I had the honour this year of serving as the official photograph event sponsor of the 2013 Greater Ottawa Home Builders Association Housing Design Awards (GOHBA Awards, or… GOHBA…A?). What does an official sponsor do? Well, he works his butt off as an event photographer for the night, taking photos of the best builders, architects, and home designers in Ottawa. I also have the benefit of having worked as the interiors photographer for Roy at RND construction for the past few years. Last year, RND won “Renovator of the year” with projects including this hollowed out suburban home and this custom-built home project.
There were some incredible design submissions from many developers. Of course, RND had to win (or at least tied for the win), on a project I photographed for them. A cleanly designed home; they took the boring (read: terrible) standard interior of a cookie-cutter suburban home, gutted it, opened it up, and grounded the whole project with another lovely central staircase. I was especially a fan of the way the 2nd floor renovation had a room with huge windows that just let the light flow in.
The GOHBA Awards were held at the Ottawa Convention Centre. A lovely venue with an incredible view of Parliament and the Rideau Canal. While there were many winners, one stood out – Christopher Simmonds Architects won a whopping 13 awards. Someone hand these guys a broom, because that was a sweep.
Finally, Roy Nandram was the recipient of the Colonel Boss Award for outstanding service to the home builders’ association.
Congratulations to all the builders at this year’s gala. There were some very impressive interior designs and I’m looking forward to producing interior photographs for a few of them soon. You can see some more of the interior photographs from the award-winning (tying) RND Construction renovation over on Flickr.