The deadline to submit your project to the Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence and Photo Awards of Excellence is quickly approaching. Submissions of projects in the design phase or under construction are due on Thursday, September 12, 2024.
This is also the deadline for submitting your best architectural photo of a Canadian building.
Here’s a look back at some of our winning entries from past years.
Designed by Edmonton-based Reimagine Architects Ltd., the Frog Lake First Nations’ Children & Family, Intervention/Prevention Horse Healing Centre offers healing for residential school survivors and others who have experienced trauma through traditional and modern methods centred on interaction between humans and horses. Juror Claire Weisz wrote: “An active community, the equestrian cultural legacy of the Peoples of Frog Lake, and the land itself combine to create an almost new type of community centre. The open and curved vault is distinctive and approachable, and shows great promise for creating an inspiring shared space for horses and people, under a mass timber structure and atop an earthen floor.”
Ismaili Centres mark the community presence of the Ismaili branch of Shi’a Islam in more than two dozen countries throughout the world. Located in the Toronto suburb of Thorncliffe Park, the Don Mills Jamatkhana and Ismaili Community Centre, designed by architects—Alliance, will mark the site of the first Ismaili prayer hall in Ontario, and will also contain a gymnasium, library, food drop-off area, administrative offices, and multi-purpose teaching spaces. “A masterful composition of texture and natural light, with places for social interaction as well as spaces for repose,” wrote juror Omar Gandhi. “The delicate building skin adds magic to an otherwise simple and economical building massing. The juxtaposition of the building massing and large refined spaces with the highly textured landscape approach is magnificent.”
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.”
Salina Kassam’s photo, entitled Creating the Landmark Project: Structural Framework, claimed the top prize in our 2023 Photo Awards of Excellence. “An equally fun and readable approach to construction documentation, this image invites the viewer in to investigate a play of repetition through solid and void, rough and refined, process and product. In choosing to show this image in black and white, the fine tonality of the columns is contrasted against excavated earth, highlighting the active cycle of destruction and construction that is universal to the architectural process,” writes juror Jacqueline Young.
You can view an archive of more past winners here.
All winners will be published in Canadian Architect magazine’s December print and digital editions—our annual Awards of Excellence issue. They will also be featured in our national newsletter and online at CanadianArchitect.com/Awards.
Find out more about our jurors.
For more information and to enter, visit www.canadianarchitect.com/awards
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