The region’s newest cultural investment is starting to reap some unimagined dividends. Waterloo Region Museum has been awarded the 2011 Ontario Association of Architects Design Excellence Award.

The 47,000 square-foot facility is the work of Moriyama & Teshima Architects in association with The Walter Fedy Partnership.

“We’re thrilled to be recognized like this,” said architect Brian Rudy. “This is the best award for architecture there is for Ontario. The only thing better is the Governor General’s Award, but that’s a federal award.”

The $26-million museum is one of 15 recipients being recognized as leading examples of architecture by the design excellence awards. This year there were 150 submissions and the jury unanimously agreed on the top-drawer quality of the 2011 winning projects.

This year’s entries showed a number of important aspects in architecture design and practice including an increased effort to address sustainable criteria, innovation when working within a tight budget and an increasingly collaborative effort in working with clients.

Rudy explained that the museum was built to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental and Design) standards.

“We know we have met LEED’s silver standards and there is a possibility that it could win gold,” said Rudy. “We’ll have to wait and see if we get the gold.”

Museum curator Tom Reitz said that in many ways he is still getting used to the building.

The design was years in the making, Reitz said, noting that his staff spent considerable time looking at the function and use of the museum in conjunction with its pioneer village. 

“One of the things we did was invite members of the museum association to come and be part of a workshop that looked exclusively at front-end services like gift shops, ticket offices, washrooms, cloakrooms and how traffic flows through the building. In talking with others and going on field trips, we learned what works and what doesn’t work”.

Museum staff visited the ROM, Gardiner, Bata, and Bruce County Museum to get ideas. 

Rudy had his design team tour the region. He then had museum staff and other key stakeholders take part in some preliminary design workshops. That was followed by ongoing dialogue to further flesh out ideas and fill in the details.

One of those details brought Rudy back to his Waterloo Region roots when it was decided to make use of barn boards collected by the City of Kitchener when the Sherk Barn was dismantled.

"My grandmother was a Sherk and I’m a direct descendent of the Sherks that built and owned the barn,” he said. “It was also a good use of recycled material.”

The wood from the barn now lines part of the museum’s entry corridor and central lobby.

Details like that led Ontario Wood Works, an initiative of the Canadian Wood Council, to honour the museum with another award. The museum received the 2010 Green Building Wood Design Award, which recognizes projects that best demonstrate how wood contributes significantly to the overall environmental performance of a building.

Moriyama & Teshima Architects has a lot of experience in designing museum space. The firm designed the National Museum of Saudi Arabia, the Canadian War Museum, as well as a number of smaller county museums across Ontario. One of the projects it is currently working on is a museum being built in conjunction with the 17th century Jesuit outpost Ste. Marie Among the Hurons.

Rudy said he is looking forward to seeing the museum’s exhibition halls completed and opened and is thrilled to see this project recognized.

“It was a great project. We had great clients and this is quite a meaningful award to me personally,” he said.

Rudy said the museum may be in line to receive two other honours. The architects will be submitting the project for the Governor General’s Award, but there is also an additional award the museum could win at the Ontario Association of Architects awards ceremony, May 20. The Waterloo Region Museum is also eligible for the 2011 OAA People’s Choice Award. Voting takes place online at http://awards.oaa.on.ca/.