Architectural Firm Award- 2020 Recipient

Since its inception in 1997, marc boutin architectural collaborative inc. MBAC has operated at the boundary between design disciplines—seeking a density of meaning that emerges through the synthesis of art, architecture, urban design, and landscape design. This characteristic interdisciplinarity both characterizes and enriches the quality of the firm's work by the emphasis it places on the relationships between scales of design.

Over the past 20-plus years, MBAC has been recognized for design excellence for both unrealized and built projects across a broad spectrum of project types—from custom houses to large cultural buildings and recreation centers to public plazas. This recognition has come in the form of local, regional, national awards, and international awards including numerous Mayor’s Urban Design Awards in Calgary and Edmonton, several Prairie Design Awards, nine Canadian Architect Awards, a Progressive Architecture Award, a Canadian Society of Landscape Architecture National Honour, National Urban Design Awards, and a Landscape Network Award 'Top 10 Public Space Award'.

Comprised of over 70 projects, the firm's portfolio is diverse, both in program type and scale. It includes small public plazas and large civic works yards—as well as custom houses and heritage building renovations. MBAC is currently working on a 7,400 sq. m. multi-use facility that will include a fire station, non-market housing, and shared corporate space for the City of Calgary.

As a design firm that champions the importance of public space in a northern climate, MBAC continues to frame sustainability as a design driver that ought to be considered pluralistically, and in the interest of social equity. MBAC is proud to pursue accreditation programs such as LEED® and WELL—but also prides itself on engaging in architectural issues that impact the broader conceptual and environmental boundaries of social justice and the built environment. To that end, MBAC is as proud of the Calgary Public Building Restoration being the first LEED® Platinum accredited project for the City of Calgary, introducing food security as a design driver for the upcoming Sunalta Community Hub.

MBAC has been home to nearly 40 employees, serving as a rich and vibrant point of design exchange and innovation. Led by Marc Boutin, the current staff includes Tony Leong, Richard Cotter, Nathaniel Wagenaar, Michelle Smith Cowman, Fatima Rehman, Brett Sanderson, Trevor Steckly, Tim Smith, Kalie Widmer, and Ashley Ortlieb. As the firm continues to evolve and engage new design territories, it remains dedicated to the proposition that the best design ideas are the product of intensive, interdisciplinary collaboration, and preoccupied with a desire to leverage architecture's capacity to materially enrich where and how we live.