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IQALUIT
Architect Wayne Guy, who played a pivotal role in the establishment of the architect community in the Northwest Territories, is setting up shop in Nunavut, with the opening of a Guy Architects office in Iqaluit.

Guy Architects owner Wayne Guy, left, is at the new Iqaluit office with Marion Carpenter, head of administration, and new office manager Sofia Dobrev. - Jeanne Gagnon/NNSL photo

Running his Yellowknife practice for more than 20 years and working on Nunavut projects from there for the past two years, Guy made the decision to establish a permanent base in Iqaluit as architectural demands in the territory grew, he said.

"There's a lot of work going on and we have some significant partners in the community," Guy said. "So we decided it would be a wonderful opportunity to open up office space here.

"We're very interested in the culture here and we're looking to do something unique and work with the Inuit to create a unique cultural expression for Nunavut."

In addition to attract "the very best talent in the world to Nunavut," Guy aims to help strengthen the architect community in the territory with an apprenticeship and other local training of Inuit being planned with office administrator Marion Carpenter, who is Inuit and from Iqaluit.

The establishment of an Nunavut architects association is also on Guy's to-do list, as the NWT Association of Architects celebrates its 10-year anniversary. The company also has an office in Kamloops, B.C.

"Wayne was instrumental in bringing the architectural act into place," said Rod Kirkwood, association president, about the act which transformed the NWT Architectural Society into a fully self-regulating professional association. "He was the key person of all of us who really stuck with it back in 2001."

There were about 30 practitioners in the NWT when the association was founded 10 years ago -- a far cry from the less than 10 practising across Nunavut today, Guy said. Regardless, an architects association would be an important addition to the region, he added.

"The practice in the North is so unique, you need to have a specialized local knowledge," Guy said, listing heat-loss problems, icing, and mold among the challenges to design in the North. "I would really like to start an architects association here. But you need enough people to run the association."

Projects that Guy Architects has worked on in Nunavut over the past two years include the Rankin Inlet arena, as well as the hamlet's legal services building, which was super insulated with a wall envelope and ventilated roof space for very low energy consumption, Guy said.

Energy efficiency is also a focus for the new Iqaluit office manager Sofia Dobrev, who has experience designing to the standards of industry certification program Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), she said.

"Basically the extreme weather conditions here really give you a sense of how efficiency needs to work with buildings," Dobrev said, explaining what convinced her to move to the North, after previously working in Toronto and New York. "I was interested in Inuit culture and also the change in climate."

With more than 35 years in the North, Guy has cultivated his knowledge of Northern cultural expression, often incorporating it in past work, including the Inuvik family centre with block work inspired by Inuvialuit beadwork, and the strong tipi form of the Yamoga building in Fort Good Hope, inspired by local smoke houses. That building is more than 10 years old, maintained well by the community because of local pride in the structure, Guy said.

"It's very important that the community be proud of the building and that pride means that the people associate that building with the community," he said. "With that, we find our buildings are typically very well taken care of, they age very gracefully and they continue to be useful generation after generation."

Guy Architects plans to incorporate local stone and materials in its designs, in addition to paying close attention to the way space is used by Inuit culture, and the usage of structural forms that "meld well with the landscape," Guy said.

"So then the building is part of the land and not just sitting on top of it."

The company celebrated its Iqaluit opening with an open house last Thursday.

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