Winners

2015 Pan Am/Parapan American Games Athletes’ Village | Canary District

architectsAlliance believes in the intensity and vitality of cities. Each of the firm’s architecture and urban design projects–which include the Cairns Family Health and Bioscience Research Complex at Brock University, the Four Seasons Hotel and Residences, and the Bloor Street Transformation–is a conscious act of city-building. In every case, aA works to articulate a convincing and urbane response to context, and a compelling and appropriate reaction to density that enriches both the public realm and the individual’s experience of urban life. aA’s approach reflects the personality of the city itself, which is shifting, multivalent and mutable. The city is not a monolithic statement, but a meandering conversation that takes place over generations–that is by turns respectful, fractious, tentative and insistent. The buildings and public spaces that aA creates represent lines of dialogue, through which the firm continues the conversation and advances the language of architecture. 

Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects was founded in 1987 by Bruce Kuwabara, Thomas Payne, Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg. The firm has since earned over 175 awards for architectural excellence. In the last decade, KPMB contributed to Toronto’s evolution as an international destination with projects for the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada’s National Ballet School, the Gardiner Museum, the Young Centre for Performing Arts and the Royal Conservatory. Projects across Canada include Manitoba Hydro Place (LEED Platinum) in Winnipeg, the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, and the forthcoming Remai Art Gallery of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon which earned KPMB its 11th Canadian Architect Award of Excellence in 2011. Recent projects include the Rotman School of Management Expansion at the University of Toronto, the CIGI Campus in Waterloo and the Quantum-Nano Centre at the University of Waterloo. KPMB is currently working on projects for Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northwestern University, as well as the new headquarters for the Elementary Teacher’s Foundation of Ontario and The Globe and Mail in Toronto. 

Since 1988, DAOUST LESTAGE inc. has been actively involved in the fields of architecture and urban design. Involved in design at every scale, this multidisciplinary firm strives to bridge the limitations of traditional design practice and to overcome boundaries between urban design, architecture, landscape, graphic, interior, industrial and furniture design. For each project, the approach rests on a careful understanding of the site’s present and historical characteristics in order to anchor the proposed intervention with the intrinsic qualities of the surroundings, revealing traces of the past through a resolutely contemporary language. Characterized by simplicity, the firm’s designs demonstrate an ability to conceptualize projects of varied nature and scope. From large-scale urban improvement projects and architectural schemes to interior and furniture design, the DAOUST LESTAGE inc. team has acquired unique expertise in the planning, design and realization of diverse and award-winning projects. 

MacLennan Jaunkalns Miller Architects is a Toronto-based design practice with over 25 years of experience and the proven ability to deliver sustainable civic projects to meet the requirements of universities, municipal clients, and other public institutions. The work of the firm is centred on developing hybrid forms of public architecture that incorporate high-performance sports, recreation and community programs into the vibrant social hearts of many campuses and municipalities. From field houses, gymnasia, arenas and aquatic centres to community rooms and libraries, the volume and quality of the practice’s portfolio are represented by more than 50 projects and over 45 national awards including the Governor General’s Medal in Architecture. 

UBC Geological Field School

BattersbyHowat started informally as
a design studio in 1996. Now an 11-person architectural practice, the office has a strong track record in both design excellence and the inclusive and considered nature of its design process. As partners and friends for 25 years, Battersby and Howat hold combined degrees that encompass architecture, landscape design and interior design. This multidisciplinary approach gives the firm a distinct advantage to conceive of a project holistically, and reflects the receptive and collaborative nature of the studio’s culture. BattersbyHowat simultaneously considers the architectural resolution of a space or building, the material and physical occupation of an interior space with people, furnishings and fixtures, and thoughtfully engages the surrounding landscape both on the level of its formal and ecological potential. 

Children’s First Centre

Based in Whitehorse, Yukon, Kobayashi + Zedda operates in fairly extreme climatic conditions. Working above the 60th parallel in a rugged and mountainous territory adjacent to Alaska, there are five caribou for every human and, in some areas, the ground is permanently frozen. With the lowest recorded temperature in Canada at –63°C, there is not much of a summer to speak of but the continuous daylight in June convinces residents otherwise. Aboriginal people comprise one-quarter of the population, and it has been only 60 years since the Alaska Highway connected the outside world to them. The firm realizes that a small community discourages specialization, and has been known to tackle any project as long as there exists the potential to do interesting work. Recently, in order to bring design to the neglected urban landscape of Whitehorse, KZA decided to lead by example by building and renovating its own buildings and to run a coffee house. 

Spa Le St-Jude

T B A | Thomas Balaban, architecte is an emerging Montreal architecture practice formed in 2009. During the past three years the studio has garnered local as well as national recognition through a growing list of awards, exhibitions, publications and competitions for projects that thoughtfully search for a new contemporary expression within Montreal’s existing fabric and vernacular traditions. It is a critical practice that favours the omnivorous integration of art, technology and pedagogical research over the increasing fragmentation and specialization of architectural practice. 

Amphithéâtre Trois-Rivières Sur Saint-Laurent

Paul Laurendeau established his firm in Montreal in 1995 after gaining international experience with renowned architects in London and Paris. His initial work includes competition submissions in which he explored and developed a style of creating stark spaces organized along orthogonal axes. Laurendeau’s architecture is an artistic undertaking rooted in proportions and geometry that play on symmetry, repetition and verticality to create a tangible effect with one’s perception of space. His work has received numerous design awards including Awards of Excellence from the Ordre des architectes du Québec for Fashionlab in 2003, Desert in 2005 and Dolbeau-Mistassini Theatre in 2009, along with a Canadian Architect Award of Excellence in 2006. His most important project to date is the 9,000-seat Trois-Rivières amphitheatre currently under construction, the result of a competition he won in 2011. 

Established in 1990, Beauchesne Architecture Design is located in Trois-Rivières. With its team of architects, technicians and designers, it integrates various skills allowing it to offer complete professional services to its clientele throughout the province of Quebec. Focusing primarily on institutional, health care, education, commercial, housing and industrial projects, Beauchesne stresses the need to create good working conditions for its staff where client respect is paramount. It derives the greatest satisfaction from creat-ing quality spaces for the users that will in-habit them.

Go Roof, Union Station

Zeidler Partnership Architects has been established for 50 years in Toronto, which now serves as headquarters for the firm with additional offices in Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Abu Dhabi, London, Berlin and West Palm Beach. With over 200 professional and support staff members, most senior personnel have been with the firm for 10 to 30 years, and are currently led by senior partners Alan Munn, Tarek El-Khatib and Vaidila Banelis. The firm’s projects cover virtually the entire range of architectural, urban and interior design work, varying from large mixed-use complexes to small residences and offices. The major body of work is located in Canada and the United States, but the firm has also, over the past 25 years, developed a significant international presence in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Zeidler has been recognized by its peers with over 140 national and international awards, and more than 400 articles on the firm have been published in its distinguished and long history. 

1^st Street SW Underpass Enhancement

The Marc Boutin Architectural Collaborative is a research-based critical practice. The work in the studio is focused on the design opportunities that lie at the confluence of different disciplines, seeking a density of meaning that can only be achieved through the synthesis of art, architecture, urban design and landscape architecture. The concepts of negotiable space and imprintable architecture have been central contributors to the value of the design projects pursued. Equally important is the firm’s capacity to dynamically and responsively engage clients in order to develop project accountability. MBAC’s resultant design portfolio has received numerous international and national awards for architecture and public space design and has been internationally published and exhibited. Recent work includes the Eau Claire Plaza Redevelopment, one of Calgary’s significant public spaces; the revitalization of Calgary’s river pathway system through a series of plazas and nodes; the restoration of the historic Calgary Public Building; the Calgary Centre for Global Community; the National Mountain Centre; and The Roadshow: Architectural Landscapes of Canada. 

el dorado inc started as a firm providing architectural design and construction services in Kansas City, Missouri. Its history is shaped by a constant and rigorous exploration of the relationship between designing and making, from smaller-scale installations to larger-scale architect-led design-build projects. By incorporating the construction of its designs into its project delivery, the firm is able to more effectively control the project schedule and cost, and to achieve a higher level of craft. el dorado’s 25-person company is a collaborative enterprise, focused on work in six target sectors: commercial, residential, industrial, civic/institutional, public art and planning. As a group, it is understood that every project it takes on, regardless of sector, scale or budget, must be exceptional.

House In Four Fields

’OEUF is an award-winning firm with a diversified practice founded by Daniel Pearl and Mark Poddubiuk in 1992, with Bernard Olivier and Sudhir Suri as more recent additions to the partnership. L’OEUF has won the prestigious HOLCIM Foundation international prize for its Greening the Infrastructure at Benny Farm project, an innovative neighbourhood development promoting community empowerment and proactive participation of stakeholders. With a deep commitment to research and teaching, a strong sense of the importance of socially equitable space, and an acute sensitivity to cost, L’OEUF is renowned for its expertise in sustainable and socially progressive design. The firm focuses on and revels in the elegant resolu
tion of complex design problems, with vast experience in designing at residential, institutional and urban scales.