Elsa Lam

Vancouver-based MOTIV Architects was co-founded by architects Tracey Mactavish and Asher deGroot in 2017. In the past nine years, the firm has evolved as a practice structured around positive environmental and social impact as its primary motivator. The practice, write Mactavish and deGroot, is “designed to tackle the issues that we believe are most relevant to humanity's very sustainability on the planet; namely resilience and climate change and the importance of local food security and sovereignty, housing affordability, and the active sharing of knowledge and lived experience.”

A redeveloped pier offers recreational and museological space connecting downtown Nelson, BC, to its waterfront.

A striking new sports facility combines an Olympic-standard velodrome track with community recreation programs.

This month's Viewpoint is excerpted from editor Elsa Lam's convocation remarks to the 2026 graduating class of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

At the eastern edge of Vancouver's Granville Island—a dense tangle of industrial buildings rendered into a lively marketplace and artisan hub in the early 1980s—a place of quiet stands out. This building, like many of its neighbours, is clad in corrugated metal and assembled from shipping containers. But a gently uplit wood slat wall, fronted by a spray of ornamental grasses, hints at something different inside.

Every two years, the prestigious Governor General’s Medals in Architecture recognize and celebrate outstanding design in recently built projects by Canadian architects. Here are this year’s winners.

Last February, Canadian Architect was invited to Spain’s Castellón province to attend Time of Spain, an initiative co-hosted by the Spanish Ceramic Tile Manufacturers’ Association (ASCER), which represents 90 percent of the country’s producers, and the Spanish government’s Institute for Foreign Trade. The event was meant to draw attention not just to the Spanish tile […]

2026 Governor General’s Award juror Colin Ripley discusses how this year’s winners confront global debates with seriousness and ambition.

Sarah Bonnemaison reviews two books: Colin Ripley's The House is (Not) a Prison: On the Queerness of Architecture and Milena Charbit's Architectures lesbiennes: Subversions du lien, de l’intime et de l’espace.

This year’s exhibition at the Venice Art Biennale explores the relationship of buildings to the natural world.