Winners of the 2025 Hobin Prize in Architecture & City Building

The awards ceremony took place on January 24 at the Architecture Building.

The students presented their projects to the four-member jury, which included three members of Hobin Architecture: Rhéal Labelle, Marc Thiverge, and Melanie Lamontaigne. Associate Professor Janine Debanné was also on the jury. All are alumni of the school.

The jury considered 17 projects nominated by the six professors and instructors who taught the studio in the fall of 2024: Associate Professor Benjamin Gianni (Coordinator), Assistant Professor Menna Agha, Adjunct Professor John Cook, Adjunct Professor Honorata Pienkowska, Instructor Karen Lindkvist, and Instructor Benoit Maranda.

“This is not an easy task,” said Labelle. “You’re having to deal with a lot of density, a lot of people, and you’ve got to create quality spaces around these buildings that will attract and create vibrant, human-scale residential habitats for years to come. It’s very challenging.”

The project focuses on creating dense, meaningful in-between spaces by interacting with the buildings on the site and the sprawling paths. The buildings are designed to support a wide demographic of people and lifestyles with below-market, student, family, and permanent supportive units. The design offers accessibility to all locations while maximizing microclimate environments and landscaped areas. The high-rise development focused on building density while maintaining active green space. This allowed us to blend affordable and market housing, aiming to use the market units to subsidize the cost of construction for permanent supportive housing.

Jury Comments: There is a strong emphasis on good quality elevations, a strong focus on the public ground, the greenery weaving in and around those buildings, and an exceptional quality of renderings. We appreciated the strong video. It’s amazing how much digital representation transforms your perception of a project.

The Alta Vista Oasis introduces height and density within a suburban fabric. The building heights step down from a 23-storey and 19-storey rental tower (The Pair) to 10-storey affordable and permanent supportive housing (The Lodge), which dissolves into stacked townhomes. Communal spaces at multiple elevations offer varying activity levels and make use of the abundant underused green space and old-growth foliage. The Lodge funnels pedestrians through a cantilevered corner opening toward public amenities in the central courtyard. Using mass timber for rapid implementation, the Alta Vista Oasis aims to foster social interaction and belonging for residents.

Jury Comments: The jury appreciated the exceptional quality public realm, the master plan, the building elevations, the idea of using prefabricated architecture, and the materiality of the buildings. The stepping from your mid-rise typologies down to the low-rise typologies was interesting. The road infrastructure was successful in bringing people to the site.

Pinecrest Pavilion envisions transforming this 9.1-hectare site, adjacent to the new Pinecrest LRT station, by adding 3,000 new residential units while preserving the existing 210-unit apartment tower. The project introduces a mix of residential, commercial, and community spaces. The site is structured around a central circular plaza, with density decreasing outward in a radial pattern. This arrangement promotes a vibrant, community-focused core while transitioning to quieter, more private areas at the periphery. Vehicle access is limited to the site’s edges and underground parking, ensuring a pedestrian-friendly environment. The design prioritizes light and shadow management, with decreasing building heights toward the west to maximize sunlight exposure.

Jury Comments: Beautiful radial plan in the master plan, arrangement of towers in the right locations, complemented with mid-rise forms, and then down to public realm spaces. The jury appreciated the textures of the public realm spaces and the rigor that went into defining those pedestrian spines through the project.

Pocket Hubs envisions the Greenboro Station parking lot as a playful destination for students, young families, and seniors to live and grow in an urban setting. Organized around three key zones, each features a space curated to foster a sense of identity for the development. The Tea Pot, Kids Box, and Green Burrow are designed to invite interaction, establishing the site as a destination hub for OC Transpo users and the surrounding community. Elevated residential spaces with voids below and between the building blocks, allow community spaces to be celebrated at all levels of the project.

Jury Comments: Two very strong forms arranged on the public landscape provide a lot of great animation and break down the scale. Although these two buildings are quite tall, they provide porosity and scale-oriented programs. These little cubes at grade create a human scale and a sense of vibrancy. Some amenities transitioning throughout the seasons was a nice gesture.

Two sister buildings offer about 600 residential units. Cedar Glade on the northern edge blends with Greenboro’s natural surroundings, bridging urban and natural spaces with greenery, while Aspen Grove on the southern end, connected to Greenboro Station, serves as a gateway, fostering community interaction and integrating urban life with transit. The design integrates commercial spaces, essential services, and outdoor areas. By blending public and private residential zones, we aim to foster a sense of inclusivity, while pedestrian-friendly pathways and sustainable practices enhance the environmental and social fabric of the development.

Jury Comments: This was an interesting approach. The assemblage of the buildings on site, specifically how the first building interacts with the LRT and creates a welcoming plaza drawing you into the site, and then the second building which interacts with the park on the north side.

This project transforms the site into a vibrant, pedestrian-oriented hub, where pathways connect residents to essential services and community spaces, including a farm-to-table market and an urban garden. A thoughtfully planned public square, seasonal ice rink, and sledding hill create spaces for year-round interaction. The development integrates mixed-income housing, with affordable and market units distributed across the site, fostering inclusivity. Green spaces, stormwater management features, and urban agriculture enhance both environmental resilience and quality of life.

Jury Comments: Some strong rendering visuals connecting the buildings and the public realm at grade showing good quality residential private and public spaces knitting together. The idea of thinking about the seasons, engaging those spaces, and understanding how they change with each season is extremely important. In our climate, we can harness outdoor experiences and try to capitalize on them.