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.
