CITYSPACE: Medals honour exquisitely crafted projects

2010 Governor-General's Medals go to projects in Ontario, Quebec

LISA ROCHON April 29, 2010

The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) and the Canada Council for the Arts announced on Tuesday the winners of the coveted 2010 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture.

Wide-ranging and exquisitely crafted, the award-winning projects are designed by some of the country’s most sophisticated architects. There’s an ethereal glass studio by Toronto architects gh3, set at the edge of the water on Stoney Lake, north of Peterborough, Ont., and an epic public-gathering landscape designed by Montreal’s Daoust Lestage inc. that rekindles Quebec City’s relationship to the St. Lawrence River.

The 12 projects cited are all in either Ontario or Quebec. Talent from the rest of Canada was shut out, with the exception of Vancouver-based Patkau Architects, which led the design for La Grande Bibliotheque du Quebec, a major new cultural hub in Montreal. Toronto’s Shim-Sutcliffe Architects scored a remarkable three Governor-General’s awards – for a sculptural guest house, a discreet private studio and the Corkin Gallery in Toronto’s Distillery District, while Montreal’s Saucier + Perrotte architectes earned two GGs for muscular, daring designs of a spa in Old Montreal and a private residence in the Laurentians.