Margolese National Design for Living Prize

Celebrating a Canadian designer whose work in the built environment improves the lives of people and their communities.

Nominations are closed

Thank you to everyone who took part in this year’s nomination process.

Jury deliberations will be held shortly and a winner will be announced in the coming months.

Learn more about the prize

The Margolese Design for Living Prize is a $50,000 award that recognizes a Canadian designer in early to mid-career whose work and advocacy in the built environment addresses the pressing human and environmental challenges of our time and improves peoples’ lives and communities.

The Prize is awarded by the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA) whose commitment is to educate the next generation of architects, landscape architects and urban designers to become creative leaders, advocates, effective collaborators and progressive agents of change through design.

 

 

 

 

Architects

Landscape Architects

Planners

Designers

Engineers

& Practitioners in Allied Fields

The Margolese National Design for Living Prize is open to any Canadian citizen who is doing outstanding work in a field related to the built environment. Suitable candidates might come from, but are not to be limited to the above disciplines.

Eligibility

Candidates for the prize are Canadian citizens and early to mid-career practitioners whose design work demonstrates wide environmental and social impact across a diversity of design disciplines and geographies.

For example, a candidate’s design work may have impact at any scale in any of the following areas:

  • Affordable housing and social infrastructure
  • Community design and public space
  • Ecological design and biodiversity
  • Climate change and resilience
  • Human health and well-being
  • Food security and water quality
  • Social equity, diversity and environmental & social justice
  • Mobility and transportation
  • Disaster and pandemic relief
  • Universal design and accessibility

Letter from SALA Director
Ronald Kellett

Design is everywhere, and it matters, now more than ever. Society faces urgent, interconnected, global emergencies — of urbanization, climate change, natural environment, social equity and, human health and well-being. Design can enable creative solutions integrative of the diverse expertise necessary to meet these challenges. Design can inspire and empower people to safer, more independent, accessible and meaningful lives every day, at every scale, from the things we touch to the places we inhabit to the communities and infrastructure we share.

SALA is honoured to offer the Margolese Design for Living Prize — a distinction that speaks directly to the values and vision that have shaped the school since its inception in 2006. SALA is one of North America’s leading schools of architecture and landscape architecture.

Our academic programs integrate design, technical, theoretical and historical knowledge to enable a built environment supportive of civil and sustainable patterns of living. Our academic culture cultivates intellectual and creative leaders, articulate spokespersons and progressive agents of change. Through the Margolese Prize we aim to inspire students everywhere, by highlighting Canadians who are shaping their professions and the future of the built environment.

The Margolese Prize celebrates an individual whose contributions to the built environment advance their practice while visibly improving the quality of life for others. Please help us find, recognize and reward that person. Nominations are open annually from February through April 2022.

Timeline

Feb

2022

Nominations open

Apr

2022

Nominations close

May

2022

Shortlisted candidates notified and asked to submit applications

Jun

2022

Applications are due and jury deliberations commence

Sep

2022

Winner announced

Oct

2022

Award ceremony and presentation event live stream

Past Winners

2022

Meet the Selection Committee

Jill Anholt

Artist and Principal of Vancouver-based Jill Anholt Studio

Grant Fahlgren

Member of Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, founding member and Chair of the CSLA Reconciliation Advisory Committee, and Project Designer at Vancouver’s PFS Studio

Tudor Radulescu

Co-founder of KANVA, a Montreal-based multidisciplinary architectural firm

Blair Satterfield

Associate Professor and Chair, Architecture at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

Brigitte Shim

Principal, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects and Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto