Celebrating Emerging Talent: The 2026 Hobin Prize in Architecture & City Building

Friday, January 23 – Hobin Architecture was pleased to present the annual Hobin Prize in Architecture and City Building at Carleton University’s Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism. Awarded in cash, the prize recognizes outstanding fourth‑year housing studio work, celebrating projects that demonstrate design clarity, strong architectural ideas, and a sophisticated understanding of contemporary city-building in Ottawa.

This year’s Housing Studio featured 19 student projects, each presented through a concise three‑minute format and displayed throughout the PIT and Lightroom Gallery. The work reflected thoughtful responses to affordability, community programming, family-oriented living, and the evolving needs of our city.

City-Building Criteria & What We Looked For

Before announcing this year’s awards, Hobin Architecture shared the values that anchor our understanding of architecture as a city‑building discipline. Ottawa is a place where design operates at the intersection of history, landscape, policy, and growth. Architecture here must respond not only to buildings but to the shape of neighbourhoods, mobility patterns, and the public realm.

In reviewing the students’ work, we looked for several key qualities:

1. Density as a City-Building Tool – Not density for its own sake, but density that supports transit, local services, and complete communities—density that respects human scale and Ottawa’s established fabric while enabling the city to evolve.
2. Affordability through Intelligent Design – We looked for projects that treat affordability as a design problem, not a reduction of ambition—where efficiency, repeatable systems, and thoughtful construction strategies support responsible, high‑quality housing.
3. Contributions to the Public Realm – Active ground floors, animated edges, and social infrastructure—indoor and outdoor gathering spaces that strengthen the life of streets and communities.
4. Architectural Craft and Clarity – Clear and disciplined plans, contextual massing, resilient material strategies, integrated sustainability, and an understanding that architecture must endure climate, time, and use.
5. Thoughtful Engagement with Mobility – Projects that emphasize transit, walking, and cycling while accommodating vehicles responsibly within a city increasingly shaped by LRT and shifting mobility patterns.
6. A Strong, Organizing Architectural Idea – An idea capable of bringing coherence to complexity—connecting density, social responsibility, sustainability, and urban presence through a clear and purposeful architectural vision.

Studio Sites: Designing for Ottawa’s Future

Students designed for four sites across Ottawa, each representing distinct community needs and development conditions:

• 100 Constellation Drive — A significant transit-oriented redevelopment zone shaped by future LRT/BRT infrastructure and the potential for 500 to 1,000 new homes.
• 1700 Heatherington Road — An OCH-led affordable housing expansion, integrating family-oriented typologies and supportive services around the Taggart Parkes Family Clubhouse.
• 250 Montreal Road — A mixed-use civic hub combining a major new Vanier Community Services Centre with housing, retail, recreation, and childcare.
• 320 Lajoie Street — A long-term redevelopment opportunity involving school properties, community facilities, adaptive reuse, open space, and missing-middle affordable housing.

2026 Hobin Prize Recipients

• 1^st Prize – The Village (Maggie and Sophia)
• 2^nd Prize – Nested Heatherington (Amalia)
• 3^rd Prize – The Converge (Jas Singh and Rachel)
• 3^rd Prize – The Kit (Aria and Mya)
• 3^rd Prize – Axis Point (Charbel and Yosef)

These projects distinguished themselves through exceptional clarity of architectural idea, thoughtful responses to site and community needs, and a strong commitment to city‑building principles.

Our sincere congratulations go to this year’s prize recipients and to all 19 project teams for their thoughtful, ambitious, and well‑crafted proposals. The work demonstrated this year speaks to the strength of Carleton’s Housing Studio and the promise of a new generation of architects who understand the interconnected nature of architecture, community, and city‑building.

Hobin Architecture is proud to continue supporting this important work and to help elevate emerging voices shaping the future of Ottawa.

About the Hobin Prize

The Hobin Prize in Architecture & City Building, established in 2019 by Ottawa‑based Hobin Architecture, recognizes outstanding student work produced in the fourth‑year housing studio at Carleton University’s Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, celebrating excellence in high‑density, urban, and community‑focused design. Each year, a Hobin‑led jury evaluates submissions for conceptual clarity, responsiveness to site and community, technical resolution, graphic communication, and their potential impact on the built environment—reflecting the firm’s long-standing commitment to meaningful city‑building and mentorship within Ottawa’s architectural community. The 2026 jury included Marc Thivierge, Melanie Lamontagne, David Anderson, and Laura Clark.