ERA Architects

In practice since 1990, ERA Architects Inc. (@eraarch) has over 85 staff members based in Toronto, Montréal, and Ottawa. The founding principals of ERA are members of the Ontario Association of Architects and the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals (CAHP), and are Fellows of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

Architecture
Recent and ongoing architectural projects in building conservation and adaptive reuse include Toronto’s Distillery District; Maple Leaf Gardens; Renaissance ROM; Transformation AGO; the Evergreen Brick Works; Union Station; the Artscape Wychwood Barns; Bridgepoint Health (the former Don Jail); Massey Tower; La Cour d’appel du Québec; and the Government Conference Centre.

Planning
Within our planning expertise we have a particular interest in regional and neighbourhood cultural planning; in cultural landscapes and their regeneration; and in facilitating community consultation of all stakeholders, as the democratic basis of good planning. Significant planning work includes the Tower Neighbourhood Renewal Project in Toronto; Union Station Heritage Precinct, Toronto Cultural Institutions Public Realm Study, the Culture of Outports program; and numerous Heritage Conservation District Plans and other studies in in Toronto, Hamilton, Peterborough, Kingston, Picton, and other parts of Ontario.

Values
Our core interest is in connecting heritage to wider considerations of urban design and city building, and to a larger set of cultural values that provide perspective to our work at every scale. Our core values are in generating professional integrity and expertise through research, education and mentoring. To that end ERA frequently works collaboratively with other firms to engage in city building, conserving heritage architecture and improving the built environment. We also generate publications and exhibitions related to Toronto and to Canada’s built environment. The firm’s most recent book is The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto’s First Immigrant Neighbourhood, a documentation of Irish, African-American, Jewish, Chinese, and Italian immigration to the Ward, spanning from the 1870s to 1950s.