Omar Gandhi Architects (OGA) was founded in 2010, and has design studios in Toronto, Halifax, and Berlin. The internationally honoured practice has produced a portfolio of architecture and other designed products for projects ranging from homes and innovative urban in-fills to medium and large-scale public works, and historic landscapes.
Gandhi and his highly collaborative OGA team create architecture that responds in often remarkable ways to design briefs. ‘There is a sense of play and the unexpected in key parts of our designs,’ explains Gandhi. As a result, each scheme is unique and surprising in form and interiors, and in the way materials are expressed.
“Our designs are based on the physical characteristics of individual sites and the historically familiar architecture in a given area.
And we then create evolutions or abstractions of the usual associations between buildings, sites, topography and other environmental phenomena. We are exploring and designing new ways to experience these things.”
In essence, OGA’s approach is to unravel clients’ briefs as creatively as possible, absorb the physical and environmental characteristics of individual sites, and then design architecture that boldly reinvents the familiar forms and materials of established building types or settings. These formal and spatial originalities are accentuated by superbly crafted materials and meticulous refinements of architectural detail.
The practice’s critically acclaimed work continues to attract ambitious clients, and this has been key to architecturally sophisticated projects such as the Schlotfeldt Residence in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, the Rabbit Snare Gorge cabin in Nova Scotia, and OGA’s remarkable landform-like intervention at the historically important Peggy’s Cove site in Nova Scotia.
Winner of 25 international awards in 2023-24, including Practice of the Year awards from Architizer, Architects Newspaper Awards, and the Architectural Masterprize, Omar Gandhi Architects continues to earn widespread international praise and academic recognition.
Additional accolades include the Canada Council for the Arts Professional Prix de Rome, Architectural Record Magazine’s 2018 Design Vanguard, and the Canadian Governor General’s Medal in Architecture.
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Founder Omar Gandhi is actively engaged in academia, having served as a Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor in Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture, and was named among Monocle magazine’s Most Influential Canadians.
Our process begins with a thorough understanding of each client's vision and the site's unique characteristics.
From there, we abstract familiar forms and recompose them into compelling architectural expressions.
Collaboration, play, and craft guide each step.
The studio has remained dedicated to creating ‘nice things for good people’ and is deeply committed to the collaborative process of design, working closely with clients, communities, and stakeholders to create inclusive spaces to be enjoyed by all.
Every member of the team shares a deep appreciation of people and place that informs the design process for each of the firm’s projects.
Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professors 09
Florencia Pita, Jackilin Bloom, Omar Gandhi, Scott Ruff
Scott Ruff’s studio, “Gullah/Geechee Institute,” investigated architecture’s role as a cultural signifier in the African-American Gullah-Geechee community off the South Carolina coast. It challenged students to translate cultural ideas into tectonic and spatial strategies for a monument,museum, and memorial that serves as a gateway to the Gullah-Geechee corridor, incorporating public interpretive and historical programs.
by Omar Gandhi (Artist), Jimenez Lai (Contributor), John Leroux (Contributor), Miquel Adrià
A ten-year survey of Omar Gandhi Architect—one of Canada’s most influential young firms.
Celebrating the Canadian architecture firm Omar Gandhi Architect, this publication chronicles the firm’s history through texts, interviews and reproductions of its most important projects. Selected works emphasize Gandhi’s commitment to traditional Canadian construction methods, the use of regional materials and local workmanship.
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