Manitoba architects take home seven of 11 awards at CMHR gala

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This article was published 28/5/2014 (1175 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba was the big winner at the Prairie Design Awards gala Wednesday night, snagging seven of the 11 awards handed out.

More than 68 projects from the three Prairie provinces were in the running for this year's PDA awards. The awards are handed out every two years to honour those who are setting new standards of creativity and skill in architecture and interior design and making a significant contribution to the Canadian architectural landscape.

Manitoba's haul included three Awards of Excellence and four Awards of Merit.

The award-winning projects included a collection of three public washrooms in Assiniboine Park made out of decommissioned steel shipping containers, a dynamic play space and garden created for a Winnipeg school and a high-profile downtown-redevelopment project that involved the conversion of two long-vacant Portage Avenue heritage buildings into a new apartment/office complex.

This year's awards gala was sponsored by the Manitoba Association of Architects (MAA) as part of the RAIC Festival of Architecture being held this week in Winnipeg. It was held at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR), and the keynote speaker was Antoine Predock, the internationally acclaimed architect who designed the museum.

"As the MAA celebrates its 100th, we are incredibly proud of the mark this year's recipients have left on the architectural community in Manitoba and Canada," MAA president Lee McCormick said. "Their award-winning projects are a testament to the renaissance in architecture in our city and province and a clear indication that we have a community of architectural and design excellence that is second to none."