it, “the government giveth, the government taketh away.” The judge summed up, “your argument is that the Charter shouldn’t have anything to do with traffic management.” Cycle Toronto’s lawyers, on the other hand, argued that while the Province of Ontario is not obliged to provide safe infrastructure, when another State actor does, the Province should not be allowed to impede it. While the Charter protects rights, it also states that these rights and freedoms can be lawfully limited by the state—so long as these limits are reasonable and can be justified in a free and democratic society. To decide whether a government action that infringes a Charter right is unlawful, the government must show that the law is rationally connected to a pressing and substantial objective, that the law is minimally impairing of the Charter right, and that the beneficial effects of the law outweighs its negative effects on the Charter right in question. The applicants asserted that the way in which the bike lane removals were passed in law violated two of these fundamental principles of justice. First, they said, it is arbitrary: there is no rational connection between the purported object of the law (reducing traffic congestion) and its effect. Second, there is a grossly disproportionate negative effect—even if the law was successful in reducing travel times, it would only be by a few minutes at best—a marginal time savings which would be paid for in the much larger cost of cyclists’ lives. They added that while the legislature “is free to make legislation that is ineffective,” they are obliged to protect children—who are among the cyclists who use these routes—and cannot be allowed to enact a “folly” that would have a detrimental (and possibly deadly) effect on kids. Crown lawyers countered that while in the lay sense this bill “deprives” cyclists of bike lanes, it is not a “deprivation” in the legal sense of the term. Moreover, they said, the law is not arbitrary since it opens up an additional lane for motor vehicles—meeting the bar of having a logical connection to the stated objective of reducing congestion. The large number of road drivers using arterials such as Bloor, they added, means that even a marginal reduction in travel time would not be grossly disproportionate to the potential harm caused. The effects, they conceded, might be “deleterious,” but were not “grossly deleterious.” Judge Schabas reserved his decision, saying that “it’s a difficult, complex, and challenging case.” The post Toronto Bike Lane Battle Lands in Court: Judge Weighs Rights, Safety, and the Province’s Power to Remove Cycling Infrastructure appeared first on Canadian Architect.

1120 Ossington. Photo credit: Doublespace Photography “As Canada approaches a federal election, the future of deeply affordable, supportive housing will depend on sustained investment and coordinated leadership,” says Naama Blonder of Toronto-based Smart Density. The firm, together with mcCallumSather serving as Architects of Record, recently unveiled 1120 Ossington, a new 25-unit supportive housing development which aims to deliver affordable, rent-geared-to-income homes for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness. The rapidly deployed modular project was delivered by Assembly Corp. Blonder says that 1120 Ossington is “proof that when funding, policy, and thoughtful design come together, exceptional housing outcomes are not only possible—they’re scalable.” The project, developed by St. Clare’s Multifaith Housing Society, aims to demonstrate how permanent supportive housing can be delivered without compromising on design quality or integration within the existing urban fabric. 1120 Ossington. Photo credit: Doublespace Photography The project is located on a surplus portion of land adjacent to a previously converted church, and is owned and operated by St. Clare’s. The goal for the project was to “make the land work harder,” says Blonder, by increasing the site’s total unit count as well as improving operational efficiency, while addressing a need for supportive housing in the city. It uses mass timber and a panelized, tilt-up construction method, which allowed the structure to be assembled in 17 days. This offsite approach reduced build time, minimized disruption, and improved energy and cost performance. The building is modeled to perform 40 per cent better than the NECB baseline, with an R40 nominal envelope and a Passive House-rated slab from Legalett. A building automation system (BAS) will monitor energy use in real-time to measure performance against TEDI and TEUI targets. 1120 Ossington. Photo credit: Doublespace Photography Each unit is a private micro-unit with a kitchenette and bathroom and supports autonomy and dignity for residents who have experienced chronic homelessness. Shared spaces also provide access to on-site services, and an exterior corridor improves natural ventilation and energy efficiency. The design constraints of modular, mass timber construction were addressed through integrated architectural art. Wind Garden, by artist Leo Krukowski, features perforated metal panels mounted outside the windows. These screens provide shading and privacy while also casting shifting patterns of light and shadow. The installation, which was inspired by the forms of native plants, enhances the building façade and reinforces the idea that supportive housing contributes meaningfully to the public realm. 1120 Ossington. Photo credit: Doublespace Photography The project was made possible through funding and support from all levels of government, including the City of Toronto’s Open Doors and Concept 2 Keys programs, CMHC, the Province of Ontario, and private donors. All 25 units are rent-geared-to-income, with most tenants paying $582; the shelter component of ODSP. The post This is what deeply affordable housing success looks like. Can it endure after the election? appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Dec 6, 2018. Taken from Ferris wheel. Photo courtesy of Patricia Chang Imagine your mandate was to design an outdoor place in Montreal that would embody the Canadian identity, and one where you could enjoy sun, fresh air from the St. Lawrence River, and soak in the spectacular views and history of the city, all while enjoying music of all eras, genres and languages, and even get some exercise in? Where people young and old, locals and tourists, couples on first dates, singles getting energized before tackling their work days or relaxing after a tough week, children with their parents and grandparents, groups from elementary and high schools and colleges, hockey teams, breakdancing and ice skating groups, and those of all ages and nationalities could co-exist and mingle in a magical setting? Where the vibe is one of excitement, positivity and joy, and even tranquility, depending on the time of day? What if I told you, such a place already exists—and has been in existence for 33 years? The skating rink at Bonsecours Basin at the Old Port of Montreal has evolved into the embodiment of a modern Canadian square; a genius loci. Those who gather there, non-skaters and skaters alike, connect to the rich history, culture and identity of Montreal, Quebec and Canada, to nature, and to each other. They are not just sitting there scrolling on their phones, they are actively participating in physical exercise, having fun and laughing while learning a new skill, even if they fall. Isn’t this what we want for our youth and young adults? To become physically and mentally strong, especially with depression and anxiety levels being at all-time highs? To become resilient, to be able to handle all the stress of growing up so that they can contribute to society? The natural skating rink of Bonsecours Basin last seen in February 2020. Photo courtesy of Patricia Chang So then why would the Federal Government—which owns the land where the skating rink is located—quietly announce that they would be closing the skating rink, due to costs associated with the requirement of a new refrigeration system meant to deal with extreme fluctuating temperatures? It seems ironic that the government, which had spent years developing the Old Port—starting from the national competition in 1981 and completion in 1992—would make this decision so hastily as a “fait accompli,” especially since the skating rink had always been the shining star. It has become more and more popular each year, despite the fact that one must pay to skate and a parking fixed fee of $25 has been implemented. The skating surface has also decreased: the natural ice rink of the entire Basin used to be maintained and accessible for skating, but in the last five years, only the refrigerated portion of the rink has been in operation. The unpredictable weather has also shortened the seasons of many neighborhoods’ natural ice rinks across Montreal Island, so that is all the more reason for the Old Port refrigerated rink to stay open. As for the costs? The complex at Bonsecours Basin is currently grossly under used. When the refrigerated rink is closed for nine months out of the year, the open space of the rink, or the space in front of the pavilion, could be used for events. Imagine dancing under the stars, or doing yoga, tai chi, martial arts, or break dancing, or even attending weddings there during the day. The possibilities are endless. Same goes for the two-winged pavilion. In fact, the upper storey, rooftops, and side terrace could be used for events during the season, and off season, could be rented to groups and events. Ferris Wheel. Photo courtesy of Patricia Chang Perhaps we can also look to other cities for inspiration such as Reston, Virginia, which has their outdoor skating rink, that features a gorgeous glass and steel structure, as their main attraction to the town square. Their off-season events even include concerts. Other examples include Delaware River Rink in Philadelphia, and Wollman Rink in Central Park. The latter is an activity hub with a skating season that lasts seven weeks longer than ours. While their climates don’t experience the same extremes as ours, the warmer temperatures also present their own challenges. The Old Montreal rink is in one of the most gorgeous unique settings in the world. It is not as large as the Rideau Skateway, but it is of no less importance. So, what is the silver lining? The opportunity to maximize the potential of the site—in a way which retains the open-air skating rink. A start is signing a petition on Change.org. How can architects or developers rally to approach the government with further ideas and plans? I would be pleased to offer my suggestions. Patricia Chang is a lifelong Montrealer, former architect, realtor, content creator on Tik Tok as elfie@BigPictureCoach and is writing a book on Hope and Humour for Humanity. The post Op-Ed: A Silver Lining to the Closure of Montreal’s Old Port Skating Rink? appeared first on Canadian Architect.