I was drawn to this field because it indulged my social, aesthetic, and intellectual interests. It gave me an opportunity to not only theorize about building better public institutions, but help realize them. (Pictured: Makoko Floating School.)
We value and make time for creative endeavours and exploration. Cultivating creativity and putting energy into big questions isn’t peripheral here — resources, even full days, are allocated to ideas that matter. These ideas are integrated into the way we design buildings.
I’m inspired by the publication Twenty + Change, which was founded by a group of youngish Toronto architects “to encourage the exchange of ideas, and to expose and disseminate the work of a new generation of Canadian architects and designers.”
We can easily graph a surge in registration in a new community centre or an improved response time in a firehall, but the most meaningful, systemic changes architecture can catalyze are as hard to quantify as they are to predict.
At HCMA we listen for personal narratives so we can really understand the impact of our work — nurses who say the addition to the hospital triggered a marked improvement in staff morale, or the librarian who says that he has never been as happy at his job since moving into the new library.
When I joined the firm, the first project I had the privilege of contributing to was Jasper Place Library. The unusual longspan concrete structure elegantly accomplishes its spatial and programmatic mandate. And I was instantly part of a great team that worked well together.
I also enjoy spending some of my off-hours in the fringes of design culture—critical interpretations of the built environment, visual art, and music.
Spatial-political think tank Operative Agency
Essay in Canadian Architect Magazine Grand Hotel
Essay in Canadian Architect Magazine Industrial Revolution
Essay in Canadian Architect Magazine Health and Healing: Sechelt Hospital Expansion
Essay in Twenty + Change 04 Next Generation (available only in hard copy)
Interview on The Early Edition with Rick Cluff
This open and inviting community living room welcomes all demographics with its memorable, flexible spaces. Parents and tots play in the children’s area, students and seniors surf the internet and various groups use the Community Room both during and after library hours. All are filled with a sens...
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