Brigitte Shim was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1958. She was educated at the University of Waterloo where she earned degrees in environmental studies and architecture. She has worked on the west coast of Canada with Arthur Erickson and Associates, and in Toronto with Baird/Sampson Architects.
 

She is a tenured professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, where she has taught a broad range of architectural design studios and lecture courses since 1988. In the spring of 2002, Ms. Shim was a visiting professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and in the fall of 2001 she was the Bishop Visiting Professor and the Visiting Bicentennial Professor of Canadian Studies at Yale University’s School of Architecture. She was also a visiting professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design in 1993 and 1996, teaching advanced option studios in the master’s program in architecture.
 

Shim and Howard Sutcliffe are partners as well as collaborators in Shim-Sutcliffe Architects Inc. in Toronto. Their studio works in an intense and probing way, sharing ideas through drawings, models and discussion with the numerous remarkable clients who have put their faith in them over the last 15 years.