2026 RAIC Gold Medal: Pat Hanson | Editorial Viewpoint

This special issue of Canadian Architect celebrates 2026 RAIC Gold Medal winner Pat Hanson, and the work of her firm, gh3*. Hanson’s exceptional design abilities came onto my radar when gh3*—then just a six-year-old-firm—won two of five projects in an open national design competition for park pavilions in Edmonton. On my first visit to Edmonton as a magazine editor, City Architect Carol Bélanger toured me through the construction site at Castle Downs Park, where gh3*’s fun-house-like mirror cladding panels were just being installed, to remarkable effect.

Before receiving the RAIC Gold Medal—the highest career honour bestowed by a Canadian architectural organization—gh3*’s work has been amply recognized. Among many awards, the firm has received five Governor General’s Medals in Architecture, and seven Canadian Architect Awards for future projects.

To me, one of these projects stands out for what is says about Pat Hanson’s creative vision and ethos: the Borden Park Natural Swimming Pool. In its design phase, the project that won a Canadian Architect Award was made of round pools, and used curved cutouts and additions to strategically repurpose two existing mid-century changeroom buildings. The final project—with its rectilinear pools, and pavilions built with gabion basket walls rather than smooth white surfaces—bore little resemblance. This in itself is not unusual. Costs come in too high, value engineering is requested, and projects that dream big in the design phase are often pared back when built. 

What is unusual is for the resulting project to be so accomplished that it goes on to win a Governor General’s Award. Hanson says the process wasn’t easy—she and her team put a lot of energy into the initial design—but when a pivot became necessary, she rose to the occasion. “I got another idea,” she recalls of the change.

This is the genius of Hanson, and of gh3*’s work. It is idealistic in its design vision, while being utterly pragmatic about the real conditions by which buildings are made: with tight municipal budgets, locally available materials and labour, and complex stakeholder and client groups. Hanson’s creativity isn’t limited by these constraints: her genius lies in the arguably harder task of working within such parameters, and still finding rich artistic and architectural possibilities.

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