This weekend The Globe and Mail published an article on how the Toronto firm KPMB “became Canada’s big-city visionaries of architecture.” KPMB is the firm of Bruce Kuwabara (BArch 1972), Marianne McKenna, and Shirley Blumberg (BArch 1976).

Last week, the firm received two 2014 Governor General Medals: one for its design of the Centre for International Governance Innovation Campus in Waterloo, another for the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Many of KPMB’s celebrated buildings can be found throughout Toronto, and several of them (as the Globe’s Architecture Critic Alex Bozikovic reminds us) have played a significant role in the city’s recent “cultural renaissance." Together, the National Ballet School (2005), the Gardiner Museum (2006), and the Royal Conservatory of Music (2009) received a total of 31 awards.

“More than a quarter-century after they started, this Toronto office, now led by Kuwabara, Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg, has assumed an important place in Canadian culture, as city builders, mentors and advocates,” writes Bozikovic. (Founding partner Thomas Payne left in 2013 to launch a new practice.)

Among their own mentors and advocates, Kuwabara credits Professor Emeritus, and former Dean of the Daniels Faculty, George Baird — who taught Kuwabara and Blumberg — for KPMB’s interest in urbanism.

"They don’t see working with existing buildings as a constraint,” Baird tells Bozikovic; “they see that as a normal part of urban-design operations.”

The full article, along with images of KPMB's many projects, is available on The Globe and Mail's website.

Related links:

• Fort York Library by KPMB architect Shirley Blumberg to open in November
• Daniels Public Lecture: Bruce Kuwabara
• Daniels Alumnus Bruce Kuwabara appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada