Roger du Toit, right, works with collaborators at a consultation session for Carleton University?s new master plan.
Canada?s centennial in 1967 arrived with a sense of decided optimism, as the country entered a period of explosive growth. Roger du Toit, this year?s RAIC Gold Medal winner, charted a career that coincided with this era. He was a leader in shaping the burgeoning country, taking advantage of opportunities that arrive perhaps only once in a generation.
Du Toit earned his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Cape Town in South Africa in 1960, but his interests in design were far more diverse than a single discipline could encompass. At the University of Toronto, he studied urban design with Jack Diamond, FRAIC; by 1967, he had become a partner with John Andrews Architects, where he came to lead the urban design aspects of the practice. Later, landscape design was also added to the purview of his expertise. The idea of design as a holistic enterprise was in the air in the 1970s. Ian McHarg?s Design with Nature and Christopher Alexander?s The Oregon Experiment were touchstones for du Toit. The former laid out a method for overlaying multiple sources of information to understand a site?s complexities. The latter documented a pilot campus planning project that relied on broad democratic participation and user-focused collaboration.
These principles were first tested with du Toit?s leadership on the plan for Metro Centre, a modern development in downtown To...