In an award program unlike any other in its history, the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) honoured the 10 winning recipients of its 2020 Design Excellence Awards in an Oct. 1 virtual showcase of its celebration of excellence.

A major highlight was naming the winner of a People’s Choice Award, in which 2,135 members of the public voted for their favourite project, choosing from 10 in an online poll conducted after the OAA had announced the winners.

That honour went to the University of Windsor’s new Essex Centre of Research, which was designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects and houses the physics, chemistry and biology departments. The project features highly functional and unobstructed floor plates.

In its submission, the Toronto architectural firm described the centre as a “jewel amongst the aging infrastructure of the university” and one that tells the story of science at the institution.