2024 Governor General's Medal in Landscape Architecture

Photo credit: @CCxA, 2000

Claude Cormier was born on a dairy and maple farm near Princeville, Québec. A curious relationship with nature, Claude’s notions were far from bucolic or romantic. Forged in an environment of existential survival and risk, Claude used his imagination to escape the relentless labours of the farm. 

Despite the vast open spaces, the farm was too small for Claude’s dreams. He longed to be in those airstream trailers that passed by their farm, modern and free, and going places! His father died of cancer when Claude was 17. Difficult choices ensued about what to do with the farm, how the family would go on.  

For ‘orphan’ Claude, this was his fateful chance to take a leap and choose another path. His airstream trailer was an acceptance letter into Agronomy at the University of Guelph, where Claude aspired to invent a new flower. Studies were a challenge for someone with very little English at that time, yet he graduated to realize that new hybrids for him would not emerge from the lab, but rather through design. 

He would go on to pursue a BLA at the University of Toronto, where he graduated with the Lieutenant Governor’s Silver Medal. Claude started his career with the firm Gerrard Mackars in Toronto. He began as the design and construction manager for the landscape at the new Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. The client was the formidable Phyllis Lambert, with whom he forged a deal: in exchange for tuition, Claude would undertake the landscape architecture scope for the continual maintenance of the CCA. Phyllis Lambert was unknowingly cultivating the seed that would launch Claude Cormier and a new expression for landscape architecture in Canada.

At Harvard, Claude learned from Peter Walker, Richard Foreman, and especially Martha Schwartz, with whom he was able to work part-time as an intern.  Martha’s audacity revealed to Claude the transformational power of artful creativity as problem solver; and that joy and humour could actually be used as a tool for serious design. Returning to Montreal, this realization and confidence would become the cornerstone of the practice he established in 1994.

Photo credit: @JF Savaria

Claude’s first and one of his last projects (Les Pruches in 1990, and The Ring in 2023 respectively) were CSLA award-winners, along with 22 others in between. They reflect Claude’s signature eclecticism, yet share a common denominator for creative ingenuity and excellence.  

Other Canadian awards include National Urban Design Awards for Sugar Beach in 2012 as well as Berczy Park and 18 Shades of Gay in 2020, Azure Awards for Pink Balls in 2018 and The Ring in 2023, as well as dozens of other Canadian accolades across the 30 years of Claude Cormier’s career.  

Internationally, Claude’s work received two ASLA Honor Awards for HtO Park in 2009 and Sugar Beach in 2012, a prestigious EDRA Great Places award for Sugar Beach in 2014, a Holcim sustainability award for the Brick Works in 2008, and Fast Company Honorable Mention for Chicago’s Cascade Park in 2022.  Humble yet monumental, the work of Claude Cormier was designed not only as a backdrop to daily life, but also as spaces that could turn heads.  For this reason the work has been featured on the covers of numerous publications from Landscape Architecture Magazine, TOPOS, Landscapes/Paysages, and numerous travel magazines and newspapers, advertisements, and movie sets.  

Beyond their visual appeal, his projects consistently demonstrate excellence in how they feel, their ability to influence how people relate to space, each other, and even themselves.  The smiles and spontaneous conversations between strangers when people approach the dog fountain at Berczy Park, the relaxing of shoulders as visitors leave the city and step onto the sand at Sugar Beach, endless selfies of Mont Royal framed through The Ring at Place Ville Marie, and dopamine moments sparked by the mosaic heart at Love Park – these are spaces of experience.  

Photo credit: @JF Savaria

Claude Cormier participated in more than a hundred lectures and juries, both domestic and international over his thirty-year career.  In 2002, he gave a lecture at the Universities of Toronto, Manitoba, and Arizona titled Beige Landscapes.  This title was a tongue-in-cheek critique of passive notions of landscape architecture held by many as merely foundation planting intended to disappear into the backdrop.  

For Claude, landscape merited diva status on its own merits, and he became a leading voice to appropriate landscape architecture into a larger cultural conversation.  Claude was able to harness his spark and charisma to communicate ideas and narratives that were audacious and bold, sometimes dismissed at the start with a laugh, but appreciated upon deeper reflection as serious design thinking. Where others would have been undermined by an audience of eye rolls, skepticism, disbelief or mockery, Claude managed to communicate an infectious optimism that motivated clients and collaborators to take risks and invent something new.  Claude’s contribution has elevated landscape architecture into the popular imagination, raising expectations for a public realm everyone could love and enjoy.

An example of Claude’s impact on Canadian society is captured though much of his work in Toronto, particularly on the Toronto waterfront.  Winning the international design competition with Janet Rosenberg Studio for HtO Park was one of the key triggers that would launch the complete transformation along the city’s harbour.

Claude was part of the competition jury that selected the winning DTAH/West 8 scheme for the Central Waterfront Master Plan, and the completion of Sugar Beach helped unlock the East Bayfront into a dynamic new anchor neighbourhood in downtown Toronto.  Sugar Beach has become the brand of the district.  Similarly, his signature helped the Brick Works be identified as a top geotourism destination by National Geographic, and Pink Balls helped reverse a Montreal neighbourhood sliding into dereliction.

Photo credit: @Industryous Photography

Claude Cormier had a transformational effect on everyone he met.  People would look to sit next to him at meetings because he always made them feel so good.  With Claude, you felt seen.  He had a generosity that was sincere, and helped people see the best in themselves.  This is the same spirit with which he approached design for the public realm, as an opportunity to connect with people and create experiences of joyful discovery.  

This combination of audacious creativity, human sensibility, and technical pragmaticism made him an authentic leader who earned trust and admiration.  Claude was not afraid to roll up his sleeves with architects and engineers, asserting his role to build solid consensus and uncover fundamental synergies to enrich projects overall.  At Garrison Point in Toronto, Claude saved millions in contaminated soils disposals by locally re-using excavated fill to raise adjacent grades, creating a panorama promontory and elevated perch for a new park in the heart of a growing community.  

Photo credit: @Industryous Photography

Claude was an unprecedented ambassador who raised the profile of landscape architecture by bringing awareness to its profound impact for shaping the public realm.  He also showed developers how a generous public realm could improve their city-building credentials through projects that gave back.  One client reflected on how, before working with Claude, he had perceived landscape architects as mere planters of shrubs and trees.  His epiphany of the profession’s value and power came when the landscape moves pitched by Claude demonstrated to City officials that the public would be well-served, resulting in unanimous Council approval of a project that had previously been rejected before a landscape architect had joined the team.  He was a tireless defender of the public realm, and was able to gain respect from clients, municipalities, and the public for his uncompromising dedication to public life.

Claude had an ethic about paying it forward and cultivating the next generation of landscape architects.  Since the early 2000s, Claude Cormier Architectes paysagiste Inc. (CCAPI at that time) established a scholarship at the University of Toronto, which was expanded significantly in 2021 with a $500,000 personal gift from Claude (that was matched by the University) for an annual scholarship to support a talented student in financial need.  From lectures (including keynote speeches at several CSLA conferences) to studio reviews and professional mentorships, Claude has always been an accessible figure who shared his passion and expertise with colleagues across Canada and around the world.

In addition to being an ambassador for the profession, Claude was also an ambassador of excellence.  He had been an active participant on numerous juries, ranging from the architectural competition for the new Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax to the Margolese Prize at UBC.  Claude was a member of the Waterfront Toronto Design Review Panel for thirteen years since 2009, where he brought an uncompromising and critical perspective in the review of major projects.  Claude also promoted excellence through practice, sharing narratives with transparency and openness to reveal (and educate on) both the successes and failures that made up his professional learning curve.

Claude’s leadership style was also one that motivated others to be their best.  This applied not only to colleagues in the studio, but also to collaborators, clients, and even contractors. His ability to bring everyone on board through optimism and encouragement produced results that were better than they could have been when they were imagined on paper.  

Photo credit: @Industryous Photography

Since the beginning of his career, Claude Cormier explored new ways of practice and expression in landscape architecture.  His earliest award-winning project was Les Pruches, a carefully studied layout of large tree trunks across the space of a night club (Montreal’s equivalent to Studio 54 at the time).  From the nightclub to Lipstick Forest to the arrangement of umbrellas at Sugar Beach, there is a social ecology that is enabled by the spatial configurations in Claude’s work.  Going beyond checking boxes, Claude strived to consolidate accessibility, ecology, sustainability, and soul into a coherent and beautiful whole.  His emphasis on the experience of a place restores a focus on a human-scaled public realm designed for everybody.  

Under Claude’s leadership, the firm has been an early adopter of emerging green technologies, from an early use of silva cells at Sugar Beach, sponge-based stormwater systems at Love Park, and a climate-adapted Miyawaki Forest at Leslie Lookout Park, all in Toronto.  The integration of conceptual rigour with technological advances created steppingstones in a constantly evolving practice.   

Collaborations with other firms have also helped to bring muscle to tackle larger more complex projects, which otherwise would have gone to larger engineering-oriented firms, or others from outside the country.  Claude’s practice joined forces with DTAH, Diamond Schmitt Architects, and E.R.A. to deliver the Brick Works, gh3 Architects and Arup for Love Park and Leslie Lookout, as well as gh3 for Warehouse Park currently under development in downtown Edmonton.  This ‘superfriends’ approach opened doors and new insights to cooperation and collaboration, allowing firms to stay small and focused on their niche strengths.

As a landscape ambassador, Claude took the Canadian landscape spirit with him into his network around the world.  As a Fellow of the ASLA, his affinities and connections with the large pool of talent and resources south of the border nourished practice in Canada.  One example is Claude’s connection with The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) and Charles Birnbaum, with whom Claude coordinated an oral histories project at the end of his life to document his unique contributions to the profession and position in landscape architecture in Canada.  From Denmark to Australia, the United States to the UK, Claude was a bold Canadian voice that established connections worldwide.

Photo credit: @CSLA Awards of Excellence

The outpouring of support and condolences at the end of Claude’s life was epic and humbling.   These included official condolences from Toronto City Council, testimonies from the Mayor of Montreal, and moving tributes from clients, academics, media, and the public.  At The Ring in Montreal and Love Park in Toronto, votive lamps were set up in spontaneous tribute; everyone seemed to be in mourning.

Claude earned respect from both clients and colleagues for being a dedicated and sensitive team player.  He was recognized by the Médaille de l’Université de Montréal in 2018, a rare distinction acknowledging his outstanding career and audacious contributions to the profession, as well as his unique talents for creativity, determination, and resilience.  In 2009, Claude became a knight of l’Ordre National du Québec, the highest distinction for individuals who have contributed to the development and leadership of Quebec internationally.  He was selected as an Emerging Voice for North America by the Architectural League of New York in 2005, and named one of 14 international designers advancing the design field by Fast Company Magazine in 2007.  Claude was invited by Phaidon Press in 2016 to be featured in their publication showcasing the top 30 Landscape Architects in the world.  

Shortly before passing away, Claude was admitted as an Honourary Fellow to the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), a rare distinction for a landscape architect.  Fellow in both the CSLA (2008) and ASLA (2021) Colleges of Fellows, recipient of the Frederick Gage Todd Award in 2001, and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts since 2015, Claude has received numerous recognitions acknowledging the unique contributions across his entire career.  Claude received the Arbor Award in 2018 for his outstanding voluntary service to the University of Toronto, and an award from the AAPQ in 2011 with an overall recognition of his work.  

Claude and the work of his studio was featured in a retrospective exhibition at the Harvard GSD in 2010, where he was also invited to deliver the Dan Kiley Lecture.  Claude was also invited in 2005 to give the Harvard commencement day address to the graduating class of the GSD, with a presentation titled Having a Vision and Keeping It.  

From Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C. to the Australian Landscape Conference in Melbourne, Claude was frequently invited by prestigious organizations to deliver his unique design approach and experience to an audience of thousands.  

After his death, the New York Times published a full colour page detailed obituary on the work and life Claude Cormier, a rare appearance by a landscape architect in the Times, let alone one from Canada. At Claude’s memorial, so many clients, colleagues, collaborators, as well as those from the general public traveled to pay their final respects to Claude’s pink coffin at Place Ville Marie.  Everyone was touched by Claude’s big life and bold spirit, grateful for having had the chance to experience his unique radiance, laughter, and boundless generosity.

Photo credit: @Jean-Michael Seminaro

Claude was a queer voice in a generation that transitioned from fear and discrimination to acceptance and equality.  When the pink tree trunks for the Lipstick Forest arrived at the construction site for the Palais des Congrès in Montreal in 2002, workers inside the building refused to unlock the doors, spouting derogatory comments to those carrying out the installation work.  

Throughout the construction of Toronto’s Sugar Beach in 2009, Claude gave a wink of the umbrellas to come by wearing a pink hardhat during site visits.  The looks cast his way by many on site were not so welcoming.  During the Waterfront Design Review of Sugar Beach the year before, one of the jury members noted ‘you won’t see me sitting under a PINK umbrella!’.  Fast forward to the Pink Balls / 18 Shades of Gay installations between 2011 and 2019, and you could witness how Claude’s pink persistence became a barometer for social change, embodying new freedoms in the global progress for civil rights.  

Claude was not a conventional activist – he didn’t choose pink with a political agenda in mind.  As a chromatic contrast to contexts made up of blue and grey skies, he considered it aesthetically to be the right colour.  C’est beau!  But his mantra ‘Colour is not a decoration’ was also the playful workings of an irreverent provocateur.  So much of Claude’s work underscores the notion of pleasure activism at the heart of all his studio’s work.  

Claude was able to change hearts by making people feel good.  He was able to take the exuberance of queer joy and make it universal. Claude was a disciplined yet free spirit who showed what was possible when you give in to your heart’s wish.  His courage and conviction extended to the end of his life, when he opted for Medical Assistance in Dying because of his incurable cancer.  His openness and exhaustive effort to communicate with his wide network of colleagues and friends over this time was admirable.  Claude always had formidable foresight, and wasted no time to tie loose ends and secure the future of his firm and the legacy he was able to build with his team.