Editorial: An All-Woman Jury

For the first time in the 58-year history of the Canadian Architect awards, this year’s jury was composed solely of women: Alison Brooks, Kelly Buffey, Sonia Gagné, and photo juror Salina Kassam. It’s a milestone that is overdue—but that nonetheless gives me great personal pride. 

Why did it take us so long to get here? When the Canadian Architect Awards were initiated in 1968, architecture was almost exclusively a male profession. The first 23 years of the awards program included, accordingly, all-male juries featuring the luminaries of the day—Eb Zeidler, Ron Thom, Barton Myers, Peter Hemingway, and so forth. The first woman juror, Ruth Cawker, participated in the jury in 1991, two years after winning a province-wide competition to design the Ontario Association of Architects headquarters. Odile Hénault, Kim Storey, and Francine Houben would join juries in the following few years. 

In retrospect, there are some notable absences: why was Blanche Lemco van Ginkel, who with her husband Sandy masterplanned Expo 67 and saved Old Montreal from a destructive surface-level expressway, not invited to be a juror? Or Phyllis Lambert, who was instrumental in Mies van der Rohe’s commission for the Seagrams Building in the 1950s, and founded the CCA in 1979? I would have loved to see Eva Vecsai—a partner at Arcop and a significant contributor to Place Bonaventure—on an early jury. 

In 1985, women made up just 6.6% of licensed architects. By 2011, women represented 28.9% of architects nationwide. By 2021, the national representation of women had risen to 37.9%. Despite these improvements, a glance around the room at any architecture conference confirms that men still dominate in senior leadership and partnership roles. 

Apart from the obvious equity issues, why does this matter? Building Equity in Architecture (BEA), an organization I’ve been part of for half a decade, articulates that having architects with diverse lived experiences enriches the practice of architecture—and the quality of the resulting built environment. 

Different perspectives also enrich the teamwork at the core of both design and jurying. At this year’s jury meeting, having an all-woman jury contributed to a particularly collaborative tone of meeting. Mutual respect has always characterized Canadian Architect jury meetings, but this year, it felt like there was a particular willingness to shift from initial positions taken during the individual pre-evaluation of entries, towards collective decisions based on shared expertise and discussion. 

Subtle differences were also present in those moments when the group wasn’t actively jurying—over coffee breaks, lunch, a formal jury dinner, and a post-jurying toast (the latter suggested by Kelly Buffey, who generously hosted the jury meeting at Akb’s offices in west Toronto). These brought moments of sharing about the challenges and opportunities of current architectural practice—but also discussions of issues particular to women, such as integrating motherhood and family-caring roles with the pressures of leading a business. There was also value seen in the relationships that grew between the jury members over the two-day jurying process. The group mused openly about possible future collaborations together, something I’ve never heard another jury speak about.

I was reminded of a conversation with Indigenous architect Kelly Edzerza-Bapty. She noted that in the extensive consultation processes that she leads with Indigenous communities, she asks for separate meetings with community leaders, youth, men, and women. Women will say different things when they’re not in the same room with men, she explained—and ditto for the other groups. 

While we’ve made a lot of progress on equity in the profession in the last few years, there is still much to be done. And one marker of this progress is that, increasingly, an all-woman jury shouldn’t be a special reason for celebration, but simply a normal possibility.

Read our jury’s full comments here.

You can see all of the 2025 Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence winners here.

As featured in the Canadian Architect December 2025 Awards of Excellence issue.

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