Daniel Pearl

Co-founding Partner, L’ŒUF (l’Office de l’Éclectisme Urbain et Fonctionnel) and Full Professor, School of Architecture, University of Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Daniel Pearl

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    Holcim Forum 2016

    Daniel Pearl, Co-founding partner, L’ŒUF (l’Office de l’Éclectisme Urbain et Fonctionnel), Canada at the 5th Holcim Forum on “Infrastructure Space” held April 2016 in Detroit, USA.

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    Holcim Awards North America ceremony, Toronto, Canada

    The Holcim Awards ceremony included the launch of Community-inspired housing in Canada, a book that illustrates the success of a former Holcim Awards winner and the evolution of how communities are designed and built. Master of Ceremonies, Dennis Trudeau (left) with book editor Daniel Pearl, Founding partner L’OEUF architects, Montreal; Founding member Canada Green Building Council; Winner global Holcim Awards Bronze 2006; and Winner Holcim Awards Gold North America 2005.

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    Global Holcim Awards 2006

    Representatives from the team winning Global Holcim Awards Bronze 2006: “Greening the Infrastructure at Benny Farm”, Montreal, Canada: (l-r): Josée St.Onge, Daniel Pearl, Jennifer Towell, Mark Poddubiuk, Sudhir Suri, Martine Bédard, Martin Roy.

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    Holcim Awards 2005

    Representatives from the team winning the Holcim Award Gold 2005 - North America prize (l-r): Jennifer Towell, Josée St.Onge, Mark Poddubiuk, Daniel Pearl, Bernard Olivier, Martine Bédard, Martin Roy, Katarina Cernacek, Sudhir Suri

Daniel Pearl is a Co-founding Partner at L’ŒUF (l’Office de l’Éclectisme Urbain et Fonctionnel) and Full Professor, School of Architecture, University of Montréal, Quebec, Canada. He is a winner of the Holcim Foundation Awards Gold 2005 for North America and Global Holcim Foundation Awards Bronze 2006 for Greening the Infrastructure at Benny Farm, Montreal, Canada.

Last updated: August 17, 2024 Montréal, Quebec, Canada

He is also a founding board member of the Canada Green Building Council and explores local building designs, green infrastructure, and sustainable neighborhoods. His research has extended to include community activism as a form of redesigning the Public Realm, and introducing the integrated design process in Architectural, Urban Design and Ecological Urbanism studies.

L’ŒUF was formed by Daniel Pearl with Mark Poddubiuk in 1992. Current partners include Daniel Pearl, as well as Bernard Olivier and Sudhir Suri. The firm concentrates on sustainable architecture, urban housing, residential and commercial renovation, as well as in research, critique and theory. L’ŒUF developed its reputation particularly in sustainable and environmental architecture, and maintains an active involvement in the academic, professional and community context. L’ŒUF members, as architects, support the fact that they are stewards of a built environment that is dignified, human, pleasant, functional, sustainable and sensitive to the environment.

L’ŒUF received the Holcim Awards Gold 2005 for North America and Global Holcim Awards Bronze 2006 for Greening the Infrastructure at Benny Farm, Montreal, Canada. The low-cost housing and urban renewal project in Montreal incorporates community involvement and many beneficial technologies for outstanding building performance and efficiency.

The Holcim Foundation released Benny Farm and Rosemont: Community-inspired housing in Canada co-edited by Daniel Pearl, which summarizes the most important points about the Benny Farm and Rosemont projects that exemplify L’ŒUF’s engagement in the field of sustainable construction. The publication described social housing projects include major innovations with respect to building envelope, energy efficiency, thermal comfort, and interior air quality that are rarely seen in this depth at this scale for affordable housing.

Book announcement: Learning from Montreal’s green social housing

The redevelopment of Benny Farm was the world’s first government-subsidized, large-scale, community-driven neighborhood renewal project combining affordability, green building technologies, rehabilitation, and new construction. This urban, landscape, and architectural project is a pioneer of sustainable urban renewal.

Daniel Pearl has developed important working relationships with numerous innovative consulting engineers, both academically and professionally, such as structural engineer Jean-Marc Weill of Paris; as well as mechanical and bio-climatic engineers Trevor Butler of Kelowna, BC, Canada and Matthias Schuler of Transsolar, Stuttgart. He has coordinated these consulting engineers’ participation within the conceptual approach phase through Integrated Design Process (IDP). Over the past two decades, Daniel Pearl has been involved in and has led numerous design charrettes from individual scale buildings to sustainable community plans for 10,000 people.

He obtained a degree in architecture from McGill University (1985) and commenced his professional career in New Delhi with ARCOP. He worked with architect Michel Vinois (1987-91) and received a mention in the Prix d’excellence de l’Ordre des architectes du Québec for a house La Maison Sous Les Arbres (Résidence Neumark) (1992) and in the sustainability category for La Bergerie (2015).

He is a Professor at Université de Montréal (2001-) and has chaired of the academic committee for the Canada Green Building Council (CAGBC) since its inception in 2003. Since 2002, Daniel Pearl and Ray Cole, from the University of British Columbia have co-chaired three international symposiums on “Greening the Curricula”, where architecture students, faculty and practitioners from across Canada and parts of the United States, come together to explore creative ways to introduce environmental and sustainability issues into architectural education.

Daniel Pearl as co-investigator together with Michaël Kummert (Polytechnique Montréal) and Lisa Bornstein (McGill University) received funding of CAD 150,000 from the Trottier Energy Institute (EIT), Polytechnique Montréal to undertake a three-year research project to improve the energy efficiency of buildings at the neighborhood scale. The research project aims to develop a system of sharing and recovering heat that is efficient, profitable, and ethical.