Studio VAARO

We are thrilled to have received an Award of Merit in the Concepts category at the 2026 AZ Awards by , for Impossible Toronto: On the Courtyard, Learning from European Blocks. Written in collaboration with for the .

2018 Competition entry for Barilla Visitors Center - revisited by our friends and longtime collaborators

2018 Competition entry for Barilla Visitors Center - revisited by our friends and longtime collaborators

Following Viewing Rooms’ sculpture gallery, a second threshold (containing a washroom and kitchenette) guides movement into the photography gallery.

This final room, a perfect square, was designed to display photographs in an intimate setting. Rounded corners soften the room’s geometry, while a tall lightwell set flush with the far wall casts diffuse illumination that further dissolves the wall’s edges.

In Collaboration with our dear friend and fine art photographer

Visualization:

Viewing Rooms’ interior opens with a compact threshold, where visitors pass between two thickened volumes housing storage before emerging into the expansive sculpture gallery.

The gallery’s ceiling is punctuated by two tall lightwells whose curved surfaces distribute soft, even illumination. The space supports flexibility for floor-, wall-, and ceiling-mounted works.

In Collaboration with our dear friend and fine art photographer

Visualization:

Viewing Rooms’ brief, to design three interconnected spaces for landscape, sculpture, and photography, offered a strong framework for a spatial narrative grounded in perception and reflection.

First in the sequence, the landscape court is enclosed on all sides but open to the ground and sky. A circular void in the roof captures shifting light and weather.

A pivot door leads to a deep threshold, opening onto the sculpture gallery beyond.

Viewing Rooms, Studio VAARO’s design for a small art gallery in rural Ontario, sits in a forest clearing.

Its dark, monolithic pigmented-concrete façade echoes the surrounding earth and bark tones. Three chimney-like lightwells rise among the trees, drawing diffuse daylight deep into the galleries. Below, five concave bands are carved into the base, recalling stone shaped by wind and water, or the imprint of fingers pressed into clay.

In Collaboration with our dear friend and fine art photographer

Visualization:

For On the Courtyard, our design prioritizes high-quality interiors as a compelling, flexible alternative to the detached house: well-proportioned rooms across a range of household sizes, generous windows, strong thermal and acoustic performance, and a direct connection to the outdoors.

Our courtyard apartments are “through-units”: all primary rooms are naturally daylit and cross-ventilated, with views to both street and courtyard, unlike the deep, narrow units typical of much recent construction in Toronto.

The courtyard-block typology supports a range of apartment types, from studios to four-bedrooms, allowing residents to remain in the same block over a lifetime, moving between units as their circumstances evolve.

Read more in our research and design publication Impossible Toronto: On the Courtyard, a collaboration with , for — link in bio.

Visualizations:

Dupont Housing - Located on a corner lot along a busy Toronto thoroughfare, this six-storey multi-unit residential building is defined by geometric clarity and bold colour. A mineral base of vertical, pigmented concrete panels establishes a resilient and tactile material presence at the pedestrian scale. Above, the upper levels are clad in pigmented corrugated metal, shingled at an oversized scale and carefully aligned with the Juliet balcony guards to create a unified façade language.

We conceived the envelope as a repeatable system, allowing the architectural expression to be deployed across a range of urban conditions while maintaining a strong and recognizable identity within the client’s growing portfolio of missing-middle residential buildings. This emphasis on modularity and replicability informed both the massing strategy and the planning logic, enabling adaptation to sites of varying scale and configuration.

At grade, the building engages the street through a flexible ground-floor space designed to accommodate either office or café use, contributing to the vitality and social life of the neighbourhood.

In Collaboration with:
For our friends: