Shim-Sutcliffe Architects

Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe are partners as well as collaborators. They have created a firm and a life around their shared passion for architecture, landscape and furniture. Their interest in the construction and fabrication of buildings, sites, and their intersections has forced them to question fundamental relationships between object and ground, building and landscape, man and nature. Though their backgrounds and sensibilities are very different, their similar education and architectural journeys together offer a rich starting point for their work. Their studio, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, is located in Toronto, Canada. The city’s diversity and ethnicity make it a vital metropolis reflective of both global and North American sensibilities. The work references both the city and its landscape within the urban core of Toronto and the many particular landscapes around it. The studio works in an intense and probing way, sharing ideas through drawings, models, and discussion with the numerous remarkable clients who have put their faith in them over the last fifteen years. Brigitte Shim was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1958. She was educated at the University of Waterloo where she received degrees in Environmental Studies and Architecture. She has worked on the west coast of Canada with Arthur Erickson and Associates and in Toronto with Baird/Sampson Architects. She is a tenured professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design where she has taught a broad range of architectural design studios and lecture courses since 1988. In the spring of 2002 she was a visiting professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and in the fall of 2001 she was the Bishop Visiting Professor and the Visiting Bicentennial Professor of Canadian Studies at Yale University’s School of Architecture. She has also been a visiting professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1993 and 1996, teaching advanced option studios in the master’s program in architecture. Howard Sutcliffe was born in Yorkshire, England in 1958. He was educated at the University of Waterloo where he received degrees in Environmental Studies and Architecture. He has worked with many significant Canadian architects including Ronald Thom, Paul Merrick, Barton Myers and KPMB Architects. He has played a key role on several award winning competition teams for both Barton Myers and KPMB Architects including the Kitchener City Hall (KPMB Architects.) In 1992, he was the first recipient of the Ronald Thom Award for Early Design Achievement awarded by the Canada Council for the Arts.