July 1, also known as Canada Day, is a time when Canadians come together to commemorate the union of what were once three separate colonies — New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Canada (contemporary Ontario and Quebec).
Canada isn't just one of the largest countries in the world, but it's also one of the most urban. In a 2021 report, about 82% of the country's total population lives in cities. In honor of Canada Day, we take a moment to celebrate Canadian architecture by highlighting 15 firms working across the country.
For this special feature, we asked each firm a few questions to learn more about their practice, what makes Canadian architecture so unique, fellow Canadian firms they're fans of, and asked them to share a memorable or brand new project they've worked on.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
Smoke Architecture is an all-woman, majority Indigenous architecture firm. Indigenous teachings and methods are the foundation for how we work and the designs we create. As Oshkabewis | helper/messenger, we use a rigorous listening process to give our clients’ intentions physical form and create hospitable venues for their critical work. We are passionate about making manifest the Indigenous peoples’ millennia of inhabitation and learning within our territories.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
Architecture physically expresses how we see our relationships with each other and with other life systems and defines what is possible for us to do together and what we can imagine ourselves to be. We can see the marks in our built environments where Indigenous nations of Turtle Island welcome newcomers to bring together knowledge systems, push back when colonial leaders try to eradicate us and maintain hope that our original intent for collaboration can be realized. Our potential for working together is only just starting to open up.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
Two Row (Mohawk-led) has been active for decades, and recent projects are inspiring as their reach and impact extends. Sean Bailey (Métis) is spearheading land-based architectural learning in Northwestern Ontario / Manitoba. Trophic (Metis-led) and SpruceLab (Mi’kmaq-led) are leading Indigenous thinking in landscape architecture. David Fortin was Canada’s first director of a school of architecture, and his small firm is leading Métis design thinking, along with Solo, led by Jason Surkan in Saskatchewan. There are Indigenous architects in BC, SK, and ON, but none in QC (except for Smoke Architecture) nor in eastern Canada yet, so we eagerly anticipate that first eastern Canadian presence.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
I’m inspired by the potential in the post-industrial landscape of Hamilton. The profound marks of extraction physically demonstrate that a sustainable path forward for humanity respects other life systems and amplifies and diversifies the dynamics of life we all share. As we reinhabit and reclaim these highly impacted industrial environments, we walk back along the path we’ve traveled and pick up things we forgot along the way.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
The Algoma University Mukwa Waakaa’igan. The vision for this project is a building that blurs the lines between building and land, indoor and outdoor and creates choices for students, staff, visitors, and faculty. These choices are places of learning and gathering but also pathways that permit encounters with the difficult history of the site, permit exploration of new experiences and perspectives and reveal our place on the planet. Mukqua Waakaa-igan will also create possibilities for new ways of learning and teaching that use the building and site as a place of exploration, grounding, and discovery
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
The exploration of the territory is an imaginary but very real way of defining the work of Blouin Orzes, whose practice puts forward an integrated vision of the project where architecture and landscape are at the heart of the approach. Their achievements, ranging from residential insertion in an urban setting to overall planning on a territorial scale, have in common their sensitivity to the environment in which they are embedded.
A first project carried out at the turn of the century in Quebec's Great North was, however, decisive in the impact that the landscape, the climate and the resilience of the northern populations had on their vision of architecture. Since then, Marc Blouin and Catherine Orzes have pursued a rigorous approach based on their involvement with communities and their mastery of the technical aspects of construction in a northern environment in an era of climate change. Blouin Orzes' approach goes far beyond architecture. It is, above all, a practical reflection on the vast notion of Nordicity
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
Although based in Montreal, our practice is, in fact, located in Canada's Far North, which takes us across this vast territory from Nunavik to Nunavut via Churchill, Manitoba. In addition to the technical challenges posed by construction in a northern environment, we are now faced with the challenges posed by melting permafrost in a time of climate upheaval. These new realities are now part of our daily lives.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
As Quebecois, we have a particular interest in the work of Dan Hanganu, the architect behind Montreal's Musée de la Pointe à Callières. Across Canada, we're particularly fond of the work of Brian MacKay-Lyons of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
Parc des Îles, the site of the 1967 World's Fair, is an exceptional site in the middle of the St. Lawrence River and is still home to Buckminster Fuller's Biosphère and Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67. It's also home to Alexander Calder's monumental stabile, under which people dance to electronic music all summer long.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
PBI Projects Churchill Manitoba - By the end of 2017, we were commissioned to build in Churchill, northern Manitoba, the Polar Bears International House. Polar Bears International is an organization of conservationists and scientists whose mission is to protect polar bears through research, education, and action on the issues that endanger this species. Polar Bears International's presence in Churchill is due to the fact that this post-industrial town has now turned to eco-tourism, is located along the migratory path of the Hudson Bay region's polar bear population, which has declined by 30% since 1980, and is at risk of extinction by 2050. Two years later, we built the Buggy House, a residence for researchers who came to Churchill to continue their field observations. Using a concept of prefabricated panels and modules delivered by train, this building was assembled on-site in 14 days.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
I think people know and follow our work, but we fly below the radar within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms. We have slowly and carefully selected our projects, clients, and employees to create the right team environment and the right selection of projects best suited to our strengths. Our office is a boutique, mid-sized firm designing a mix of genres with a common thread among them that is relevant and meaningful to the urban context or that allow us opportunities to expand our knowledge in materials, efficiency, lighting, building methodology, and adaptive reuse
Our portfolio includes commercial interiors, park pavilions, adaptive reuse of heritage assets, and private residential, multi-residential, and some institutional. Our designs utilize simple form types (interior and exterior) that are pulled and/or offset to make “activators” for gathering in the public realm.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular
Our region is distinctly unique from the rest of the Canadian Architecture scene, and I probably think that most regions would feel that way, as the country is so vast. After decades of a depressed economy here on the East Coast, relative to the rest of Canada, we now find ourselves within a rapidly growing city with major housing deficits. We like to be mindful of the local vernacular in style, materiality, and building culture. We most often build and clad our buildings in wood.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
I don’t follow particular practices, but there are areas of interest that I will review across the board when I see them; glulam construction, wood construction, passive house or similar for envelope design, embodied energy in materials, ideas in affordable housing, limited trades and inflating construction budgets. We are trying to maintain an awareness of how today's economic and social environment intersects and impacts our architecture.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
Our harbor really defines our city. It is both what separates us and what glues us together. It's an industrial, working harbor with towering concrete wheat bins blocks in length and post panamax cranes, wharfs, and buildings scaled for the size of trucks, rail, or ships that dot the waterfront. Yet, for the most part, it is fairly accessible. You can walk from one end of the harbor to the other and experience many different public and industrial functions juxtaposed within this harbor space creating a unique sense of scale to the area.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
Stephan Chevalier co-founded the architecture firm Chevalier Morales in 2005 with Sergio Morales. Based in Montreal, the firm develops a contemporary architecture that is sensitive to context – to materials, light, and space, as well as to the identities of the communities and territories with which it works. The firm has been awarded and shortlisted for over twenty Canadian and international architectural competitions and projects, including Saul-Bellow Public Library in Lachine, House of Literature in Quebec City, Drummondville Public Library, Pierrefonds Public Library in Montreal, and most recently, Agora des Arts in Rouyn-Noranda, a former church reimagined as a performing arts center. Chevalier is presently acting as co-designer for Saskatoon’s New Central Library. The firm is also known for its award-winning homes and is increasingly active in the world of education, transforming spaces for primary schools, colleges, and universities.
The quality of the firm’s work has been recognized by several Awards of Excellence from Canadian Architect magazine and the Grand Prix d’architecture from the Order of Architects of Quebec, as well as two Governor General’s Medals in Architecture. In 2018, the firm garnered the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Emerging Architectural Practice Award, and in 2022, its project Pre-Occupied Architectures was selected as one of the finalists for Canada’s official representation at the 18th Venice Biennale in Architecture. Both Chevalier and Morales are regularly invited to lecture, exhibit, and publish their work internationally.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
The climate in Quebec, its rich culture, and its context, taken from a broad perspective, are the firm’s main sources of inspiration.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
Canadian leaders and architectural practices, such as Patkau Architects in Vancouver and Shim-Sutcliff Architects in Toronto.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
Place Ville-Marie by I.M. Pei.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
Drummondville Public Library. Better known for its curved form and milky-white glazing – a reference to the Saint-François River and its history of hydroelectricity – the library also boasts dramatic staircases, ambitious public programming, a welcoming, free-flowing circulation, and a sustainable development strategy that includes a geothermal system connected to an outdoor hockey rink. Completed in 2018, it represents a whole new generation of Canadian public libraries.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
In terms of architecture language, we would like to think of our work as extending the careful modernism of Canadian architecture beyond its successful relationship with ecology, nature, and craft to a more formal, typologically exploratory territory without ruining its current achievements. In terms of mode of practice, we would like to extend the definition of an architecture firm towards an architecture studio that escapes the boundaries imposed by the service industry and still remain engaged with the process of building in the city.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
Canadian contemporary architecture, in its successful examples, has managed to add specificity to the neutral language of high modernism through its attention to ecology, natural light, and craft, thus generating a national identity around ecology. In Ontario and Toronto, specifically, immigration adds richness and complicates both the problem of national identity and its potential responses.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
Shim-Sutcliff on the east, Patkaus on the west. Of course, a lot of great in-betweens, but these two still seemed to be the most careful in their body of work and its evolution.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
Gehry’s AGO when you are inside the building. It is a careful montage of old and new and shows how Gehry can be both formally expressive and utterly functional at the same time (also taught Canadian architects how mass timber can be radicalized).
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
Editor's note: The firm provided a wonderful list of projects, such as 44 Foxley and the Underscore Gallery Artist Gallery and Studios which are shown above. Other memorable projects that were mentioned include One and a half ADU project (set to be completed in 2023), Wardell Toronto, Rooms Bauhaus Museum Dessau, Forno Cultura Bakery Bakery, Bore-ing Lightness Canadian National Pavilion (2019), and their One to One Exhibition 1:1 at the Cooper Union.
*Be sure to check out Archinect's exclusive interview with JA Architecture Studio back in 2022 for our Archinect Studio Snapshot series.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of architecture firms in Canada as well as in the American Northeast?
To start, we celebrate Canada Day, Independence Day, and several other remarkably similar holidays of different importance and sometimes different days. Unfortunately for me, this often means I work on both. Yes, international design practices are more commonplace than in many other professions, and a Canadian from Toronto is one of the most famous American architects! (Mr. Gehry, Canada finally returns your affections). However, we likely stand out as an emerging firm, given we are simultaneously Canadian and American in origin and practice.
Despite the proximity, many would likely be surprised by the marked difference in culture, communication, and norms. Operating in both provides a great deal of practice at holding multiple perspectives yet not being confined by them. What is routine in one place can become a fresh perspective in another. Although it sometimes plays out as a thorough understanding of unquestioned norms followed by a tendency to misbehave. This, combined with my background in product design and interior architecture, before a focus on architecture and development, drives a propensity to color (colour) outside the lines in the type of work we take on, tailoring our role to suit the project.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular? What about the U.S. region you're also in?
Canadian cities are undergoing unprecedented urban development. Along with-it Canadian designers and architects are rising to the occasion and getting more attention on the international stage. Toronto and the surrounding areas provide a curious combination of cosmopolitan dynamism and provincial sensibility. With largely embraced historical population growth, Toronto is in an inevitable state of transformation. In contrast, cultural and political resistance to change and breaking with convention is particularly pronounced in the built environment. The associated bureaucracy has brokered a range of peculiar stylistic mash-ups. But also some unique and fruitful experimentation.
The American Northeast has a rich mix of historic styles with modern and contemporary architecture. This reflects the layers of frequent reinventions and transformation.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada and in the American Northeast?
Winnipeg-based 5468796 architecture consistently surprises and delights! Such resourcefulness.
I am very excited by the housing projects completed by Interface Studio Architects (ISA) out of Philadelphia. These projects are anchored in their context while also serving as local landmarks in their own right. These are good examples of how a little individuality can contribute to the larger whole. Many of these projects provide clear insight, if not inspiration to their Canadian counterparts for the potential of small-scale housing projects with only slightly more hospitable approvals processes, zoning and building codes.
What's your favorite architectural landmark in your cities in Canada and in the U.S.?
Toronto City Hall (1965). Less to do with my architectural admiration and more to do with it representing a moment when the city processed an ambition and enthusiasm for the future and civic space. It's coming back around.
American Cities have an abundance of architectural landmarks from industrial uses to more grandiose civic icons. I spent most of my childhood and young adult life exploring these cities. What interests me most today are the small-scale interventions like the ones previously mentioned. Although, I am very fond of Steven Holl's Nelson-Atkins addition.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
The Quinzhee firm offers a diverse field of expertise, collaborating on projects at all scales: from architecture to urban planning, furniture design, and even ski manufacturing. They firmly believe that the combination of disciplines is essential and necessary to nurture their passion for creation.
While diverse, the core of Quinzhee’s mission remains the transformation of urban environments that have been neglected for decades by introducing pragmatic solutions while developing a sensitive dialogue with the environment. They aim to offer new living environments for middle-class citizens, including tenants and buyers, and actively contribute to shaping the everyday landscape of the city. The firm strives to revitalize urban neighborhoods in Quebec City while preserving a human-scale intervention approach, ensuring affordable financial accessibility, and adapting housing typologies to meet the real needs of today’s and tomorrow’s society.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
The Climate: The Achilles’ heel of Quebecois architecture. The climate of Canada is characterized by significant diversity and variability due to its vast geographic extent. The country experiences harsh winters and hot summers, with significant variations from one region to another. In Quebec, these extreme climate variations are even more pronounced and require increased attention in the development and construction of building envelopes. The annual temperature differences, ranging from -30 to 30 degrees Celsius, significantly complicate the composition and junctions of the building envelopes. Despite these complexities, Quebecois techniques manage to promote even more interesting architecture.
Quebec’s heritage: Quebec City is renowned for its impressive variety of architectural styles. The ancestral streets of the city bear the traces of both French and British colonialism, as well as other influential movements that have left their mark on Quebec’s history, such as Romanticism and Art Deco.
Despite its rich architectural heritage, Quebec, like other North American cities that experienced significant urban sprawl during the modern era, faces challenges in its urban organization dominated by the influence of the automobile. This has created an environment filled with obstacles when it comes to achieving everyday architecture in the Quebec territory. However, these challenges also provide an opportunity for innovative approaches and solutions in urban design and architecture.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
Quinzhee finds inspiration from its travels and encounters to activate and enhance the joy of creating everyday architecture that is well-suited to its surroundings.
In this regard, the humility and commitment to preserving the land through the sensitive and integrated design approach of the Brian MacKay-Lyons architectural firm serve as a remarkable source of inspiration for the Quebec-based firm. Quinzhee greatly appreciates their thoughtful reflection and adaptability to the impacts that architecture can have on the local environment. Another innovative and collaborative architectural firm that Quinzhee holds in high regard is 5468796 Architecture Inc, located in Winnipeg. They actively contribute to the democratization of sensitive architecture in urban living environments. Quinzhee values their work and finds particular inspiration in their efforts to create architecture that responds to the needs of the community. The firm takes also pleasure in witnessing the emergence of young architectural firms that strive to make architecture an accessible solution for everyone.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
Quinzhee believes that an architectural landmark is not only a distinctive and recognizable element in the community’s landscape but also needs to meet its needs while preserving the harmony of the urban environment.
The Musée de la civilisation in Quebec City has emerged as a significant landmark for the city since its conception in 1984 by architect Moshe Safdie. This building exhibits a distinctive and bold aesthetic, skillfully combining modern and traditional elements. It also holds a prominent position in the city’s cultural and social activities to this day. This vibrancy is notably due to key architectural features that have facilitated the viability of its operations, such as the richness of public spaces, the unique architecture, and the appropriation of the premises.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
For Quinzhee, the most significant project is undoubtedly the one that allowed the firm’s holistic vision to be realized for the first time. Here is a brief overview of the architectural intentions and objectives: Integrated into the existing neighborhood, Les Triplettes de Jeanne- Mance is housing sixteen units on two floors. This typology was preferred in order to respond to the demand of new families wanting to settle in the neighborhood. The facade is divided into several parts, with different colors of siding, to facilitate its integration into the heterogeneous built environment of Limoilou. These different sections of the facade are punctuated by a play of openings and are staggered in relation to each other in order to integrate with the site and to preserve its natural topography. In an effort to increase the sense of ownership, the large two-story units are served by individual exterior entrances, thus eliminating interior common corridors and creating more street traffic to participate in the dynamism of the street. The lower units are designed with individual balconies that provide direct access to the backyard, while the upper units have a rear balcony overlooking Lairets Park.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
We are optimists. Within the Canadian Context our architecture is activist and we fight for design at all scales, we challenge the Traditonal practices of Canada’s architecture community, we challenge the status quo. Our studio's organic design language is informed by an intersection of sculptural and technological practices.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
Canadian architecture is presently defined by a unique discourse in inclusivity, versus techtonics or materiality. Canada has talented, visionary, and diverse next generation architects, who should be globally recognized and hired abroad. But they suffer provincial, and cultural attitudes that we must push back to redefine. We have to fight for our dignity beyond just being celebrated as pragmatists, to win the best opportunities versus allowing them to be farmed out.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
Uufie, Adrian Phiffer, Batay Csorba, Studio Ja, 5468796.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
OCAD by Will Alsop by a long shot, he was a brilliant man and taught us a lot.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
Our new Elm Street tower, which is in progress, is really exciting, our ROLEX store in Toronto, and so is our net zero prefab project 1925 Vic Park which is a CREE building. We are also designing a digital memorial project called Cumulus. We are really excited about the future.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
UUfie is a small architectural design studio that engages in projects of all scales and types. Since we focus only on a few projects, each is connected to us but with the understanding that they will transcend us.
What is unique about Canadian architecture and in your region in particular?
The region is paradoxically both diverse and homogenous.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
Patkau and JA Studio.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
Toronto City Hall and The Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
We have a few projects in progress; this includes a rural house and multi-tenant housing in the city.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
Our work aims to critically examine and influence our cities towards more beautiful futures. We attempt to claim both the core of architectural practice, as well as work beyond the limits of our field, engaging with political, economic, social, environmental, and technological concerns. Since we don’t limit ourselves to the scale of architecture, we are also curious about the characteristics and design of cities, landscapes, and objects.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
Canada can be defined as an enormous area of land and water populated by a very small number of people. Our relationship to the land is something we continue to refine and evolve, especially as we engage with Truth and Reconciliation processes and learn to appreciate the traditional connections and caretaker roles Indigenous communities and nations have with the land. Our home in Calgary, for example, can be understood through the lens of the deeper histories of the Plains peoples. It is also a landscape that has been irreversibly and violently reshaped by the DLS land survey. We’ve written about this situation here.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
There are a lot of interesting emerging practices in Canada that are engaging with important topics, and in the process creating exciting new outcomes. Although there are too many to list, our friends SOCA, Omar Gandhi, Matthew Soules, Uufie, Partisans, Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, Lateral Office, MODA, and MBAC are doing work that, in very different ways, inspires some aspects of our processes and projects. In addition to younger and emerging offices people such as Arthur Erickson and Douglas Cardinal are examples of outstanding Canadian architects and thinkers who imagine(d) bold and unique outcomes for our cities. We are also encouraged by architects who are working outside the borders of Canada. It’s important to us to be global citizens, rather than focusing too much on our national identities – we would prefer not to restrict our ability to shape our environment and our relations with the world to the space that falls within the national borders of Canada.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
It would be hard to pick one, so perhaps it’s better to describe a type of building that is desirable to us. Many buildings that we like in Calgary respond to their situation, in the broadest sense, in a way that is less about being an individual object. Buildings that describe an orientation to the cosmos, or to mountain views, buildings that provide a generous space to the public, buildings that respond to existing and historical conditions. Concrete examples include the Nose Hill Siksikaitsitapi Medicine Wheel, the Telus Sky building, the Hudson’s Bay department store, the City of Calgary Municipal Building, and the Saddledome. However, it’s important to find a tension between a projective vision and a design that simply responds its context. And it’s important to embrace ugliness and camp.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
A few years ago, we entered a submission for the new Sara Hilden Art Museum. Our entry, entitled Art Mill, avoided the typical expectation of a contemporary museum to be a spectacular object of desire, in the vein of the Guggenheim Bilbao, and instead acted as a frame for the district of Finlayson and the city of Tampere. The museum visitor would embark on a Promenade Urbaine as museological flaneur, and the experience of viewing contemporary art was combined with visual connections with urban monuments near and far.
Tampere’s identity as a locus of industrial innovation is closely tied with its history of harnessing natural forces to generate energy for production. Now, at least in the Finlayson district, productive activities are making way for new creative functions. The relocation and enhancement of the Sara Hilden Art Museum provided the opportunity to build on the Finlayson area’s history, and thriving cultural activities, through a programmatic, architectural, and urban intervention that reflected the past and anticipated a bright future.
The museum in our design reassumed its role as a place in-between - mediator, moderator, educator, forum, and bridge. Varying themes of Tampere and Finland were echoed at a range of scales - a country historically between empires, a city on two sides of the rapids and between two lakes, a museum with two locations before and after relocation. The museum became a place for the churn of innovation - an intellectual generator - as well as a place for preservation and continuity.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
We live and work in Vancouver and British Columbia, but our interests have taken us to Switzerland, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and the US too. With every design we try to be inventive in a project-specific way. Working on multiple buildings in a single Vancouver neighbourhood one month and then working in a far-flung location the next provides opportunities to try on all kinds of ideas. Hopefully our work is an antidote to architecture’s corporatization, by taking curiosity and situational awareness seriously.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
The best part of Canadian architecture is its lingering wahoo attitude. As Canada becomes more urban, labor costs soar, and permitting feels like a gerbil wheel, architecture-as-asset is the name of the game. As a backdrop to practice this can be daunting, but it is rewarding to maneuver through the friction to create meaningful buildings.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
Canada has a handful of quirky smaller practices, often flying under the radar. Right now little experimentation or risk is happening at the large scale, so small or medium-sized offices doing small or medium-sized work are interesting. Adam Thom (Agathom) makes built joy. Williamson Williamson design sophisticated spaces with a few simple moves. La Shed’s modernism feels approachable. And the late David Penner’s ambitious modesty was underappreciated.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
Probably Vancouver’s Planetarium, for being both futuristic and oddly classic.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
Our Hornby Island Arts Centre recently broke ground. We are excited to see it finished, so this small gulf island finally gets a hub to nurture its creativity. Years of residential design prepped us for the new cultural work in the office. Comfort, freedom of movement, and the balance between refuge and outlook are scalable. These ingredients are just as important in a community building as they are in a home. We are also designing a small house hanging onto an impossibly steep cliff on Howe Sound, and a multigenerational family compound on a very busy street in Vancouver.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
Our firm has a distinct sensitivity to the natural environment given much of our work exists within peri-urban or rural locations within Atlantic Canada.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
I find Canadian architecture demonstrates a unique responsiveness to the natural landscape. This may be a result of the sheer size of our country and the vast amount of open landscape that exists in relation to the built environments. In addition to this, the Atlantic region of the country that we call home, demonstrates a refined critical regionalist approach to design where the local vernacular is very apparent in the architectural built form.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
Some of the practices we respect, and follow are Patkau Architects, Scott and Scott Architects, D'Arcy Jones Architect in Vancouver. Williamson Williamson Architects, Shim - Sutcliffe Architects, and Baya Csorba Architects in Toronto.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
The Halifax Central Library played an integral role in the introduction of modern architecture within our urban fabric. Prior to its construction many progressive architecture proposals felt significant public pushback given the divergency from the traditional building forms the city had formally been accustomed to. This project help to pave the way to the acceptance and admiration of modern architecture within our city.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
Yes, we recently completed a dwelling in New Brunswick which was strongly influenced by the local climate, culture and vernacular.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian/New England architecture firms?
Our practice is unique in that we work very actively across borders, both in the U.S. (where we originally founded the studio in Los Angeles) and in Canada. Since its founding, we’ve aimed to challenge the traditional top-down approach to architecture, by making design more democratic, accessible and inclusive for our clients, and the wider community.
What is unique about Canadian/New England architecture, and in your region in particular?
While it’s difficult to address this uniqueness at the scale of a nation (in the case of Canada) or the New England region - at the local scale, what we find unique and wonderful about these cities (Portland and Toronto) is that the landscape and built fabric is unique and acts as an important backdrop for its inhabitants.
In Toronto, an extensive ravine system creates an undulating landscape that cuts across the city and affords opportunities to connect with nature directly in the city. When buildings engage with the ravine (similar to the Ontario Science Centre we talk about later on), it generates incredible sectional opportunities and forces a direct relationship between architecture and landscape, in an exciting way.
In Portland and many of the coastal towns along New England, there’s a solid vernacular of colonial and victorian architecture that engages with its rocky and often hilly shoreline in a wonderfully playful and animated way. We find this clustered and undulating landscape of historic fabric fascinating in the way the buildings and their inhabitants speak with each other against the backdrop of the ragged coastline.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada as well as in New England?
So many wonderful practices to choose from!
Local to Toronto, we’re big fans of LAMAS, Office of Adrian Phiffer, Ja Architecture Studio (who we teach with at University of Toronto’s Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design), and SOCA (who we collaborate with at BAIDA).
In New England, we love a few well-known names like WOJR and NADAA out of the Boston area, but are also fond of a few local emerging practices like Jessie Carroll Architect and Aceto Landscape Architecture, who blend a modern approach to architecture with New England vernacular in a beautiful way.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city (Toronto and Portland, Maine)?
One of our favorite landmarks in Toronto is the Ontario Science Centre by Raymond Moriyama. It’s a wonderful brutalist building that, despite its size, sensitively descents and integrates itself into a steep and lush ravine site. Sadly, the provincial government of Ontario recently announced plans to demolish the building. We are joining the chorus of local community members and architectural societies that are opposed to this, and call for the restoration and care for this important landmark and vibrant space for learning in Toronto.
In Portland, it’s definitely Fort Gorges, which sits in Casco Bay between the downtown peninsula and the city’s residential islands. It is a former US military fort dating back to roughly 1860 that so fully inhabits the small island it was built on that from the exterior there is no longer any semblance of land. This gives the illusion that the sem-octagonal stone fort is floating in the middle of the bay. Always a fun sight when taking the ferries out to the islands.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
We recently completed a design for an ADU (accessory dwelling unit) in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles that - due to the nature of the site setback conditions - took the shape of a near-perfect triangle. Conceived during the height of the pandemic, the unit is made of two home offices and a gym for the homeowners on a daily basis, that can be easily covered into a guest or tenant unit with murphy beds, kitchenette and a built-in banquette. The primary home is a 1920s Spanish-style home, which informed many of the material and formal decisions on the ADU.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
Our practice is intrigued by architecture’s capacity to respond to the contemporary condition. Much of our work and collaborative processes build from the expertise and knowledge of local community arts groups, cultural organizations, and artists. Having an interest in small-scale and provocation, our practice often represents spaces, places, and ideas that have yet to reach the mainstream but are reshaping the Canadian design discourse at the grassroots level.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
Canada is a very large country, so a unique attribute of Canadian architecture is its regional diversity. Toronto, in particular, has become a fast-growing multicultural city faced with lots of challenges and opportunities. Also evolving with this rapid demographic change is the city's architectural identity.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
Naturehumaine, Anya Moryoussef, Pelletier de Fontenay, Sheeep Studio, and Studio AC
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
We have a couple: We are in love with the recently completed Love Park by Claude Cormier and Associates in collaboration with GH3 Architects. Built on the site of a former highway off-ramp, It’s a whimsical, colorful, and playful public space in a neighborhood of corporate blue-glass architecture.
Another is Kensington Market Neighbourhood; a Victorian-era suburb that evolved into a Jewish market in the early 1900s when working-class citizens converted the lower levels of their homes into retail space. Over the subsequent decades, the neighborhood became a hub for various immigrant communities, each adding to the unique and messy architectural character.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
We are contributors to the Canadian pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture. In collaboration with community activist groups, our installation titled Reparative Architecture proposes to mend the cultural, economic, and population displacement happening in Toronto’s culturally rich Little Jamaica neighborhood.
How would you define your practice within the greater context of Canadian architecture firms?
NÓS is based in Montreal, Quebec, and embraces its Latin culture to craft refine projects within the North American territory. Acting as a laboratory, the practice of NÓS favors a bottom-up approach that values the contribution of the community and local know-how while drawing inspiration from international best practices.
What is unique about Canadian architecture, and in your region in particular?
Canada is a Nordic country with a strong winter culture that really conditions how people live, especially in our region. Winter is part of our practice both in terms of our technical approach and our ambition to activate places all year long.
What are some of your favorite practices you follow in Canada?
Lateral Office, for their work on Nordic territories and communities. Alain Carle, for their approach towards site and landscape as well as the sensible experience of architecture.
What’s your favorite architectural landmark in your city?
Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome because it embodies a technical innovation at the service of a sustainability ideal.
Do you have a new or memorable project you can share with our readers? Completed or in progress?
One of our most memorable projects is Moving Dunes, a monumental installation that we created for the Montreal Museum of fine art as part of the temporary exhibit ‘From Africa to the Americas: Face-to-face Picasso, Past and Present’. It is inspired by the plastic approach of cubist painters to question the role of perspective in visual representation.
Katherine is an LA-based writer and editor. She was Archinect's former Editorial Manager and Advertising Manager from 2018 – January 2024. During her time at Archinect, she's conducted and written 100+ interviews and specialty features with architects, designers, academics, and industry ...
Alexander Walter grew up in East Germany with plenty of Bratwurst. He studied Architecture and Media Design at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany, and participated in foreign exchange programs with Washington-Alexandria Architecture Consortium in Alexandria, Virginia and Waseda University in ...
1 Comment
Particularly love the two pictured projects by Blouin Orzes!
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