The deadline to submit your project to the Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence and Photo Award of Excellence is quickly approaching. Submissions of projects in the design phase or under construction are due on Monday, September 11, 2023.
This is also the deadline for submitting your best architectural photo of a Canadian building—professionals, non-professionals and students are welcome to enter.
Here’s a look back at some of our winning entries from past years.
Winner of a Canadian Architect 2022 Award of Excellence
In 2021, the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association and Algoma University held a design competition for the Mukwa Waakaa’igan Indigenous Centre of Cultural Excellence, which will be erected next to Shingwauk Hall, a former residential school. It is envisioned as a place for truth telling, healing, teaching and learning, cultural preservation and transformation. The winning design team of Moriyama & Teshima Architects and Smoke Architecture aspires to design a campus gateway that will embody the promise that reconciliation can be achieved, and foster universal principles of respect toward one another and the planet.
Winner of a 2021 Canadian Architect Award of Excellence
Designed by Revery Architects Inc., The Butterfly and FBC (First Baptist Church) pairs a downtown Vancouver church with a new condo tower. “How do we bring biophilic design into towers? This 57-storey building essentially eliminates interior corridor space, instead including an outdoor breezeway that extends vertically to a very tall height,” wrote the jury. “This brings natural ventilation and a communal connection to the outdoors through the core of the building, and introduces the possibility of cross-ventilation at higher elevations. It’s an innovative move that pushes the envelope of the tower typology.”
Winner of a 2020 Canadian Architect Award of Merit
Shefford Primary School, by Pelletier de Fontenay + Leclerc Architectes, was selected for an award in our 2020 cycle. Part of Quebec’s Lab-École initiative to improve the province’s schools, this design for a new elementary school in the Eastern Townships encourages its students to develop as physically active, intellectually engaged, and community-minded youth. “Clustering the classrooms gives the large school a smaller feel, and offers students a sense of identity,” commented juror Susan Fitzgerald.
Winner of the 2020 Canadian Architect Photo Award of Excellence
Salina Kassam’s photo, entitled Massey Hall Dance Floor, claimed the top prize in our 2020 Photo Awards of Excellence. “We’ve done our share of construction site photos, and it isn’t always easy to make sense of the chaos of that environment. This does so in a lovely, clever way. There’s something so refreshing about an image that is so real and so raw, and yet so beautiful and communicative,” writes juror Younes Bounhar.
You can view an archive of more past winners here.
Here are some tips on preparing your submission, and information about our Photo Awards of Excellence.
To find out more about our jurors, visit www.canadianarchitect.com/meet-the-jury-2023/
For more information and to enter, visit www.canadianarchitect.com/awards