Médailles du Gouverneur général en architecture

Architecture Sans Frontières Québec (formerly Emergency Architects of Canada) and Frontiers Foundation, with the initiative of architect Guillaume Lévesque, have used their knowledge and professionalism to improve the off reservation dwellings of the Native community of Kitcisakik. This project has been undertaken in close consultation with the Anishnabe (Algonquin) Nation, with the goal of developing the skills, confidence and autonomy of the people.

The Integral House is a place for architecture, music, and performance located at the edge of a Toronto ravine. From the street, one sees a two-storey building with a translucent, gently shaped etched glass skin sitting on top of a wooden base. These serpentine walls of glass separated by oak fins form the gentle perimeter of the house, echoing the undulating contours of the valley and the winding pathways of the native forest. The key moment in the project is a performance space for 150 people located a floor below entry level and visually intertwined with the ravine landscape.

Located at the edge of the relatively new campus, the new Trades and Technology Building mediates between the existing college grounds and the forested bluff that marks the southern edge of the property. The formal parti is derived from the clear division between the indoor and outdoor shop-type learning spaces and the more traditional classroom settings, and is informed by the desire for future expansion. A generous linear public space succinctly organizes all of the elements while providing a day lit connection to the existing main campus building.

Bloc_10 is a condominium project situated on a busy traffic corridor in Winnipeg’s post-war neighbourhood of River Heights. Starting from a standard, three-storey vertical volume, the individual floor plates of each walk-up are strung together along a common service core, then staggered across the site to provide unique unit compositions and a multiplicity of views. Dotted across each elevation are six-foot-deep cantilevered projections that extend the useable floor area on alternating levels.

The Bloor Gladstone Library project is a renovation and addition to a listed heritage library in downtown Toronto. The architects were commissioned to design for an additional 12,000 square feet, bringing the facilities to a standard consistent with a district library. This project transforms a dilapidated and dysfunctional heritage library into a functioning, interactive, contemporary institution. The quality of finish, detail and design resolution elevates the community library to a level commensurate with other significant cultural institutions.