Media Releases

Rotman School expansion receives Canada’ s highest honour for architecture

April 23, 2014

TORONTO, ON —  The expan­sion of the Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is the recip­i­ent of a Gov­er­nor General’s Medal in Archi­tec­ture, Canada’s high­est hon­our for archi­tec­ture. Opened in Sep­tem­ber 2012, the expan­sion was designed by award-win­ning Kuwabara Payne McKen­na Blum­berg Archi­tects (KPMB) with Bruce Kuwabara as the design part­ner and Mar­i­anne McKen­na as the part­ner in charge.

The expan­sion dou­bled the amount of teach­ing, research, study, pre­sen­ta­tion and spe­cial event space avail­able to the Rot­man School com­mu­ni­ty. It also pro­vides a new home to sev­er­al of the Rot­man School’s research and edu­ca­tion cen­tres includ­ing the Desau­tels Cen­tre for Inte­gra­tive Think­ing, Rot­man Design­Works, Mar­tin Pros­per­i­ty Insti­tute, Clark­son Cen­tre for Busi­ness Ethics and Board Effec­tive­ness, Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness, Cen­tre for Entre­pre­neur­ship and Inno­va­tion, Michael Lee-Chin Fam­i­ly Insti­tute for Cor­po­rate Cit­i­zen­ship, the Cen­tre for Health Sec­tor Strat­e­gy and the Cre­ative Destruc­tion Lab.  The expan­sion con­tains sev­en new 70-seat class­rooms, state-of-the-art Desau­tels Hall which is used for lec­tures and events, fac­ul­ty and staff offices, a ground floor café with seat­ing for 130, four out­door spaces includ­ing ter­races and green roofs, as well as over 60 new study rooms and 790 full size lock­ers for stu­dents.

“KPMB under­stood not only our phys­i­cal needs for new space but also our com­mit­ment to a new way to think about inno­v­a­tive approach­es to busi­ness edu­ca­tion,” says Mary-Ellen Yeo­mans, Assis­tant Dean, Inte­gra­tive Plan­ning & Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer at the Rot­man School.  “With the expan­sion we’ve been able to con­tin­ue to inno­vate and grow our pro­grams.”

“We con­ceived the Rot­man Expan­sion as an inte­grat­ed, ver­ti­cal cam­pus to reflect the design think­ing strate­gies intro­duced by for­mer Dean Roger Mar­tin. A dynam­ic stair with a rib­bon of hot pink ani­mates the inte­ri­or atri­um. Desau­tels Hall, a large sig­na­ture event space, extro­verts the Rot­man pro­grams to St. George Street, the cam­pus and the city,” says Bruce Kuwabara.

“From the start we were inspired by Rotman’s belief in the pow­er of cre­ativ­i­ty and thought lead­er­ship to rev­o­lu­tion­ize busi­ness edu­ca­tion for mak­ing the world a bet­ter place. The Gov­er­nor General’s Medal rein­forces the Rot­man School’s broad and embrac­ing com­mit­ment to their fac­ul­ty, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and the city,” adds Mar­i­anne McKen­na.

The Gov­er­nor General’s Medals in Archi­tec­ture rec­og­nizes out­stand­ing achieve­ment in recent­ly built projects by Cana­di­an archi­tects. This pro­gram, cre­at­ed by Roy­al Archi­tec­tur­al Insti­tute of Cana­da con­tributes to the devel­op­ment of the dis­ci­pline and prac­tice of archi­tec­ture, and increas­es pub­lic aware­ness of archi­tec­ture as a vital cul­tur­al force in Cana­di­an soci­ety. These awards are admin­is­tered joint­ly with the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Voice 416.946.3818
mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool
Watch Rot­man on You Tube www.youtube.com/rotmanschool