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Ryerson picked up four awards for design excellence in the City of Toronto Urban Design competition this week.

The Maple Leaf Gardens and Ryerson Image Centre building projects, a group of architecture students and a master’s student all won awards for urban design and architectural excellence.

Every other year, the City of Toronto bestows Urban Design Awards to acknowledge the significant contributions of architects, landscape architects, urban designers, artists, design students, and city builders to the look and livability of the city. The awards competition offers the opportunity to receive city-wide recognition from a jury of urban visionaries. There were 125 entries this year.

The jury noted that Loblaw and Ryerson University have teamed up to breathe new life into Maple Leaf Gardens and to reanimate an important intersection, while they called the RIC “a subtle and sophisticated backdrop building to a dynamic and energetic civic public space.”

A group of architecture students received an award for their collaborative exercise, An Architecture of Civility. Undergraduates worked with master’s students, under the direction of professor George Kapelos, to imagine a better city and create solutions to civil challenges at 16 sites across Toronto. The jury commended the initiative for its overall range of ideas and for stimulating debate.

Architecture master’s student Melody Taghi-Poor was recognized with an award for her project called In Search of Place, for Toronto Harbourfront, envisioning the proposed underground pedestrian tunnel between Toronto’s mainland and Billy Bishop Airport. The jury was impressed by the simplicity and poetic way this project was illustrated and how it reinvents what would be a typical tunnel into a place with its own unique experience.

The jury report summarizes the results of the competition.

Projects will be on display at Toronto City Hall Rotunda until Sept. 20 and then later at the Etobicoke, Scarborough and North York Civic Centres.