“The individual voices of KPMB….are discernible within a common commitment to making appropriate responses to the urban context, to cultivating a strong sense of community, and to producing work for which the art of architecture is the overriding preoccupation.” - Phyllis Lambert, Founding Director and Chair of the Board of Trustees, Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), Montreal
KPMB Architects is one of Canada’s leading architectural studios. Founded in 1987 as a hybrid studio model, KPMB offers an alternative to either the sole practitioner or the large corporate firm, merging individual creativity, collaborative team work and professional practice.
In the first five years of practice the firm won significant design competitions for Kitchener City Hall and the Joseph S. Stauffer Library. This work, along with a number of smaller-scaled interiors and contemporary interventions to heritage structures, rapidly established the firm’s reputation for design excellence and high-quality production standards. Since then, it has created a diverse portfolio of award-winning work for educational, cultural, healthcare, civic and corporate clients throughout North America and Europe and has earned over 180 awards for excellence, including 12 Governor General’s Medals for Architecture, Canada’s highest honour, as well as distinguished international awards from the American Institute of Architects and the Royal Institute of British Architects, among others.
Regardless of scale, every project of architecture by KPMB is conceived as a contextual response, to both site and a client’s vision. Eschewing consistency of style, the body of work is coherent in its ideas about making flexible, sustainable platforms to support and inspire creativity and innovation as well as to contribute to city and community building over the long term. The range and depth of the work is documented on this web site, as well as in numerous international publications including monographs by Rockport (1997) and Birkhauser (2004). A third monograph, published by Birkhauser, will be published in the fall of 2013.
