IN PROGRESS DRAMATIC ARTS BUILDING, YALE UNIVERSITY
IN PROGRESS ARTS COMMONS TRANSFORMATION , CALGARY (WITH HINDLE AND TAWAW)
IN PROGRESS KINDRED WORKS PROJECTS (MULTIPLE LOCATIONS)
IN PROGRESS EQUITABLE BANK CORPORATE INTERIORS, TORONTO
IN PROGRESS 300 BLOOR STREET WEST / BLOOR STREET UNITED CHURCH, TORONTO
2024 MASSEY HALL RENOVATION AND ADDITION, PHASE 2, TORONTO
2023 SCOTIABANK NORTH FLAGSHIP OFFICES, TORONTO
2022 ALUMNAE HOUSE RENOVATION, SMITH COLLEGE, NORTHAMPTON MA
2022 DUAN FAMILY CENTER FOR COMPUTING AND DATA SCIENCES, BOSTON UNIVERSITY
2021 PARK HYATT REDEVELOPMENT, TORONTO
2021 700 UNIVERSITY AVENUE REDEVELOPMENT, TORONTO
2020 BANFF CENTRE FOR ARTS & CREATIVITY, JENNY BELZBERG THEATRE
2019 THE BREARLEY SCHOOL, 590 EAST 83RD, NEW YORK NY
2019 ST. THOMAS’S CHURCH, FEASIBILITY STUDY, TORONTO
2018 OAKVILLE CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS FEASIBILITY STUDY, OAKVILLE (WITH SAVIRA)
2017 LLOYD HALL RENOVATION, BANFF CENTRE FOR ARTS AND CREATIVITY, BANFF, AB
2017 20 VICTORIA STREET, OPTION STUDY, TORONTO
2017 MASSEY HALL RENOVATION, PHASE 1, TORONTO
2017 KELLOGG SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, EVANSTON, ILLINOIS
2017 ADAMS CENTER FOR MUSICAL ARTS, YALE UNIVERSITY (CD THROUGH TO POST-OCCUPANCY)
2017 GLOBE AND MAIL OFFICE INTERIORS, TORONTO
2016 THORNWOOD HOUSE, TORONTO
2016 THE BANFF CENTRE CAMPUS MASTER PLAN, BANFF, ALBERTA (WITH STANTEC ARCHITECTURE)
2015 TORYS LLP, MONTREAL AND HALIFAX OFFICES
2015 ST. MICHAEL’S CATHEDRAL BLOCK MASTER PLAN, TORONTO
2013 ORCHESTRA HALL RENOVATION AND EXPANSION, MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA, MINNEAPOLIS
2013 ROY THOMSON HALL, WINE BAR, TORONTO
2013 CONRAD HOTEL, LOBBY INTERIOR/CUSTOM FURNITURE/ STANDARD ROOM DESIGN, NEW YORK
2012 M USIC AND THEATER ARTS PROJECT, WALKER MEMORIAL HALL, MIT, DESIGN, CAMBRIDGE, MA
2012 ROTMAN SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT EXPANSION, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
2012 MIKE AND OPHELIA LAZARIDIS QUANTUM-NANO CENTRE, UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
2012 TORYS LLP OFFICES, CALGARY
2009 KOERNER HALL, ROYAL CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC, TORONTO
2009 LE QUARTIER PHASE 2, CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL (IN JOINT VENTURE WITH FICHTEN SOIFERMAN ET ASSOCIÉS ARCHITECTES)
2008 ROYAL CONSERVATORY, TELUS CENTRE FOR PERFORMANCE AND LEARNING, TORONTO
2008 TORYS LLP OFFICES, TORONTO
2008 CTV EXECUTIVE OFFICES, TORONTO
2008 RYERSON UNIVERSITY MASTER PLAN, TORONTO (IN JOINT VENTURE WITH DAOUST LESTAGE INC. AND IN ASSOCIATION WITH GREENBERG CONSULTANTS INC. AND IBI GROUP)
2007 FACULTY OF LAW DEVELOPMENT STUDY, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
2005 WOODBRIDGE OFFICE, TORONTO
2005 LE QUARTIER PHASE 1, CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL (IN JOINT VENTURE WITH FICHTEN SOIFERMAN ET ASSOCIÉS ARCHITECTES)
2003 M CGILL UNIVERSITY AND GENOME QUEBEC INNOVATION CENTRE, MONTREAL (IN JOINT VENTURE WITH FICHTEN SOIFERMAN ET ASSOCIÉS ARCHITECTES)
2003 ST. ANDREW’S COLLEGE, AURORA
2002 CENTRAL PARK LODGES, HAMILTON, BURLINGTON, RICHMOND HILL, ONTARIO
1994 ROYAL CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC, HISTORIC ROOF RESTORATION, TORONTO
1993 KITCHENER CITY HALL, KITCHENER, ONTARIO
1992 CANADIAN IMPERIAL BANK OF COMMERCE, PICKERING, ONTARIO
1991 ROYAL CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC, MASTER PLAN, TORONTO
1991 WESTNOR LIMITED, SITE CONCEPT PLAN, NORTH YORK, ONTARIO
1991 LEE CORPORATE CENTRE, SCARBOROUGH, ONTARIO
1990 347 BAY STREET, TORONTO
1990 THE MARKHAM PROJECT, MARKHAM, ONTARIO
1989 YORK UNIVERSITY LINK BUILDING, NORTH YORK, ONTARIO
1989 DOVESTAR ST. JOSEPH, ST. NICHOLAS STREET PROJECTS, TORONTO
1989 284 KING STREET EAST, GRAPHIC DESIGN STUDIOS FOR TUDHOPE ASSOCIATES, TORONTO
1989 YORK UNIVERSITY CENTRE FOR FINE ARTS 3 (IN ASSOCIATION WITH BMA), NORTH YORK
1988 35 EAST WACKER DRIVE, RENOVATIONS AND 24TH FLOOR EXPANSION, CHICAGO
1987 130 BLOOR STREET WEST; RENOVATION AND ROOF DECK, TORONTO
1981 ROYAL CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC, TORONTO (BMA), FEASIBILITY/DEVELOPMENT OPTIONS
1981 CANADIAN CENTRE FOR ARCHITECTURE, MONTREAL (BMA), PLANNING/PROGRAMMING STUDY
SHIRLEY BLUMBERG
IN PROGRESS TYNDALE GREEN AFFORDABLE HOUSING, NORTH YORK
IN PROGRESS MONTREAL HOLOCAUST MUSEUM (WITH DAOUST LESTAGE LIZOTTE STECKER)
2024 UN IVERSITY OF TORONTO, LANDSCAPE OF LANDMARK QUALITY (WITH MICHAEL VAN VALKENBERG ASSOCIATES)
2020 DOWNSVIEW FRAMEWORK PLAN (WITH HENNING LARSEN, SLA ARCHITECTS, AND URBAN STRATEGIES)
2022 B EAVERBROOK ART GALLERY, PHASE 3 EXPANSION (HARRISON MCCAIN PAVILION), FREDERICTON, NB
2022 WATER RECLAMATION CENTRE, YORK REGION, ONTARIO (WITH GHD)
2021 DOMINION FOUNDRY DEMONSTRATION PROJECT, TORONTO, ON DEMONSTRATION CONCEPT
2020 A RESILIENT DUPLEX FOR FORT SEVERN FIRST NATION, FORT SEVERN, ON
2020 L AWRENCE HEIGHTS, BLOCKS 1B REVITALIZATION, TORONTO (IN ASSOCIATION WITH PAGE + STEELE / IBI GROUP ARCHITECTS)
2020 NYC OFFICE HEADQUARTERS, HUDSON YARDS, NEW YORK
2019 ROBERTSON HALL RENOVATIONS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, PRINCETON, NJ
2019 THE WYATT, BLOCK 26, REGENT PARK REDEVELOPMENT, TORONTO, ONTARIO
2018 L AWRENCE HEIGHTS, BLOCKS 1A REVITALIZATION, TORONTO (IN ASSOCIATION WITH PAGE + STEELE / IBI GROUP ARCHITECTS)
2018 RONALD O. PERELMAN CENTER FOR POLITICAL SCIENCE AND ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
2017 R EMAI MODERN ART GALLERY OF SASKATCHEWAN, SASKATOON (IN JOINT VENTURE WITH ARCHITECTURE 49)
2017 GLOBAL CENTRE FOR PLURALISM, OTTAWA, ONTARIO
2017 J ULIS ROMO RABINOWITZ BUILDING AND LOUIS A. SIMPSON INTERNATIONAL BUILDING, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, NEW JERSEY
2017 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY CAMPUS FRAMEWORK PLAN, PRINCETON NJ (WITH URBAN STRATEGIES AND MICHAEL VAN VALKENBERG ASSOCIATES)
2016 PHASE 1 MASTER PLAN: JACK LAYTON FERRY TERMINAL, TORONTO (WITH WEST 8 AND GREENBERG ASSOCIATES)
2016 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, INFRASTRUCTURE MASTER PLAN /ENERGY EFFICIENT BUILDING STUDY, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY (WITH TRANSSOLAR KLIMAENGINEERING AND BEHNISCH ARCHITEKTEN)
2015 P ONDEROSA COMMONS PHASE II, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, VANCOUVER (IN JOINT VENTURE WITH HUGHES CONDON MARLER ARCHITECTS)
2015 ROBERT H. LEE ALUMNI CENTRE, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, VANCOUVER (IN JOINT VENTURE WITH HUGHES CONDON MARLER ARCHITECTS)
2014 FORT YORK LIBRARY, TORONTO
2013 LIBRARY DISTRICT CONDOMINIUMS, TORONTO (IN ASSOCIATION WITH PAGE + STEELE / IBI GROUP ARCHITECTS)
2013 P ONDEROSA COMMONS PHASE I, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, VANCOUVER (IN JOINT VENTURE WITH HUGHES CONDON MARLER ARCHITECTS)
2013 ELEMENTARY TEACHERS’ FEDERATION OF ONTARIO, TORONTO
2012 B LOCK 32, TORONTO COMMUNITY HOUSING CORPORATION (IN ASSOCIATION WITH PAGE + STEELE / IBI GROUP ARCHITECTS)
2011 CIGI CAMPUS, CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE INNOVATION, WATERLOO, ON
2010 TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, TORONTO
2010 CANTEEN CAFÉ AND LUMA RESTAURANT, TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, TORONTO
2010 MAPLE LEAF SQUARE, TORONTO
2010 ONE BEDFORD RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT, TORONTO
2009 BLOCK 24 E, RAILWAY LANDS WEST, NEO AND MONTAGE RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS, CONCORD
ADEX /CITYPLACE, TORONTO
2008 SUGARCUBE, MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT, DENVER, CO
2008 JAPANESE CANADIAN CULTURAL CENTRE (PHASED IMPLEMENTATION), DON MILLS, ON
2006 RAILWAY LANDS WEST MASTER PLAN, CONCORD ADEX CITY PLACE, TORONTO
2006 GARDINER MUSEUM RENEWAL, TORONTO
2005 C ANADA’S NATIONAL BALLET SCHOOL, PROJECT GRAND JETÉ STAGE 1: JARVIS STREET CAMPUS, TORONTO (IN JOINT VENTURE WITH GOLDSMITH BORGAL & COMPANY LTD. ARCHITECTS), TORONTO
2004 UN IVERSITY OF TORONTO AT SCARBOROUGH, MANAGEMENT BUILDING (UTSC) SCARBOROUGH, ON
2004 CENTENNIAL HP SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CENTRE, SCARBOROUGH, ON
2003 JAMES STEWART CENTRE FOR MATHEMATICS, MCMASTER UNIVERSITY, HAMILTON, ON
1999 500 QUEENS QUAY WEST CONDOMINIUMS, TORONTO
1999 TORONTO CITY HALL, RENOVATIONS AND ADDITIONS, TORONTO
1998 ALIAS|WAVEFRONT OFFICES, TORONTO
1998 CRABTREE & EVELYN, NEW STORE DESIGN, REGENCY MALL, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
1997 DISNEY TELEVISION ANIMATION STUDIOS, TORONTO
1997 AMMIRATI PURIS LINTAS, ADVERTISING OFFICES, NEW YORK
1996 ALLIANCE COMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION HEADQUARTERS, TORONTO
1994 THE DESIGN EXCHANGE, TORONTO
1994 HASBRO INC. HEADQUARTERS PHASE 3, PAWTUCKET, RHODE ISLAND
1992 HASBRO INC. HEADQUARTERS PHASE 2, PAWTUCKET, RHODE ISLAND
1991 KING JAMES PLACE FOR EQUIFUND CORPORATION, TORONTO
1986 HASBRO INC. HEADQUARTERS PHASE 1, PAWTUCKET, RHODE ISLAND (BMA)
2025 RAIC GOLD MEDAL
06 CHARTING THE COURSE
Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg’s legacy in Canadian architecture. TEXT Beth Kapusta
13 ETHICS IN ACTION
Shirley Blumberg reflects on how her South African roots led to a lifetime of social justice advocacy through architecture. INTERVIEW BY Elsa Lam
21 COMMUNITY CHAMPION
Marianne McKenna discusses the challenges and opportunities of creating community—both in her buildings and in the practice she co-leads. INTERVIEW BY Elsa Lam
29 FIERCE, PASSIONATE, VISIONARY
Colleagues and friends reflect on Marianne and Shirley’s contributions.
04 VIEWPOINT
Bruce Kuwabara pays tribute to his partners.
34 BACKPAGE
Paulo Rocha on learning from founding partners Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg,
COVER Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg at KPMB’s Toronto office.
Photo by Nina Boccia
SHIRLEY BLUMBERG and MARIANNE MCKENNA are visionary architects whose work showcases design sensitivity, technical excellence, and foresight in sustainability, reflecting a deep understanding of spaces. Their architectural contributions are both beautiful and meaningful, impacting Canadian and international landscapes. Through platforms like BEAT, they promote equity, diversity, and inclusion and have paved the way for women and other practitioners from diverse backgrounds.
Blumberg and McKenna are consistently generous in sharing what they’ve learned with students through their academic work, and through professional mentoring of emerging architects and other colleagues in smaller specialty, or otherwise diverse, firms. Innovating business structures, their leadership and dedication continue to shape the profession, challenging the status quo and broadening perspectives, establishing a legacy in education, practice, and social reform.
— RAIC Gold Medal Jury: Peter Braithwaite (MRAIC), Jamie Fobert, Eric Gauthier, Carol Phillips (FRAIC), and KaaSheGaaBaaWeak | Eladia Smoke (FRAIC)
CHARTING THE COURSE
MARIANNE MCKENNA AND SHIRLEY BLUMBERG—THE ‘M’ AND ‘B’ OF KPMB—HAVE BEEN INSTRUMENTAL IN SHAPING ONE OF CANADA’S MOST INFLUENTIAL AND ADMIRED DESIGN PRACTICES.
Shirley Blumberg, Bruce Kuwabara, Thomas Payne, and Marianne McKenna at Woodsworth College in 1993, following the completion of the addition of new facilities and a courtyard to the University of Toronto institution. ABOVE The KPMB founding partners in 2001.
KPMB is one of Toronto and Canada’s leading design practices, a firm of influence and action. The four founding partners Bruce Kuwabara, Thomas Payne, Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg were senior associates in the studio of Barton Myers Associates. In 1984, Myers opened an office in Los Angeles, and in 1987 relocated his practice there to focus on American projects. Remaining in Toronto, the new KPMB partners became the joint venture associates to finish the work begun by Myers on the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Phase 3 expansion, which opened in 1993.
Barton Myers had been a forceful personality and a strong influence during his relatively short interlude as a Canadian architect. After immigrating from the U.S., he first partnered with Jack Diamond from 1968 to 1975, and was known for a strong sense of urban context and activism. These themes endured in KPMB, which from the beginning upheld the importance of cities, often through creative adaptive reuse projects. What set the new firm apart was a finesse in detail and a flair for design innovation. These qualities informed their winning submission in a national design competition for Kitchener City Hall their first major commission independent of Myers.
Myers’ signature love for overarching roofs with villages of program below and preference for high-tech architectural expression (what Shirley Blumberg calls “Kahnian planning with Eamesian expression”) were soon supplanted by KPMB’s more situational, materially refined design approach. KPMB would quickly develop a reputation for quality with carefully detailed, elegant materials (wood, steel, glass), highly articulated and often sculptural stairs, and strategic transparency to support signature social spaces. These“city rooms”
were at the heart of many of their projects, focusing the spirit of a project and its highest purpose in the city in a single space.
KPMB’s ascendency as an important design practice in the late 1980s and early 1990s is interesting firstly for its timing: the recession of that period devastated architectural practices across the country. However, early on, KPMB’s win of the Kitchener City Hall competition would allow them to survive and expand against the prevailing economic cycle. The firm was also quick to establish their design credentials by a steady accrual of competition wins and awards that laid the groundwork for a natural expansion into the university and corporate sectors, providing further resiliency.
The firm started out with around 16 people, including the four partners. While with Barton, Shirley had led the firm’s work for Hasbro headquarters; her strong credibility with the client brought its second phase to KPMB. Shortly thereafter, a KPMB team led by Shirley won a competition for the Design Exchange, and after that, the firm clinched a number of “cultural renaissance” projects initiated in Toronto and supported by generous government funding: Canada’s National Ballet School (2005), the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art (2006), and the Royal Conservatory of Music (2008).
Each partner would carve a personalized trajectory based on their connections, talents and affinities. Bruce Kuwabara, a third-generation Japanese Canadian from Hamilton, was a gifted all-rounder with exceptional design skills who quickly insinuated himself into Toronto’s cultural scene. Thomas Payne, hailing from Chatham, Ontario, and a partner until launching his own practice in 2013, brought East Coast academic connections that would translate into a series of notable educational pro-
MICHAEL RAFELSON
OPPOSITE
TEXT Beth Kapusta
building behind them. Instead, it introduced a hybrid of respect for the old and a strong sense of the new a sophisticated vision of architecture as an extension of brand identity. New stucco panels layered upon the old building and then unified by colour made this project perfect for a highly visual client conscious of brand image, as well as of the importance of design to attract both clients and creatives.
McKenna’s cultural interests aligned well with the “cultural renaissance” projects that were being funded in Toronto in the wake of the recession of the early 1990s. Her design tenacity and unrelenting drive for excellence is perhaps best exemplified in the Royal Conservatory of Music arguably one of Toronto’s best loved cultural venues. This project would span nearly a decade, and culminate in the addition of two great city rooms to KPMB’s growing list: the delicate strategic renovation of the Conservatory’s Mazzoleni Concert Hall, and the architectural and acoustical virtuosity of the 1,135-seat Michael and Sonja Koerner Hall, beloved by musicians and music lovers alike. For her dedication to the project, Marianne was named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Conservatory.
She would also steer the design of Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis (2013), a project that has proved a catalyst for local downtown revitalization and the dramatic expansion of the orchestra’s audience. Then in 2015, McKenna was approached to “improve everything, change nothing” at one of Canada’s most storied, revered and possibly most neglected performance venues: Toronto’s Massey Hall, originally constructed in 1895. The meticulous renovation of the original performance hall would also see a seven-storey addition of two new venues and suspended exterior walkways that tie them together.
McKenna’s leadership has extended to notable educational projects in the U.S. and Canada, including Concordia University’s competition-winning integrated vertical campus in Montreal (in joint venture with Fichten Soiferman et associés architectes, 2009), the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (2017), and the restoration and expansion of the Jenny Belzberg Theatre at the Banff Centre For Arts and Creativity (2020).
Several of KPMB’s best known educational projects showcase Marianne’s specialization in restoring urban fabric and her place-branding abilities. This includes The Brearley School in New York, a vertical campus housing a private day school containing academics, performance and science. The School’s generous central space evokes Rome’s Spanish Steps: it’s a natural hybrid of the enigmatic stair and the city room of the KPMB signature.
Most recently, McKenna leads Kindred Works, a national multi-residential program with the goal of building beautiful, sustainable and attainable rental housing, incorporating carbon-reduction features like mass timber, geothermal heating and cooling, and passive solar strategies.
McKenna’s role as a board member for the province of Ontario’s transit agency is a prime example of her powers of architectural persuasion at the scale of the city. Working in a time in which multi-billion-dollar transit investments included UP Express and the Eglinton Crosstown, but had little design ambition, Marianne galvanized the board of directors to create a small but powerful design excellence team. This team which I headed as its founding Chief Design Excellence Officer was charged with elevating the level of design and architecture on the customer-facing parts of transit, by focusing
the brand and changing underlying determinants of quality, like procurement. The end result saw an unprecedented leap in the quality of design during Marianne’s six-year tenure.
McKenna serves on the advisory board of the McEwen School of Architecture in Sudbury, where she received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 2017. In 2019, she was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women by the Financial Post and one of Azure’s 30 outstanding women in architecture and design. In 2021, she was named one of Toronto Life’s 50 Most Influential Torontonians, and became the first woman to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Design Futures Council. She continues to lead and provide mentorship on significant projects like Equitable Bank in Toronto, the competition-winning Arts Common Transformation in Calgary, and, coming full circle, her alma mater Yale’s Dramatic Arts Building.
B: Social Justice Leadership
Shirley Blumberg grew up in the apartheid-era culture and politics of Cape Town, having been a youth activist for racial equality. She briefly moved to London, where she married her British boyfriend. At 21, she came to Canada out of a desire to live in a place that was not culturally divided, attracted to what she called “the relatively European culture and diversity of Toronto.”
When she began her architectural degree in South Africa, Shirley’s education had been devoid of professional female role models. She finished her education at the University of Toronto, under the directorship of Peter Pragnell, in an educational milieu little more gender-balanced than the one she had left behind. She was one of five female graduates, and throughout her architectural education there were no female profes-
sors, and only one female guest critic. George Baird proved an influential thesis advisor Shirley’s thesis involved redesigning the Union Station train shed, establishing a lifelong interest in architecture’s capacity to shape public space. Marshall McLuhan acted as a thesis reviewer his insights into the differences in the Canadian sense of private and public space had a lasting impact on Blumberg’s thinking.
Blumberg saw gender and social justice advocacy as lifelong callings, and this coloured her career as an architect and an influential member of the profession. Social justice causes she has championed range from affordable housing to advocating for the preservation of threatened buildings and sites.
Seeing echoes of the apartheid system she had left behind reflected in residential schools and in the wake of the suicide crisis in Attawapiskat First Nation which identified housing and overcrowding as a contributory factor Blumberg joined forces with Two Row Architect to led an Indigenous housing prototype for Fort Severn, the northernmost Indigenous community in Ontario. The team was part of a National Research Council initiative called Path to Healthy Homes that produced a best-practice manual for architects and engineers working with Indigenous communities; KPMB and Two Row focused on a simple, stick-frame duplex designed to foster close extended family structures and to be easily constructible with local building techniques.
In 2014, on the eve of her investment as a Member of the Order of Canada, Blumberg felt compelled to pull together women in the architecture profession for a proactive, networked approach to addressing gender challenges in the architectural profession. While the graduation rate from professional schools had been well over 50% female for several years, the number of female architects was around 23%, with fewer still
partners in architectural firms. With a strong cohort of like-minded colleagues, BEAT (Building Equality in Architecture Toronto) was born as a grassroots initiative to promote equality for women in the profession. It focused on activities like organizing industry talks, social events and female-led site visits, supporting symposia at schools, and promoting mentorship and role model opportunities for women in the profession to connect. Today, there are chapters across Canada, and Blumberg continues to sit on the Advisory Board.
Blumberg recently rallied a pro bono effort to defend a significant heritage project threatened with destruction, the Toronto Dominion Foundry complex. Blumberg championed a better idea by donating time and proactive ideas to demonstrate how leading with good design could avert the wholesale destruction of the irreplaceable buildings, and advocacy efforts were able to divert demolition.
OPPOSITE TOP Greencedar Commons in Toronto’s Woburn neighbourhood is one of many rental residential projects by Kindred Works, the world’s first comprehensive portfolio converting under-utilized properties into an ecosystem of homes across Canada that are attainable and climateresponsive. The portfolio is stewarded by Marianne McKenna. OPPOSITE
BOTTOM Marianne McKenna delivers a keynote address after receiving an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College. ABOVE After Toronto’s Dominion Foundry was threatened with demolition, Shirley Blumberg was part of a team that put together a design concept for retaining the buildings while adding affordable and market housing to the site.
Ottawa is a city where Blumberg’s activism and architecture are showcased, both involving sensitive sites close to the parliamentary precinct. The conversion of the former Canadian War Museum on Sussex Drive to the Global Centre for Pluralism an institution dedicated to advancing respect for diversity worldwide involved rehabilitating and stabilizing the historical building and carefully revealing the original structure within, with a trademark KPMB “city room” breaking the back wall to establish a link to the Ottawa River.
After being invited to be a jury member of a competition for a memorial to the victims of communism in Ottawa, Blumberg resigned from the jury and publicly challenged the politically motivated siting of the monument part of the Harper government’s ploy to win votes from Polish and Russian voters from western Canada. An influential piece in the New York Times and a legal injunction ensued, leading to the project’s suspension just before the 2015 federal election.
For one of the rare Canadian international competitions of the last decade, Blumberg convened a team for the Holocaust Museum competition in Montreal including renowned Holocaust scholar Robert-Jan van Pelt, urban culture expert Sherry Simon, and joint venture architects Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker. Their architectural approach would avoid a literal paradigm of replicating aspects of Auschwitz to instead create a gentle, serene place of rooted materials and choreographed light an austere transparent ground plane with a solid stone building poised above, quietly defying gravity. Shirley considers the project one of the highlights of the later part of her career.
In the family tree of Canadian architecture, KPMB’s dominant design genes carry through into architectural firms its alumni have established. This includes a who’s who of Toronto-based influential female-partnerled firms Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, Dubbeldam Architecture + Design, Superkül, Gow Hastings Architects, Jill Greaves Design, StudioAC, Akb Architects, Studio VAARO, Deborah Wang as well as notable Canadian-based firms such as TaylorSmyth Architects, Omar Gandhi Architects, Anthony Provenzano Architects, Drew Mandel Architects, MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, AXIA Design, and accomplished architecture-adjacents like furniture designer Andrew Jones, visual content expert Norm Li, and designer/artist Michael Awad. Bruce Kuwabara, Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg are all recipients of the Order of Canada.
In 2021, the firm announced an expansion of its leadership team, many of them with multiple decades of experience at KPMB. Kuwabara, McKenna and Blumberg remain active as founding partners. The 143-person studio remains located in Toronto, having expanded to include seven new partners.
ABOVE LEFT Ottawa’s Global Centre for Pluralism opened up the former War Museum to connect the city to the Ottawa River. ABOVE RIGHT Led by Shirley Blumberg, the Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building and the Louis A. Simpson International Building saw Princeton University’s former Frick Chemistry Laboratories fully renovated with strategic new additions.
Coda
ADRIEN WILLIAMS
ADRIEN WILLIAMS
My dad used to make these trains out of tin cans he drew and he was always really good with his hands. And he had a workshop at the lower level, off the garage. That was my happy place to hang out in the workshop with my dad.
Growing up in South Africa had an indelible impact because of apartheid. It was very personal for me. Dora who I call my African mother came to work for my family when she was 22 and I was two. And her daughter, Wilma, was the same age as me. They lived in a little flat at the garden level. And so Wilma and I grew up playing together as kids. And I would go to my white school, she would go to her coloured school. And she came first in class, and I came first in class, and every afternoon we played together. And then Wilma started failing when we got to adolescence. And I thought, what happened there? I saw her hanging around with an older guy on the corner, and Dora sent her back to the country town they were from. She was really very smart, and she became a teacher, which is the highest thing you could do at that time within the apartheid system as a Black person. And that was so shocking to me.
I did my first year at the University of Cape Town and was very active. It was a liberal university, and we were very involved in demonstrations and marches, and running away from Afrikaners wielding cricket bats, stuff like that. There were spies at the university. You couldn’t talk freely. There was censorship you could hear the clicking on the phones. It was very much an unjust government and a controlling state. It was very serious business to oppose the party: people were getting killed, having their arms blown off, et cetera. All the student leaders got what they call “banned,” had their passports taken away, and they were under house arrest.
That’s why I do the social justice projects and why I do the advocacy, because I think you can’t be complacent as a citizen. In South Africa, you could not be on the fence. It was so polarizing, but it also made you feel alive, too. Your life had a real sense of purpose. And Canada’s facing that, now, because things were always absolutely fine here, but it’s not anymore.
EL: Tell me about coming to Canada.
SB: We left South Africa to go to England, and it was the oil crisis. People were working four-day weeks by candlelight in London. We were there for a year, and then we emigrated to Canada. It was 1973: you had Expo 67, you had Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada looked like Nirvana. I absolutely did not want to go to the U.S. because I knew about the South and their racist laws.
EL: How did you decide that you wanted to be an architect?
SB: My sister encouraged me, because I really loved drawing and I loved reading. I loved English, history, math, science, geography, everything I was one of those. And she said, it’s perfect. I knew nothing about it, but I loved it. At university, there were very few women in the class, no female professors, even here at U of T. I never dreamt it was possible to have this life.
EL: There were also not many female practitioners at that time.
SB: There were only about five women in my class when I graduated. And then Barton Myers was great, because it was like the youth invest-
KPMB ARCHIVES
ment program. Barton is such a great architect, and he would spend a lot of time mentoring us, and he threw us into the deep end. It was a small office, and we did everything. So we were very fortunate that way we learned so much. And then it was like the coach leaving the team. He went to L.A. and he tried to convince some of the associates to go with him, and none of us wanted to go. At that time, we were playing in an architectural baseball league. We called ourselves the L.A. Dodgers. He was not amused. So one day, it was Barton Myers Associates. The next day it was Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, and we started with 16 people. It was kind of amazing.
EL: Tell me about the structure of the firm and how that’s evolved.
SB: We looked and tried to find some kind of model. We were coming from the Barton model the white male practitioner, very high at the top and very hierarchical. And there was the model of the husbandand-wife practice, of course, but we weren’t that. We truly believed we were better together than as individuals, and we wanted to work in a collaborative way. And we were very proud of being Canadian, and we wanted to stay in Toronto and do great architecture from here. The previous generation was not as collegial as we thought was appropriate, so we wanted to change that as well. And we wanted to raise the culture of architecture in Toronto, and across Canada, if we could. Canada, when I came in the seventies, it was so aspirational. In the early eighties we felt that there was a lot that was really positive about the country, about how diverse it was.
In the beginning, I worked quite a lot with Bruce. But the wonderful thing about architecture it is a very long apprenticeship, but eventually
you find your own voice. There’s enough elasticity in our firm for each of us to flourish. While Marianne and I have different focuses, the three of us absolutely share the same values.
We were very clear: no bread-and-butter work. Every project counts. Every seven years, we would say what we wanted to achieve in the next seven years. We said we wanted to do institutional work, academic work. We wanted to work in the States. And it worked.
We also realized very early on, we’re not for everybody, so we stopped competing with firms who would lower their fees, or do work that was just not great quality. We tried to position ourselves in the world of architecture at a certain level. And if you think of that, you go there.
As partners, we are a bit like siblings, but we’re very complimentary to each other. We all have different skills and talents, but we’re all very much focused in the same direction, which doesn’t mean we don’t disagree. I think one of the reasons we’ve been partners for so long is we are perfectly comfortable arguing with each other, but then we always
OPPOSITE A photo of Barton Myers’ office from 1978, including Shirley Blumberg, seated at left. ABOVE CENTRE Led by Shirley Blumberg and Bruce Kuwabara, King James Place in Toronto is an early adaptive reuse project that won the firm a 1992 Governor General’s Award of Merit in Architecture. ABOVE RIGHT Shirley Blumberg leads an engagement session with stakeholders from Princeton University.
work. We’re too busy, right? I just hope it stays that kind of grassroots volunteer group, being relevant to the issues we’re facing.
EL: You’ve also done research on building for Indigenous communities in the North.
SB: Canada seemed like the anti-South Africa, until I learned about the Indigenous situation. And that was shocking to me the first time the conditions of living in the North hit the newspapers. Just before that, I had learned that after the Second World War, when the Afrikaner government set up the apartheid system, they came to Canada: a model was the Indian reservation system in Canada. Doesn’t that chill the blood? That really got my attention.
I started reading up and I was just appalled that this could happen in a country like Canada. So I reached out to [Indigenous architect] Brian Porter, and I said, as a leading practice, KPMB needs to try and do something to improve the situation with the skills that we have. Brian was very open to doing research together. I said to my lovely partners, Marianne and Bruce, I’m doing this research, and of course it’s pro bono. This was way before the overwhelming interest in the Canadian North.
I also got Transsolar involved, because the technical conditions of the North are so challenging, and Alex Lukachko from RDH for building envelope, Dave Bowick for structure. And I was even speaking to Morten Schmidt from shl about Greenland. That research went on for about three years. And then this opportunity came up: the NRC [National Research Council] asked David Fortin to organize Indigen-
ous architects to design housing for different regions. Brian and I saw that as an opportunity to do something with our research.
We were assigned Fort Severn, which is the northernmost community in Ontario. The chief, Paul Burke, said they needed a duplex unit, which consisted of a family unit and a single unit, which could be for an elder or a couple‚ or a single man. So that’s what we designed.
The community had skills for light wood trade, and they have large stands of tamarack. So the idea was they would use the local materials and try and set up a way to manufacture this.
The houses are where the people have parties, they’re social centres. Quite often people will sleep over if it’s late into the night. There’s a loft that would be flexible and the kids could play there, you could work, have additional bedrooms if you need.
OPPOSITE Two Row Architect and KPMB, with Shirley Blumberg’s leadership, partnered with Fort Severn First Nation—Ontario’s northernmost community—to design a concept for durable, sustainable, and culturally appropriate housing as part of the National Research Council of Canada’s “Path to Healthy Homes” program. ABOVE LEFT Ponderosa Commons, a project completed with hcma architecture + design, was the first in a series of high-density, mixed-use hubs at the University of British Columbia. ABOVE RIGHT Led by Shirley Blumberg, 150 Dan Leckie Way was planned and designed to fill a need for family-centred affordable rental housing in the rapidly developing Railway Lands West precinct of Toronto.
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an absolute pittance. There was no money. Actually pulling that off was great working almost like a master builder with the construction manager. We met with every trade to figure out how we could design to afford this. And that was a revelation. At the time, academic was $400 per square foot, and housing was $250 [per square foot]. Our budget for phase one was $210 [per square foot] and phase two was $185 [per square foot]. We had the art school in phase one, and half the education department in phase two, and we did it. So that was very interesting. That was like a “Horton Hears a Who” moment for me, just working with contractors. Why wouldn’t you? And then you learn from them. You want to do precast? Do three stories high; repeat, repeat, repeat. You want to use wood? Don’t sand the wood, just do roughsawn. That saves a little bit. So all of that, we did.
The Fort York Public Library was another one. The librarians were amazing. That was during the time of [then Toronto Mayor] Rob Ford. Remember when the Ford brothers said there are more libraries than Tim Horton’s in Toronto, and that’s a bad thing? That was only $5 million. We knew we couldn’t go above, because otherwise it would be cancelled by the mayor. I actually love that with very few resources, to be able to do stuff that has such an impact.
At Beaverbrook, the chair of the board rang me up and said, do we want to do this tiny little project, and there really is no budget? Are you interested? I said, yes, absolutely. I knew the Beaverbrook because I’d been there quite a while before, and I was blown away by their collection. And Fredericton is remarkable because it is the provincial capital, and they have such a rich heritage of civic and residential
buildings that are pretty well untouched. So I based it very much on that, and also the curve of the road and the river. They loved the idea, and we built it. It’s amazing. It’s really created a wonderful social hub in the city and the social centre. It was published in South America, North America, the U.K . and Europe, including in Domus which thrilled me because all my architectural life, Domus is so extraordinary this tiny project.
I asked a young guy from the Architects’ Newspaper, why is there so much interest in the States in this? And he said, we have nothing like this, and we need it: this kind of small space, you don’t have to pay, it’s open to the public for the good of the community.
One of my favourite quotes is from Thoreau: “to affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts.” Isn’t that beautiful?
OPPOSITE The Lawrence Heights multi-unit, mixed market and social housing residential development, designed by Shirley Blumberg, comprises two large mixed-use sites that are located on either side of the Allen Expressway and the University subway line at Yorkdale Station in Toronto. The pair of medium-rise developments is sited strategically to form a distinctive gateway to the renewed neighbourhood.
ABOVE The Harrison McCain Pavilion is a small addition that completes the expansion of Fredericton’s Beaverbrook Art Gallery. The pavilion is a multi-functional space—open to all, free of charge—accommodating art exhibitions, gallery and community events, a café and fireplace seating area, reception/ticketing, and a shop.
EL: It is.
SB: The other big shift for us is the climate crisis. We started KPMB Lab quite a while ago. When our Lab director Geoff Turnbull left, and I bumped into Alex Lukachko, he became our new Lab director. He wanted to coach architects how to up their game, to make every project count in terms of mitigating the climate emergency. We’ve really focused, and the Lab is embedded in all our projects we take this very seriously. We do a lot of research with other firms, and agencies, and universities and so on. But it’s not an academic thing everything’s actionable in our work. We’re trying to persuade all our clients to optimize or to minimize carbon.
EL: Would you like to say a few words about the Montreal Holocaust Museum?
SB: The Montreal Holocaust Museum is the most personal of my projects, because it’s my history. We won the international competition working with Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker. The wonderful thing was you don’t just sit down and start sketching a Holocaust museum. It was 77 years after the end of World War II. Most Holocaust museums try to replicate Auschwitz, but how can you possibly represent the Holocaust? It was just so overwhelming and so horrific.
What do you do now? Because now we’re, again, in a time of great uncertainty. I called up almost immediately [Holocaust expert and architectural historian] Robert Jan van Pelt, and he said, “you do know, Shirley, that you cannot represent the Holocaust in architecture?” And I said, “I’m so glad you said that, because I think that’s absolutely hubris to imagine that you ever could.”
And so it’s a totally new paradigm. The content, all the really horrific stories, all of that is in the exhibitions. The building is very much rooted in Montreal in the morphology, the structure of the city with
light shafts that mark the lot lines and local materials: Quebec stone, white oak from Quebec. The building offers respite as you move through. And as you circulate through the public spaces, you see the seasons changing, and have access to natural light. That’s been very exciting and an incredible experience for me. I’ve always wanted to do a spiritual project. It’s the closest I’ve come to that.
EL: Do you have any final thoughts?
SB: I think it’s an extraordinary time for architects. We have never been as relevant. We can actually be truly instrumental with climate change, resource depletion, equity. So I think it’s a very exciting time for architecture in a very bleak moment. It becomes more important than ever. Gone is deconstructivism, gone is postmodernism imagine, things have meaning! And that’s in the end what you’re looking for, right? Meaning in your work and in architecture.
The question always is, in the end: what can architects do for society? Each generation of architects should respond to their times that’s what we do. We work in a synthetic way using design thinking taking two opposing ideas and reconciling them so it becomes a third thing. It’s a pretty interesting way of working, and we need that.
In architecture it takes forever to find your own voice. It’s such a long apprenticeship. That’s why they say it’s an old person’s profession. Architecture keeps you humble if you’re doing it properly, I think because it’s always challenging.
ABOVE KPMB Architects, led by Shirley Blumberg, and Daoust Lestage Lizotte Stecker Architecture won the international design competition for a new building for the Montreal Holocaust Museum.
MARIANNE MCKENNA
“WHAT I’M INTO,” SAYS MARIANNE MCKENNA, “IS ARCHITECTURE AS A GAME-CHANGER FOR THE INSTITUTION YOU’RE BUILDING FOR.” HER COMMUNITY-CENTRED WORK HAS CREATED POSITIVE, LASTING CHANGE FOR CLIENTS IN TORONTO, MONTREAL, NEW YORK CITY, AND BEYOND.
Elsa Lam: Tell me about your early life and what brought you to architecture.
Marianne McKenna: It was inherent in my upbringing that the girls and the boys in my family got the same education, and the expectation was that when much is given, much is expected. There was an expectation to be a major contributor: either you were a contributor as a kind of genius, or you would organize genius.
The history of my family is more about organizing genius making sure that you were the kind of leader that could take brilliant people, and bring them together around an objective. And they knew how to lead. My brother’s an internationally famous cardiologist, my father was a research gastroenterologist, but also a professor of medicine, my grandfather started a pharmaceutical company when he was a poor boy from the Quebec countryside.
EL: And you were growing up in Montreal as well, where certainly the kind of cause of women’s rights was much more in the air.
MM: When I was growing up, I was the only girl on the ski team with all the French boys. I didn’t even notice I was the only girl. Afterwards
I thought, where are the girls? They said, oh, the girls are at home taking care of their fathers or sweeping.
So we came out of mediaeval times quite quickly, but then, you still changed your name [when you married]. You didn’t inherit in the same way. So it had a bad start but the history of women’s rights in Quebec in the last 30 years has been astounding.
In 1967 when I was just in high school, there was Expo 67, there was the CIBC building by Peter Dickinson. My father would drive us around and say, “Look at the city, how it’s changing.” He’d take us up on the Bonaventure Expressway, sometimes in our pyjamas.
But growing up as an English Canadian in Montreal, it was clear at a certain point, I thought: this is not my battle, you’re not going to be successful. It was the first year of the cégeps, and my father said, “I don’t recommend going to the first of the cégeps because you don’t know what it is. Go somewhere more established, you’ll know what you’re getting, and you’ll get a great education.” My brother was already an undergraduate at Yale, so that’s where I went.
EL: Eventually, you did go back to Montreal with the Concordia project.
MM: The Concordia project, and the McGill project, let me feel like I was going home. Every three or four years, Bruce, Shirley and I would ask, “What do you want to do?” I said, “I’d like to work back home in Montreal.” And they said, “That’s never going to happen, kiddo.” I said, “You don’t know that.” And then one of them said, “Well target an English-speaking university.”
When we won the Concordia competition, there were five firms, four Quebec, and then us from Ontario. It was an undeniably great scheme. We won fair and square.
EL: That project at Concordia was a game-changer for that whole part of the city.
MM: Parents say very proudly to me, “My son goes to Concordia.” In the old days, you’d say, “because he works a day job,” or “because he’s blue collar” or what not. It’s given the whole university a prestige. What an incredible thing that architecture can change image, identity status, the way people feel, the way it brings communities together. So that’s really what I’m into architecture as a game-changer for the institution that you’re building for.
EL: Here in Toronto, I wanted to talk about Koerner Hall. I only realized recently that when you did that project, you had been involved with the Royal Conservatory of Music for decades. So that building didn’t come out of nowhere. Can you tell me a bit more about that story and your involvement?
MM: When my son was four, he began doing his violin lessons there. He came home and had a stomachache, because he wouldn’t go poop. I asked why, and he said, “Have you seen the washrooms?” Anyway, we began with renovating the washrooms, and just continued working. We did a roof renovation in the late 1980s they only had the money to do half the roof.
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EL: And you also did a master plan at some point as well.
MM: We did a master plan which was quite different, where we had two wings of performance and academic. It was an iterative process they didn’t have the money, but they didn’t even know they didn’t have the money.
It’s been a fantastic relationship with Peter Simon. He had just arrived as President and I took the master plan to him. He said, “What’s this?” I said, “You have to get your board to approve it.”
He said, “Why?” And I said, “Because if you have an approved master plan, you’ve got status and we can take it to the City and show the City. Otherwise you have no status.” So they had that when the University of Toronto, in the early nineties, was trying to develop the stadium site, and they wanted to reduce the development rights on all but four or five of their own properties, including the ROM and the Royal Conservatory.
It’s about having a voice, feeling that along with these clients of yours, you’re part of a dynamic organization that can actually transform a building. When the Koerner Hall project started, Peter Simon said, “I want three things. I want amazing acoustics. When the cameras turn on the stage, I want people to say, that’s that hall in Toronto. And I don’t want the ceiling to look like a gym no perforated metal deck.” And then he was like: “You got it. You can do this.” I’d never done a hall ground-up in my own city. It was pretty amazing. I was confident, but not that confident. Again, any of us are part of a larger team. We’re just those organizing-genius people that see who has great talent, then bring them into your orbit, help to develop some of them.
EL: KPMB has a reputation of fostering all of these great architects who have gone on to do their own thing, but also being very generous about that.
MM: That’s me. It’s really important to actually encourage and support them. You’ve seen all the people that have catapulted out of here. Those are the people that we trained, and we’re seriously attached to in a way. I call them alumni. These guys make us look good. And it makes better architecture in the city that we have been in. It was no threat to us, and there was no harm in getting more voices for great architecture and planning in the city.
So it’s been about being able to sustain this incredible organization over almost 40 years, without losing the culture by losing those people.
OPPOSITE In 2001, Concordia University held a design competition to rehouse three major faculties—Engineering, Computer Science, Visual Arts, and the John Molson School of Business—on either side of Guy Street. This initiated the first phase of its long-term vision, led by Marianne McKenna, to create Le Quartier Concordia. In a second phase, Marianne McKenna led the win of another design competition for the university’s John Molson School of Business. Both projects were completed in joint venture with Fichten Soiferman et associés architectes. ABOVE The 2008 TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning, including the 1,135-seat Koerner Hall, is the final phase in KPMB’s 1991 master plan for Canada’s premier music and arts educator, the Royal Conservatory of Music.
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EL: Tell me about cultivating the next generation of leaders at your office.
MM: That’s a big thing for us, to have new partners who bring different perspective. I mean, they’ve worked with us for 15 or 20 years, but they don’t want to be us. I’m a very optimistic person, I think it could be great. I can feel it happening that you have your partners taking initiatives that you think are smart. They are beginning to demonstrate that they can get out there, get the work, do it, stick with it. And so I’m beginning to see the apple hasn’t dropped too far from the tree.
I think we [as the founding partners] have taken the time and not been impetuous like some other firms I know where they just said, okay, on that date, I’m leaving, pay out, goodbye. For us, it’s been slow and we haven’t been pushed to get out, and they seem to like us when we’re here. And I’m kind of incredulous that it actually is such a positive experience.
There’s a realignment of how younger partners are going to work in this practice and deliver value, because we bring so much value. We bring 38 years of value, when these are guys who did buildings for us who never looked up now suddenly they’re learning how not to miss the nuance, how to make sure we get the second phase, and all these things. And it’s maybe not exactly the way I would’ve done it, but I think it’s actually pretty good, and the work looks good in the end.
EL: It circles back to what you were saying about being tactical in terms of how you use your voice. And it sounds like I’m hearing a lot about
being tactical in how you communicate, and how you listen, and how you cultivate relationships with a very long-term horizon in mind.
MM: It comes back to people. Who are we building for? We get those extraordinary clients who are not entirely sure how to do it, but they know they want to change. They have something great, but they need to build a ballet school around it, or they need to build a Royal Conservatory around this idea, and change their institutions that may have been there for a long, long time.
EL: I’m wondering if you could speak a little bit about one of your very early projects, the Grand Valley Institution for Women.
MM: Yeah. Who wants to do a prison? Amanda Sebris [now KPMB’s Director of Business Development Strategy] comes along with this
OPPOSITE LEFT Marianne McKenna with then Governor General of Canada David Johnston, upon receiving her Order of Canada medal. OPPOSITE RIGHT
The renovated Park Hyatt in Toronto re-envisions the spatial sequencing of the hotel and residences, including a reconstructed link between the North and South Towers, and a reconstructed centre podium with a new restaurant. ABOVE The multi-year revitalization and modernization for Massey Hall/Allied Music Centre, completed under Marianne McKenna’s leadership, included a full exterior and interior renovation of the historic hall along with a new addition. The modernization enhances acoustics, improves seating, upgrades audio-visual infrastructure, and creates performance support spaces that will sustain Massey Hall into the future.
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RFP and says, this is a really interesting program. This is about creating choices. If you look at the profile of federally incarcerated women, the average age was 24, and 85% of them were accessories to men’s crimes. They were taken from across Canada and put in the Kingston penitentiary. It’s really unfair. This was a program to build five institutions across the country regional institutions that could change the world for these women. I did things in my youth that if I had been caught, I would’ve probably gone to jail, but I would’ve gotten bailed out I know kids that were in that Concordia riot, and some of them didn’t get bailed out, Montreal girls.
So Amanda brought it to us, and it was embraced by the partners: to do a prison based on the program of creating choices. We did a village green-type space, then you have a bit of a roadway, then you have a sidewalk, then you have a path in, then you have houses with porches and living spaces. Typically with eight bedrooms, you’d have four at the ground floor and four up. And we said, no, four half-down, four half-up. Make it more equal. We put the laundry machine in the kitchen, because these are women who’ve never used equipment before. We were saying they would alternate the chores. So the kitchen was really important as the communal area. We were thinking deeply about these people who have not had privacy, not had their own room, in fact.
We made a kind of a spiritual place because women heal together. Men heal on their own, they’ll go to the chaplain. Whereas women want to tell other women; they want to get things off their chest, and they want to do it repeatedly. So these communal spaces were more feminine.
When I went back, the chef, the commissary, said, “I can’t even meet my budget with what they want me to buy.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, ”Well, they want pigs’ feet.” And it was really this interesting ethnicity of who was in the prisons, which you can read through this. One woman did the gardening and one woman did the cooking, they kind of divided that way. And they’d also began to work on the houses a little bit, attaching a fence to the side. The people who hired us said, “Of all the five centres, you’re the ones who when you came in and told us what you were going to do, and you actually did it.” And I think that’s a signature of KPMB that you have a real narrative that tells the story of how people will live here. And then you deliver that, with modifications as you’re learning more. People relate to stories.
EL: I’d also like to talk a little bit about Brearley School, as another explicitly feminist space.
MM: My husband laughed at me and said, “It’s the Gossip Girls.” I said, “It’s not lay off.” In fact, it is a private girls’ school in New York where 50 percent of the girls are on financial assistance. They may come from an hour away or more to get there. They’re looking for girls with curious minds. It’s very disciplined they’re not out at Macy’s in the afternoon to get a new lipstick. It’s an interesting ethos.
It was a really complicated project, because they had an old building on the East River where girls used to come by boat and climb up the wall to get into the school, 120 years ago. And then they bought a site that was 80 steps away, but not contiguous across the street. Who goes
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to the new building? They said, “We thought the middle school.” I said, “I think you should bring the little girls there, and also the senior labs any technical space that you couldn’t do in the old building. Bring the little girls and let them aspire to be in the Hogwarts building. And also for parents coming in, they’ll know that their kids have great gyms, great art, maker spaces.” David Constable worked with me on the sustainability, so the building is totally green. I think it’s been very successful. The head of school called at the end of Covid, and she said, “We didn’t close one day. We’re the only private school in Manhattan that didn’t close a single day.” Who gets to build a new ground-up in Manhattan, 80,000 square feet on a corner lot? We were just very, very lucky.
EL: One last question. I’m hoping to circle back to the beginning, when you were talking about working in the States. How do you retain your values, but communicate them in a way that allows you to work in the States at this moment?
MM: When we did the Yale interview, we did a land acknowledgement they’d never seen it before. I said, “Let me explain to you what it is, what it means in our day, in our time, in this place where we haven’t seen a Mohawk in 50 years. It is about respect for the land, about respect for community, and it’s about thinking seven generations. Don’t think about only your children, your grandchildren who are going to go to Yale think about seven generations and what that building means in the city.”
Subtly as the world has changed, Canadians had a certain authority and voice, and they were interested in a way maybe it was post-Trump term
one to actually understand what another country like Canada might be doing, interested in hiring Canadians, for the values that you bring. I think it’s a challenge to influence in the most positive way and to establish that we are to be respected, that we have a sovereign nation, that we are a certain culture, and that we respect each other, and we acknowledge and benefit from the knowledge of each other.
EL: Do you have anything else to add?
MM: One of the things that happened at the beginning [of KPMB] is we worked together, and then slowly we worked apart. I really struck out early, beginning to do my own projects and get other partners off it. And that’s been very successful for me, because I work at a different pace. But I wanted to do it, and I also wanted to be consultative: I’ll make the decision, but let’s talk about my idea, your idea, how you make those ideas work together.
OPPOSITE Marianne McKenna was the partner-in-charge for the Grand Valley Institution for Women, a correctional facility that provides a residential environment and aims at opening new life pathways for incarcerated women. ABOVE LEFT In Manhattan, Marianne McKenna led the team that designed and constructed the new 12-storey expansion for The Brearley School. The design is conceived as a mini-vertical campus for the all-girls’ school. ABOVE RIGHT The first two levels of the Brearley School act as a community hub where students, parents and teachers can gather formally and informally.
To me, this is the fulfilment of the whole practice. The four of us who started out together said: instead of dividing up tasks between design, production, marketing, finance the boys would’ve happily put us in finance and management Shirley and I both said, I want to do my own projects. And so we’ve all worked together to do that. There’s a kind of cross-pollination that happens, and not only from looking at the work and competing with each other to do something different. So that’s been the full evolution of the 38 years to see that.
I think we’ve each fulfilled our mandate. Shirley has launched off, has found the link to her personal and professional childhood reasons. Bruce, being Japanese, is now going to do the Japanese Canadian Monument in Victoria, BC. I’ve been able to go back to Montreal, and to go back to Yale where I was a graduate student, and where my family went to school. If you live long enough and you keep practicing at what you do and just get better, the apotheosis of that is that you become a distinct individual in a group. I’m incredibly proud of that. The Gold Medal is a wonderful acknowledgement. Things like this elevate the platform for you to do more not less, not retire. I feel it’s an incentive. When I got the Order of Canada, Cornelia [Oberlander] said, “You must wear it [the pin].” She said, “It gives you courage.” So I think about it sometimes I walk into a meeting and think, okay guys, here is what we’re going to do. And I have the courage to launch off and bring people together to share ideas.
ABOVE At the Kellogg School of Management, a project stewarded by Marianne McKenna, the interior is connected through pathways and terraces that facilitate circulation and visual transparency. The fivestorey LEED Platinum building provides a variety of signature classrooms and convening spaces for all scales of learning and collaboration. At its heart is Gies Plaza, a three-storey atrium and meeting place for students, faculty, and visitors.
ative use of natural materials, creating an extraordinary environment for the audience. Similarly, the trajectory through the existing neoRomanesque building, arriving at the glass wall lobby and its privileged view, add to this very fine experience. At McGill University, McKenna has created dynamic spaces for interaction and collaboration, embodying her belief that the spirit of a building resides in its social spaces.
Shirley Blumberg’s impactful work centres on social justice and the urban context’s role in fostering community. Blumberg has designed affordable housing projects for several communities. Projects such as affordable housing for Toronto Community Housing and prototypical housing for the Indigenous community of Fort Severn further demonstrate her commitment to equitable design. Blumberg’s winning submission for the Holocaust Museum in Montreal, soon to be in construction, will add a much-needed sensitivity and a place of discourse around prejudice and its effects on community. A leader of BEAT (Building Equality in Architecture Toronto), Blumberg champions equity and diversity in the profession. In 2022, Blumberg was in residence at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), exploring new readings of our holdings that highlight the intellectual relevance of John C. Parkin’s role as a proponent and key actor in the modernization of Canadian cities in the 1950s and 1960s.
Although I have noted only a few of the projects in the wide-ranging work of Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg, both have served on numerous juries and delivered lectures worldwide, earning widespread recognition for their transformative contributions. Together, they have redefined architecture, seamlessly blending visionary design with social responsibility, and continue to shape Canada’s architectural future.
Brigitte Shim and A. Howard Sutcliffe FRAIC, OC, RCA, Hon. FAIA, OAA Principals, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects 2021 RAIC Gold Medal Winners
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Shirley Blumberg and Marianne McKenna have built an exemplary body of built projects the work of their firm, KPMB, has been recognized by 18 Governor General’s Medals for Architecture and many other professional accolades. As two of its founding partners, McKenna and Blumberg have become inspirational architects for an entire generation. Through the years, the balance created by the founding partners has been advanced and made richer as their practice has developed and matured. Our profession still lacks equity and diversity, but co-recipients Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg have worked tirelessly towards building a more inclusive architectural practice. In order to do so, they have designed and redesigned their practice itself. In 2024, the KPMB studio, under the direction of McKenna and Blumberg, created a flattened boardroom to provide a democratic and safe space where every team member is heard. Both McKenna and Blumberg have taken the opportunity to support the strengths of their unique model of practice, understanding that broad diversity and gender balance contribute to more inclusive architecture. They have a hand in reevaluating the kinds of projects KPMB will take on, ensuring alignment between the firm’s values and its work. The result is a compassionate and inclusive KPMB studio culture, committed to creating thoughtful, meaningful, and regenerative architectural solutions that contribute to a future world that we all want to live in.
Some 25 years ago, Marianne McKenna led KPMB’s first federal government commission a women’s prison with a social justice agenda to transform the model from punishment to creating choices for women to transform their lives. This foundational project for their young firm demonstrated that they could realize a complex institution that had a positive impact on many lives. In 1997, KPMB Architects received
a Governor General’s Award of Merit and an AIA Honor Award for the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario: a recognition that good design can aid in changing lives. The projects Marianne McKenna has chosen to tackle have resulted not only in designing buildings, but also in transforming cultural institutions. She has worked with the Royal Conservatory of Music for over two decades, resulting in a vital music campus for education and performance: its showpiece, Koerner Hall, is widely recognized as one of the finest musical venues in North America. Marianne McKenna also led the recent restoration and transformation of Massey Hall, working with heritage consultants GBCA Architects, and has ensured that this fine space will continue to be a mecca for our community.
Shirley Blumberg has led social justice-oriented projects within the firm, working on prototypical housing for the northern Indigenous community of Fort Severn in collaboration with Brian Porter of Two Row Architect, affordable student housing on the UBC Campus in joint venture with hcma , and numerous projects for Toronto Community Housing. She was a founding member of Building Equity in Architecture in Toronto (BEAT), promoting equity for women and minorities in the profession through action-oriented initiatives.
The recognition of Marianne McKenna and Shirley Blumberg as co-recipients of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Gold Medal acknowledges the contribution of two pioneering female practitioners who have worked tirelessly in tandem and individually to transform our profession and redefine contemporary practice in Canada.
Deborah Berke FAIA, LEED AP Dean and J.M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture, Yale School of Architecture
2025 AIA Gold Medal Winner
It gives me great pleasure to congratulate Shirley Blumberg and Marianne McKenna on being named the joint recipients of the 2025 RAIC Gold Medal. They and their firm, KPMB, are supremely good architects and they are also significantly good people. This matters.
Wherever they build, McKenna and Blumberg’s work is driven by their admirable principles to create inclusive, accessible, sustainable, and community-based architecture. They design thoughtful buildings for people in a wide range of project types from museums to performing arts centres, hospitals, universities, office towers, residential buildings, and religious institutions, to name a few. Their work elevates the human experience, creating places of purpose and cultural significance.
In my role as the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, I invited Marianna McKenna to be the Norman R. Foster Visiting Professor in 2016, a position intended to bring top talent and international faculty at the school. Others who have held this position include David Chipperfield, Zaha Hadid, Tatiana Bilbao, and Brigitte Shim. It was her first ever advanced studio at Yale and was wonderfully received. The quality of work was impressive, as was the student engagement to the subject matter. Ms. McKenna gave a lecture at the school titled “Urban Good” to a packed auditorium. It was a superb talk, illustrating KPMB ’s built work, and raising important questions about community and advocacy.
Ron McCoy
University Architect, Princeton University
Shirley Blumberg’s architecture brings life to the values of the communities. Through the beauty of her designs and her leadership within the profession, Shirley has made remarkable contributions to contemporary architecture throughout North America. I can speak intimately
about her work at Princeton University and I see clearly the deep traces of her curiosity and spirit in every one of her projects.
Over the past fifteen years Princeton has grown faster than at any time in its 279-year history and no architect has had as touched this era of the campus making as much as Shirley. Her remarkable range of projects include the complete transformation of a collegiate gothic laboratory into a home for our Economics faculty, an equally complete yet subtle transformation of a mid-century modern masterpiece by Minoru Yamasaki and a new home for our Facilities department.
We ask our architects to provide stewardship for the remarkable experience of the Princeton campus and to guide the campus fabric into the future, creating an architecture that is authentic, specific to Princeton, and expressive of our community and our values. To accomplish this at the level of excellence to which we aspire requires an architect who can read the fabric of the historic campus; one who can listen, with empathy, to the aspirations of our community; lead a process of discovery and employ a contemporary sense of craft that resonates with the unique identity and sense of place of Princeton. Shirley’s gifts of insight, humility and creativitiy have been a perfect match to our aspirations.
Each of our projects seek to create a welcoming sense of belonging for our increasingly diverse community and we make every effort to identify and support diversity within the architectural profession. Through her advocacy for women in the profession and her collaboration with Indigenous architects, Ms. Blumberg has been an exemplary collaborator in these efforts.
When future Princetonians look back on the current generation of campus history they will recognize the beginning of a new era of architecture shaped by a heightened sense of responsibility to the environment. This distinctive new generation of campus-making reflects Shirley’s influence. As the architectural leader of our 2026 Campus Plan, she successfully advocated for the creation of a Sustainability Advocacy
Committee, a policy committee created to ensure each one of our projects is empowered to push the boundaries of sustainable design.
In Shirley’s body of work architecture has a pervasive effect; it speaks to the best values of society and provides moments of delight, inspiration and wonder. Her work gives meaning to our lives.
Meryl Streep Actress
Half a century ago, my graduate school roommate, Marianne McKenna, and I sat at our tiny kitchen table in New Haven. She was pursuing an M.Arch at the Yale School of Art & Architecture, and I was getting an MFA at the Drama School next door. She taught me a lesson about collaboration in art and acting, which marked my life and work ever since. The conversation was about dreaming a building into being and the responsibility in that act. Marianne was showing me a book by Robert Venturi, ‘Learning from Las Vegas’, explaining the idea of context in design: How will a new building speak, visually, to its surroundings? Is it listening to the community into which it intends to plunk itself? Is it a good neighbor?”
I thought about where we sat, on the top floor of a (probably) 19thcentury, three-story small brick house close to the campus. A few blocks down Chapel Street, Louis Kahn’s monumental minimalist steel-clad Yale Center for British Art was under construction. Nearby, Marianne’s studies were conducted in Paul Rudolph’s brutalist, rough-edged concrete statement building, which sat next to the Drama school squat and familiar in the faux Gothic style favored by the Ivy League which (I remembered as an undergraduate) was once the DKE fraternity house. What could we make of the conversation these entities were engaged in?
It was the first time I had heard the word “vernacular” used, not to refer to language, but to convey the integrated aesthetic of place: the context, the visual language of a neighborhood, and the common
ABOVE LEFT Thomas Payne, Shirley Blumberg, Marianne McKenna, and Bruce Kuwabara with a model of the 1988 JASMAC proposal, an unbuilt project in Toronto. ABOVE RIGHT In 2023, Marianne McKenna became the first woman to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Design Futures Council.
Meg Graham OAA FRAIC Partner, Superkül
If I had to pick one word that defines Marianne McKenna it is: fierce. She is a powerful advocate for her projects, her clients, and her staff, and I have been fortunate in my career to have been both a witness to and beneficiary of that strength of character.
As a project designer at KPMB, I can recall meetings I attended with Marianne where she literally stood up and fought for the good of a project. She was a model of professional fortitude and resilience, at a time when that wasn’t a buzzword.
I have been in rooms with her since, and nothing has changed: she continues to bring that same unflagging dedication and clarity of vision to every project she shepherds into the world. Her standards are high, her mind is incisive, and her spirit is deeply collaborative and generous. And she is a highly committed mentor and champion.
Over 20 years ago, when I was working at KPMB, I was accepted into the Master in Design Studies program at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Part of my funding fell through at the last minute, and I was resigned to declining the offer of admission. When I asked the partners at KPMB if I could stay on working at the office, they instead surprised me by offering to loan me the money. It was an extraordinary gesture and one that I will never forget.
The partners’ act in itself was equally transformative: it taught me a crucial lesson about what it means to invest in people, and how simple acts of kindness and support can change the course of people’s lives. With that gratitude still in my heart, I celebrate both Marianne and Shirley for this much-deserved recognition.
Betsy Williamson OAA FRAIC
Co-founder, Williamson Williamson Architects
Most notable examples for me include our work on Ottawa’s Global Centre for Pluralism for the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada, where, with Shirley’s expertise, we created a compelling vision that expressed the Aga Khan’s broad and generous ambition for a Rideau-Canal-to-RideauRiver public connection on the Ottawa River banks, which has catalyzed the ongoing work of the National Capital Commission.
Another was our pro bono work on the Design Review Panel for Toronto Community Housing, overseeing the plans for the revitalization of Regent Park and eventually all of the TCHC transformational projects in that area. Shirley had a penetrating way of seeing and seizing on the potential for architecture to enhance and enrich people’s lives in ways both large and small.
Shirley’s strong commitment to place-making and design quality makes each of her architectural and urban design projects into compelling demonstrations of sustainability and effective city building. This dedication was always very much in evidence as her career and interests have continued to evolve, with an emphasis on the contributions that design innovation and research can make in addressing the global issues of environmental sustainability, social equity, and inclusion. It can be argued that both in Canada and abroad, her work exhibits a particular Canadian sensibility in reconciling these goals.
Shirley is also rare among architects for her fearless principled advocacy. Her background in South Africa in the apartheid era has sensitized her to the need to speak out and make use of her talents and knowledge again pro bono where the public interest is challenged, and her values lead her into the fray. A notable example being her contribution, as part of a group of local experts, to generating a counterplan that successfully showed how the historic Dominion Foundry Buildings in Toronto’s West Don Lands, already partially under the wrecking ball, could be saved and that contributed to the retention of those buildings.
Nine years ago, Shirley and I met for lunch, and the topic quickly turned to recent efforts each of us had made reaching out to women in the architecture community regarding the lack of equity in the profession. She had recently been hosting regular meetings with a core group of women in her firm, digging into the issues of equity in her own office, and she understood that there was both a need and an appetite for change.
She connected this work with a recent lecture series she had been a part of at Princeton and in about 20 minutes, we had a plan for the first BEAT event: a leadership seminar to be held at two architecture schools in Toronto where we could have frank conversations about equity in the profession, and then tour the young women and men through projects, connecting the conversations to real work.
Shirley’s leadership in founding BEAT Building Equality in Architecture Toronto stands as a testament to her commitment to promoting equity in the profession. This grassroots initiative has evolved into a nationwide organization, with chapters from Atlantic Canada to the West Coast, that is committed to creating lasting systemic and transformational change, understanding that empowering women in the design community improves and enriches the practice of architecture, the quality of the built environment, and ultimately, the human experience.
Shirley Blumberg’s influence extends far into the realms of academia, cultural institutions, social justice, and the broader architectural discourse. It is her work, however, with this grassroots organization that makes her extra special to our community. As a leader of the most influential architecture firm in Canada, her actions will be reflected and amplified by others. When BEAT was founded, no one else in Canada at her level of practice would have done this work. She has always been a leader in design and building, but, in addition to this, her work advocating for women in architecture will make a longstanding impact in our field.
ABOVE Shirley Blumberg and then Governor General of Canada, David Johnston, upon receiving her Order of Canada recognition.
CURRENT KPMB LEADERSHIP AND STAFF
LAUREN ABBASS
RAMONA ADLAKHA
MEHRNAZ ADLI
MOLLY ADAMS
SAMIHA ALI
DUNYA ALANI
RYAN ALEXANDER
LAURA ALEXIM
ALI AL-JUBOORI
DHARMIK BABARIYA
DONIA BARAI
GRAHAM BAXTER
NEGAR BEHZAD JAZI
ROXANE BEJJANY
MELISSA BELL
KUSHAL BHAT
NINA BOCCIA
SHIRLEY BLUMBERG
KEVIN BRIDGMAN
STEVEN CASEY
JACKI CHAPEL
ARASH CHAREHJOU
CLEMENTINE CHANG
JASON K. CHANG
MELISSA CHIN
NICK CHOI
OLENA CHORNY
TERESA CHUNG
CHRIS COUSE
PHYLLIS CRAWFORD
ALENA CROWNE
RACHEL CYR
CIRO DIAZ
PHILIPPE DIBON
MOTASEM DUKHAN
ANDREW DYKE
ANILA ELMAS
TAE WOOK EUM
HUSSAIN EZZY
GAL VOLOSKY FRIDMAN
JADWIGA GAJCZYK
JOAN GARDNER
VICTOR GARZON
COLIN GEARY
PHIL GILDER-SMITH
ZACHARIAH GLENNON
ANGELA GOU
ALISTAIR GRIERSON
BACK COVER The Harrison McCain Pavilion at Beaverbrook Art Gallery, a project led by Shirley Blumberg, Fredericton, New Brunswick. Photo by Julian Parkinson. INSIDE FRONT COVER Duan Family Center for Computing & Data Sciences at Boston University, a project led by Marianne McKenna, Boston, Massachusetts. Photo by Nic Lehoux. INSIDE BACK COVER The Globe and Mail corporate event space, project led by Marianne McKenna. Photo by Adrien Williams.
