Canadian Architect RAIC Gold Medal 2021

A. HOWARD SUTCLIFFE

RAIC GOLD MEDAL 2021

BRIGITTE SHIM

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Viewpoint

I first met Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe on a tour of Integral House, considered by many to be one of their masterworks. The tour was not about self-promotion: it was a fundraiser, organized in support of a young landscape-architect-turned-filmmaker, who was creating a documentary on Integral House and its owner, James Stewart. In retrospect, I have no doubt that Brigitte and Howard were behind organizing the event, as well as ensuring it would strike the right tone: creating a special opportunity to visit the house, helping the next generation, and perhaps even raising the spirits of Stewart, who loved a good party—and who, unbeknownst to the guests that evening, was ailing from cancer.

Brigitte and Howard are first and foremost architects of a calibre rarely seen in the world, let alone in Canada.

Going beyond this, they are tremendous advocates for architecture and for young architects, working behind the scenes in everything from advancing inclusive housing policies in Toronto to orchestrating public seminars for BEAT and the Daniels School of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. All these activities share a common thread: the pursuit of excellence in architecture, in all of its facets.

In everything that they do, Brigitte and Howard exhibit a deep respect for the people they work with, from builders to photographers, including those in generations that both precede and follow theirs.

It’s a great honour and privilege to present this special issue of Canadian Architect, dedicated to the work of RAIC Gold Medalists Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe.

Canadian architecture benefits immensely from them, and from their work.

— Elsa Lam

Editor, Canadian Architect

BRIGITTE SHIM A. HOWARD SUTCLIFFE

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Architecture of Insistence: Crafting Place, Building Material Legacies RAIC Gold Medal 2021 Jury Comments On Receiving the RAIC Gold Medal 2021

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B r i g i t te S h i m a n d A . H owa r d S u tc l i f f e p.13

Governor General’s Medals and Awards received by Shim-Sutcliffe 1992-2020

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1992 Garden Pavilion and Reflecting Pool Governor General’s Award in Architecture p.14

2002 Moorelands Camp Dining Hall Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p. 20

2010 Craven Road Studio Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p.3 0

1994 House on Horse Lake Governor General’s Award in Architecture p.16

2004 Muskoka Boathouse Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p. 2 2

2012 The Integral House Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p.3 2

1994 Laneway House Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p.17

2004 Weathering Steel House Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p. 26

1997 Craven Road House Governor General’s Award in Architecture p.18

2010 Corkin Gallery Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p. 28

2014 The Residence for the Sisters of St. Joseph Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p.3 4

1999 Ledbury Park Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p.19

2010 Ravine Guest House Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p. 29

2016 Wong Dai Sin Temple Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p.3 6 2020 Lake Kawagama Retreat Governor General’s Medal in Architecture p.37

A Work In Progress

Mentors, colleagues, clients and fabricators speak about the work of Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe p.4 0

Teaching + Pedagogy

R o b e r t Wr i g h t Professor Robert Wright interviews colleague Brigitte Shim p.4 4

Climate, Place and Craft

Ke n n e t h Fr a m pto n p.47

FRONT COVER Main elevation of residence in a forest near Moscow, Russia, designed by Shim-Sutcliffe, currently under construction.

Photo by Shim-Sutcliffe INSIDE FRONT COVER AND INSIDE BACK COVER Custom brick profiles developed by Shim-Sutcliffe and produced by Peterson Tegl, Denmark, for residence in a forest near Moscow, Russia. Drawing and photo by Shim-Sutcliffe OPENING IMAGE Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe at Le Corbusier’s Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France.

Photo by Donald Chong GRAPHIC DESIGN

Anita Matusevics, Wonder Incorporated

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Architecture of Insistence: Crafting Place, Building Material Legacies Elke K ra sny

Since they first began their collaborative practice, Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe have continuously dedicated their life in architecture to building an architectural oeuvre.

Situated in the decades of globalization following the 1980s, this oeuvre—which is primarily located in Canada, but also in other geographical and climatic environments including Hong Kong, Hawaii, and Russia—can be understood as a single body of work, which has been insistently and purposefully created over time. Each one of their buildings adds significance, depth, nuance, and meaning to this body of work. In turn, the body of work in its entirety adds significance, depth, nuance, and meaning to what will in the future become understood as the present-day contribution to the making of architectural history.

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Shim and Sutcliffe are keenly aware that architecture is situated in specific geographical locations and environments, and exists only through the creation of material manifestations.

Over time, these material manifestations can become material legacies: articulations of their culture, place and time. Throughout their work, Shim and Sutcliffe have actively avoided the misfortunes of iconicity, placelessness, conspicuous construction, and hedonistic consumption that befell much of contemporary architecture in the decades of rampant globalization and neoliberal capitalism that followed the 1980s.

German-Jewish philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin noted that the historical materialist must include the notion of the present when thinking about history, which, of course, always extends to the history of the present moment. His insight leads me to propose that Shim-Sutcliffe’s body of work is a manifestation of an architecture of insistence, when read against the devastating (and even disastrous) effects of globalization and neoliberal capitalism on the production of architecture today.

The ways in which Shim-Sutcliffe has achieved an oeuvre—a whole body of work, in which each of their buildings contributes to creating more meaning than their mere sum total—has to be analyzed through the context of today’s globalized economic and cultural conditions. As American architect and architectural historian Peggy Deamer has lucidly observed, the history of architecture is the history of capital. Therefore, the history of today’s architecture has to be understood as the history of globalized capital.

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Following the 1980s, contemporary architecture was swept up in the image-centric and placeless culture of globalization. Supported by the advent of digital production, this unleashed not only a plethora of new shapes and forms, but also new functions that came to define the architecture of our historical moment: iconicity, spectacle and financial speculation.

The anywhere-can-be-everywhere mindset of globalization led to a new mentality of placelessness, which became firmly entrenched in architecture—even though it was previously well-understood that architecture cannot exist or survive outside of the conditions of its physical site and its geographical environment. The place-based understanding of architecture gave way to an image-based understanding, with architecture primarily serving the function of providing iconic images, which are needed to advertise, market, and sell experiences. Such images suggest that architecture can easily be placed anywhere. Consequently, the notion of architecture-as-image transformed the very notion of place, in such a way that anywhere was believed to be everywhere, and everywhere was believed to be anywhere.

This prevailing idea of architecture-as-image gave rise to the production of iconicity-ondemand, with buildings becoming spectacles for hedonistic consumption. Spectacular iconic buildings around the globe are evidence of this architectural trend connected to globalized capital.

At the same time, globalized capital began to harness the power of architecture—and in particular, the power of towers—as instruments

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of financialization. Super-tall buildings, including condominium towers as well as of office towers, are the expression of this new function of architecture. Iconic architectural objects built for the purpose of spectacle and units of architecture built for the purpose of financial speculation—with the singular goal of maximizing return on financial investment—are, in fact, hostile to the prime function and core value of architecture, which is to create places for living.

Spectacle and speculation, which have come to largely define architecture at our historical moment, share the same Latin root, spec, which means “to look” or “to see.” With iconic architectural objects trending online, and even canonic examples of historical architecture first and foremost consumed as Instagram images, placelessness has become a profound cultural experience of our time.

Such placenessness—with buildings understood to be images that are delocalized, singularized, and isolated from their place—has impacted our understanding of the effects of architecture on place, as well as the importance of understanding place in creating architecture. The centrality of the gaze that unites spectacle and speculation sees architecture as image: useful because of its potential for conspicuous construction, marketable experiences, hedonistic consumption, and financial speculation. This way of seeing has profoundly eroded the understanding of place, and what architecture does in, with, and to a place. It erases the fact that place is the ground—materially and semantically—for architecture’s very existence.

Crafting place, which is at the core of Shim-Sutcliffe’s body of work, counteracts the imageover-place mentality at the heart of the twin regimes of spectacle and of speculation.

Crafting place starts with considering given sites in geographical and climatic terms, but also in cultural terms. Crafting place results from the most intimate interweaving of site and building, which is in stark opposition to the anywhere-iseverywhere mindset of globalized architectural production.

The body of work created by Shim-Sutcliffe can be understood as an architecture of insistence as they pursue their site-specific approach to crafting place, refusing to compromise architecture to image, nor site to sight. Kenneth Frampton’s 1983 essay Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance was a reminder that architecture can, and should, resist the homogeneity of modern society. Rather than an approach based on resistance, I propose that Shim-Sutcliffe’s achievement of an uncompromising body of work sets a precedent for an architecture of insistence.

Resistance, in my mind, speaks to a political philosophy connected to anti-fascist and anti-capitalist struggles and social movements.

Insistence, on the other hand, speaks to the dedication to, and ethics of, carving out conditions for making architecture uncompromisingly committed to its core values.

An architecture of insistence works within the economic realities of capital, yet never gives in to spectacle and speculation. The degree of architectural perfection which has come to define

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Shim-Sutcliffe’s body of work—and is impeccably achieved in each one of their buildings—is, of course, highly labour-, resource-, and cost-intensive. Shim-Sutcliffe’s architecture of insistence is characterized by the ethics of putting to best use the resources that they are entrusted with by their clients, in order to create lasting material legacies. Firm in its course, such an architecture of insistence continuously affirms its core values in formal, aesthetic and material terms.

Buildings by Shim-Sutcliffe are built manifestations that architecture cannot be anywhere (or everywhere), but that architecture is always located on a specific site with given conditions.

Crafting place means that architecture starts from the specificity of a location on the map, from the ground of any given site. This means to start from an ethics of responsiveness, which acknowledges that buildings cannot be severed from their site, and understands that buildings have social, environmental, and cultural impacts and meanings beyond the immediate scale of their footprint on the ground.

In Shim-Sutcliffe’s body of work, site-specific ecologies matter. These include conditions of climate, weather and light, urban and natural landscapes, cultural forms and shapes, local approaches to construction, the skills of builders and craftspeople, and traditional uses of materials. Their attentive responsiveness to such conditions has led Shim and Sutcliffe to create unique responses to each of their buildings’ sites. Their architecture is always inseparable from its place, and gives expression to environmental, social, cultural, and emotional belonging through its material composition.

Crafting place is a process that unfolds over time. The site on which a building is located existed long before the arrival of the building.

Crafting place takes into account that buildings become part of a process of place, as it unfolds over time. To use American science studies and multispecies thinker Donna Haraway’s term, site and building are understood as sympoiesis, which means “making with each other.” The processes of crafting place, site and building are inseparable in their interrelatedness and interdependence. To craft a place over time, it is fundamental to never separate site from building, or material from meaning.

Crafting presents a form of knowledge-cultivation through architecture. Craft is commonly understood as knowledge that is passed along, gradually changing and adapting over time.

Shim-Sutcliffe’s profound interest in the material legacies created by architecture has led them to closely study such knowledge-cultivation.

They carefully examine the solutions provided by the historical modernist project and by vernacular architecture. They are particularly interested in understanding how buildings respond to the specific natural, climatic, cultural, and historical conditions that shape their sites. This in-depth study retraces and uncovers how particular buildings respond to the site-specific ecologies of different geographies and environments.

In their own nuanced architectural responses to sites, Shim and Sutcliffe have drawn on these material legacies.

Crafting, here, is understood as the knowledgecultivation of site-responsiveness—a core insight to be gleaned from architecture that cannot be reduced to its image.

Crafting place is a knowledge-cultivation that pushes back against the dictatorship of architecture-as-image by making room—and time—for the experiences of material intimacy, the sense of touch and visceral feelings of tactility, and an attentive listening to material and spatial compositions. It makes space for the contemplation of the (im)materiality of light, as light moves through buildings and sites, and views, as inhabitants move around in the buildings.

Crafting place is not reducible to the time it takes to look at an image. Rather, crafting place unfolds over time. Shim-Sutcliffe’s buildings provide for experiential richness. Their buildings enable those who live in them, and with them, to grow their sensorial attentiveness, and their nuance in making meaning from spatial and material encounters. Crafting place allows for the unfolding of the meaning of buildings over time.

The buildings created by Shim and Sutcliffe invite an embodied, affective, and even spiritual experience of everyday living as a sympoietic process between humans, buildings, and sites.

Drawing architecture into existence—as ShimSutcliffe do with dedication, insistence, and continuity—is a process that requires time. Time is needed to create specific responses to the complex entanglements that sites present. Drawing into existence can literally refer to the practice of materializing architectural ideas with paper and pencil. Central to Shim-Sutcliffe’s creative practice is making time for such drawing, as well as for testing models at all scales, from view models to full-scale mock-ups. Their craft harnesses the flawless precision of digital fabrication, but also allow for the small imperfections that are part of how materials are experienced, and that

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give them affective and emotional dimension.

On a metaphorical level, drawing into existence refers to the process of bringing about and causing to exist—the larger idea of an architecture of insistence which causes architecture to be. As Shim and Sutcliffe connect site, material and spatial composition, they draw architecture into existence in both senses. Each of their buildings manifests a unique response to its site, be it a high-density urban context or a sparsely populated natural environment.

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Shim-Sutcliffe’s work embraces all scales—from the design of doorknobs, built-in fittings, lamps and chairs, to small private homes and cottages, to larger-scale religious and residential buildings.

Throughout, qualities like spatial generosity, calm serenity, choreography of nuanced experience, and intimate tactility are achieved by not separating vernacular traditions from modernist traditions, craft from art. The work unlocks and shapes the inherent qualities of materials, which includes respecting their processes of aging and weathering, as well as honouring the small imperfections that bring out the aliveness of materials. Shim-Sutcliffe’s architecture intricately weaves together the interior and the exterior, function and beauty, material and meaning, to appeal to the human senses. Building material legacies makes these ethical and aesthetical expressions of their time and their place.

Shim-Sutcliffe’s architecture of insistence is firmly rooted in a triple commitment: to be responsive to both nature and culture as it comes to specifically define each of their sites and their material choices; to be responsive to the needs and wishes of their clients; and to be responsive to the legacies of the modernist architectural

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project and vernacular building traditions. As Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe continue to cultivate and to grow their body of work, they remain carefully aware that crafting place not only requires time, labour and resources—but above all, an unwavering ethics of insistence. Staying true to their values, they use the core means of architecture—spatial and material composition— to create buildings that provide material evidence for these values and create material legacies.

Crafting place draws into existence the built manifestations of architecture as a continuum of site, material, and building. Building is understood both as a noun and a verb: their work unfolds buildings’ potentials over time, in sympoiesis not only with their sites, but with all those who are touched by them and find their senses of belonging in them.

Elke Krasny is a curator, cultural theorist and writer. She is a Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and heads its Department of Education. Her scholarship, academic writings, curatorial work and international lectures address questions of care at the present historical conjuncture, with a focus on emancipatory and transformative practices in art, curating, architecture and urbanism.

In 2012, Elke Krasny was a Visiting Scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). Her residence focused on studying the work of Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe in the CCA’s archives. Her CCA Visiting Scholar Seminar Shim-Sutcliffe: Crafting Architecture posed many questions about Canadian architecture and positioned the work of Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe within our current cultural condition. Her research-based curatorial work on global and Canadian architectural practices was presented in the exhibitions The Force is in the Mind: The Making of Architecture and Thinking Aloud | Making Architecture at the Architecture Centre in Vienna in 2008, at UQAM’s Centre de design in Montreal in 2010, and at the Dalhousie University School of Architecture in 2011. Through filmed interviews, photos, drawings, models and unusual objects, the exhibitions focused on the making of architecture, rather than on finished work.

OPPOSITE Weathering steel panels are waterjet cut with black-locust leaf patterns for a recent Shim-Sutcliffe project, producing striking visual effects looking outwards. Several significant black locust trees are part of the Carolinian forest where the project is situated.

Photo by Scott Norsworthy

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RAIC Gold Medal 2021 Jury Comments By their relentless pursuit of excellence, Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe have produced a significant body of exceptional design works covering architecture, landscape, interiors, furniture and hardware—all developed to an incredibly high standard, with craft, rigour, sense of place, and mastery of proportions. Their work demonstrates a dedication to material expression and exquisite detailing across multiple scales, in addition to creating an intimate connection with each site. They continue to be an inspiration to other architects by demonstrating that exceptional projects are possible and by their tireless commitment to advocacy, teaching and mentoring. We wish to recognize them as a powerful collaborative duo, whose commitment to craft, tectonics, site and ecology will have a lasting impact on Canadian architecture.

–2021 Gold Medal Jurors Susan Ruptash, FRAIC, André Perrotte, FIRAC, Drew Adams, MRAIC, Marie-Odile Marceau, FIRAC, Susan Fitzgerald, FRAIC

ABOVE

Shim-Sutcliffe current project located on the Canadian Shield. Photo by David Bowick, Blackwell Engineering

On Receiving the RAIC Gold Medal 2021 We are truly delighted to receive the Gold Medal from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. To be honoured by our respected peers is the highest form of professional acknowledgement. Each of the previous recipients of this award has made an indelible contribution to culture in Canada, and we are proud to stand amongst them.

Architecture is a complex discipline, demanding the collective effort and commitment of many. We are grateful and fortunate to have collaborated with many exceptional clients, remarkable builders, skilled fabricators, and the stellar architects and graduates who have worked with us in our studio over the last three decades. To date, our studio has completed some 50 buildings and landscapes, including sacred spaces, public parks, institutional buildings and private residences. Our clients have demonstrated a deep commitment to realizing projects that harmoniously integrate architecture with landscape. Our clients all believe that design matters, and that it truly enriches daily lives. Each project we design is considered in relation to site. We examine its potential to integrate light, water, climate and landscape in order to create a meaningful place. We regard our studio practice as one continuous exploration of materiality and craft, woven through many projects.

Our work is an ongoing laboratory for living.

We are always experimenting with new ideas and pushing limits to discover new ways of inhabiting space. In parallel with buildings, we have also realized over 50 objects, including furniture, lighting, door handles, boat cleats and pedestrian bridges. Through their eloquent and rigorous assembly, we enable inert materials—wood, brick, steel, concrete—to speak.

For this special issue of Canadian Architect, we felt it was appropriate to present fifteen projects premiated by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and Canada Council for the Arts’ Governor General’s Medals programme. These awards are perhaps the most prestigious project awards administered

by the RAIC, and undoubtedly the most significant national architectural project awards in Canada. We appreciate the time and energy spent by every jury reviewing, considering and debating built work created by practitioners from across this country, and ultimately recognizing exemplary projects. We believe that the Governor General’s Awards describe a rich history of built work and contribute positively to Canadians’ awareness and understanding of the importance of architecture as a vital cultural force, helping us build a better society. Our projects that have been honoured with Governor General’s Medals are varied in scale and budget, reflecting our interest in a large range of project types and our experiments with construction.

Winning the 2021 RAIC Gold Medal has been incredibly gratifying and important to us. It both acknowledges our efforts, and also supports critical conversations about how our work will continue to shape—and be shaped by—a national conversation and drive for architectural excellence.

–Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe

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Garden Pavilion and Reflecting Pool TORONTO

19 92 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s Awa r d i n A rc h i te c t u r e This architectural garden is the endpoint of an extended promenade that begins at the existing house and culminates in a place of repose and contemplation.

Architectural elements, inserted into the landscape, become instrumental in framing and revealing views.

Rich, layered and complex, the work is engaging on many levels as one reads and experiences the sophisticated spatial and symbolic crafting of this architectonic garden. The plan yields a multiplicity of centers which are encountered along a zig-zagging, descending passage in which the lines of vision move in a kind of unfolding tour. Nature is engaged, transformed and inhabited to create a place of repose, pleasure and reflection. The four primary elements of earth, air, water and fire are represented in varying ways within the garden text. We turn back to recapitulate our journey from house to garden, and appreciate the clarity of the subtle labyrinth tracings of Shim and Sutcliffe.

–Bruce Kuwabara, Domus, No. 703, March 1989

1992 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Peter Cardew, Sharon Fogo, Carlos Morales, Helga Plumb, Jean-Marie Roy ABOVE

Photo by James Dow

OPPOSITE Drawing by A. Howard Sutcliffe (graphite on vellum) Original drawing in the collection of the Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal © Shim-Sutcliffe Architects

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House on Horse Lake HALIBURTON

19 9 4 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s Awa r d i n A rc h i te c t u r e This wilderness retreat’s robust, articulated hip roof shelters and shapes a metaphorical interior landscape.

It is experienced as a rich architectural promenade from outside to inside.

[Shim and Sutcliffe] approach architecture as a set of historically and culturally grounded phenomena that address all of our senses. The house becomes an auditory vessel, whose open interior, high sloping ceiling, and hard interior surfaces echo the welcome sound of human activity in that wilderness. The small two-bedroom house appears larger than it is. On the exterior, an undersized dormer makes the hipped roof look huge, and on the interior, the wood paneled cathedral ceiling, within which floats a studio loft, seems to stretch on for an indeterminate length.

–Thomas Fisher, Progressive Architecture, May 1992

1994 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Nigel Baldwin, Essy Baniassad, Odile Hénault, Raymond Moriyama, Jeremy Sturgess, Billie Tsien ABOVE

Photo by James Dow

Laneway House TORONTO

19 9 4 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e This urban residence is conceived as a series of interior and exterior gardens and courts that intensify and densify an existing laneway while blurring the boundaries between inside and out.

While reworking the typology of the Toronto Victorian lot and house, the project also sets itself in contrast to its context. Although at the broadest scale this contrast is a matter of iconography, it is also supported by construction.

Does the Laneway House suggest, as its ultimate state of resolution, a consistent, total and exquisite craftedness?

Or are the concrete block walls and bentwood chairs intended to retain a sufficient degree of difference from the remainder of the house to serve essential roles as readymades? Either attitude would be a form of resistance to the normative conditions of building production, but each implies a different theoretical position with regard to our current cultural condition.

–Graham Owen, “The Meaning of Construction, the Construction of Meaning,” Architecture Canada, 1994 1994 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Nigel Baldwin, Essy Baniassad, Odile Hénault, Raymond Moriyama, Jeremy Sturgess, Billie Tsien ABOVE

Photo by Steven Evans

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Craven Road House TORONTO

19 97 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s Awa r d i n A rc h i te c t u r e The specific, particular scales of the Victorian cottage and the industrial loft are fused together in this residence. The building also reinforces and densifies its urban context.

A glance at both the house’s west elevation (the front) and south elevation points out how the uncrowded but nevertheless profound density of the structure results from what appears to be the elision of two large volumes: ‘cottage’ and ‘loft,’ each deftly indexed by cladding. The house has the immovable aura-presence of a moon rock— this despite its fully disclosed constructional delicacy. It has the significance that rests in all resolution. And a full palette of materiality. The house’s admirable “emptiness” comes from its almost baroque procession into simplicity.

–Gary Michael Dault, “Falling to Hand: New Canadian Architecture in the Wilderness of the World,” Architecture Canada, 1997

1997 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Douglas Cardinal, Ken Greenberg, Dan Hanganu, Phyllis Lambert, Christine Macy, Abraham Zabludovsky ABOVE

Photo by Michael Awad

Ledbury Park TORONTO

19 9 9 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e Ledbury Park begins with a constructed topography that shapes a new public realm. A pedestrian bridge traverses a linear skating canal that doubles as a reflecting pool, and links change pavilions with outdoor swimming pools.

The project invents its own site in a compelling manner.

By means of cut and fill, it establishes a site that didn’t exist before the project intervened. Its achievements lie in the multiplicity of site identities that it manages to establish. Its architecture seems most compelling when aiding in establishing that richness of place: providing sequence, forming places tucked down in the land and paths above, using rows and grids of trees to occupy the modified topography, forming edges above, overlooks, and filtered views through.

–Patricia Patkau, Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments 1999 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Anne Cormier, Patricia Patkau, Gino Pin, Larry Wayne Richards, Stephen Teeple ABOVE

Photo by James Dow

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Moorelands Camp Dining Hall L A K E K AWAG A M A

20 0 2 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e Mooreland Camp’s dining hall is a wooden tent in the wilderness. Linear industrial greenhouse glazing invites daylight to track against the wooden framework, shaping the form and character of this key gathering space.

This modest project exhibits a very strong spatial and tectonic idea. These qualities are further buttressed by a careful repertoire of appropriately straightforward fabrication details.

– George Baird, Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments

The choice of a simple barn form, inflected by the wonderful natural lighting element down the centre of the space, leaves us with the impression of a spiritual space—an impression not out-of-place in a churchsponsored camp for city children.

–Donald McKay, Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments

2002 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: George Baird, Éric Gauthier, Donald McKay, Toshiko Mori, Peter Pran ABOVE Drawing by A. Howard Sutcliffe (graphite on vellum) Original drawing in the collection of the Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal © Shim-Sutcliffe Architects OPPOSITE

Photo by Shim-Sutcliffe

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Muskoka Boathouse L A K E MUSKOK A

20 0 4 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e This boathouse is a sophisticated hut, hovering over the fresh water of Lake Muskoka on the Canadian Shield.

It links the local building traditions embedded in the area’s Victorian cottages and crafted wooden boats with the robust underwater infrastructure of wooden piers and docks.

The architects have made a beautiful building on the border between forested land and water—a challenging site that should almost be forbidden. With its fine proportions and refined craftsmanship, the house resembles the super-designed hardwood boats that it envelops.

-Markku Komonen, Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments

In this project, North American ‘stick’ wood construction is refined to a high level of artistic expression. The same level of care and precision is applied to every aspect of the project as well as to its siting. This results in a boathouse that has a familiar quality. It is like other boathouses in the Muskokas, yet is differentiated as an artful re-interpretation of the type.

-Stephen Teeple, Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments 2004 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Brit Andresen, Markku Komenen, Chris Macdonald, Daniel Pearl, Stephen Teeple ABOVE

Drawing by A. Howard Sutcliffe (graphite on vellum)

OPPOSITE Drawing by A. Howard Sutcliffe (graphite on Strathmore paper) Original drawings in the collection of the Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal © Shim-Sutcliffe Architects

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The Muskoka Boathouse project extends beyond conventional architecture, becoming a broader “laboratory for living” catalyzing many ongoing experiments in lighting, hardware, furniture, fixtures and fittings. As part of the boathouse project, we designed custom boat cleats, door handles, and hanging lights. We also developed a prototype of our HAB chair. Two chairs were produced by a millwork shop for the boathouse; subsequently, we collaborated with Klaus Nienkämper to realize a production version of the HAB chair. This iteration combined the lessons we learned in our prototype development with Nienkämper’s knowledge of manufacturing, marketing and distribution. What began as a site-specific commission is now a chair that remains in production by Nienkämper to this day.

A hanging light designed for the Muskoka Boathouse has evolved as our Firefly Lamp. It combines scientific glass with custom fabricated elements to create a light with a phosphorescent afterglow inspired by fireflies in a jar. We are continually rethinking and reinventing the definition of craft in architecture using a broad range of fabricators and tools to realize our fittings and fixtures. We love experimenting with design at all scales and strive to embed tactility, wonder and delight into all our projects, irrespective of their scale.

Photo by James Dow Photo by Steve Elphick, Velocite

OPPOSITE ABOVE

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Weathering Steel House TORONTO

20 0 4 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e This materially rich, opaque house uses sculptural cutouts to offer glimpses of a linear water feature and the ravine beyond. The openings bring reflected light, motion and sound into the heart of the project.

The architectural quality of this suburban house owes much to the making of micro-landscapes on-site to engage both with the larger setting and the interior spaces. The weathering steel cladding further acts to register the site and climate conditions of the place. The ladder of relations between furniture, room, garden and larger setting contributes to the memorability of this house.

– Daniel Pearl, Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments

In its instinct for situation as well as in its material execution, the house acknowledges past habits and traditions of the region, while advancing these practices to a level of exemplary resolution.

– Chris Macdonald, Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments

2004 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Brit Andresen, Markku Komenen, Chris Macdonald, Daniel Pearl, Stephen Teeple ABOVE

Photo by Michael Awad

OPPOSITE Photo by Shim-Sutcliffe Original model in the collection of the Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal © Shim-Sutcliffe Architects

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Corkin Gallery TORONTO

2010 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e A former pure spirit building is transformed into a space for contemporary art. Carefully layered additions result in new, dynamic cultural space situated within a heritage industrial complex.

An intelligent adaptation of the distillery infrastructure, repurposing the building to effective ends. The project shows that it is not enough to preserve the “history” of the building with a passive voice, but instead requires a strategic intervention, drawing out its latent qualities and giving it renewed meaning. Delivered with impeccable detailing, the project distinguishes between the old and the new—a wellrehearsed genre—but here brings the two into seamless and inventive cohesion.

The contemporary insertion is careful and clever, creating a spatial complexity that the original building lacked, while maintaining all the old structural elements. The dialogue between old and new is respectful, and makes a better building than the simple sum of the elements used.

–Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments 2010 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Jane Pendergast, Nader Tehrani, Betsy Williamson, Bernardo Gómez-Pimienta, Georges Adamczyk ABOVE

Photo by James Dow

Ravine Guest House TORONTO

2010 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e This small pavilion is a glowing lantern in a verdant Toronto ravine. It blurs the distinction between inside and outside, and uses a minimal hanging steel structure which supports a continuous clerestory.

The Ravine Guest House is an extremely sophisticated volume, blending interior and exterior space. The use of a reduced material palette is enhanced by the clarity of the structural solution, making the clerestory seem to float above the seemingly continuous space.

This retreat, a few minutes from downtown in a Toronto ravine—a carefully preserved natural haven—is a very sophisticated construction that boldly plays with the laws of gravity and tends to blur the line between inside and outside […] Beautiful trees and the reflection off a water pool reinforce the meditative quality of this project. The materials fit a tense and precise architectonic story that has a great clarity, proving that simplicity is the fruit of a patient and sensitive search for the truth. In a way, it’s the perfect example of a manifesto for architectural beauty.

–Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments 2010 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Jane Pendergast, Nader Tehrani, Betsy Williamson, Bernardo Gomez-Pimienta, Georges Adamczyk ABOVE

Photo by Raimund Koch

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Craven Road Studio TORONTO

2010 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e This urban studio building was designed for study, display and storage. It shapes indirect illumination through a system of narrow light coffers surrounding the building’s perimeter.

In a modest project like the Craven Road Studio, it can be too easy to give away tectonic rigor to the banalities of typical construction. Here, however, the architects have ensured that every surface and detail becomes a conceptual proposition.

The particularly inventive juncture of wall and roof creates coffers that sculpt the changing conditions of light to create a sublime daylighting condition and test a proposition that could be applicable to larger-scale work. This project captured our attention at both the detail level and at the urban scale. The inside perimeter walls are washed with light, thanks to a brilliant sectional detail which also sets off the floating ceiling and disguises the fact that the walls are often housing deep storage cabinets. The studio site completely rethinks the realm of the tight inner-city block off the lane—creating a sanctuary of inside and outside spaces.

–Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments

2010 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Jane Pendergast, Nader Tehrani, Betsy Williamson, Bernardo GómezPimienta, Georges Adamczyk ABOVE AND OPPOSITE

Photos by Bob Gundu

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The Integral House TORONTO

2012 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e Located at the edge of a Toronto ravine, the Integral House is a place for architecture, music and performance.

Its serpentine walls of glass and oak fins form a curvilinear perimeter, echoing the undulating contours of the Don Valley.

A genuine gesamtkunstwerk in which individual parts combine to create a resonant and beautiful whole.

Standing out as a new landmark in Canadian domestic architecture, the house is a tour-de-force of elegance and expressiveness. The intimate relationship with site and landscape, lyrical play of light, and intense focus on how things are made and put together makes this a superlative achievement that extends the pioneering role of the private house in modern architecture.

–Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments 2012 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Joost Bakker, Siamak Hariri, Manon Asselin, Catherine Slessor, Alejandro Villareal ABOVE Drawing by A. Howard Sutcliffe (graphite on vellum) Original drawing in the collection of the Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal © Shim-Sutcliffe Architects OPPOSITE

Photo by James Dow

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The Residence for the Sisters of St. Joseph TORONTO

2014 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c tu re The new home for the Sisters of St. Joseph forms a sinuous line between the Don Valley ravine and the city. Its form articulates the duality between individual contemplative life and the community engagement of the sisters’ ministries.

This project shines for the care that was brought in creating a loving environment for the elderly. The progression of public to private living spaces is underscored by the transition from urban to natural setting, along a narrow site on the edge of a ravine. The choice of materials and the careful attention to detail further add to the notion of this being a life-supporting environment, in the most profound sense of the term.

–Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments 2014 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Dorte Mandrup, Maxime Frappier, David Miller, James KM Cheng, Roberta Brandes Gratz ABOVE AND OPPOSITE

Photos by Scott Norsworthy

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Wong Dai Sin Temple MARKHAM

2016 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e The Wong Dai Sin Temple is a modern sacred space that houses a dynamic Taoist community. Like a measured tai chi pose, the building demonstrates asymmetry and counterbalance, while maintaining its equilibrium.

The jury appreciates this project for its conceptual clarity.

It is a pleasure to see such a unique building that celebrates structural form and materials. The relationship between the form and function of the Temple demonstrates a strong and considered composition. For example, the Temple gives the appearance of being both heavy and light; the major volume hovers above the ground, providing a protected space below for collective activities. Similarly, the striking façade modulates natural light while controlling views of the surroundings. This is a beautifully crafted and designed building that the jury feels raises the bar for architects working in the domain of new spiritual buildings.

–Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury comments 2016 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Annmarie Adams, Vanessa Miriam Carlow, Gary Hack, Richard Henriquez, Todd Saunders ABOVE

Photo by James Dow

Lake Kawagama Retreat HALIBURTON

20 20 G ove r n o r G e n e r a l’s M e d a l i n A rc h i te c t u r e Located on the Canadian Shield at 45˚ latitude, this building embraces the sectional aspect of the site’s naturally sloping topography. The design reconciles a north-facing view of the lake with the introduction of warm southern light, which enters deep into the residence.

Comforting, inviting, and carefully crafted, this project carries on the grand tradition of wooden cabins nestled in the Canadian wilderness. The Haliburton retreat sits halfburied in the sloping terrain overlooking the lake, reducing our perception of the cabin’s bulk. Inside, every inch is scrupulously designed, almost as if the interior were carved out of a single piece of wood. The sculpting of light using wood—such as with the oversized Douglas Fir fins in the main living area—creates a soft glow that animates the interior and invites you in any season.

–Governor General’s jury comments

2020 Governor General’s Medals in Architecture jury members: Alison Brooks, Isay Weinfeld, David Theodore, Johanna Hurme, Renée Mailhot Photo by Scott Norsworthy Experiments in hardware, fixtures and fittings by Shim-Sutcliffe. Photo by Shim-Sutcliffe ABOVE

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A Work in Progress “Good buildings need good friends,” said Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe in their 2006 Martell Lecture, delivered at the University at Buffalo’s School of Architecture and Planning. They were speaking of their ongoing work in the stewardship of Massey College, a 1963 building designed by Ron Thom at the University of Toronto. But the same can be said of all of their work: none of it is done by the architects alone. Rather, Shim and Sutcliffe see architecture as a collaborative endeavour. Making a building is a complex task that involves the contributions and support of clients, builders, fabricators, engineers, staff, and students—as well as the sometimes invisible scaffold of colleagues and mentors. Here are the voices of some of those who have worked with Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe, and who have been touched by their work.

OPPOSITE AND OVERLEAF

Photos by Ed Burtynsky

The Integral House under construction.

The work of Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe has not only contributed to the state of architecture in Canada, but it has had an impact on changing architectural discourse far beyond. Their humane approach and attention to the quality of life distinguishes them, but their willingness to share their knowledge with architects and architectural students is what separates them from others. Serving others was particularly evident when Professor Shim assisted us in the Aga Khan Award for Architecture—in various capacities, over many years—in her pursuit of a better environment for future generations.

—His Highness the Aga Khan CC (Hon), RAIC Gold Medallist, 2013 Brigitte Shim has been a mentor and inspiration to students for over three decades in the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. Through her excellence in teaching, she has helped to form outstanding practitioners across Canada and around the world. This is just one of the ways in which Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, with its brilliant body of work, has been so influential. On behalf of the entire U of T community, I am delighted to congratulate Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe on receiving the RAIC’s Gold Medal.

—Meric S. Gertler CM, President, University of Toronto

The work that Brigitte and Howard produced for us has always exceeded our highest expectations, in terms

of design and execution. It also did what excellent architecture should always strive for: to create an environment that transcends the physical space and elevates the human dimension.

—Gerald Sheff and Shanitha Kachan, clients Brigitte and Howard—Howard and Brigitte—they are like a palindrome, each completing and complementing the other. Their work always starts with a deep understanding of place, and then expands on that to create subtle, yet robust, spaces held together by their brilliant use of materials and highly refined design sensibility. We have followed them from their earliest projects in Toronto, through the design of our own house and beyond. What most impresses us is how grounded they are in the values that guide them: clarity, integrity, patience, and generosity.

We celebrate their architecture and salute them on this well-deserved award.

—Glenn and Susan Lowry, clients 25 years ago, we had just moved into our home, and had seen Brigitte and Howard’s work at a friends’ home some time before. The top floor of our new house was a mess and we had some ideas about what it might become. It was astonishing to see these two gifted artists transform this completely unassuming space into a beautiful and joyous celebration of proportion, dimension, and light.

It was a privilege to be involved in the decision-making behind such a modest project, and to see Brigitte

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and Howard take it so seriously. What excites these extraordinary architects is the relationship of human beings to the spaces they choose to live in, and how this complex synergy can be reflected in the profound alchemy of form and materials. We are eternally thankful for their warm friendship, their invaluable contributions to architecture, and for providing a personal space that continues to console, delight, and inspire.

—Atom Egoyan CC, client The poetic quality and independence of their design work, their inventiveness, and their thoughtful, holistic consideration of site, materiality, typologies and the senses have made Shim and Sutcliffe exemplars of architectural practice in Canada and internationally. To me, it is clear that they are abundantly worthy of being awarded the Gold Medal of the RAIC and stand as strong exponents of Canadian values.

—Phyllis Lambert CC, RAIC Gold Medallist, 1991 Howard Sutcliffe and Brigitte Shim are extraordinary Canadian architects who can be compared to few others.

They are special in many ways: special in their sensitivity, their use of materials, their attention to detail. And they are special in how they reflect many of the wonderful characteristics associated to Canadians—namely, a sense of modesty, honesty, a lack of bombastic shouting, always very natural. They show an appreciation of place—the

Canadian place, particularly the forests and lakes of Ontario. They might write a Canadian version of the Frank Lloyd Wright monograph In the Nature of Materials, and produce a book on detailing rivalling the late Italian master Carlo Scarpa. They are that good. Regard their master work, the Integral House: it says it all.

—Barton Myers, RAIC Gold Medallist, 1994 The true life partnership between Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe is a remarkable collaboration that has created wondrous architecture and landscapes, expressing the love and virtuosity of making things.

The fusion of their observations, thinking, experimentation, adaptation and evolution has created some of the most compelling integrations of buildings and contexts I have had the pleasure of experiencing. Bravo!

—Bruce Kuwabara OC, RAIC Gold Medallist, 2006 The architectural practice of Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe is truly remarkable. For more than 30 years they have worked to the highest standards of design and execution of building and landscape. (15 Governor General’s Medals is no small accomplishment!)

For me—as I expect for the Canadian architectural community as a whole—their unrelenting commitment to excellence has been both a model and a challenge.

Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe have created a truly outstanding body of work which will continue to expand

in years to come. This accomplishment is a gift of great value to Canadian culture.

—John Patkau CM, RAIC Gold Medalist, 2009 During the nearly 25 years that Brigitte and Howard have been colleagues and close friends, I have enjoyed watching their body of work evolve and mature. During that time, they have made significant contributions to both architectural education and practice. They have been both thought leaders and craft leaders within our architectural community in Canada and internationally. Brigitte and Howard are architect’s architects. In my view, theirs is one of the few Canadian architectural firms whose work consistently enjoys the respect of the architectural community worldwide.

—Brian MacKay-Lyons, RAIC Gold Medalist, 2015 We have known Brigitte and Howard, and followed their work, for many years. This award is so well deserved.

Brigitte and Howard are simply without parallel: as individuals, parents, educators, partners in work and life, and practitioners who clearly demonstrate the art of architecture. If, as Goethe famously stated, “architecture is frozen music,” then the work of Shim and Sutcliffe would be Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The rich and considered intricacy of every detail is contained in a structure of extreme clarity.

—Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, National Medal of Arts recipients, 2013

For eight years, I sat next to Brigitte and Howard on their office mezzanine, starting as a young intern who was thrilled to be part of a studio that achieves truly remarkable buildings. Over that time, it was not just their talent and vision that I learned from, but their generosity.

As a team, they command the complementary skills needed to produce great work. As you quickly learn, great work is not just an exquisite detail or unique idea, but the ability to create a culture of excellence. Within this culture, each person—builders, engineers, clients, and those of us in the office—understood that we were working towards something bigger than the piece of the project we were responsible for. The ability to create this atmosphere and vision takes tenacity and toughness (and sometimes cajoling and gentleness), but most often, generosity.

When you are working closely with Brigitte and Howard, you are in a world where every piece of it contributes to the culture of the work. Where “come for lunch” is as important as the pattern of fasteners on sheet metal. At that lunch, you might find yourself dining with a metalsmith, a student, or sitting nervously next to a Pritzker Prize winner. Everyone was treated with the same generous spirit of inclusion and respect. Everyone’s voice contributed to the idea that we were all there to create great things. This is what I learned, and this is what I try to pass on in my own work.

—Betsy Williamson, architect I have had the great honour of working with Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe on several projects, and must acknowledge how they have factored greatly in my growth and expertise as a builder. Brigitte and Howard are the embodiment of contemporary architecture, and I have marvelled at the development of their collective ideas as we collaborated on some of the most inspired works in Canada. They recognize that the complexity of their vision requires patience, an attention to detail, and a dedication to the quality of the work. They therefore have an authentic respect for what I know is the messy part of architecture—the construction of buildings. When I reflect on the projects we have completed together, I am filled with a sense of awe and reverence for their endless creativity and dedication to the final product.

—Vic Furgiuele, builder

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Teaching + Pedagogy

Robe r t Wr ight a nd Br igit te Shim On the occasion of Brigitte Shim winning the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada’s Gold Medal 2021 with her partner, A. Howard Sutcliffe, Professor Shim reflected on her three-decadelong commitment to teaching with her Daniels Faculty colleague, Professor Robert Wright.

You have been teaching at the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto since 1988. Why is teaching so important to you?

Educating the next generation of architects is essential to fostering design excellence in Canada and helping to guide the future of our world. I see teaching as a form of design advocacy: part of permeating, contributing and being deeply invested in what really matters. The Daniels Faculty fosters an environment of tremendous reciprocity.

The Faculty is comprised of esteemed colleagues who are equally serious about their commitment to the future of the profession, and students who draw on diverse backgrounds, cultures and perspectives. Together, faculty members invest a tremendous amount of time, energy, and optimism into sharing our knowledge and experience with our undergraduate and graduate students.

How do you determine the topics of your studios?

My studios always address pressing themes, and are often taught in collaboration with other architects, landscape architects, urban planners, artists, and academics to cultivate rich, cross-disciplinary perspectives. With each new studio, I try to seek out themes that are not just exercises, but rather opportunities to explore and test issues that are fundamentally shaping the future of cities and the broader environment.

We aim to empower our students to not only discover these themes, but to develop a different reading of the city and to think about how they can shape better futures. Take for example: advancing the intensification of Toronto laneways, building for northern climates, rethinking community-based healthcare, interrogating the challenge of contested and sacred sites, and more recently, the role of places of production linking our forests to factories–to name just a few.

Can you give me an example of one of your studio projects that has impacted our city and its urbanism?

With many new citizens making Toronto their home every year, we need to find innovative ways of housing them. Right now, we have limited options. In the early 1990s, Howard Sutcliffe and I designed a small residence in a back alley in Toronto. It has been our home, but also a kind of laboratory for investigating the physical and psychological impacts of laneway housing. It provided us with a deep understanding of not only

the nitty-gritty regulatory issues, but also the amazing potential of laneways as a site of inhabitation throughout our city.

In 2003, I launched a studio exploring Toronto’s ad hoc laneways and alleys further with a group of architecture, landscape, and urban design students. Rigorous and intensive research by these students, with direction from Daniels faculty, was essential to fully understanding the morphology and typologies of these elements of existing city infrastructure. My student’s site-specific design interventions explored the potential of laneways as a new “site unseen,” realizing an incremental urbanism in Toronto.

The real impact of the studio came when we won a 2003 City of Toronto Architecture and Urban Design Award of Excellence in the Visions and Master Plans category. I realized that as an institution, the Daniels Faculty can be a positive generator of intellectual capital with the capacity to help to reshape the future of the city. With this recognition of our studio research, we were able to have an impact on the City of Toronto’s policies and bylaws enabling laneway suites to become legal across the city.

This is just one example of many initiatives at the Daniels Faculty.

My colleagues and I are continually rethinking the possibilities of urban form through our design studios, reimagining a better city that has a positive impact on the quality of life for its citizens.

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How would you encourage new students to approach experimentation and invention in the design process?

The work that my students undertake while in school must push the boundaries and rethink the possibilities of design to reshape the built environment. Through collaboration, exploration, and experimentation, there will be invention and discovery.

And finally, do you have any other advice for current students before they enter their professional life?

I believe that the perceived boundaries between the disciplines of architecture, landscape and urban design, visual art and forestry are artificial. You and I have taught several joint studios working with architecture and landscape architecture students which has resulted in exemplary projects that link site, design and placemaking. The best thing about being a student at 1 Spadina in the Daniels Faculty is that you work under one gigantic roof with engaged students in many design disciplines. Each student must take advantage of this opportunity to discover each discipline and the very interesting territories in between.

OPPOSITE Site Unseen. Laneway Architecture & Urbanism in Toronto (2003) edited by Brigitte Shim and Donald Chong.

ABOVE Covers of two Daniels Studio Series publications and studios coled by Brigitte Shim and Robert Wright, Places of Production: Forest and Factory (2021) and Building Health (2018).

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Climate, Place and Craft In November 2020, Brigitte Shim presented the work of Shim-Sutcliffe as part of the Angan Lecture Series at the School of Architecture and Design, Brac University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The online lecture was followed by responses from Kenneth Frampton and Marina Tabassum. Here are some of Kenneth Frampton’s remarks.

Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe’s work is constantly expanding in its scope, although the same constants of climate, place and craft run through their work with ever-increasing intensity.

One aspect of their work which is particularly striking is not only their respect for craft, but the way that craftsmanship is quite literally built into their practice. This is polemically driven home in the recent presentation of their work with a dramatic image of Howard Sutcliffe cutting steel with an oxy-acetylene torch!

A similar emphasis on the nature of the raw materials out of which their work is made surfaces in the specific quality and treatment of the Danish brickwork used by the architects for a project they have recently designed in Russia. The Petersen brick company made hand-moulded bricks to Shim-Sutcliffe’s design to construct the body of a large villa on the outskirts of Moscow. The interest of the architects in the expressivity of materials is very evident in these bricks—in the way they are shaped, and the way they are treated— in some cases glazed, in some cases sandblasted. This kind of penetration into the nature of a material is exceptional.

Brigitte’s lecture also referred to placemaking rather than to the design of buildings as free-standing aesthetic objects. You see this in the impressive photographs of Integral House in Toronto, with its undulating wall. The brise-soleil is, of course, syncopated in and of itself, but what is quite astonishing is the way this functions as a light filter, and the way in which the character and feeling of the space is totally transformed by the seasons. There is a point in the lecture when Brigitte cuts to an exterior shot of the Don Valley and the forest that is adjacent to the interior (see page 33). When one looks back, the house is not an object anymore. The important thing is that the house is not conceived as a free-standing object—but rather as a reflexive form in relation to both nature and the specific character of the site.

This is the placemaking impulse at its most sensitive—close to the paradoxically positive connotations that Auguste Perret gave to the term ‘banal’ at the beginning of the last century, that is to say for him, the appearance of a new work that looks as though it has always been there.

Kenneth Frampton is Ware Professor Emeritus at Columbia University’s GSAPP, where he taught from 1972 to 2020. His teaching was the subject of the 2017 exhibition Educating Architects: Four Courses by Kenneth Frampton at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, where his archive is held. In 2018, he was recognized with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale for Architecture.

A. Howard Sutcliffe cutting weathering steel for the roof of the Garden Pavilion. Photo by Shim-Sutcliffe Firefly Lamp designed and fabricated by Shim-Sutcliffe, using Pyrex scientific glass, custom base with stainless steel mesh, and organic cast resin shapes embedded with phosphorescent powder. Photo by Steven Elphick, Velocite OPPOSITE

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Our heartfelt thanks and gratitude go to Gerald Sheff, Shanitha Kachan and their Charitable Foundation for their long-standing commitment to design excellence. Without their unwavering support, this publication would not be possible.

We would also like to thank the remarkable design community at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto for their ongoing support.