This jury-mentioned competition entry for the Bamiyan Cultural Centre in Afghanistan was co-led by Taymoore Balbaa, winner of the inaugural RAIC Young Architect Award in 2011.
By Tanner Morton, Editor, RAIC Journal
Awards can have a significant impact on an architect?s prospects?even more so when they come along early in a career. For Taymoore Balbaa, MRAIC, winning the RAIC Young Architect Award in 2011 was an early sign of the stellar career ahead of him.
Balbaa was the inaugural winner when the prize?now known as the Emerging Architect Award?was first established. He is the first in our series on award recipients past and present.
?It was extremely memorable?not only receiving the news, but also having my work adjudicated by people I highly respect across Canada in the worlds of design, academia and journalism,? said Balbaa. Taymoore Balbaa, MRAIC, won the inaugural RAIC Young Architect Award in 2011.
One of the motivations for submitting to the awards competition was the way the prize criteria reflected his work at the time. Balbaa was a burgeoning architect and academic, and the award addressed both sides of his early professional career.
This was not the first major accolade for Balbaa, who also was the inaugural winner of the Canada Council for the Arts? Prix de Rome in Architecture for Emerging Practitioners in 2005, and won the RAIC?s Medal for Outstanding Thesis after graduating with his master?s in architecture from the University of Waterloo.
Many of the same ...