What’s great architecture in Canada? With these awards, who knows?

Pumphouse, by Winnipeg’s 5468796, slips two apartment buildings onto the ends of an Edwardian pumphouse, and drops a new office floor onto its steel structure.James Brittain/Supplied

Canadian architecture has a problem with grade inflation. There are far too many awards programs. Too often our institutions applaud deeply mediocre buildings and then hire those award-winning architects to build more.

In this context, the Governor-General’s Medals in Architecture matter. This 74-year-old award program, more than any other institution, sets the stakes and defines the canon.

But the latest 12 awards, announced last week, bring mixed news. Judging from this lot, the best of Canadian architecture is well-meaning, moderately attentive to sustainability and maybe – or maybe not – interesting or beautiful.

The medals, run by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada with the Canada Council and awarded every two years, recognize some laudable themes: Public buildings are pivotal. Wealthy people’s houses are not all-important. Working with existing buildings is crucial.

The most interesting choice may be a Calgary apartment building, dubbed GROW, by the local office MODA: Though modest, it delivers livable apartment layouts, a sloped rooftop deck and a distinctive zigzag form. It’s slightly rough around the edges, but brimming with spatial imagination. (It’s also the only apartment building on this list, which is a serious problem for a country that needs to build millions of apartments.)

On public buildings, the big winner is Toronto firm MJMA, which won a rare two awards. Both are deserved, especially for the magnificent Churchill Meadows community centre in suburban Mississauga, which mixes the rigour of Minimalist sculpture with the beauty of mass timber and delivers the nicest basketball court I’ve ever seen.

But there’s a quirky choice, too: the Simon Fraser University Stadium by the Vancouver office of Perkins & Will. This is basically a roof – a sleek, thin, highly engineered blade that reaches out to shelter ranks of seats. It’s a good project. It is also unquestionably a minor one. Is it truly among Canada’s 12 best buildings of the past two years?

Simon Fraser University Stadium by the Vancouver office of Perkins & Will is a quirky choice.Andrew Latreille/Supplied

On the theme of working with existing buildings, there is a similar split. A clear winner: Pumphouse, by Winnipeg’s 5468796, in the Exchange District. This slips two apartment buildings onto the ends of an Edwardian pumphouse, and drops a new office floor onto its steel structure – all of which is a lot harder than it sounds.

But also: an office building in suburban Toronto, 31 Scarsdale Road, by Suulin. The jury’s statement notes “the preservation and renovation of existing building stock is one of the most important choices” for sustainable building. Amen. But it’s a workmanlike factory-to-office conversion with quite a lot of glass (an inherently unsustainable material) and what the jury calls “straightforward details.” Again: A nice, moderately virtuous building. Is that all we’ve got?

It seems to be. Perhaps two-thirds of the selected projects display any sort of flair in their form, choice of materials and texture, or in the articulation of details, where architecture can deliver magic to the eyes or to the hand.

Equally, none of them display a perceptible agenda for social change.

What’s missing? An Edmonton bus garage by GH3, the innovative and elegant Pearl Block housing in Victoria by Darcy Jones, and Montreal’s Insectarium. Plausibly, the judges could have honoured houses by Omar Gandhi, Michael Leckie and Atelier Kastelic Buffey.

And above all: Where is the Ace Hotel Toronto, by the frequent medalists Shim-Sutcliffe? It is one of the most beautiful buildings in Canada, a feast of haptic pleasure and subtle nods to the history of architecture and the city where it sits.

Toronto's Ace Hotel, by frequent medalists Shim-Sutcliffe, is one of the most beautiful buildings in Canada.William Jess Laird/Ace Hotel

Who knows why it didn’t make the list? This award was chosen by a jury of Canadian and foreign architects, and any juried award has quirks and surprises. But the aesthetic standards here are inconsistent, and it’s hard to read a political or environmental agenda that includes rooms at a pricey rural golf resort – as this set of medals does, with a project by Nova Scotia’s FBM – but can’t make room for an urban hotel.

Architectural quality is notoriously elusive. But in Canada these days it is often absent. And when the country’s top awards can’t decide what it is, or adequately explain why, then architectural culture is on a shaky foundation.