Meet the Principals
Meet the Principals: Shelley Ludman
Shelley Ludman discusses designing for continuity and change
by Alessandro Tersigni , September 17, 2025
I've always valued projects in which I get to work intimately with clients and communities to understand those significances. Supporting the evolution of spaces within living cultures is what’s made ERA such a great fit for me.
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Meet the Principals: David Winterton
David Winterton discusses urban layers and heritage heterodoxy
by Alessandro Tersigni , September 12, 2025
What ERA offers is our ability to interpret those many formal and material registers and architectural codes, ascertain their value and meaning, share this with our clients and the broader public, and bring all of it together to reactivate old places and create meaningful new spaces for our contemporary world.
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Meet the Principals: Samantha Irvine
Samantha Irvine on harmonizing conversations about the built environment
by Alessandro Tersigni , September 10, 2025
In an ideal world, great buildings are reused not because they must be, but because it makes sense from the perspective of the people who use them, the contribution they make to the public realm, in terms of good architecture, and the sustainability imperative they serve. When owners or users value a place and want to build on that value, that's when we do our best work.
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Meet the Principals: Jan Kubanek
Jan Kubanek discusses conservation and public good
by Alessandro Tersigni , August 25, 2025
ERA isn’t a typical architecture firm. Collaboration is at the core of everything we do — we’re used to working closely with other architects and consultants to deliver our projects. We also take a more interdisciplinary approach than most, often getting involved in areas of a project that go well beyond standard architectural practice.
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Meet the Principals: Philip Evans
Philip Evans discusses value and outcome in the built environment
by Alessandro Tersigni , August 15, 2025
I don’t think our profession has fully settled or articulated what it is yet. Heritage — as just one of many public benefits — is steadily broadening as a concept, and it remains incredibly difficult to define.
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Meet the Principals: Graeme Stewart
Graeme Stewart discusses legacies and transformations
by Alessandro Tersigni , August 6, 2025
ERA is fundamentally grounded in place. We always start with something — whether a site, city block, community vision, landscape, or a set of ideas. We’re usually exploring particular ways of stewarding what exists and enabling some kind of thoughtful transformation. That’s been true since ERA was a firm of 12 people. In the early days, the question in Toronto’s collective consciousness was, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could imagine that something could transform?” Today, we take transformation as granted. The goal is to ensure it’s meaningful.
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Meet the Principals: Victoria Angel
Victoria Angel discusses constructive debate and living heritage
by Alessandro Tersigni , July 31, 2025
I see ERA’s work as translating contemporary place-based theories and ideas into practice. We’ve tended to push the field of conservation by tackling complex problems and developing innovative strategies, approaches, and tools through those crucibles. One of the most interesting things about ERA is that we embrace the diversity of expertise and perspectives that exist across our studios. We have this incredible breadth of practice that fosters constructive debates and discussion.
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Meet the Principals: Ya’el Santopinto
Ya’el Santopinto discusses ERA’s radical practice
by Alessandro Tersigni , July 11, 2025
We're not demolishing buildings — we're renewing them. In the context of our current housing crisis, it turns out that preserving housing is, in fact, supplying housing. The work that our studio does is less about preserving architectural expression and more about making a particular kind of community possible, but fundamentally, we’re all using a unique set of skills to tackle challenges with our built forms.
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Meet the Principals: Scott Weir
Scott Weir discusses ERA’s approach to renewing interesting places
by Alessandro Tersigni , June 26, 2025
There are all these architectural conversations out there, and our job is to be as open as possible and see where there are ways to draw out something new and complementary from what we've already got by telling a story.
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Meet the Principals: Andrew Pruss
Andrew Pruss discusses ERA’s collaborative lenses on change
by Alessandro Tersigni , June 20, 2025
ERA started small, but with a multidisciplinary approach. We’ve since grown to fulfil our aspiration and build our capacity so we can work with existing places at every stage and scale: pre-planning, policy, strategy, and implementation, not just with architecture but also landscapes and intangible management.
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Meet the Principals: Michael McClelland
Michael McClelland discusses evolution and innovation at ERA
by Alessandro Tersigni , June 13, 2025
For 35 years, ERA Architects has been a strategic thought leader in understanding the ever-evolving phenomenon of heritage. As the firm evolves, so does our approach to working with heritage. Our interdisciplinary talents, insights, and relationships to the existing built environment lead us to understand places as living through time. As people, communities, values, and...
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