Ideas

As we look to the end of 2020, many architects are breathing a sigh of relief at having navigated, with more or less success, a harrowing year. While office…

New buildings constructed using innovative techniques are springing up all over Canada. These structures only exist because someone tried to push the…

The following excerpt is taken from Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future  by Mary Soderstrom (University of Regina Press, 2020). The book can…

Designing a World-Class Architecture Firm, by Patrick MacLeamy, FAIA (Wiley and Sons: Houston, 2020) From the title, I initially thought this book was about…

The public message was clear: maintain six feet apart. As people began to physically distance themselves to prevent the spread of COVID-19, cities and rural…

For good, and sometimes for ill, Vancouver’s Peter Cardew has become Canada’s definitive ‘architect’s architect’ over the past several decades. For good, he…

High-rise living in multi-unit residential buildings is, historically speaking, a relatively recent development. Traditional housing typologies—including…

To mark the first anniversary of Canada’s Architects Declare initiative, we’re publishing the original text of the declaration, signed by over 200 practices. We…

How are architects faring as we head into the second wave of the pandemic? Two surveys in late August—one by the Ontario Association of Architects, the other…

The challenge we face is overwhelming and complex. Our industry’s emissions currently account for 40 percent of total global annual CO2 emissions. Of that, a…

When presenting our work on reducing embodied carbon in our projects in Kigali, we’re often asked some version of the question: “You can do that in Rwanda,…

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of making design education available to those who are distant from major cities, part of marginalized…