The University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture (SALA) has announced the jury for the seventh edition of the Margolese National Design for Living Prize.
The $50,000 prize — created through an estate gift to UBC from the late Leonard Herbert Margolese — recognizes a Canadian citizen who has made a remarkable impact on the built environment through design. This year’s jury comprises influential experts that reflect the breadth of professionals eligible for the award.
Shortlisted candidates, determined from the nominations by a Steering Committee, will be contacted and requested to submit additional materials to support their nomination. Jury deliberations will take place in June. The jury will select one winner, based on the demonstrated tangible and far-reaching impact of their designs. The successful candidate will be notified in July. A public announcement will be made in September followed by an award ceremony to be held in October at which the winner will present their work and receive the $50,000 prize.
The jury includes:
Aaron Betsky
Director of the School of Architecture and Design at Virginia Tech and critic of art, architecture, and design. Aaron Betsky is the author of over a dozen books on those subjects, including forthcoming volumes on Frank Lloyd Wright, and the landscape architecture firm Turenscape. He writes Beyond Buildings, a bi-weekly blog for architectmagazine.com. Trained as an architect and in the humanities at Yale University, Aaron Betsky has served as the President of the School of Architecture at Taliesin (originally the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture), Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Netherlands Architecture Institute, as well as Curator of Architecture and Design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Claude Cormier
Founding Principal of Claude Cormier + Associés, a second-generation conceptualist landscape design practice based in Montreal. Established in 1995, the firm has acquired a solid reputation noted for Claude Cormier’s originality and creativity. For Cormier, landscape architecture is used as a medium to create an experience that embodies humour, subversion, and pleasure. The practice has completed many well-loved public spaces, including Sugar Beach and Berczy Park, both in Toronto. The firm is the recipient of nearly 100 awards and was invited by Phaidon Press to be featured in their publication as one of the top 30 Landscape architects in the world.
Mari Fuijta
Associate Professor and Chair of the Bachelor of Design Program at UBC’s School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture, Mari Fujita’s research focuses on the spatial and cultural effects of urban change. Her design studios and seminars explore emergent forms of urbanism with a focus on Vancouver and other regions experiencing rapid growth or decline. She also maintains a multidisciplinary design practice, Fubalabo, and is also a partner in the product design practice, Maiku Brando. She received a B.A. from Columbia University and an M.Arch from Princeton University and worked as an architect in both New York and Berlin.
Ema Peter
Principal of Ema Peter Photography, Ema Peter has worked with many of North America’s most prominent architecture, interior design and engineering firms establishing herself as one of Canada’s leading photographers. Her work has been published extensively in international publications including The New York Times, Architectural Record, and Azure, among others. She has been named one of the world’s top 12 women in architectural photography and has won both the inaugural Créateurs Design Award 2020 for Best Photography and the Canadian Architect 2019 award for Architectural Photography.
Tudor Radulescu
Co-founder of KANVA, a Montreal-based multidisciplinary architectural firm, Tudor Radulescu’s work is at the forefront of thinking, imagining, drawing and constructing collective space. Leading a team of dynamic architects, he continually maintains the balance between the theoretical and practical aspects of the profession and has an approach that seeks to question and transform the built environment. Each project is engaging, memorable and sensitive to the human experience and to contemporary culture. KANVA has won numerous awards including the 2015 Emerging Architectural Practice Award awarded by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
For more information about the prize and nomination process, visit: margoleseprize.com
