The 2022 RAIC International Prize has been awarded to The Warming Huts, Winnipeg, Manitoba. The architecture firm behind the project is Sputnik Architecture Inc. The consulting team includes consulting team that includes Crosier, Kilgour & Partners, specialist consultant Luca Roncoroni, the Forks Renewal Corporation, and a host of other collaborators.

The Warming Huts are the product of a recurring exercise in design and construction that takes place on the frozen rivers of Winnipeg every winter. Playful but significant as works of architecture, they have been created over more than a decade with the support of hundreds of collaborators, both local and international.

Conceived, coordinated and often constructed by members of Sputnik Architecture, the Warming Huts are episodic and transformative, linking parts of a city divided by waterways, creating spaces of encounter and exchange, and reconnecting citizens to healthy lifestyles and the history of place. It is a wondrous celebration of winter that engages Winnipeg’s design community and draws the eyes of the world to a small city punching above its weight in its commitment to place-making and city-building.

The Warming Huts were selected by a nine-member jury in a process that included site visits by representatives of the jury to each of the three shortlisted projects. The shortlisted projects included, in addition to the Warming Huts, two other buildings: Borden Park Natural Swimming Pool, Edmonton, Alberta by Architects: gh3* and Stade de Soccer de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec by Saucier+Perrotte / HCMA Architects in joint venture.

A sculpture created for the RAIC International Prize by Canadian designer Wei Yew will be presented to the winners in the RAIC Celebration of Excellence, an awards ceremony and gala that will take place in May 2023 during the RAIC Conference on Architecture in Calgary.