Designers

50 Years of WL: #12 The True West Architecture of Jeremy Sturgess

The first ever inductee to the Residential Design Awards Hall of Fame.

By Western Living / August 3, 2021

In 2003 when we created the Residential Design Awards Hall of Fame, our very first inductee was Jeremy Sturgess. In part, it recognized that, while he often did important commercial work, at its heart the architecture firm he founded in Calgary in the early 1980s was predominantly focused on designing beautiful modern houses.

Credit: Joshua Lawrence

Jeremy and his wife, architect Lesley Beale, in the garden of their home in Victoria. Beale was a partner at Sturgess Architecture.

But more importantly, it recognized that, even among all the luminaries you see on these pages, Sturgess stood alone for the pan-Western focus of the projects his firm undertook. We first featured one of his houses in 1982 in an article written by our legendary Calgary editor Anne Suche, and in the following almost-four decades, we featured more than 30 of his projects, which is also a record for an architect in our pages.

Credit: Martin Tessler

Sturgess made a splash in our first ever Residential Design Awards in 2003.

Of course, given his locale, most were in Calgary and environs, but sprinkled in there were several Vancouver condos, a Bowen Island retreat, some Okanagan abodes, a few Kootenay Lake cabins, a visitor centre in the Yukon and a Skybridge in Jasper National Park. More so than any other designer, he put his imprint on all of the West. And in so doing he has also put his imprint on this magazine, not just with his work but by always stepping forward to help judge our Designers of the Year, championing other Alberta designers and generally helping us foster the idea that Western Canada has its own distinct design ethos… and It's a pretty amazing one at that.