Winners of the 2023 Stantec Architecture Prize for Excellence
By Maria Cook
January 17, 2024
Twenty graduate students have received cash awards in the 2023 Stantec Architecture Prize for Excellence.
See the winning projects below.
Stantec’s Senior Associate Natalie Petricca and Intern Architect Michelle Harper, both alumni of the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, school, presented the awards on January 12 at the Architecture Building.
The ceremony honoured students from the fall 2022 and fall 2023 cohorts of Gateway Studio for their Urban Forestry Knowledge Centre projects.
The award recognizes projects that demonstrate excellent spatial and tectonic resolution befitting a professional program.
Associate Professor Lisa Moffitt and Instructors Tom Leung and Mathieu Lemieux-Blanchard led the three Gateway Studio groups in 2023. Associate Professors Paul Kariouk and Lisa Moffitt led two Gateway Studio groups in 2022, assisted by Assistant Professor Jerry Hacker and Instructor Jay Lim. There are about 45 students per cohort.
The prize, established in 2007 by Stantec Architecture Ltd., is awarded annually. The jury members for the 2023 edition are practitioners who work at Stantec. “The work keeps getting stronger every year,” said Petricca.
2023 Stantec Prize Winners
First Place: $600
Ksheel Shetty
Project Description: The Arborline learning centre uses the rail as a tool to remediate the impact of deforestation through the distribution of tree samplings and the building. The building protrudes through the landscape allowing the saplings held on a vertical scaffolding system to be seen at all site lines, highlighting the trees as a beacon to heal and overturn its industrial environmental trauma.
Jury Comments: Amazing artistry. Beautiful graphics. Clear narrative. The drawings are enough to understand what is trying to be achieved. The site approach is well done.
First Place: $600
Ann-Catherine Lemonde
Project Description: This project was inspired by Forêt Capitale Forest, an Ottawa-based non-profit, that uses the Miyawaki method to plant tiny, yet dynamic and biodiverse food-producing forests. Tree varieties are densely combined to create a soundproofing layer along Carling Ave. while a main circulation garden slices across all three sites. The greenhouses are divided into seven pods that allow for a variety of active and/or passive growing conditions.
Jury Comments: Good study of form shadow. Powerful three-site parti. Unique third site and development of the building; the north-south fingers are elegant. Regimented and clear. Perspectives are very compelling.
Second Place: $500
Sam Lane-Smith
Project Description: Tracing The Timber Line
The Timber Line is a mass timber greenhouse and education facility that acts as a central node in Ottawa’s reforestation efforts. Situated on what was once the Fraserfield Lumber Yard, the Timber Line references the stacks of lumber with its rows of sapling planters. Inside, the saplings have been arranged vertically, referencing this stacking, and allowing the public an intimate view in.
Jury Comments: Used the greenhouses to delineate public space and tried to use as few walls as possible. Historical research. Beautiful graphics. Nice models. Modelling and detail panel are very successful.
Third Place: $400
Marco Vukovic
Project Description: Horizon
A large pond reflects the cantilevering greenhouse overhead. An open atrium pierces through the greenhouse, which has operable glass louvres on the walls, roof, and floor and steel grate floors to allow users to occupy the space. The flexible design of the atrium allows the plants to interact with the elements year-round with adjustable conditions at the discretion of the occupants.
Jury Comments: Good narrative, beautiful renderings, good idea. Interesting and provocative concept. Bold architecture. The renderings give a good sense of what it might feel like.
Third Place: $400
Sepideh Sahebsara
Project Description: Equilibrium
The design seeks a harmonious balance between architecture and the environment, utilizing natural resources to enhance ecological equilibrium. Addressing climate-related challenges, the project strategically manages rainwater by incorporating basins and bioswales into the landscape. Within the building, a central atrium features a basin that collects rainwater, offering a unique space for interaction, natural light, and ventilation.
Jury Comments: Strong three-site parti and clear parti diagrams. The building on the third site takes cues from how the first two sites are organized. Nice modelling studies. Thorough project resolution.
2022 Stantec Prize Winners
First Place: $700
Frank Hinoporos
Project Description: Catalyst
Approaching the Urban Forestry Knowledge Centre, visitors meet a hostile barren landscape that evokes the site’s industrial past, with steel fins lining the path. Upon arrival, they experience its mission, seeing how trees are cultivated and engineered inside greenhouses to withstand the climate emergency. Departing, they can see through the directionally oriented fins along the path, now seeing the lush landscape that the fins were previously hiding from them.
Jury Comments: Strong idea of how you experience the building. Thinking about how the experience of arrival and departure are informed by the experience of the building. The design of the fins is very strong.
Second Place: $600
Caitlin Chin
Project Description: The [TREE FACTORY] is an urban forestry knowledge centre that aims to educate the public about climate change and rekindle the relationship between people and trees. It is a collection of microclimates that choreograph interwoven paths of education, people, and trees through converging moments in time.
Jury Comments: Strong narrative around how all three sites work together and how that informs the building. Beautiful graphics, good explanation of ideas, and how the building is organized.
Second Place: $600
Will Hermer
Project Description: DIRTWORKS aims to create a monumental architectural language focusing on how humans affect the earth with both engineering and design in negative and positive ways. The primary gesture is displaying extracted soil from the site, polluted from past projects, as well as the construction of this one. Allowing plants to grow from the top and sides, the project showcases the consequences of our industry while transforming it into something beautiful.
Jury Comments: Execution is clear and ties directly into the narrative and parti. The expression of the building is aligned with the parti. Expression that is a finer grain than the parti, works at different scales.
Third Place: $400
Carmen Kam
Project Description: In-Between
The concept of the in-between comes from thinking of the building as an artifact that marks a period of transition: a state of preservation shifting to adaptation as the threat of climate change starts to take effect. The project aims to highlight and emphasize interstitial spaces by exploring ideas of transitions and the in-between through layers in the site and the building.
Jury Comments: Strong ideas. The rendering that showed the building in context was very well done.
Third Place: $400
Gerry Rafael-White
Project Description: Soiled Absorption
The site interacts with the developing community by taking in the disturbed fill that is excavated from the regional sites of urban development. The site becomes a quilt of mounds and phytoremediation, where the mounds and vegetation act as proverbial sponges for urban toxicity. Children will learn to care for the genetically modified trees that are raised on-site, in front of a backdrop remediating toxicity.
Jury Comments: Good relationship between the landscape approach and the building. Love the phytoremediation quilt and the site model using sponges.
2023 Honourable Mentions
Honourable Mention: $200
Olga Budilovskaia
Project Description: {in} grown
The project addresses a lack of grocery stores within a 15-minute walking radius of a residential neighbourhood, proposing community vegetable gardens to enhance food accessibility and reduce CO2 emissions from grocery transportation. The landscape design focuses on efficient routes, stormwater management, and shielded micro-climate zones for diverse produce growth. The building design emphasizes transparency, public engagement, and social spaces, featuring a farmers’ market space and greenhouses.
Jury Comments: Planning is different from the rest. Angled spaces converge in interesting ways. The perspectives are interesting.
Honourable Mention: $200
Luca Corazza
Project Description: Sensate
The building’s design centers around a pit, with dynamic bands radiating outward, seamlessly integrating aesthetic and functional elements. These bands guide occupants through curated spatial sequences, manipulating light, shadow, and sound to craft unique atmospheres. The result is a series of meticulously crafted special experiences, immersing visitors in a sensory journey that harmoniously fuses the built environment with nature.
Jury Comments: Good hand. Beautiful drawings. Excellent line weights. A great exploded structural axo. Captures a sensory experience. A good project, tectonically.
Honourable Mention: $200
Syeda Khadeeja
Project Description: Beauty and The Machine
While my site is more organic with a carving out for the bioswale and seasonal flowers, the building contrasts with a more rational approach. My idea for the building was to create an exposition of function. This is shown through the accessibility and transparency of the greenhouses, and by an exposed structural language with the timber structure and various services and fasteners that are integrated into it.
Jury Comments: Well thought-out parti. Intriguing and evocative by presentation style. Thorough environmental research and light studies Focus on all abilities experiencing the space.
Honourable Mention: $200
Grace Sample
Project Description: Carling Street Gallery for Urban Ecology
The separation of human and natural elements serves as a foundational principle, fostering an environment conducive to optimal sapling growth within the greenhouse and across the adjacent sites. As visitors ascend the building along a concentric ramp, the architectural journey unfolds into an immersive experience. This passage within the greenhouse promotes understanding of the delicate balance between human intervention and nature, and the significance of sustainable growth and co-existence.
Jury Comments: Studied the façade more than other projects. The modelling studies are very successful.
Honourable Mention: $200
Alex Saucier
Project Description: Adapt to Habitat
This project focuses on reviving non-human species in danger due to climate change and human intervention. The on-site labs genetically modify the saplings to develop more resilient ash trees which are currently in danger of extinction due to the invasive emerald ash borer. The project strives to craft habitats for endangered non-human species by designing ecosystems and microclimates tailored to their needs.
Jury Comments: The roof is occupiable. The façade studies were well done, including a habitable façade for insects, animals, and birds.
2022 Honourable Mentions
Honourable Mention: $200
Nupur Agrawal
Project Description: Daedalic Reflection
Using mass timber, the centre serves as an educational tool to provide visitors with insights into the projected consequences of climate change and to encourage contemplation on the magnitude of this crisis. To aid trees during drought conditions, the design redirects rain and snow. The butterfly roof structure and landscaping features such as salt-tolerant trees address water conservation by redirecting water into retention ponds during severe storms.
Jury Comments: The formal expression across the whole site is consistent. Beautiful representation through drawings and renderings.
Honourable Mention: $200
Harrison Lane
Project Description: Just like a forest
This project reimagines current construction practices by emulating forest succession within the envelope, leaving a building free of all plastic, harmful construction materials, and planned obsolescence after approximately 120 years. Once the building has reached its end, it may return to the earth and nurture the ground on which it once stood, with the seedlings taking root and a new urban forest sprouting from within.
Jury Comments: Interesting thinking about the building decomposing. Unique approach to the program and site.
Honourable Mention: $200
Lauren Leibe
Project Description: Knowledge Centre for Urban Forestry and Ecological Habitats
This project aims to challenge surrounding tower developments in the city and rethink the distribution of “prime real estate.” The building is designed with spaces and shelters embedded into the layout and façade to give back to the surrounding ecological system and encourage people to interact with and accept the non-human inhabitants of the city.
Jury Comments: Most unique approach to the building. Wonderful graphics.
Honourable Mention: $200
Michael Fiel Mandac
Project Description: Co_sequence
Floods and rising temperatures guided this project to use water as a medium for meaning. The site is designed to be amphibious and anticipate flood water. The project sees a raised greenhouse safe from flood, highlighting the role of engineered trees in the climate crisis.
Jury Comments: Beautiful graphics and drawings. Good relationship between the landscape approach and the building.
Honourable Mention: $200
Arkoun Merchant
Project Description: Urban Central Research Facility
This design proposal embodies the gestures of carving and circular descent as the basis for the building and landscape design. Organized around a central courtyard, the building’s main program of a tree nursery features saplings catered for the different biomes found around Ottawa. As they reach maturity, the saplings find their way into the carved landscape where visitors can enjoy the flora while exploring the park’s numerous public spaces.
Jury Comments: Interesting building form; clear connection between the form of the building and how the site is addressed.