Vikram Bhatt
2014 Winner of the Margolese Prize
Photo courtesy of the Royal Society of Canada
Vikram Bhatt, FRAIC, FRSC
Vikram Bhatt’s entire career has focused upon improving the quality of life for those who may be seen as poor, but who have human capital and great resourcefulness. In addition to his four decades of foundational work on housing for the developing world. In addition, he has led a national urban agriculture initiative in Canada – a project that has benefited Canadians of all economic classes, particularly those who lack food security, a pressing issue of urban sustainability in North America and abroad.
Vikram Bhatt has dedicated his life to the application and teaching of appropriate technologies for the improvement of community life, not only for Canadians but for communities throughout the developing world. In his own modest and incremental way, Professor Bhatt has had, and continues to have, an enormous and positive impact on Canadian architects, urban designers, and urbanists.
2014 Selection Committee
Photo: McGill University
Bhatt is a Professor of Architecture at McGill University School of Architecture, and is Director of McGill’s Minimum Cost Housing Group (MCHG). In addition to being considered a significant figure in Canadian and international architectural education, his research, projects, and publications have exerted great influence both inside academia and in practice. He has directed or co-directed more than $2 million of research based on projects in Argentina, Canada, China, India, Mexico, Sri Lanka, and Uganda. His numerous awards include: the 1991 AD Architectural Design Research Award; a 1993 American Institute of Architects Sustainable Community Design Ideas Competition Prize; two Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute’s Faculty Research Fellowships (1993-94; 2000-01); and two Graham Foundation for the Fine Arts Grants (1993; 2000).
In 2008, his team won the National Urban Design Award of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Canadian Institute of Planners, and Canadian Society of Landscape Architects for the “Making the Edible Campus” project. In 2018, his team was awarded another National Urban Design Award for designing an outdoor sports pavilion out of repurposed materials in the Northern Village of Kuujjuaq. Bhatt was named a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada in 2018, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2019.
There’s a limit to how much municipal systems can do to make cities greener… Urban agriculture is a way for the citizens to take on the initiative.
Vikram Bhatt, Inverse
