Four Carleton University student projects that explore the potential of urban housing on redevelopment sites in Ottawa have received awards in the third annual Hobin Prize in Architecture & City Building event.

The prize recognizes excellence in the fourth-year undergraduate housing and city-building studio at the Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism.

“It’s important to realize that increasingly these types of projects define architecture,” said Ottawa architect Barry Hobin, founder of Hobin Architecture, which endowed the prize.

“A hundred years ago, 80 percent of the population lived outside cities, and 20 percent lived inside cities,” said Hobin. “Today, it’s the flip of that. Cities and city pieces of land are really important and under tremendous change.”

The awards ceremony took place on March 2 in the PIT at the Architecture Building and was also live streamed on Facebook. In total, $4,000 in prize money was distributed to the winners.

See the winning projects below.

The studio explored the redevelopment of:

• Somerset St. (between the Plant Recreation Centre and the O-Train tracks,) with support from the City of Ottawa;

• The former bus station site on Catherine St., with sponsorship from Brigil;

• The corner of Innes and de Lamarche Roads in Orleans, in partnership with Groupe Lépine.

“In all those sites, there are common themes that are shaped by context,” said Hobin. “Certainly, one of them is green space and open space and how we create urban public realm spaces. The other big thing is mass and typology and how to actually create the most livable environments. Increasingly we’re being asked to live in denser and denser situations.”

On March 2, the jury considered 19 projects nominated by the six professors and instructors who taught the studio in fall 2021: Piper Bernbaum, John Cook, Jelle de Roeck, Benjamin Gianni, Nicole Moyo, and Honorata Pienkowska.

The seven-member jury consisted of four representatives from Hobin Architecture: Barry Hobin, Gordon Lorimer, Patrick Bisson, and Marc Thivierge. All are graduates of Carleton’s architecture school. Also on the jury were Professor Steven Fai, Assistant Professor Suzanne Harris-Brandts, and Instructor Dina Sarhane.

“Most of these projects were done by teams,” observed Lorimer. “That’s a remarkable thing. That’s a skill that you’re learning right now about how to work with other people. Everything that’s good, in the way of the design world, is a team effort. The notion that one person designs it all is wrong.”

Each year fourth-year students in Carleton’s Bachelor of Architectural Studies program undertake a major housing and city-building project. Operating under the rubric of intensification, students produce proposals for multi-unit housing on sites that are likely to redevelop in the near future.

Among other things, this involves understanding what zoning will permit, what the marketplace will support, and what the community might envision. Ranging from 40 to 400 units, projects must accommodate a mix of housing types and residents, complemented by uses such as street-oriented retail.

In addition to orchestrating the tight boundaries between the public and private realms, students must consider how their projects contribute to character and integrity of the street and the surrounding neighborhood.

Interim Director Federica Goffi congratulated all the students for their entries. “It’s wonderful to see what you were able to accomplish, all the more considering that in the fall, we were still primarily online, so you’d be working with partners but also in isolation from each other.”