For the second year in a row, AZURE is recognizing new voices in architecture, design and interiors in our Emerging Awards. This program celebrates studios and individuals who established their careers within the past decade and have created works that excel in the key criteria: aesthetics, functionality, innovation and social and environmental responsibility. Congratulations to this year’s recipients!
EMERGING ARCHITECTURE FIRM
Winner: AAmp Studio, Toronto
NO TWO AAMP STUDIO PROJECTS ARE ALIKE. But all share a set of core principles — a “commitment to care,” as the firm describes it. Operating between Toronto and Portland, Maine, and led by its two Yale University–educated co-founders based in those cities (Anne-Marie Armstrong and Andrew Ashey, respectively), positions architecture “as an act of stewardship, under-stood as the long-term care of buildings, communities and cultural memory.”
This work also takes place across scales and typologies, from single-home residences to multi-unit, mixed-use buildings to hospitality projects. Among its most impressive works are those that celebrate what already exists. While its ground-up projects, like Ell House (with Ravi Handa Architect) in Prince Edward County, Ontario, position care and consideration for evolving living conditions as central, adaptive re-use is particularly fertile ground for the firm. Projects like Municipal Grand in Savannah, Georgia, and in Toronto are exemplary.
The former transformed a mid-century Federal Savings Bank into a boutique hotel; while introducing new interventions, including rich wood millwork and vibrant textiles, the project sensitively preserves the building’s architectural integrity. In Jones Commons, a seemingly nondescript 1950s building is also given new life and purpose as a live–work building that adds gentle density to the site.
beautifully and thoughtfully
designed, are always
welcoming and contribute
to their respective
communities. AAmp Studio
has shown exceptional
promise with its body of
built architectural projects
to date.”
The partners’ dedication to a context-informed approach carries into their written work and their teaching. Unoccupied, an in-progress architectural research book, continues the critical gaze of the firm’s AAnotated journal by investigating “the overlooked structures and spatial artifacts that support human life but are rarely designed for direct human habitation.” In Toronto,Armstrong is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s John H.Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design; in Maine, Ashey is a studio instructor at the University of Maine at Augusta. A Black-led, woman co-owned practice (Armstrong is also a co-founder of BAIDA, the Black Architects and Interior Designers Association), AAmp embeds equity and inclusion structurally within its leadership and operations. The ethic of care is full circle.
Honourable Mentions
Ultralocal Architectes, Quebec
BASED IN QUEBEC CITY, where it was founded by Véronique Barras-Fugère and Alexis Ruelland in 2020, advocates for an architecture that does good —“an architecture attentive to people, uses, territory and the planet.” Its standout projects include La Seigneurie FuneralHome, which brings light and a modern touch to what can often be a heavy setting; at the heart of the building, a circular skylight imbues the space with a calm, contemplative soul.At the Kangiqsualujjuaq arena, the firm is crafting a lantern-like envelope attuned to Nunavik’s climate and culture.And at Pharmacie Cartier, it’s restoring and reinvigorating a facade as part of a deeply urban undertaking — with folded painted aluminum used as “a restrained gesture rooted in the collective imagination.”
Palma, Mexico
THE WORK OF MOVES BETWEEN “permanent and temporary architecture, engaging domestic, civic and experimental scales with equal rigour.” Ilse Cárdenas, Regina de Hoyos and Diego Escamilla founded the firm, based in Mexico City and Sayulita, in 2016 with an eye toward making this duality a central focus. Among its most fascinating projects is Types of Spaces, an ephemeral installation developed for the Concéntrico architecture festival in Logroño, Spain; it occupies the narrow passage of the former tobacco factory of La Rioja with a series of brickwork facades. Another project is a contribution to PILARES, the small-scale community centres developed by Mexico City to provide social, educational and cultural infrastructure to local neighbourhoods.
Wayback Architects, Toronto
IS a Toronto-based architectural and design studio “shaped by friend-ship, curiosity and a shared belief that buildings should feel as good to live in as they are to see.” Founded by Stephen van der Meer andJordan Winters, the firm focuses primarily on the residential and commercial realms, and its works display an attention to landscape, climate and the modest rituals of daily living. Among them are Trent Hills House, which is organized as two primary volumes joined by a green, gable-roofed entry. Another is a dreamy laneway abode: Banana Lane transforms a former banana ripening warehouse into a compact dwelling. By retaining the existing concrete block perimeter, the latter project establishes a sheltered courtyard that mediates between the public and the private, “allowing the house to shift between openness and retreat through operable screens and layered thresholds.”
EMERGING INDUSTRIAL DESIGN STUDIO
Winner: Smallmediumlarge, Montreal
TRUE TO ITS NAME, has scaled up quickly. Co-founders Sharlene Dupont-Morin and Juliette Mondoux, who launched their Montreal studio in 2023, had grand ambitions from the get-go: to tackle everything from products (small) to installations (medium) and interiors (large). So far, their furniture and accessories, displaying a winning blend of rigour and charm, have had the most impact: At their 2024 Interior Design Show (IDS) debut, a mirrored shelf presented an optical illusion, making the lower half of books appear to vanish into another dimension, while a side table, Spag, rested a glass circle atop a tubular metal base that resembled a zigzagging noodle.
After showing at ICFF in New York and SaloneSatellite in Milan, the duo returned to IDS Toronto in 2026 to take part in Ourse’s launch with pieces including a trio of adorable stools (Soufflé) — one fully upholstered, one with spider-like legs and one with a solid wood pedestal base. Building on that momentum, the studio’s latest collection, The Dressing Room (unveiled in May during New York Design Week) is perhaps its most confident yet, with a series of brutalist wooden side tables accented by graphic bolts that recall a pin-filled sewing cushion. The founders of smallmediumlarge describe it as being “driven by curiosity and shapes that matter” — and right now, we can’t stress the value of those shapes enough.
EMERGING INTERIOR STUDIO
Winner: By Lemoignan, Montreal
MONTREAL DESIGNER has built everything from cafés to barbershops to boxing gyms — but what sets his work in the commercial and hospitality sectors apart is the way it often counters the expected tropes of each typology. He has coined this as his “provocative edge.”
Yet his interiors aren’t about theatrics — they are shaped through the rich interplay of light, texture, sound and even scent to create a strong sense of atmosphere. Take REBL, for instance, a boxing and weightlifting club in Griffintown that pairs dark and pale blues with rich burgundy; or Salon Volta in Laval, a barbershop reminiscent of Batman’s lair. Against a backdrop of slate-grey lime-washed walls and matte epoxy flooring, pops of stainless steel and deep black set a moody vibe. Custom-fabricated by a local woodworker and bathed in an unexpected butter yellow, the chunky mirror frames become part of the architecture, anchoring each station within the open-concept space. By Lemoignan resists the idea of a signature style.
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