School of Architecture news

The undergraduate and graduate programs at the School have been highlighted by Spacing magazine (Fall 2013) as producing top graduates.  The Toronto-based publication surveyed more than 120 “professional city builders” on the abilities of graduates in Urban Planning, Architecture and Architectural Studies, and Landscape and Environmental Design. The citations for McGill read as follows: Undergraduate: “Faculty availability, studio space, and other resources are rated best-in-class.  Graduates carry a good reputation when it comes to design and building science.”

Prof. Martin Bressani has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant in the amount of $248,093 (over five years). The title of his research is “Architecture and the Environmental Tradition: The Atmospheric in British Architecture from 1750 to 1850.” The co-applicants on the project are Jodey C. Castricano (UBC), Marc Grignon (Laval), and Nicholas Roquet (U de M). The collaborators are Profs. Annmarie Adams and Aaron Sprecher, both of McGill.

Prof. Ipek Türeli has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant in the amount of $54,859 (over two years). She will research the topic of “Building Architectural Networks: American Missionary Schools in the Eastern Mediterranean,” for which she had received earlier in the year an FQRSC grant in the amount of $39,600 (for over three years).

Bassem Eid Mohammed (Ph.D. 2014) will be supported as a postdoctoral fellow by the Mitacs Elevate program, beginning in February 2014. The award is for one year, in the amount of $57,000, under the supervision of Prof. Aaron Sprecher, co-supervised by Prof. Temy Tidafi of UdeM, and in collaboration with industry partner  Bone Structure.

The Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) has given a 2013 Award of Excellence in the category Innovation in Architecture to KANVA Architecture Management R&D for their project Irène in Montreal.  KANVA was co-founded by Rami Bebawi (B.Sc.Arch. 1999, M.Arch. 2001) and Tudor Radulescu (B.Sc.Arch. 1998, M.Arch. 2001).

We are delighted to announce the hiring of two new full-time faculty colleagues.

Ph.D. student Elisabeth Bouchard and partner Eric Boucher have won first prize in the Concours d’idées en design urbain: Pôle muséal du quartier Montcalm. The urban design competition was launched in Quebec City at the end of April and the winners were announced at a press conference at the Musée National de Beaux-Arts du Québec on June 13, 2013. Open to registered architects (members of the OAQ), the program asked for a unifying signature for the Montcalm neighborhood in view of the completion of the new pavilion of the MNBAQ designed by OMA.

Raymond Moriyama (M.Arch. 1957, D.Sc. 1993) has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Calgary. From the website of the Faculty of Environmental Design at U of C: "The Faculty of Environmental Design (EVDS) celebrates the lifetime achievements of distinguished Canadian architect, Raymond Moriyama, with an honorary doctorate and public event on Monday, June 10, 2013.

Recent post-professional graduates, Bahareh Atash and Hesam T. Rostami (M.Arch. 2012), have won first prize with their submission "Form vs. Uniform" in the 2013 Burnham Prize Competition, "Next Stop: Designing Chicago BRT Stations." The single-stage international design ideas competition intended to catalyze iconic, sustainable, and functional design for representative corridors in Chicago’s planned Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system. It received 42 submissions from 14 countries.

At a ceremony on May 16, 2013, following the final Faculty meeting of the academic year, Interim Dean Andrew Kirk presented the Engineering Class of 1944 Teaching Award to Prof. Martin Bressani. Dean Kirk also presented the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award to professional M.Arch. student Francis Ng. The Director of the School, Prof. Annmarie Adams, was on hand to celebrate the double win, along with Profs.

Ph.D. student Francois Leblanc has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (Doctoral) for a duration of three years and a total amount of $105,000. The title of the doctoral research project is “Robots in architecture: merging design optimization with additive manufacturing technology.” An abstract of the project follows.

Ioana Teodorescu (Ph.D. 2013) has won the Phyllis Lambert Prize for 2012. The prize is awarded annually by UQAM’s Canada Research Chair on Urban Heritage to a candidate who has submitted the best doctoral dissertation on the subject of architecture and architectural history in Canada, based on the assessment of an independent jury. This prize honours Phyllis Lambert, architect and tutelary figure of architectural conservation, founder of the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

On May 3, 2013, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced support of more than $82 million through Natural Resources Canada’s ecoENERGY Innovation Initiative (ecoEII) for 55 innovative projects across Canada. Of these, 15 will be pre-commercialization demonstration projects to test the feasibility of various technologies, and 40 will be research and development projects to address knowledge gaps and bring technologies from the conceptual stage to the ready-to-be-tested stage of development.

The consortium of Manon Asselin Architecte + Jodoin Lamarre Pratte Architectes has won the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' architectural competition to design its new fifth pavilion. Manon Asselin (B.Arch. 1992, M.Arch. 2001) is co-founder, with her partner Katsuhiro Yamazaki (B.Arch. 1996), of Atelier TAG.

Prof. Ipek Türeli has been awarded a Fonds Québécois de la Recherche sur la Société et la Culture (FQRSC, Quebec Fund for Research, Society and Culture) grant in the amount of $39,600 (over three years). She will research the topic of “Building Architectural Networks: American Missionary Schools in the Eastern Mediterranean.”