People
|
Bruce Kuwabara
OAA, FRAIC, AIA, RIBA, Founding Partner
bkuwabara@kpmbarchitects.com Bruce Kuwabara is the 2006 recipient of the RAIC Gold Medal for Architecture. In 1987, he founded Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects (KPMB) with his partners Thomas Payne, Marianne McKenna, and Shirley Blumberg. Kuwabara has been internationally recognized as one of Canada's leading architects. Their practice is committed to architectural excellence and the design of the public realm, and has earned distinction with 11 Governor General’s Awards, Canada’s highest architectural honour.
Upon graduation in 1972 from the University of Toronto School of Architecture, Kuwabara joined the ‘teaching office’ of architect and critic George Baird who influenced his ideas on urbanism. In 1975, he joined Barton Myers Associates where he continued to evolve his ideas on city building and socially-aesthetic driven concepts of architecture. As a design partner of KPMB, in the first few years of practice Kuwabara directed several small scale interior projects as well as the winning competition scheme for Kitchener City Hall. The early work rapidly established the firm’s reputation for excellence and commitment to city building. His commitment to making architecture that ensures the vitality of cultural, educational and social institutions has also contributed to raising the international profile of Canadian architecture. As a practitioner and a critic, Kuwabara has contributed to the national discourse on city building in the 21st century. KPMB has produced six of the nine Cultural Renaissance projects in Toronto. Kuwabara is the design partner for Canada's National Ballet School (NBS) (a joint venture with Goldsmith Borgal & Company Ltd. Architects), the Gardiner Museum and the Bell Lightbox for the Toronto International Film Festival. The NBS is the recipient an American Institute of Architect’s Honor Award and both the Urban Land Institute Award, Award for Excellence and the Global Award for Excellence. The Gardiner Museum was recently bestowed the 2008 Royal Institute of British Architects International Award and the Chicago Athenaeum Award. For more than twenty years, Kuwabara has directed the majority of the firm’s competition-winning schemes, including the Vaughan Civic Centre, the Canadian Embassy in Berlin (a joint venture with Gagnon Letellier Cyr, architectes, and Smith Carter Architects + Engineers Inc.), and Le Quartier Concordia for Concordia University in downtown Montreal (a joint venture with Fichten Soiferman et Associés Architectes). All of this work prioritizes the creation of architecture as an enduring cultural and national asset engaging the unique Canadian condition of openness. During his career, Kuwabara has taught at the Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto and at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He is the Honorary Co-Chair for Fundraising responsible for establishing the Frank Gehry International Design Chair at the U of T, the first chair of the Waterfront Design Review Panel for Waterfront Toronto, and a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. From 1986 to 1992, he was a member of the National Capital Commission Advisory Committee on Design. He continues to participate as a jury member, guest lecturer and critic on issues of architecture, urbanism and sustainable design. Kuwabara’s projects have been published extensively both in Canada and internationally and are featured in a monograph on the practice published by Birkhauser, a leading European publisher of books on architecture. Entitled The Architecture of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, this was Birkhauser’s first major monograph on a Canadian practice. |
