Toronto’s Workshop Architecture Inc., a firm established in 2010 out of a desire to create buildings and spaces for communities and with community input, is the recipient of the 2013 best emerging practice award from the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA).
The award recognizes the contribution of young firms that have been in practice for five years or less and that demonstrate a clear vision, well-articulated goals and proven effective strategies that provide a competitive advantage.
Criteria can include such practice-building tools as unique client services and innovative resources for clients.
“It’s fantastic,” principal David Colussi said of winning the award.
“Hopefully, this will provide a springboard for us to do the sorts of things that we want to do.”
The firm, which now has a staff of five, received its certificate from practice from the OAA in September 2010.
It is led by Colussi, an architect with 15 years of experience designing education buildings, public institutions and public space and Helena Grdadolnik, an urban designer, architectural activist, educator and curator with a master’s degree in architecture.
She has 12 years of experience working with non-profit organizations, private developers and municipalities on planning and creative programs that help to engage people with the built environment.
“While there is never an optimal time to start a new business, this was something that Helena and I had been working towards for a long time,” Colussi said.
The two met as students at the University of Waterloo.
Workshop Architecture’s “primary experience and passion” is designing spaces for teaching and learning, with a particular expertise in designing for special needs students.
At one juncture in his career, while working at an architectural firm in London, England, Colussi served as project architect for the Tuke School, a special needs school in the borough of Southwark.
Workshop Architecture’s philosophy is that schools have the unique potential to enhance their environments both through their primary function in the delivery of education and their wider engagement with the community.
Although small projects, additions and renovations for the full-day kindergarten program represent a huge investment in schools across Ontario.
The firm is involved in a number of such projects. It sees them as opportunities to re-energize and fix issues in the whole school.
A case in point is its design solution for an addition to the Princess Elizabeth Public School in Brantford, a project that was completed in September 2012.
The firm proposed not only adding a new 1,300-square-foot learning space but also addressed safety and graffiti issues by turning a hidden dead-end into a courtyard space.
The courtyard became a new secure outdoor play area that can be accessed from both new and existing kindergarten classes.
The courtyard was outside of the project scope, but with inexpensive finishes to brighten up the space, was realized within the $500,000 project budget.
While Workshop Architecture provides a full range of architectural services for clients, it also works pro-actively to identify and initiate community-based projects — which it terms architectural activism. Through such projects, it seeks to involve the people who will be most affected by physical changes to an area.
As a further extension to this “activist” architectural practice, the firm engages people with the design of architecture and public space through exhibitions, competitions, events and education programs.
The list of services provided by the firm includes creative stakeholder engagement methods, drafting cultural policy, public art management, organizing design competitions, writing, curating and exhibition design.
Workshop Architecture initiated and is managing the Green Line ideas competition, a design competition that invited designers to contribute to an overall vision for the public use of a five-kilometre-long hydro corridor through midtown Toronto.
The winning ideas will not be built. But a selection of entries will be exhibited in the Green Line site on May 4 for the purpose of getting the people who live, study and work near the site to start discussing the potential of the space.
Follow Patricia Williams on Twittter @Patricia_DCN.
Recent Comments
comments for this post are closed