Gold Medallist Jerome Markson (centre) with George Baird (left) and the building contractor on the construction site of Chatelaine Design Home ?63, Bramalea, Ontario. Photo courtesy George Baird
Certain works of architecture are so carefully woven into the times, places and cultures within which they are set, they seem to have always been there. Such buildings form the settings for events both ordinary and extraordinary, shaping not only the ways we engage and remember these events, but also quietly defining how we see ourselves, through shifting circumstances wrought by time. It can be a valuable lesson to look back at the moments these buildings appeared. What was the vision that brought them into being, that imagined them as something wholly new" Happily, the RAIC 2022 Gold Medal Jury has done just this, in awarding Jerome Markson its highest honour. Markson has spent his career creating just such works of architecture:  inscribed within their contexts, imbued with a masterful level of craft and character, and conceived foremost as settings for human interaction. His practice of nearly 60 years can only be described as omnivorous, embracing a wide range of building types and programs, from single family homes, to multi-family housing, to housing for the aged, to cultural and religious buildings, to medical and office buildings?even post-office prototypes, and yes, a floating cottage. He created notable buildings of distinction in all these categories, earning over ...