20 Years of hcma in Victoria

This year, our Victoria office turns 20 – a significant milestone in our journey to create spaces that help people thrive, on Vancouver Island and beyond.

From modest beginnings as a two-person office on Bastion Square in 2005, our vision has always been clear: to serve the Island as a local practice and connect deeply with our neighbours.

Since then, our team in Victoria has grown to play an indispensable role across hcma’s four studios in BC and Alberta – diversely-skilled designers, collaborators, and leaders, all advancing meaningful social and environmental impact in our key sectors of Housing, Learning Environments, Community and Recreation, and our work with First Peoples.

Students walk up and down a wide staircase within the bright, modern Royal Bay Secondary School atrium, with large windows and a colourful abstract mural on the wall behind them.

Children ride horses on a traditional carousel, housed inside the wood-framed Butchart Gardens Children's Pavilion, with a geometric timber ceiling and circular skylight.

Evening view of the Arts Centre at Cedar Hill, a gabled building with translucent wall panels glowing from interior light, wood siding, and a sloped green lawn in the foreground. Through the windows, people are working away in the studio.

Above Royal Bay Secondary School, Butchart Gardens Children's Pavilion, Arts Centre at Cedar Hill Recreation Centre

For two decades, Principal Carl-Jan Rupp has led hcma’s efforts on the Island, building strong local relationships and helping shape our collective story. Together with values-aligned client and consultant teams, we have designed and delivered schools that inspire, art studios that combat loneliness, and homes that respond to society’s most urgent needs. These places are more than buildings. They are backdrops to life – spaces where we learn, play, work, and belong.

Today, in our new studio on Courtney Street, we look to the future with renewed excitement and resolve. We know the wicked problems of our time will require solutions steeped in curiosity, care, and collaboration – so too, we know we have precisely the right team to tackle them. A team that pushes for much-needed conversations about inclusion and access. That listens deeply, to learn and unlearn. That helps steward the land and its resources to support future generations. And that continues to call for our industry to be a catalyst for positive change.

To our clients, collaborators, and communities: thank you for your ongoing trust and partnership over the past two decades – it has been a true privilege to grow with and alongside you. And to our incredible team of hcma-ers in Victoria (and beyond), thank you for your dedication, your care, and your shared efforts to make a tangible and lasting difference in people’s lives.

Cheers to 20 years, and all that’s to come.