Ventin Group (Toronto) Ltd Architects The

There are numerous brilliant, interesting architecture firms in Ontario, but none with a mandate quite like that of The Ventin Group Architects (+VG). I’ve been writing about them since the 1980s, first as a freelancer, then as Fashion and Design Editor at The Globe and Mail, Editor at Canadian Interiors and subsequently as a public relations consultant. As I quote Paul Sapounzi, FRAIC, the firm’s President and Managing Partner, in “+VG: Ontario’s unofficial municipal architect,” published in Building, September, 2020, the firm’s mission “is to strengthen, reinforce and repurpose the cumulative heritage treasure of the province, one town at a time.” Without +VG’s timely intervention, Queen’s Park and Toronto Old City Hall, for instance, would be crumbling and derelict. They do wonderful new builds as well, as a glance at the King Township Municipal Administration Centre or any of the Muskoka cottages by +VG Principal Peter Berton will confirm. And—as their bid to enable COVID-era public education by rethinking the portable school classroom (“A learning pod-filled future,” Officeinsight, Sep. 8, 2020; and “Hex pods,” Building, August, 2020) shows—they’re also visionaries.