Today@Dal

Top players in the international architectural and design community, from Canada, the U.S., Brazil, Japan and beyond, gathered at Toronto’s Evergreen Brick Works earlier this month as Azure magazine announced the winners of its fourth annual AZ Awards.

From a house that pulls apart and transforms into concert seating, to a home interior clad in striking pine plywood and a carpet tile collection that makes recycling a beautiful thing, the 13 winners of the AZ Awards demonstrate an expansive spirit of innovation. At Friday’s event, many of the winners took to the stage – some coming from as far away as Halifax and São Paulo – to receive their trophies, which were designed by Matteo Ragni, and crafted in Alpi’s reconstituted wood product. All 49 of the finalists, which were also up for People’s Choice awards, were applauded by a standing-room-only audience.

MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects, including School of Architecture faculty member and alum Brian MacKay-Lyons, took home Best Residential Architecture for Cliff House. The project is the first of a series of projects for a large 455 acre site on Nova Scotia's Atlantic coast. This pure box in the landscape is precariously perched off a bedrock cliff to heighten one's experience of the landscape through a sense of vertigo and a sense of floating on the sea. This strategy features the building's fifth elevation - its 'belly.' It previously won the 2012 Governor General's Medal for Architecture, among other awards.

Learn more about Cliff House.