Last night was a beautiful evening spent at the Palais Royal enjoying the late summer warmth and the lake view while celebrating the winners of this year’s Toronto Urban Design Awards. Betsy spent two days on the jury in June with Elsa Lam, David Anselmi, and Gary McCluskie visiting nearly three dozen projects before narrowing the field to twelve Awards of Excellence and 9 Awards of Merit. Visiting the work is critical to assessing the level of detail and care in the design and construction and seeing how well the spaces are configured and maintained. It was a strong group of entries this year and every team recognized should be thrilled with their achievement.

The Jury Report is available here as a PDF and the Jury Statement is below.

Every two years, the City of Toronto Urban Design Awards program provides an opportunity to assess the progress of the city’s built environment, and to recognize those buildings that strengthen the public realm. The program looks at buildings in their context to identify those that make a positive contribution to the life of the city, and to assess how well they respond to their surroundings.

Above all, the jury seeks to identify projects that are unequivocally public—that engage people through their presence in or proximity to the public realm, adding noticeably to the civic experience. These considerations can’t be measured solely through presentation panels and project texts. So, after compiling a shortlist of projects, the jury piles into a mini-van to visit every chosen site as a group. Over the course of two days of touring and deliberations, this year’s jury travelled to the city’s furthest reaches—from City Hall, to Etobicoke, to North York, to Scarborough—to arrive at the present list of award-winning projects.

The selected projects share a number of common characteristics. Aside from being exemplary in their contributions to the public realm through siting, programming, or composition, all the winning projects also demonstrate conceptual rigor, fine detailing, and equally fine craftsmanship in their construction.

The quality of a project’s detailing and construction is critical in contributing to the experiential quality of the city and raising the bar for public projects. Craftsmanship is exemplified in two projects that received awards of excellence in the Elements category. The public art installation Two Circles and the pavilions at the East Point Bird Sanctuary are each made of a single, carefully manipulated material— ceramic tile and Corten steel, respectively—with results that demonstrate discipline and restraint, and that add to the works’ settings both from afar and up close.

The reuse of heritage buildings also requires a degree of craftsmanship, as well as a vision for an existing building’s potential. The jury found this embodied in the Queen Richmond West development, in which a new block is perched atop two heritage warehouses, supported by sculptural columns in a publically accessible atrium—a stunning blend of old and new. As a more traditional adaptive reuse,

“On Tranby Avenue, history is for the birds. Stained-glass birds nest in almost every transom on this narrow east Annex street, the work of the artisan Robert McCausland when its houses were built around 1890. Most of these birds have been preserved and refurbished – including the one on No. 66, which was cleaned up by Andrew McCausland, great-grandson of the original artisan.

And behind the façade is one of the best modernist renovations I have ever seen in Toronto. It suggests a new and welcome approach to the city’s Victorian houses: to preserve the craftsmanship of the 19th century, and match it with the design and craft of the 21st.”

Alex Bozikovic praises our collaboration with 3GEN and Geronimo in his latest Globe and Mail article seen here.

Our renovation of an 1892 Victorian House in the Annex has caught the attention of Designlines’ editor Tory Healy. Along with Darcy and Alexis of 3Gen Developments, our job was to make this complicated renovation look effortless. As noted by writer Matthew Hague, “The strategy was simple: rooms that were in good condition were preserved, which such details as art nouveau doorknobs and hinges left intact. Areas that had been chopped up by previous renos – the kitchen, bathrooms and master bedroom – were made proudly new.”

Architectural Record reports on the latest work being developed in our office. We are excited to be featured in their February issue.

“The architects are further investigating multigenerational living in their Ancaster Creek House (set for completion this April), an elegant modernist dwelling composed of two double- height volumes, linked by a central glazed dining area, for a couple and their elderly parents. The architects incorporated finely crafted details, like a gently twisting staircase, as well as universal design elements including generous entryways and living quarters on the ground level. “No one wants to feel like they are moving in with their parents, so it’s important to develop spaces that are discrete but connect on a family level…””

Check out the link here.

In an interview with the Architectural League of New York’s program director, Anne Rieselbach and executive director, Rosalie Genevro, Paul Makovsky writes about Emerging Voices’ enduring mission. We are so proud to have been a winner in the 2014 Emerging Voices Series. In this article, the work of Williamson Chong is prominently featured alongside Steven Holl, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects, Eric Owen Moss and Toshiko Mori!

“Betsy Williamson ’88 is an artist. Her medium is wood, her palette is very large, and her official job title is architect, but in Williamson’s mind, the two disciplines are inextricably linked.” Many architects will tell you that they have wanted to be architects since they were kids. Betsy locked in after taking a series of architecture and art history classes in high school at Phillips Exeter Academy. Lori Ferguson’s Exonian Profile this month outlines Betsy’s start and Williamson Chong’s recent Rome Prize research.

“Advances in building technologies are expanding the architectural possibilities of wood. Toronto-based Williamson Chong Architects will be spending their Prix de Rome winnings on a road trip to scout out new uses for high-tech timber.”  –  John Bentley Mays

We have already started planning our first trip for Spring 2013. We are getting great responses from the folks working in Austria.

We are so pleased to be included in this year’s City Home guide. Look for us on page 105. There is a nice photo of the office and descriptions of the 16 most incredible offices in the city!

PAP did a wonderful job on the publication that accompanies the Young Architects Award from the Architectural league of New York. It has just been published.

Published twice a year, Designlines Toronto is brought to you by Azure, Canada’s leading magazine of architecture, design, and art.  It serves as a city and neighborhood guide to the best design sources Toronto has to offer.  Our digital design and fabrication work is featured in an interview with Elizabeth Pagliacolo.

Pagliacolo, Elizabeth. “New Wave.” Design Lines Toronto Fall 2006: 46-48.

http://www.architectureweek.com/2004/1215/tools_1-1.html

Shane Williamson co-chairs “FABRICATION: A Conference Examining the Digital Practice of Architecture,” the 23rd Annual Conference of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA), the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and Technology and Practice (TAP). The FABRICATION conference was held November 11-14, 2004, at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Waterloo and the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto. Workshops, tours and exhibits of new rapid-prototyping machinery and European building technologies complemented professional presentations and refereed research papers. Featured speakers included Mark Burry, Cristian Ceccato, Chuck Eastman, Siamak Hariri, and Lars Hesselg.

Accompanying publications were produced concurrently:

Shane Williamson, Nancy Yen-Wen Cheng, and Phillip Beelsey, ed. Fabrication: Examining the Digital Practice of Architecture. Proceedings of the 2004 AIA/ACADIA Fabrication Conference, Toronto: Coach House Press; 2004.

Shane juries the 2004 Digital Media Awards sponsored by Canadian Architect. “Speculative Conception: Digital Media Awards 2004,” Canadian Architect, vol. 49, no. 6, June 2004; 19-25.