WL Architects of the Year 2025: MA+HG -

What is architecture? It seems that a magazine that’s been covering the topic for six decades should have a ready answer to such a foundational question, but it’s just this type of mental gymnastics that one undergoes after encountering the genre-defying work of MA+HG.

It’s a question the duo who head the eponymous firm—Marianne Amodio and Harley Grusko—think about, a lot. They met while attending the University of Manitoba and have been, as Grusko puts it, “having the world’s longest conversation about architecture ever since.” And while that conversation may have started in Winnipeg, it found fertile ground when the couple moved to pre-Olympics Vancouver and interned with some heavy-hitting West Coasters.

Marianne Amodio and Harley Grusko of MA + HG. Photo by Pooya Nabei

For Amodio it was the experimental Bricault Design followed by Hotson Bakker (now Dialog) and for Grusko it was the behemoth of Perkins and Will (where his first project was working on the high-profile Van Dusen Gardens Visitors Centre). And while they continued their philosophical musings, both were busy absorbing the less esoteric but equally important facets of the profession: scheduling, zoning, building technology and the like. And by 2016 they were poised to make a go out of it together: Amodio had already hung her own shingle in 2009 (winning our Arthur Erickson Memorial Award for an emerging architect in 2015) and Grusko was confident about leaving the big firm job security.

READ MORE: Meet last year’s Architects of the Year 2024, Measured Architecture

As with any new venture, it was a hustle, but they promised each other that they would continue to be guided by some of the principles their longstanding conversation had spawned. For starters, making something special wouldn’t mean making something expensive. They would refuse to give in to preconceived notions of what a building must be. Colour would be the most affordable tool in their arsenal.

Photo by Pooya Nabei

And above all, architecture would be for everyone, full stop. That form of idealism is so often ground down by the everyday, lost in the lure of building oceanfront mansions with ample budgets (and the attendant paying of mortgages). But not for these two, and bit by bit they found their people: clients who appreciate a pair a scrappy Prairie kids refusing to buy into doctrinaire ideas about the craft, or about luxury, and gravitating to the transformative goal of bringing the best design to the biggest number of people.

It’s the application of these ideals that’s bringing some hope to a society mired in an ongoing housing crisis. And it’s translated into genre-bending work that is radically exuberant in its approach to fusing the functionality of multi- residence living with the draw of joyful beauty.

Tomo House. Photo by Janis Nicolay

Take their co-housing achievement, Tomo House—on the one hand, it’s a striking post-modern structure bringing steel cladding and brickwork into a playful interaction. But below the surface beauty is something deeper, a treatise on living in proximity with others: walkways and stairs fostering community, shared spaces being emphasized while units simultaneously enjoy maximum light and respite. It’s an achievement marvelled at by judge Matt McLeod of McLeod Bovell: “Tomo House brings this engagement to a busy and otherwise overlooked location, by offering appropriate scale and engagement with its immediate context—and lucky occupants!”

All in the Family
Tomo House, MA+HG’s co-housing project, features a sun-filled courtyard for all residents, while the generous walkways, social stairs and patios off the walkways increase the likelihood of more frequent, casual interaction between neighbours. Windows in the building were sourced from Euroline Windows. Photo by Janis Nicolay

Smart Density
The Union project restored a 100-plus-year-old heritage home, with the addition of an infill building, which transformed the site from a single-family dwelling to a five-unit development for the homeowner, her aging mother and her extended family. It’s a great example of a “Missing Middle” project: saving a character building while promoting densification and increased affordability. Photo by Janis Nicolay

And while their Union project may have started with a more traditional foundation, beneath the century-old heritage home facade is a one-time single-family dwelling transformed through innovation into five units to create harmony for the homeowner, her aging mother and extended family. The name refers not just to its East Vancouver locale but also to the sculptural joining of the old and new, with infill and historic housing merging to create a solution for the “missing middle,” MA+HG’s sweet spot for the housing that highlights affordability without sacrificing imagination and individuality.

In Living Colour
A home for the family of a prominent local shoemaker, the Fluevog House is an expression of the family’s unabashed love of colour. Striking geometric windows and rooflines have made the home a much-buzzed about property in East Vancouver. Photo by Janis Nicolay

And finally there’s Fluevog House, the net-zero showstopper for the famed Vancouver family (of the designer shoe empire) that’s become one of the defining buildings on Vancouver’s east side. It’s an explosion of colour that would make architect Luis Barragán proud, married to the clean lines and compact footprint that melds it into its neighbourhood, save for the gaggle of Instagrammers frequently parked out front, snapping away.

Photo by Janis Nicolay

It’s a diverse body of work celebrated by judge Heather Dubbeldam of Dubbeldam Architecture and Design: “MA+HG are redefining what multi-unit housing can be, infusing affordability-focused projects with playfulness, craft and social purpose. Their work demonstrates a clear commitment to tackling the housing crisis through design that is both pragmatic and poetic—offering dense, shared-living models that still feel deeply personal.”

Nearly a decade in and an impressive body of work behind them hasn’t quelled their innate curiosity about the power of design to transform—or their desire to continue their ongoing conversation about what architecture is.