“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.