Arcop

Arcop
FormerlyAffleck, Desbarats, Lebensold, Michaud & Sise (1955-1959)
Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold, Sise (1959-1970)
Company typePrivate
IndustryArchitecture
Founded1955 (1955)
Founders
HeadquartersMontreal, Quebec, Canada
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Number of employees
150+ (1966)
Websitearcop.ca/

Arcop (also ARCOP) was an architectural firm based in Montreal, renowned for designing many major projects in Canada including Place Bonaventure, Place Ville-Marie and Maison Alcan. The firm was originally formed as a partnership under the name Affleck, Desbarats, Lebensold, Michaud & Sise between Ray Affleck, Guy Desbarats, Jean Michaud, Fred Lebensold and Hazen Sise, all graduates and/or professors at the McGill School of Architecture. In 1959, after the departure of Michaud and the addition of Dimitri Dimakopoulos, another McGill Architecture graduate, the firm was renamed Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold, Sise which it maintained for a decade afterward. The company did not adopt the name Arcop, which stands for "Architects in Co-Partnership", until 1970.

The concept of the firm was to pool together knowledge from multiple individual architects and was based upon the principles of The Architects' Collaborative, founded in 1945 by eight architects in Cambridge, Massachusetts, including Walter Gropius. During the 1960s, Arcop was the largest architecture firm in Canada and at its peak in 1966, it employed over 150 people.[1][2]

In 1970, Ray Affleck, Fred Lebensold and Arthur Boyd Nichol, an associate at the firm for over a decade, founded Arcop Associates, which continued to thrive for decades later until 2014, when the firm merged with five other architecture firms to form one national firm, Architecture49.[3]

  1. ^ Mintzberg, Henry (2007). "Strategy of Design: Architects in co-partnership, 1953-1978". Tracking Strategies: Towards a General Theory. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199228508. Retrieved 21 August 2012.
  2. ^ Gersovitz, Julia. "ARCOP". The Canadian Encyclopedia. The Historica Dominion Institute. Archived from the original on July 5, 2012. Retrieved 21 August 2012.
  3. ^ "Info".