Fairfield and DuBois are the third firm profiled in our series on Toronto’s Modernist Architects. Below is an excerpt from North York’s Modernist Architecture Revisited, augmented with photographs featured in Concrete Toronto.
Robert Fairfield graduated from the University of Toronto in 1943 with a Bachelor of Architecture, where he was awarded the Toronto Architectural Guild Medal. He commenced private practice in 1954, and his design for the Stratford Festival Theatre was awarded the Massey Gold Medal in 1958.
Stratford Festival Theater, 1957. Images via Carthalia
Macy DuBois was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 20, 1929, and earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering at Tufts University in 1951 and his Master of Architecture at Harvard in 1957. He immigrated to Canada in 1958, after placing as a finalist in the new Toronto City Hall competition. DuBois worked in the office of John B. Parkin from 1958, moved to Rounthwaite & Fairfield in 1959, followed by Robert Fairfield Associates in 1960, and finally partnered with Robert Fairfield to form Fairfield & DuBois in 1963.
Central Technical School Art Centre, 1962
Robert Fairfield and Macy DuBois, both in partnership and alone, were responsible for a number of significant projects in Toronto and southern Ontario, including New College at the University of Toronto and the Massey Medal finalist Central Technical School Art Centre.
New College at the University of Toronto, 1969
Robert Fairfield won awards of excellence from the Ontario Association of Architects, and designed buildings across North American, including theatres in New York and Alberta, and university buildings at Trent, Toronto, and Lakehead University. He died in 1994.
Macy DuBois founded DuBois, Plumb and Associates in 1975 with his second wife, Helga Plumb. He was an Honorary Fellow of the Architectural Institute of America, a member and past president of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, member and past chairman of the Ontario Association of Architects, a member of the Royal Academy of Arts, and a recipient of the 1983 Governor General’s Medal in Architecture. He died on November 9, 2007.
Oxford University Press, 1964 (Demolished)
