Marianne McKenna

Marianne McKenna (OC, FRAIC, OAA, OAQ, AIA) (born September 25, 1950) is a Canadian architect and a founding partner of KPMB Architects, a Toronto-based practice established in 1987. She is an invested Officer of The Order of Canada "for her contributions as an architect, designing structures that enrich the public realm”. Her projects include the renovation and expansion of The Royal Conservatory TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning and Koerner Hall. McKenna and KPMB were recently selected by The Brearley School, an independent all-girls school located in New York City, to lead the renovation of its building located on the Upper East Side. Her current projects also include the master plan for The Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta and the expansion and renovation of Massey Hall in Toronto In 2010 she was named one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women and in 2014 she was named one of Toronto’s top 50 Powerful People by MacLean’s Magazine.

McKenna was born in Montréal, Québec in 1950. She graduated from The Study, a Canadian private education all-girls school in Westmount, Quebec in 1968 and was honoured by The Study in 2008 with the Judy Elder Alumna Award. To the students of The Study, she explained her choice to pursue architecture as follows: “I originally saw the profession as a balance between creative and business skills. I found out quite early that it is much more than that. It is a creative profession but requires the leadership skills of innovator, arbitrator, negotiator, communicator, along with strong design talent and business acumen. The pleasure of architecture is in the range of challenges that only increase from day to day."

McKenna is an alumnus of Swarthmore College (B.A. 1972) and has a Master of Architecture from Yale University (M.A., 1976), where she studied under architects Harry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and Charles Moore. At Yale University, she also met and became lifelong friends with then aspiring actress Meryl Streep. Streep shared insights on Marianne’s career as an architect in the 2014 documentary "Making Space: 5 Women Changing the Face of Architecture".

...
Wikipedia