Barton Myers
May 2014 Honorary Degree Recipient
Doctor of Laws (honoris causa)
Architect Barton Myers studied architecture at Cambridge University and the University of Pennsylvania before immigrating to Canada in 1968 to join the faculty at the University of Toronto. He established his own practice in Toronto as co-founder and principal in the firm Diamond and Myers, and went on to form Barton Myers Associates in 1975. In 1984, he opened an office in Los Angeles that is now the firm鈥檚 base. He joined the faculty at UCLA in 1980. He has served as the Thomas Jefferson Professor at the University of Virginia, the Graham Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
The Canadian Encyclopedia describes Mr. Myers as a cutting-edge practitioner and educator, 鈥減assionate about the health of cities and the need to balance preservation and renewal.鈥� Mr. Myers is also widely recognized as one of the greatest theatre architects of his generation. Among his notable residential and public projects are the Wolf House, Sherbourne Lanes housing and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Citadel Theatre and Housing Union Building at the University of Alberta in Edmonton; the Seagram Museum in Waterloo; the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark; the Tempe Center for the Arts; and the Orlando Performing Arts Center.
Mr. Myers is also known for his commitment to the education of generations of architects. He has earned many awards and honours for outstanding architectural design, including the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada Gold Medal, the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles Chapter Gold Medal and on the occasion of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada鈥檚 Centennial in 2007, its Prix du XXe Siecle Award for the enduring excellence of nationally significant architecture for his design of the Wolf House in Toronto. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the American Institute of Architects.