housing Archives - Canadian Architect

Editorial: Why the Rush?

Elsa Lam — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 08:08:27 +0000

The slowness of the approvals process has been pegged as a key villain in the goal to increase the supply of housing in Ontario. But the truth is more complicated.

In recent years, the province has seen a flurry of bills in support of a provincial ten-year target to build 1.5 million homes. In October 2022, there was the More Homes Built Faster Act (Bill 23) and the More Homes for Everyone Act (Bill 109). Now, 2024 has seen the introduction of the Cutting Red Tape to Build More Homes Act (Bill 185).

A key theme in these Acts is the streamlining—and quickening—of approvals. Bill 23 removed the public meeting requirement for plans of subdivision, exempted developments of up to 10 units from site plan control, prevented third-party appeals on minor variance applications, removed the ability of municipal staff to require changes in exterior materials, and limited the role of conservation and heritage authorities.

Next, Bill 109 required site plan approvals to be completed by municipalities in 60 days, and to review projects requesting a by-law amendment within 90 days (or 120 days if the decision was concurrent with an official plan amendment application). To respond to what William Johnston, Toronto’s Interim Deputy City Manager of Infrastructure and Development Services, characterized as the “punitive legislated timeline provisions” of this bill, the City of Toronto hired an additional 150 staff to manage the workload. The new timelines did not allow staff to provide even a single round of comments about matters as basic as a building’s height or the size requirements of a new sanitary pipe, so comments were pushed to a mandatory pre-application consultation phase.

Bill 185, if passed, will remove the requirement for mandatory pre-consultations—reducing the ability of municipal staff to make any meaningful comments on applications, unless a developer voluntarily opts-in to this process. In many cases, this will have the effect of further shortening the timeline with which developers proceed along the well-trod route of appealing an application rejected on the municipal level to the Ontario Land Tribunal, which has the authority to override local decisions.

While this may be helpful in smaller centres where staff are less well equipped to evaluate applications, in larger cities, the move to further reduce the review and oversight process for development applications will almost certainly have an overall negative effect on the quality of buildings. Perhaps this is a worthwhile trade-off for a rapid influx of new homes. But will quicker approvals ultimately get us more housing?

A 2023 report from Gregg Lintern, Toronto’s Chief Planner and Executive Director of City Planning, suggests that the answer is: no. It found that 103,638 residential units had been built between 2017 and 2022, and that there were an additional 203,793 residential units—twice that number—that had already been approved, but not yet built. Many of these properties, presumably, are held by speculators who strategically upzone without ever having the intention to build. An additional 409,896 units were still under review at the time of Lintern’s report. If all of those units were realized over time, this would increase the total number of dwellings in Toronto by one half—exceeding the city’s projected 2051 population of 3.66 million by 14%.

The same year, the Regional Planning Commissioners of Ontario undertook a similar exercise. It reported that, province-wide, there were already over 1,250,000 housing units approved before Bill 23 even came into the picture. If stakeholders were to collaborate in getting these already-approved units built, the report implied, the province would get to its goal without rushing further approvals or removing environmental controls.

In response, a report commissioned by developer lobby groups Building Industry and Land Development (BILD) and Ontario Home Builders’ Association (OHBA), countered that there were only 331,600 “shovel ready” units, and that an additional 731,000 were in the application process, needing additional approvals, requiring a servicing allocation, or awaiting decision from a municipal council.

Perhaps a balance will come into place with an additional provision proposed in Bill 185—a “use it or lose it” provision that will give municipalities the option to specify the expiry of site plan approvals after three years.

All of this points to problems in housing supply that go beyond what can be solved by cutting red tape alone: a meaningful acceleration in homebuilding would require addressing systemic problems such as inflation and the lack of tradespeople. As Lintern concluded in his 2023 report: “Provincial targets are aspirational and their pursuit will not result in actual completed homes without a complete rescaling of the capacity of the development industry to construct new homes.”

As appeared in the June 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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Book Review: Platform.Middle—Architecture for Housing the 99%

Elsa Lam — Wed, 01 May 2024 09:04:59 +0000

Platform.Middle—Architecture for Housing the 99%

By 5468796 Architecture (Arquine, 2024)

5468796 Architecture

Winnipeg architecture firm 5468796 is known for working outside of the norm—the puzzle-box Bloc 10, the flying-saucer-like 62M—and their first publication is no exception. Rather than a traditional monograph, platform.MIDDLE is a box set of four volumes. Together, the publication’s components distill lessons learned from 5468796’s portfolio of missing middle housing projects, offering context and practical tools for architects to address housing affordability.

The first of the four books, titled platform.MIDDLE, reports from a symposium of the same name held at IIT’s College of Architecture in 2019. The symposium explored the current state of multi-family housing in North America, and architects’ role in shaping its future. The paper version is structured around illustrated summaries of the presentations by architects, developers, and educators who participated in the symposium. Especially engaging are the interludes between these summaries, where the transcripts from panel discussions are excerpted. These discussions point to the complexities of the housing challenge, and the imperatives to shift policy, harness data, and reform regulations, among other drivers for change.

Personal stories are interwoven through the conversations. Montreal architect Rami Bebawi, for instance, recalls meeting 5468796 principals Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic soon after founding KANVA with Tudor Radulescu. “We met them the first time we had ever won a medal. Out of the blue, they shared everything they knew. That stuck with us.”

That spirit of sharing is at the core of the next two volumes. The slender platform.MACRO is a primer to the many policy and financial tools that affect the affordability of housing: from zoning strategies and government investment, to alternative ownership models and hybrid housing policies. While beyond the scope of the architect, these systemic issues profoundly shape the profession’s work.

5468796 Architecture

Aspiring and practicing architects, as well as others engaged in producing housing, will find the third and fourth volumes, platform.MICRO and projects.MODELLING to be the most directly relevant. In the former, 5468796 offers a toolkit of design strategies for architects producing housing: from introducing interstitial courtyards and plazas that make the most of communal outdoor space, to creating adjoining suites to skirt zoning by-laws that mandate maximum unit counts. These strategies are illustrated with their own work, which is presented in greater detail in the last volume.

Driven by a sense of purpose, this publication is not so much a manifesto or pure celebration of 5468796’s work, as it is a guidebook that aims to open-source knowledge gleaned from that work for a greater cause. “It is our hope that the following micro strategies and solutions will allow others to leapfrog the lessons we have spent uncovering since 2007,” writes Hurme in the introduction to platform.MICRO. “This head start will hopefully allow more of us to take on the housing and environmental crises on a larger scale through the mid-scale multi-family building typology, and give architects some practical, straightforward options to increase livability and quality of the spaces they design, while still meeting the financial goals of their clients.”

As appeared in the May 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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Urban Crossroads: Îlot Rosemont, Montreal, Quebec

Elsa Lam — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 05:02:23 +0000

This view facing south from Boulevard Rosemont shows the building in its immediate context. To the left, one can glimpse the light-coloured Bibliothèque Marc-Favreau and the red-brick cooperative housing behind it. A small plaza in front of Îlot Rosemont provides access to Rosemont subway station.

PROJECT Îlot Rosemont, Centre de services de l’Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal + Résidence des Ateliers, Montreal, Quebec

ARCHITECT Lapointe Magne et associés

TEXT Odile Hénault

PHOTOS David Boyer

Emerging from Montreal’s Rosemont subway station, these days, one may be in for a bit of a shock. Where there used to be a small pavilion with direct access to the subway system—and a generous turning loop for buses—there is now the strong presence of an L-shaped complex, eight storeys high along Rosemont Boulevard and ten storeys along St. Denis Street. This recent addition to Montreal’s highly eclectic urban fabric epitomizes the city’s progress towards promoting mixed-use, urban densification, and public transit. Translated into reality, this means a subway station-topping complex that offers affordable housing for 200 seniors, as well as holding the headquarters of the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM)—a not-for-profit responsible for the management of some 880 buildings and close to 21,000 social housing units across the metropolis.

A complex context

The building sits at the border between the Plateau Mont-Royal and Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, central boroughs which span either side of a long, curving CPR freight line. For decades, the 40,000-square-metre site to the north of the rail line was occupied by municipal works yards and workshops, which were gradually demolished over time. In 2006, a new Master Plan was adopted to redevelop the city-owned area, with an emphasis on both market housing and social housing, as well as on public amenities essential to support a new neighbourhood. During the following years, the area saw developments including Bibliothèque Marc-Favreau (Dan Hanganu architects, 2013), Quartier 54, a thoughtfully designed eight-storey condominium complex (Cardinal Hardy Beinaker architects, 2012) and the Coopérative du Coteau vert, a three-storey social housing project built around a central garden (L’Oeuf, 2010).

The last site on this major lot was earmarked for affordable and social housing. In 2013, Lapointe Magne & associés was mandated to design the project, which by then had grown in size to include the OMHM headquarters. One of the architects’ main challenges, apart from the actual building design, was to secure and harmonize the labyrinthine movements of pedestrians, bikes, buses, cars, and emergency vehicles gravitating on and around the site. To top it off, bordering the parcel is an underpass heading south, and an overpass going east. A strong urban gesture was needed.

Access to the Résidence des Ateliers is located along St-Denis Street. Individual balconies and loggias on the upper seven levels provide residents with a strong connection to the surrounding neighbourhood. The bus loop is visible to the right of the entrance.

Shaping Îlot Rosemont

The architects’ mandate to renovate the existing subway access and integrate a bus terminal and turning loop was to have a major impact on the structure and the overall shape of the complex, as well as on its visual identity. Approaching the site, one is struck by the unexpected presence of giant V-shaped supports, zigzagging along the building’s perimeter. They form part of the intricate structural solution found by the engineers and architects as they looked to accommodate the large spans required by the public transit program, without compromising on the number of affordable units above.

Large V-shaped supports lift the building off the ground floor to allow for the bus loop and terminal. Ochre-coloured perforated aluminum panels were introduced on the soffit and around the loop.

The 193-unit Résidence des Ateliers occupies the upper five levels of the complex’s east wing and the upper seven levels of its west wing. The exterior volume of the overall complex is softened by the introduction of balconies and loggias, which reveal the presence of its occupants. Most of the units are one-bedroom apartments, which were designed with care despite the strict budgetary constraints attached to subsidized housing: the Résidence des Ateliers is the 11th initiative of a city-sponsored program called Enharmonie, which targets low-income seniors. As it happens, Lapointe Magne was the first architecture firm to be hired when the program was launched, designing the Résidence Jean-Placide-Desrosiers (inaugurated in 2006; see CA, Feb. 2007), and later commissioned with the Résidence Alfredo-Gagliardi (2008), located above the busy Jean-Talon subway station.

Given Îlot Rosemont’s peculiarly shaped site, the architects were able to avoid conventional, identical apartments and come up with almost 34 different unit types, all universally accessible. The lack of lavish budgets was compensated for by great attention to the treatment of spaces within the units and in commodious corridors with whimsical, oversized wayfinding graphics. Particular emphasis was put on light-filled communal and dining spaces. These were placed at the wings’ junction point in order to take full advantage of the obtuse angles generated by this irregular site.

The main dining area in the Résidence des Ateliers offers generous views of the immediate surroundings. Low-budget, high-impact design touches include coloured flooring insets and chandelier-style lights.

These gathering spaces are also found on the office floors, where light abounds thanks to an open plan and high ceilings with exposed mechanical and structural elements, which are particularly impressive at the third level. The communal rooms, such as the south-facing cafeteria on the third floor, offer generous views of the immediate surroundings and of Mount Royal in the distance. The OMHM’s double-height reception area is directly accessible from St. Denis Street, in a spot some neighbours would have preferred to see given over to a more glamorous function. The choice made by the OMHM was to offer its equity-deserving clients a space with dignity, defying the possibility of NIMBY sentiments.

The open staircase linking the top floors of the OMHM headquarters is located at the junction of the building’s east and west wings, facing Rosemont Boulevard. The presence of an angular wall reflects the site’s unusual configuration and enlivens the space.

A strong urban presence

Îlot Rosemont is a robust, unexpected object in the landscape. And it does take some getting used to, despite the looming presence across the road of a far bulkier structure built in 1972 for a then-rapidly expanding textile industry. Lapointe Magne’s response to this condition was to integrate the brutalist building by making it part of a symbolic gateway to an area of the city that is still undergoing major changes. In an effort to soften the transition towards the massive concrete volume, a dark brick—interspersed with subtle aubergine inserts and ochre finishes—was selected for the west wing of Îlot Rosemont. For the east wing, a contrasting white brick was adopted in homage to the much gentler Bibliothèque Marc-Favreau. At ground level, the soffit and bus loop that run underneath the raised building are clad with ochre-colored perforated aluminum panels.

At the crossroads of Boulevard Rosemont and St. Denis Street, a canopy marks the entry to the OMHM’s headquarters, extending a dignified welcome to the housing agency’s clients.

Key to understanding this latest urban intervention is the eclectic nature of Montreal’s streetscapes. A certain appearance of unity is given by the residential neighbourhoods with their regular, orthogonal grid and their two- and three-storey-high rowhouses, known locally as duplexes and triplexes. Attempts at building anything that breaks away from tradition are often met with scepticism. Nonetheless, the need to densify the city around subway stations—and on any of Montreal’s innumerable vacant lots—creates valuable opportunities for planners and architects to propose new formulas.

What has been built in Rosemont-La-Petite Patrie since 2006 can definitely be called a success. In less than twenty years, a new urban environment has sprung up here, anchored by some 800 housing units, more than half of which are affordable or cooperative housing. It is an exemplary showcase for the urban densification so often called for as a response to urban sprawl. Municipal leadership should be applauded for leading the way, by demonstrating how its own properties can be developed in ways that embrace complex programs and sites, as well as promoting affordable housing. Furthermore, the Îlot Rosemont and its immediate neighbours constitute a unique illustration of what committed, talented architects can contribute to their city—if and when there is political will.

Odile Hénault is a contributing editor to Canadian Architect.

Elevation

CLIENT Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM) | ARCHITECT TEAM Lapointe Magne & Associés: Frédéric Dubé, Katarina Cernacek, Pascale-Lise Collin , Alain Khoury, Olivier Boucher, Isabelle Messier-Moreau, Esther Gélinas, Alizée Royer, Frédérick Boily, Yves Proulx | STRUCTURAL Tetratech | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL Norda Stelo | LANDSCAPE VLAN Paysages | INTERIORS Lapointe Magne et associés | CIVIL AECOM | CONTRACTOR Pomerleau | SIGNAGE/WAYFINDING Pastille Rose | AREA 24,560 m2 | BUDGET $91.2 M | COMPLETION November 2022

ENERGY USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 151.2 kWh/m2/year | WATER USE INTENSITY (PROJECTED) 0.55 m3/m2/year

As appeared in the April 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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CMHC announces finalists for Housing Supply Challenge: Building for the Future

Lucy Mazzucco — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 13:00:35 +0000

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has announced the finalists for the fourth round of its Housing Supply Challenge, which is a call to action for citizens, stakeholders, and experts to come together and propose innovative solutions to overcome barriers to new housing supply in Canada. With a commitment to making housing more accessible and affordable, the challenge allocates $300 million in funding over a span of five years.

Over the course of six rounds, the challenge aims to tackle diverse barriers related to housing supply, including challenges in building timelines, construction productivity, and the improvement of data on land availability. In addition to funding support, the challenge strives to enhance community engagement, inspire national impact and cultivate collaboration and partnerships.

The Housing Supply Challenge’s Round 4, titled “Building for the Future: Innovative Construction for Housing Affordability,” aims to tackle construction-related barriers to housing supply. The challenge prioritizes solutions that accelerate the creation and preservation of affordable, climate-compatible housing that meets people’s needs. This round of the challenge consists of three stages: concept development and initial application, design and feasibility plan, and final application and implementation.

Below is a list of the shortlisted applicants and their proposals.

Solutions supported in this round are expected to have completed some prototyping and testing and may already be in limited use. The Stage 2 incubation phase allows for further exploration of potential applications, seeking regulatory permissions, and developing business and marketing plans to support wider adoption in the market.

Future rounds are expected to include Scaling Solutions (2023) and Public Perception of New Development (TBD).

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WorldGBC launches flagship report spotlighting how sustainable and affordable housing can, and should be, attainable around the world

Steve Wilson — Wed, 31 May 2023 15:26:24 +0000

Globally, two billion additional homes will be required to be built over the next 75 years. This will only add more pressure within the housing sector, which is already responsible for 17-21% of global carbon emissions. Humanity faces the dual challenge of tackling both the housing and climate crises on an unprecedented scale.

That’s why the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) has launched a new report, ‘Sustainable and Affordable Housing’, to spotlight the issues — and most importantly — address how we tackle them on a global scale.

Why sustainable and affordable housing matters

The housing sector plays a crucial role in achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2050. But by 2030, an estimated three billion people (or 40% of the world’s population) will be in need of adequate housing units, whether newly built or renovated. In addition to this, human vulnerability is heightening with devastating climate change events – research tells us that at least 85% of the world’s population have been affected by climate change, whilst 100 million people have also been displaced due to man-made conflict.

“According to the UN-Habitat, the world needs to build 96,000 new affordable homes every day in order to house the estimated 3 billion people who will need access to adequate housing by 2030, saysCristina Gamboa, CEO, WorldGBC. “In all geographies around the world, people are facing homelessness, poverty, or living in substandard homes. Those people are at the heart of this flagship report.”

“I am optimistic as always that if we collaborate on solutions, and spark consideration of best practices being implemented, we can accelerate the uptake of sustainable and affordable homes for everyone, everywhere,” says Gamboa.

The terms ‘affordable housing’ and ‘sustainable housing’ have been receiving increased attention for the past decade. However, the misconception that sustainable housing is more expensive, difficult to resource, and time-intensive to deliver is affecting its uptake. The good news, presented in WorldGBC’s new report, is that the knowledge, tools, and technologies to reduce these barriers and allow for the uptake of sustainable housing already exist.

Understanding the array of possibilities and their feasibility can help tackle the housing crisis and the various challenges surrounding it, whilst prioritising climate, health, equity, and resilience.

The aim of the report

The report presents a high-level summary of sustainable and affordable housing in each of WorldGBC’s five regional networks. It profiles the challenges facing the housing sector, and the opportunities available that are driving the uptake of sustainable and affordable housing, illustrated by global case studies. In showcasing a varied range of examples, a consistent message occurs; the challenges faced are numerous, but there is a growing body of evidence for progress and opportunities.

The case study content from each region highlights 15+ cutting-edge built environment projects, making sustainable and affordable housing a reality for all. From 3D printed homes in Kenya, community engagement and collaborative financing models in Nepal, to disaster-resilience retrofits in the Philippines, these case studies demonstrate a commitment towards the right to adequate housing and a sustainable future for populations across different geographies.

Each case study is aligned against a series of high level principles of sustainable and affordable housing developed by the Housing Taskforce representatives from the WorldGBC network. They conclude that sustainable and affordable housing in any, and all, geographies must reflect implementation of the following principles, with consideration of the cross-cutting nature of many of the topics:

1. Habitability and Comfort

2. Community and Connectivity

3. Resilience and Adaptation to a Changing Climate

4. Resource Efficiency and Circularity

5. Economic Accessibility.

This report has been developed by WorldGBC’s ‘Better Places for People’ global programme, consulted and co-created by the Better Places for People Housing Taskforce composed of Green Building Councils, programme partners, industry partners, and expert reviewers.

Read the full report here.

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McGill presents exhibition Minimum Cost Housing Group: Design for the Global Majority

Steve Wilson — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 14:19:21 +0000

Installation view of the exhibition “Minimum Cost Housing Group: Design for the Global Majority” April 12-June 9, 2023. Photograph by Arièle Dionne-Krosnick

McGill University is presenting the exhibition Minimum Cost Housing Group: Design for the Global Majority in the lobby of the McLennan Library Building. This exhibition, running from April 12 to June 9, 2023, traces how student thesis work, research papers, technical papers, reports and other types of formal and informational publications were essential outlets for the transmission of the group’s innovative research. It is curated by Vikram Bhatt, Ipek Türeli, and Arièle Dionne-Krosnick, with research by Arièle Dionne-Krosnick and Beatriz da Silva Takahashi.

Fifty years of housing research

The Minimum Cost Housing Group (MCHG) was founded in 1971 as a postgraduate program at McGill University’s School of Architecture by Columbian architect and alumnus Alvaro Ortega, and with the financial support of the CMHC, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Ortega developed his expertise in housing via his design practice. He also worked on United Nations missions, advancing economical housing solutions for under-resourced people around the globe. Architects and students who joined the program were concerned with global access to adequate housing and ecology issues.

Looking backward to look forward

This exhibition traces how student thesis work, research papers, technical papers, reports and other types of formal and informational publications were essential outlets for the transmission of the group’s innovative research. This research was wide-ranging, from mitigating the environmental impacts of building materials, and reducing environmental costs of buildings in use, to exploring culturally appropriate, context- specific design norms. These displays also emphasize how, from the 1970s to the 2010s, the MCHG’s changing objectives and research priorities are reflected in the evolving aesthetics of the publications: inspired alternatively by countercultural environmentalism, DIY, photocollages, aerial perspectives, and computational imagery. Photographs, architectural drawings, step-by-step instructions, visual aids, cartoons, and collages are interspersed throughout, offering a visually approachable lens through which to learn about the innovative technological and architectural research of the MCHG.

These collected materials represent archival holdings from the McGill Library’s John Bland Canadian Architecture Collection, including the Alvaro Ortega Fonds, Witold Rybczynski Fonds, and the personal collection of Vikram Bhatt. A more extensive and detailed exhibition will follow in Fall 2023 at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture.

For more information, visit https://www.mcgill.ca/architecture/channels/event/minimum-cost-housing-group-design-global-majority-347863

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Housing Multitudes

Elsa Lam — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 09:11:19 +0000

Drawing by Richard Sommer and Michael Piper

At a recent exhibition, a pastel-toned panorama filled the long front wall of the gallery at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. The 23-metre-long rendering showed the city of Toronto’s skyline, set against Lake Ontario.

But instead of the regular from-the-lake vantage point, which highlights the soaring CN Tower accompanied by a host of skyscrapers, the viewer is placed north of the downtown core, past Highway 401. The forest of downtown towers is a speck in the distance: occupying the bulk of the image is a carpet of small houses.

The perspective serves to highlight the enormous footprint taken up by low-rise housing in the city—the so-called “yellowbelt” of land zoned that way, which makes up half of Toronto’s buildable land. In the image, each of those parcels is marked by a monopoly-house-like yellow block. The city’s current and prospective towers, along corridors and at growth centres such as at Yonge and Eglinton, are coded in pink and cream.

The graphic manifests the city’s “tall and sprawl” planning policy—which encourages high-density towers downtown and along major arterial roads, set within a sea of individual houses. The accompanying exhibition and ongoing research project, Housing Multitudes, sets this model against the reality of a rapidly growing population: last year, almost 160,000 newcomers arrived in the GTA, and the city’s populace is set to grow by 50 percent in the next 25 years. How can the needs of both current and new Torontonians be better met by architecture and planning policy?

Curators Richard Sommer and Michael Piper, in collaboration with faculty colleagues and students, have offered an array of possible answers that build on existing tendencies in the yellowbelt, where intergenerational households and informal economies are evident. A set of animated videos imagines how a suburban house might change over time to accommodate multi-generational living; a series of graphic-novel-like renderings suggests transforming malls into public transit and micro-economic nodes; a planning map proposes the gradual transformation of existing neighbourhood blocks.

“A lot of contemporary research and practice about retrofitting the suburbs critiques this landscape for not being ‘urban’ enough, with not enough density nor active social space,” says Michael Piper. In contrast, he comments, “Our projects explore emergent forms of urbanity in the suburbs—for example, how immigrant communities have reappropriated this landscape and produced new kinds of social space, or how retired citizens produce community by gathering in shopping mall food courts to play board games.”

A section developed by Piper and his students in partnership with LGA Architectural Partners explores the nuts and bolts of how to convert single-family homes, whether in downtown or suburban neighbourhoods, into multi-unit housing. Funded by the Neptis Foundation and also designed to continue after the exhibition, the display and an accompanying website, ReHousing.ca, offer a catalogue of typical Toronto housing types, along with blueprints for how they can be modified to add housing units. An inter-war semi, for instance, can be converted into separate upper and lower units with interior renovations only, gain a third unit with a top addition, and add a fourth unit with a laneway house.

To further empower “citizen developers,” as Janna Levitt of LGA Architectural Partners calls them, the researchers are currently working with the major banks to enable the purchase and renovation of homes into multi-unit dwellings. This would open homeownership to prospective buyers who may need a rental unit to make their purchase viable, or who may wish to partner with a friend for a house purchase.

While it’s not the first (or last) exhibition on suburbia, Piper says that Housing Multitudes is different in aiming to meet Toronto where it’s at—rather than proposing to tear it all down and replace it. “We hope the work will encourage policy makers and design practitioners to imagine suburban retrofits that learn from the existing landscape, amplifying its nascent urban qualities,” says Piper. This would result, he adds, “in what we think will yield a truly new kind of urbanism.”

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Linking Up: Link Apartments, Montreal, Quebec

Elsa Lam — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 09:00:03 +0000

Photo by Adrien Williams

In the west end of downtown Montreal, an area densely packed with residential highrises, the appearance of a new apartment tower is not usually a cause for fanfare. But Link, a building designed by ACDF Architecture for developer Brivia Group, sets itself apart with a playful design that is carefully calibrated to stand out, while fitting in.

“It’s an awkward context,” says ACDF principal Maxime-Alexis Frappier, noting how the street is relatively narrow for the height of its buildings, and buried in the middle of a densely packed downtown neighbourhood. Two Victorian townhouses, at the base of the building, were remnant from a century ago, when the neighbourhood was named the Quartier des Grand Jardins for its villas and many religious institutions with large, verdant, grounds. In the 1950s and 60s, swaths of the area’s fabric of Victorian homes were demolished to make way for brutalist office and apartment towers. Now, it’s one of the city’s most densely populated areas, including a substantial number of students who attend nearby colleges and universities.

ACDF’s client had originally planned to demolish the debilitated rowhouses on their site, too—they had no heritage designation, and constructing from a tabula rasa is much easier—but Frappier and his team argued for saving them. “The street has nothing else, we needed to find a way to keep it,” says Frappier. He knew that retaining only the front elevations to form the building’s entrance, as his design proposed, would mean facing accusations of facadism—but, he reasoned, “for most citizens, they are really glad if you can keep a portion [of the historic fabric], and it contributes to the street life.”

Above the rehabilitated façades, ACDF’s design continues to pay homage to the area’s rich history. The tower is a quilt of openings, shaped as archways, gables, and rectangular dormers to reference the shapes that characterized the area’s historic homes. Some of these are windows, while others are enclosed balconies for the building’s 122 dwellings. The composition is presented as a work of art, framed by a dark granite surround.

A variety of grey tones are chosen for the precast concrete façade—a dark grey that matches the heritage slate roofs, a lighter grey to tie the building in with the neighbouring concrete towers, and a white that reflects light back into the narrow street. From the street, the patterned façade lends a whimsical touch to the neighbourhood. The shaped openings screen the clutter that often accumulates on balconies, while also affording additional privacy to residents.

The name of the development—Link—is a riff on Rue Lincoln, where the development is located. It also refers to the developer’s plan for the rental units, which includes the option to rent a single room in a three-bedroom apartment as an affordability measure for the area’s students. The architecture adds to the analogy, linking between the area’s past and present.

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Architects Against Housing Alienation to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale of Architecture

Christiane Beya — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 14:37:59 +0000

Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA), Poster in Toronto (poster by Chris Lee, rendering by William Hansen), 2022.

Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA) will represent Canada at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, from May 20 to November 26, 2023.

AAHA is a curatorial collective, newly formed for the Venice Biennale of Architecture. It has a mission to instigate an architectural movement and create socially, ecologically, and creatively empowering housing for all.

The collective was selected from among four finalists in a national jury competition. The Canada Council for the Arts, as Commissioner, oversees Canada’s official participation and will contribute $500,000 towards AAHA’s exhibition.

With this distinction, Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA) will launch Not for Sale! an architectural activist campaign for non-alienated housing

AAHA will transform the Canada Pavilion in the Giardini  into a campaign headquarters for equitable housing that rejects this concept of property and the financialized form of architecture that it implies.

Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA), Headquarters (rendering by William Hansen), 2022.

To address these issues, they will work with interdisciplinary and geographically-dispersed teams of activist organizations, advocates for non-alienated housing, and architects. They will collaborate to develop demands and create architectural projects to address housing alienation, presenting bold visions for equitable and deeply affordable housing in Canada. AAHA’s goal is to mobilize all Canadians to join the call for safer, healthier, and more equitable housing.

“We are thrilled to have been selected to represent Canada at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, a prestigious international platform that engages critical conversation about contemporary architecture. It is crucial that we respond to Canada’s deep housing crisis. Together with Indigenous leaders, activists, advocates, and architects, we will create a campaign for accessible and affordable housing for all,” says AAHA.

Along with the selected project, the proposals from the following firms and collaborations made the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture shortlist:

Chevalier Morales Collaborative: Pre-Occupied Architectures / Prerequisites
HiLo/YOW+ : Post
marc boutin architectural collaborative: Towards a Vernacular of Resilience

Adrian Blackwell is an artist, designer, theorist, and educator, whose work explores the relationship between physical spaces and political economic forces. His art and design have been exhibited across Canada, in the United States, and internationally at the Shenzhen and Chengdu Biennales, Shanghai Urban Space Art Season, the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the Toronto Biennial of Art. In 2022 Adrian and David Fortin co-edited issue 12/13 of the journal Scapegoat– c\a\n\a\d\a: delineating nation state capitalism. He has taught architecture and urbanism at Chongqing, Michigan, Toronto, and Harvard Universities and is currently an associate professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture.

David Fortin is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario and a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) Indigenous Task Force that seeks ‘ways to foster and promote indigenous design in Canada’. From 2018–2019, he coordinated a community-led housing design project with the National Research Council for remote northern communities and has also participated as a mentor and architect for the Indigenous Homes Innovation Initiative administered by Indigenous Services Canada. David is a professional architect who runs a small architectural office working primarily with Métis and First Nations communities across Canada. He is currently a professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture.

Matthew Soules is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture and the founder of Matthew Soules Architecture. Matthew’s research focuses on contemporary capitalism and architecture. His latest book, Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra Thin: Architecture and Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, examines the rise of finance capitalism and its relationship with architecture. Matthew’s work has been funded by numerous organizations, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the British Columbia Arts Council, as well as receiving a wide range of awards, such as the AIA/ACSA Housing Design Education Award in 2012. He has been visiting faculty at Harvard University and SCI-Arc.

Sara Stevens is an architectural and urban historian. She is an associate professor at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Her research focuses on real estate developers of the twentieth century, exploring the cultural economy of architectural practice, finance, and expertise in Canada and the United States. Her book, Developing Expertise: Architecture and Real Estate in Metropolitan, studies real estate development in twentieth century American cities, and how developers, investors, and architects worked together to build subdivisions and superblocks, cul-de-sacs, and towers. Sara was awarded a 2019 Research Fellowship with the Canadian Centre for Architecture that supports her second book project, titled Building Capital.

Patrick Stewart is a member of the Killerwhale House of Daaxan of the Nisga’a Nation. He is an award-winning architect with 26 years of architectural experience. Patrick was the first architect of First Nations ancestry to own and operate an architectural firm in British Columbia and elected as President of the Architectural Institute of British Columbia. Patrick is founding Chair of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada Indigenous Task Force, Co-Chair of the RAIC Truth and Reconciliation Task Force and Chair of the Provincial Aboriginal Homelessness Committee in BC. He has also been a mentor for the Indigenous Homes Innovation Initiative administered by Indigenous Services Canada as a different way to develop, design and fund projects with Indigenous communities.

Tijana Vujosevic is assistant professor at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Tijana is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the MIT Presidential Fellowship, Gerda Henkel Foundation PhD Fellowship, American Association of University Women International Fellowship, and, more recently, a two-year Fellowship with the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Strasbourg. Recently, MOMA re-published her 2013 essay on Soviet 1930s bathhouses on its site as essential reading during the pandemic. Tijana’s book on communist domesticity was reviewed in nine scholarly journals and was on Owen Hatherley’s list of most important books of 2017 in the Architectural Review.

Chris Lee is a graphic designer and assistant professor in the Undergraduate Communications Design Department at the Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY). His research and independent creative work explore the historical, practical, and pedagogical implications of centering the document—in particular its archival, evidentiary function—as a genre of graphic design. He has worked for The Walrus Magazine, Metahaven, and Bruce Mau Design.

Ali S. Qadeer is a Toronto-based designer, educator in the faculty of OCADU, an occasional writer, and a graduate of McGill University and RISD. His work and writing focus on algorithmic form-making, unorthodox toolmaking, and the disciplinary and economic structures that design practices buttress, as well as surveillance and platform managerialism and the countercultures of cooperativism.

Contributors & Collaborators: Affordable Housing Association of Nova Scotia │ Shawn Bailey and Lancelot Coar, University of Manitoba │ Bâtir Son Quartier, Black Urbanism Toronto │ Black Urbanism TO | Brique par Brique | Ian Campbell, Hereditary Chief, Squamish Nation │Canadian Cohousing Network │ Julia Christensen, Memorial University │ Anne Cormier, Atelier Big City │ CP Planning | Susan Fitzgerald, fbm Architecture │ Gentrification Tax Action | Haeccity Architecture Studio │Idle No More | One House Many Nations │LGA Architectural Partners │ L’OEUF Architectes | Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust │ Right to Remain │ Sarah Silva, Hiy̓ám̓ ta Housing │ SvN Architects and Partners │ The Studio of Contemporary Architecture │ Toronto Tiny Shelters │ Ipek Türeli, McGill University.

Lead Organization: School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia

Partner Organization: University of Waterloo School of Architecture

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OAA Applauds Province’s Housing Affordability Task Force Report

Christiane Beya — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 18:38:35 +0000

The Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) commends the provincial government’s Housing Affordability Task Force for issuing a substantive set of recommendations intended to improve the housing affordability crisis in Ontario.

For years, Ontario architects have reported a broken Site Plan Approval process that unnecessarily adds significant delays to getting much-needed housing built.

The Task Force appropriately flags negative repercussions to the economy, public services, and environment. However, the OAA adds to this list of consequences several other factors, from an annual cumulative cost to the province of as much as a billion dollars to projects abandoned before ever moving beyond the planning phase.

There is also the matter of falling international competitiveness. According to the World Bank Group, Canada ranks 172 out of 186 countries for the number of days required to obtain a construction permit.

In that spirit, the OAA states that it is pleased to see many of its recommendations incorporated into this report, and will study the report in closer detail over the coming days to issue a more in-depth response.

The architecture profession further states that it remains open to working with other stakeholders to ensure quality housing remains accessible to Ontarians. The links below offer further resources on this important topic:

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Growing Together: GROW, Calgary, Alberta

Elsa Lam — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 13:00:30 +0000

Generous rooftop garden areas provide opportunities for urban agriculture and a verdant communal space for residents.

PROJECT GROW, Calgary, Alberta

ARCHITECT Modern Office of Design + Architecture

PHOTOS Ema Peter

GROW, a striking 20-unit rental apartment development by Calgary-based Modern Office of Design + Architecture, brings new and much-needed promise to the largely uninspired world of mid-scale multifamily housing in Canada. In a sector preoccupied with margin and brand, GROW placed its bet on a different set of ideals, centered on community and gardens—and its wager has paid off. The project has achieved a diverse unit mix, community space, food production, and innovative urban form, at a competitive cost of $230 per square foot. On one hand, this makes the project a modest and successful 20-unit experiment: GROW eschews the normative template, but still converses in the economics of residential construction. On the other hand, it makes the project a much more substantive provocation, raising the question: why does so much multifamily design promise so little?

The form also allows for at-grade parking, resulting in significant construction cost savings.

The project is located on an unassuming interior street in Bankview, a neighbourhood just southwest of Calgary’s urban core. Throughout the past seven decades, Bankview has been subjected to scattered episodes of redevelopment and intensification. On every block, heritage houses intermingle with infill duplexes, walk-up townhomes, modern rowhouses, and mid-rise apartments. The neighbourhood’s complex terrain and staggered street grid further reinforce this medley of form and style. In a sense, Bankview can be read like a catalogue containing hundreds of historic visions for Calgary’s “missing middle.” GROW is that catalogue’s latest and most compelling entry.

GROW presents itself boldly to the street, as a composition of three masses that step back to create a terrace that climbs across the façade. The masses are clad in a restrained palette of wood and black metal, punctuated by infrequent openings and small balcony voids. This formal strategy lends the building a substantive presence despite its step-backs—GROW is sensitive, but not shy.

The main entry is set deep into the first mass, creating a satisfying forecourt. The same gesture draws the garage entrance far off from the street. Inside, the circulation is simple and purposefully composed. The ramping form produces a series of units that gradually increase in size, from a studio apartment up to a three-bedroom loft. The lowest row of units fronts onto the road, creating individual entrances that pick up the rhythm of the street. The second row of units back onto small, protected patios over the garage. The rest of the units look out over the multi-level roof terrace.

The project’s interiors—which are all unique—are thoughtfully resolved. A spare palette of wood floors and sharp white walls allows a sense of mass and space to emerge—an effect that is particularly successful in the lofts. There is no trace of the superficial fanciness and muddled edges that plague typical multifamily offerings. Again, GROW makes different promises.

Several of the units enjoy views to the garden plots, which are presently managed by a local community-supported agriculture (CSA) group.

The outdoor terrace is accessed from the second-floor interior corridor, making the roof a semi-private space for residents and guests. The terrace presents a journey that leads upward along the façade, through an extensive rooftop growing space to a deck at the top of the building. A handful of units look out over the terrace, creating a sense of intimacy and connection. The terrace is, at once, resident amenity, social node, habitat, and leasable property. The garden beds, which contain over 1,800 cubic feet of soil, are leased to a local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) cooperative called YYC Growers, which includes a network of local farms. In exchange for the growing space and some minor supporting maintenance from the residents, YYC Growers provides each building resident with a weekly Harvest Box. This model has already shown great value for both the residents and the producer. For GROW, it connects the architecture directly to broader conversations about food security, local economy, and community health.

The building’s raked form responds to height restrictions and creates a continuous outdoor space.

GROW wasn’t always destined for these big conversations. In 2015, Modern Office’s founding partners Dustin Couzens and Ben Klumper were asked to review a design for a more conventional building on the site. They pitched a series of optimizations that made more effective use of the slope, discarding an expensive underground parkade in favour of a parking garage tucked against the hillside. This gesture cascaded through the building form, shifting units and creating the form’s distinct terracing effect.

Section

As the design advanced, Modern Office sought out further opportunities to leverage the project in pursuit of meaningful residential innovations. “Housing is a banal and problematic typology in architecture,” says Couzens. “Because it is encumbered by return, it is creatively bankrupt. Part of Modern Office’s mission is to reinvest in those ideas.” GROW is the firm’s first major residential project that tests—and proves—that a reinvestment in the promise of multifamily housing can yield a host of meaningful returns, both to the developer and the community. In a city that had a rental vacancy rate of 6.6% in 2020, GROW has an astonishing waiting list three times its capacity.

The east-facing flats include terraces and balconies.

According to Couzens, GROW is a direct response to the challenge of the “missing middle,” which has become a common thread in the debate about affordability, housing policy, and urban growth in cities across Canada. The “middle” typically describes a wide range of housing types: denser than single family houses, but less dense than high-rise towers. Proponents of the “middle” typically point to these housing types as solutions that will produce more affordable and sustainable neighbourhoods through densification. Couzens outlines the challenge: “The missing middle needs a value proposition. It is difficult to build in a way that lives up to its promise of affordability. We need to ask more compelling questions about mixed use, and bring innovation to our underused spaces and underused surfaces.”

While Calgary’s overall housing stock remains dominated by single-family housing, the last twenty years have shown a steady surge toward the middle. In 2000, non-high-rise multifamily units comprised less than 5% of all units constructed. Last year, that share had grown to over 56%.

Clearly, development has responded to the opportunity of the middle, and it may not be “missing” for much longer. But this hardly closes the debate. GROW prompts us to ask more nuanced questions, not just about the quantity of middle, but about how it can encourage difference and connection, and how it can create appealing places tailored to the opportunities of each site. How can multifamily development produce fertile ground—both literally and metaphorically—in the city?

For Couzens and Klumper, GROW is just the beginning. “GROW proves that the reinvestment in these ideas works, but it’s limited here to twenty units. The task now is to scale the concept.”

Matt Knapik studied architecture and urban design at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary, where he has taught as a sessional instructor since 2011. He is an associate at Calgary-based O2 Planning & Design.

CLIENT RNDSQR and Andrei Metelitsa | ARCHITECT TEAM Ben Klumper (MRAIC), Dustin Couzens, Nicholas Tam (MRAIC), John Ferguson, Anthony Schmidt, Paul Mowat | STRUCTURAL Wolsey Structural Engineering | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL TLJ Engineering Consultants Inc. | LANDSCAPE Modern Office of Design + Architecture | INTERIORS Modern Office of Design + Architecture | ENVELOPE Williams Engineering | CONTRACTOR BMP Construction/RNDSQR/MAXIM Constructors | AREA 1,806 m2 | BUDGET $4.5 M | COMPLETION June 2021

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Why Ontario’s housing stock is not meeting today’s multigenerational living demands

Elsa Lam — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 13:00:28 +0000

Over the Covid-19 pandemic, the fragility of “traditional” housing has been exposed. The inability of assisted living and long-term care facilities to protect vulnerable, elderly residents led to many families caring for their loved ones at home. Offices and schools shuttered overnight, leaving families to juggle homeschooling, working from home, home resource sharing, and other challenges daily.

Truth is, the vast majority of homes in Ontario are not adequately designed for family members of different generations to live together. Many homeowners, especially those with limited financial resources, have had to devise their own solutions to the problems of cohabitation, often involving the construction of illegal secondary suites in or around their homes.

Pandemic-induced overcrowding is not the only issue affecting housing in Ontario. More generally, Ontario’s population is growing older: by 2050, about one-quarter of Ontarians will be older than 65. This will cause a significant burden to already-strained social services, and cause aging baby boomers to reconsider how their future care needs will be met. Furthermore, nearly half of young adults aged 20-34 live with their parents—a phenomenon not only affecting established urban areas such as Toronto, but also a majority of suburban communities, where most new homes and family-oriented developments are being built. These, and several other factors—including a growing population, housing unaffordability, evolving cultural norms, and a richly multicultural populace—are causing a sharp increase in the demand for multigenerational housing. While, in general, there is not enough housing to meet this demand, there is also not enough diversity in housing types to accommodate changing family dynamics.

In considering these issues, there are several ways in which policymakers, developers, and we—architects and designers—can better respond to the growing calls for action in this area. First, a holistic, community-first approach is required at the broader planning level. Second, a diversity in housing types is needed to respond to the needs of larger and more varied family compositions. And lastly, specific home design elements should be implemented to ready homes for multigenerational use and ensure a resilient future.

Q4 Architects’ multi-generational community typologies.

A holistic, community-first approach

Holistic planning and policy development at the community level can result in a process that welcomes resilient multigenerational design. These multi-gen developments can either be private sector driven (i.e., developer-driven) or public-sector driven (i.e., government-mandated), but must include sustainable design practices and the application of time-, user-, and age-specific perspectives in how they relate to the broader community. For instance, flexible zoning regulations can permit a variety of housing types, including homes containing more than one unit within or adjacent to a primary dwelling unit. This zoning should allow for market-ready purpose-built multigenerational units, secondary suites “as-of-right”, and more innovative dwelling types that employ creative ways to trade-off outdated parking requirements for multigenerational spaces. We must also design and recognize multi-generational suites as something entirely different than legal rental units or secondary suites.

Furthermore, child-centred and elder-centred planning could help us reimagine open, green, recreational spaces. For example, instead of locating large parks at inaccessible edges of suburban communities, we may prioritize small, programmable, networked, and easily accessible green spaces. Increasing lot densities and somewhat decreasing private outdoor spaces improves home affordability, while creating connected and interactive communal spaces which benefit both young and old. Merging this with less-trafficked rear-lanes and mews has the added benefit of creating safer streets for young and old, integrating dignified secondary entry, and producing a further shared amenity that will foster social interaction.

Designed around a rear-lane street network, the Cornell Village in Markham, Ontario was envisioned as a model for New-Urbanist development. The community facilitates multi-generational living, showcasing a mix of unit types, massing and façade styles that creates a sense-of-place amongst residents of all ages.

Diversity of housing types for a resilient future

When designing multigenerational homes, we must first recognize that a one-size-fits-all housing solution does not exist. While purpose-built solutions can better complement other age-friendly design strategies, it is seldom planned for in the design process. Family relationships and aging are very personal concepts, and designing within this context often requires us to reflect on lived experiences. This typically results in more nuanced and human-centric design that prioritizes functionality and livability over trend and marketability. Thus, future home design processes must take into consideration people’s needs at every stage of life. The result will be designs that produce safe and comfortable environments that facilitate aging-in-place.

There are several housing types tjat are inherently more amenable to multigenerational living. For example, rear lane homes and townhomes with a coach or garden house may offer a separate apartment with a dedicated garage and outdoor space for additional residents. This design option may serve multiple demographics, such as a young family who wants to live independently in an affordable space but requires family-based childcare, or elderly parents who may need personal care and support from their children. Secondary suites may be integrated within the home or designed as detached and separate, with their own kitchens and living spaces. All design decisions should seek dignified solutions to the at-times difficult realities of another generation’s everyday routines.

Multigenerational home design includes many nuances that need to be considered, including family members’ need for independence and privacy, as well as their desire to share resources. Should a family’s needs change, a multigenerational suite should also pivot to provide valuable rental housing, which both offsets mortgage payments and creates mixed-income housing to support community caregivers and service-workers.

Q4A’s design of Cornell Village incorporated suite-above garage coach houses and at-grade laneway houses to allow extended family members to comfortably share a property. Many Cornell residents today use these secondary suites to house and share resources within a multi-generational family.

Design interventions within the home

As new models of living together become more widely embraced, it is likely that a combination of market-driven and government-mandated multigenerational housing will become part of future communities. Whether this is through inclusionary zoning measures, revisions to the building code, or homebuyer preference, individual dwellings within these communities will benefit from specific design elements that facilitate multigenerational living. For example, as decentralized provisions for ride- and car-sharing increase, and zero-emission vehicles proliferate, it will become much more feasible to design garages for easy conversion to living space from development outset or as-of-right conversion.

Home basements, which are typically left unfinished for mechanical systems, storage, and other such utilitarian purposes, are another area that should be reconsidered in this context. Currently, basements are considered ancillary to the home, and homeowners carry the burden of transforming these spaces into living quarters if they so desire. In these situations, substandard renovations may result in potentially dangerous environments for basement residents. For example, on any other floor of a house, windows may be used as additional emergency egress. However, basement windows are not typically designed for safe egress – they are often too high from the floor, too small, and/or inoperable. In recognition that basements can house entire families, the OBC must mandate safe secondary means of egress and minimum natural light and ventilation standards for all new homes.

Additionally, home designers should consider a move away from the conflict-ridden kitchen triangle in which the focus is on individual efficiency (based on a previous generation’s gender roles), and instead design kitchens that allow for multiple cooks and concurrent meal preparation/cleanup. Often-hidden laundry rooms should be designed as larger, more open and convenient laundry spaces that adequately respond to multigenerational needs. Another consideration should be the inclusion of straight-run stairs instead of split-level, circular, or angular staircases which can significantly hamper future stair-lift modification.

At its core, designing homes for multigenerational sharing is about enhancing dignified living. Ontario not only has a housing supply problem, but a severe lack of diverse housing types that anticipate our province’s changing demographics and lifestyles. We can no longer ignore the fact that multigenerational needs are on the rise. Responding to these needs with bold, yet feasible solutions will go a long way in creating a more affordable housing stock and a more resilient future.

David DiGiuseppe is an intern architect with Q4 Architects.

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Montgomery Sisam Architects to design new modular supportive housing

Christiane Beya — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 19:15:05 +0000

The City of Toronto has reemployed Montgomery Sisam Architects, which earlier this year completed affordable housing on two City-owned sites, to design modular affordable housing for six new sites. The ongoing initiative will provide better quality long-term housing for those currently experiencing homelessness.

Exterior: Cladding details have been amended to improve the material quality and expression of the façade, as well as to improve neighbourhood integration.

Exterior courtyard: End modules have been enhanced to improve urban integration, routing, landscaping and expansion opportunities.

With these six new sites, Montgomery Sisam’s plans have evolved based on its earlier work for the City, further improving quality of living and dwelling flow, including through:

Improved neighbourhood integration: End modules have been enhanced to improve urban integration, routing, landscaping and expansion opportunities. Cladding details are also amended to improve the material quality and expression of the façades.
Enhanced unit layout: Built-in wardrobes have been repositioned to improve overall flow and layout, while windows are shifted to improve the dwellings’ entry experience.
An additional focus on sustainability: Mechanical and electrical modules are widened to improve coordination and routing, and to accommodate Toronto Green Standard Tier 2 sustainability requirements. Buildings will also include ample space for bike parking.

Interior suite: Built-in wardrobes have been repositioned to improve overall flow and layout, while windows are shifted to improve the dwellings’ entry experience.

Initiated in direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic to relieve pressure on the shelter system and create safe, permanent housing solutions for its most marginalized residents, the Modular Housing Phase 2 plan comprises an additional 398 new self-contained units across six distinct sites in the city of Toronto: 175 Cummer Ave, Trenton Ave & Cedarvale Ave, 7 Glamorgan Ave, 75 Tandridge Cres, 4626 Kingston Rd, and 150 Dunn Ave.

Phase 2 also included test-fit studies for an additional 12 sites under consideration for future phases of the Rapid Housing Initiative.

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Twenty + Change: Emerging Talent

Elsa Lam — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 13:00:04 +0000

Prenez Place! by ADHOC architectes. Photo by Robert Thibodeau

It takes courage to launch any business, but starting an architectural practice is especially daunting. Architecture presents many complexities: from finding clients, to meeting budgets, to negotiating construction—let alone establishing a portfolio with a recognizable design vision. Despite these challenges, young Canadian design practices are producing exceptional work that points to new directions for the profession.

This year, Canadian Architect teamed up with Twenty + Change to identify a group of emerging practices from across the country, selected both for their approach to practice and for the strength of their projects. Over long Zoom calls, we discussed and debated more than 90 portfolios garnered through an open call for submissions. The resulting selection of 20 firms is a snapshot of the range of concerns of young practices across the country—and their range of built work.

We were particularly interested in firms that showed design ambition and an appetite for risk. What work is pushing boundaries and displaying inventiveness in its approach to program, design, and tectonic explorations? How might a young firm set out a solid approach to design, and carry that through multiple projects? How does ambition translate into the successful execution of built work? We asked that firms submit at least one built project, and scrutinized each practice’s approach to detailing, ability to create inspiring spaces, and execution of completed projects.

The challenges of practice vary from place to place. In cities like Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, there’s a crowded marketplace, full of firms of all sizes and specialties. In smaller centers, there may not be an established design culture. Many of the architects we’ve selected have adapted their practice to their location—in some cases, creating a niche for themselves, and in others, becoming active in building design awareness and appreciation in their communities. Architects of all ages should take note: gradually, these firms are shifting the landscape of practice, carving out new roles for architects both in the industry and outside the profession.

Consistently, the firms we selected exhibited a remarkable thoughtfulness towards their work. Today’s young architects are concerned with the social and environmental impacts of their work, and many are pursuing an alternative approach to the practice of architecture. They’re advocating for increased density in urban neighbourhoods, pursuing community-oriented work, and choosing adaptive reuse projects over new builds.

In our selection, we also aimed to embrace diversity: showing different types of work from different parts of Canada, a variety of approaches, and architects of different cultures and backgrounds. We believe that diversity of all kinds enriches the practice of architecture and the design of the built environment—and ultimately, the way people in our society live, learn, work and play together.

This group of 20 practices represents Twenty + Change’s fifth showcase of Canada’s newest and brightest young designers and Canadian Architect’s third round-up of emerging firms. We’re excited and inspired by the diverse and thoughtful work that we have seen, and hope that you are, too.

Twenty + Change: Emerging Talent would not be possible without the financial assistance of our incredible sponsors. We are grateful to the following organizations for their generous support of this initiative: Patron sponsors—Blackwell, Bulthaup, Carpenters’ District Council of Ontario, Dalton, KPMB Architects, SvN and Velux; Supporting sponsors—DIALOG, Diamond Schmitt Architects, DTAH, Dubbeldam Architecture + Design, LRI Fire Protection + Building Code; Benefactor sponsors—BDP Quadrangle, Montgomery Sisam, V2com newswire.

AAmp Studio, Toronto, Ontario

Designed in collaboration with Ravi Handa Architect, Ell House is a vacation residence in Prince Edward County, Ontario, that consists of two volumes linked by a semi-exterior vestibule. Photo by Maxime Brouillet

ADHOC architectes, Montreal, Quebec

Prenez Place! was a 100-metre-long outdoor table in downtown Montreal, designed to encourage outdoor socializing during the pandemic. Photo by Robert Thibodeau

AM_A, Toronto, Ontario

Built for a retired Toronto teacher, Craven Road House creates a private, light-filled haven on a modest footprint. Photo by doublespace photography

Blouin Orzes, Montreal, Quebec

Over a three-year consultation period, Blouin Orzes helped village authorities evolve a planned facility for the presentation of Inuit Games to a professional-calibre performance hall. Savings from the project are being used to restore a neighbouring 150-year-old church into an intimate space for storytelling and throat singing. Photo by Blouin Orzes

Davidson Rafailidis, Fort Erie, Ontario

Big Space, Little Space adaptively reuses a 1920s garage in Buffalo, New York, into an apartment dwelling and workshop. A strategy of minimal interventions maintains the industrial character of the space and a flexibility in the way it is inhabited. Photo Florian Holzherr

dk Architecture, North Vancouver, British Columbia

A soaring canopy provides a warm welcome and a sheltered gathering place for visitors to the Skeetchestn Health Centre, outside Kamloops, B.C. Photo by Martin Knowles

Entremise, Montreal, Quebec

Within a 1,100-square-metre warehouse, the Project Young pilot created working space for dozens of organizations and hosted a two-year-long program of community events. Photo by Entremise

Giaimo, Toronto, Ontario

The restoration of the 1959 Oculus Pavilion was delayed by the pandemic, so Giaimo freshened it with a public art installation entitled Brighter Days Ahead. Photo by doublespace photography

MOTIV Architects, Vancouver, British Columbia

Designed as a working barn for a hobby farm, the Swallowfield Barn also serves as a community gathering space suitable for hosting  concerts and weddings. Photo by Ema Peter

MRDK, Montreal, Quebec

The wooden canopy is carried through to the restaurant’s Montreal airport location, set alongside a precisely crafted serving counter. Photo by David Dworkind

Nine Yards Studio, Charlottetown, PEI

An amphitheatre and set of demonstration hives help raise awareness of PEI’s bees. Photo by Tamzin Gillis

NÓS, Montreal, Quebec

The 2018 installation Moving Dunes, occupying a street alongside Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts, was inspired by the representational technique of anamorphosis. Photo by Raphael Thibodeau

Peter Braithwaite Studio, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Caribou Point Studio is a residence for two artists that includes studios at each end and shared living and dwelling spaces in the middle. Photo by Peter Braithwaite

Phaedrus Studio, Toronto, Ontario

Odin Café + Bar’s origami-folded counters are created with Corian laid over plywood ribs; the faceted detailing extends to the design of tables. Photo by Ryan Fung

Quinzhee, Quebec City, Quebec

B2’s six units have split-level plans that contribute to a sense of intimacy for each room. Photo by Dave Tremblay / 1PX

SOCA, Toronto, Ontario

Completed in collaboration with Andrew Chung, King West Loft transformed an open floor plan to add two bedrooms and an extra washroom. To conserve resources, the design refurbished and reused many existing elements, while strategically adding custom elements such as a bespoke L-shaped bench that doubles as a spatial divider. Photo by Andrew Snow

StudioAC, Toronto, Ontario

In Fairleigh, a triangular kitchen island invites interaction between the cook and guests sitting or standing at the counter. Photo by Doublespace Photography

Studio Shirshekar, Rothesay, New Brunswick

Completed with architect of record Des-Tec, the Petitcodiac Baptist Church pays homage to a demolished 1879 Gothic Revival building on the site. Photo by Julian Parkinson

Suulin, Toronto, Ontario

Office 31 is a gut renovation and addition to an existing warehouse building. Instead of the outdoor access to tenant spaces typical of surrounding buildings, the architects convinced the owner to create a brightly daylit shared atrium space. Photo by Anton Kisselgoff

Uoai, Toronto, Ontario

Located on Toronto’s College Street, The Blue Room uses colour to suggest an interior space. Photo by Kuba Los

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Developing Interests

Elsa Lam — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 13:00:21 +0000

“Show me a wealthy architect,” architect Lloyd Hunt once quipped to his class at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, “and I’ll show you a developer.”

The profits of developers can seemingly outstrip an architect’s fees on a project. But for architects, there’s a way to reap the financial rewards of development—by becoming the developer.

The rewards go beyond potential financial gains, though. Architects who enter the development arena are often aiming to make modest, but important improvements to a neighbourhood or city that they know well. They’re gaining valuable knowledge about building from a client-and-owner perspective that feeds back into their architectural practice.

When architects own, finance, and sometimes even act as the builder for development projects of their own design, caution is needed to navigate potential conflicts of interest. As with some other professions, architects are ethically bound to maintain a high level of independence and impartiality in supporting the interests of clients and of the public.

A conflict of interest can arise when an architect has other roles in a project. For instance, when an architect has a financial interest or acts as the builder on a project, it can be difficult to be impartial in tasks such as certifying the value of work, explains the Ontario Association of Architects in its Practice Tip 26.

The Tip states that business activities outside of providing architectural services should not be connected to the architect’s Certificate of Practice. “The OAA does not discourage members from pursuing other avenues of business, such as the provision of construction services, under a separate entity,” it reads.

The Alberta Association of Architects expects that members choosing to be involved in activities such as development conduct their business through a separately registered legal entity. It also expects members to communicate and market their architecture design services independently from other industry-related activities. For the AAA, the onus lies with members to clearly identify and distinguish in which capacity they are operating if they provide a combination of regulated and unregulated services.

Some of the architects I spoke with for this story set up a separate corporation that owns the property under development, and that hires the architect to work on it. All of them emphasized the importance of fully disclosing their role to all parties involved, and ensuring that their professional responsibilities supersede their financial interests.

The Architectural Institute of British Columbia’s Bylaw 31.5 states that an architect may be a project’s owner, and may also be a project’s contractor. The bylaw adds that in these cases, written disclosures of the architect’s additional roles should be provided to contracting parties, as well as to authorities having jurisdiction over the project’s review and approval process. Written acknowledgments that those disclosures have been received and accepted are also required.

In Ontario and Quebec, if architects own greater than a 10 percent share of a project, they forfeit their professional liability insurance for that project.

Pro-Demnity, the provider of mandatory professional liability insurance for Ontario’s architects, notes that conflicts of interest can provide an enduring risk with regards to future claims, which may come from other parties involved in the project, the users of the building, and people who may be affected by the project, such as adjacent landowners and passers-by.

“Pro-Demnity’s experience arising from claims where an architect attempts to wear two hats at the same time through two separate incorporated entities, is that the architect potentially undermines the strength of their own legal defense as professionals,” comments the insurer. “The prudent way forward is for the architect to make informed decisions about the type of risks they choose to accept, keeping the professional liability insurance limitations in mind, and appreciating that playing only one role or the other is the best way to eliminate the conflict of interest risk altogether.”

In California, where architects can obtain insurance as an owner, architect and builder, architect Jonathan Segal has built a thriving practice around development work. Segal has developed and designed 30 projects over as many years, holding most of the properties as rental apartments which his small firm also manages.

The rentals create the income needed to fund new projects and pay for employees. Since the apartments depreciate over time, they also present a tax advantage that can be used to offset gains from annual rental income.

Park & Polk is a mixed-use apartment building in San Diego by architect-developer Jonathan Segal, FAIA. The H-shaped building includes 43 residential lofts for rent, 4 low-income affordable units, 7 office studios, and ground floor retail spaces.

Segal, who offers an online course in his method, says that being the developer helps him to expedite work by eliminating the disputes and finger-pointing that typically arise between architects, owners and builders in conventional practice. “I’m making the drawings and writing the cheques,” he says. “I want to get financing, get the building done, collect rental income, and then move on to the next project.”

Since he continues to own the properties, this allows him to push the envelope of what he would do for clients. For instance, in one project he put in a glass floor that later leaked—it wasn’t a problem, in his view, as he simply repaired it. “These buildings are all one-offs, so they’re all going to have problems—we can fix that stuff,” says Segal.

He advises architects interested in development to start by building their own house and flipping it, gaining experience in dealing directly with trades, financing, and real estate transactions. This can be repeated to gain capital and momentum, with the goal of moving up to progressively larger projects.

Segal notes that the appreciation of projects over time is where he’s seen the greatest profit in his work. “Always do rentals, never condos,” he says, noting that he has only rarely sold buildings from his portfolio, when he was offered twice what he considered to be their worth.

It’s recommended for architects pursuing development work—along with any work outside the scope of architectural practice—to obtain appropriate legal and insurance advice in their province or territory to suit the contractual relationships involved.

Is it worthwhile to navigate the regulatory issues and financial risks to pursue this kind of practice? We spoke to a half dozen architects who’ve taken the leap, and haven’t looked back.

A Vancouver duplex is architect Shora Parvaresh’s first foray into working as both the architect and developer of a residential property. Photo by Janis Nicolay

Shora Parvaresh, Noble Architecture

Vancouver, British Columbia

With their high real estate prices, cities like Vancouver and Toronto are tough places to get started with development projects. But while the financial risks are high, architect Shora Parvaresh felt a strong pull to pursue her own developments as a way of nudging up the city’s standards for housing quality.

“My theory is that quality really matters—and if you’re not in a position to get an architect to design your dream home, there’s not many options that have a lot of sparkle and joy in them,” says Parvaresh. “Is it possible to push the boundaries a little, and make something affordable, high-quality, well-designed, and with an element of delight?”

Three years ago, Parvaresh founded Noble Architecture amid pursuing a Masters degree in management, all while continuing her full-time job. (She says that her current employer, MA+HG, has been supportive of this work, and she sees principals Marianne Amodio and Harley Grusko as her mentors.) Parvaresh recently completed and resold her first project under Noble—a duplex replacing a single-family home.

While most Vancouver duplexes divide houses into square-shaped front and back units, Parvaresh instead wanted to explore a side-by-side typology that would give both homes a front entrance and allow equal use of the backyard. To offset the narrower plans, more akin to Vancouver townhouses, her units include a double-height void that creates a sense of openness throughout the floorplates.

In contrast to the local convention of dividing duplexes into front and back units, Parvaresh created side-by-side units that give both residences a front entrance. A double-height void extends above the living area, creating a sense of interior spaciousness. Photo by Janis Nicolay

In construction, she prioritized high quality materials, including raw natural wood shingles that will develop a silvery sheen over time, and a metal roof chosen for its longevity and ease of maintenance.

In Vancouver, most spec homes maximize the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and add so-called luxury finishes like faux-marble tiles. “Those things are not on the top of my list, but high-quality spaces are,” says Parvaresh. “There’s things that sell in the city that become the norm, but they’re not necessarily making our lives better.”

An unexpected challenge that Parvaresh encountered in the development process was securing a commercial mortgage for the project, even though on paper, she met all the requirements. From her Masters’ research, she learned that women typically had more difficulty accessing financing than men—and this resonated with her experience. “It could be that it was my first project, or that I was trying a newish idea,” she says, reflecting that it’s impossible to know why her applications were rejected by several banks. Eventually, she was able to get approved for financing, but it wasn’t easy.

Parvaresh is hoping to ramp up to larger-scale development projects, although she is being careful to find the right investment partner to work with. Her ideal: a partner that shares her philosophy of contributing positively to the city, and producing a bottom line that doesn’t stop at profit alone.

“The reason to do this is not because I am dying to take financial risks or that I am that entrepreneurial by nature,” says Parvaresh. “But because it is the right and necessary thing to encourage market change and better housing outcomes across the city and the country. My dream is to lift up the public expectation of developments.”

“We all know that a duplex in East Vancouver is not going to solve affordability and density issues in this city,” she says. “But it is a very small step towards the right direction. Two families on one lot is a tiny bit closer to a healthier, more appropriate density.”

Gene Dub’s most recently completed project with Five Oaks is a mixed-use development called The Edge. The 10-storey building supports one of Canada’s largest vertical solar arrays, overlooking a lower-slung property also owned by Five Oaks. Photo by doublespace photography

Gene Dub, Dub Architects

Edmonton, Alberta

When Gene Dub was establishing himself as an architect in the 1970s, he got in the habit of renovating the houses he lived in and reselling them. “My father was handy and my mother was industrious,” he recalls. “The first six houses, they did all the legwork with me.”

He also started fixing up spaces occupied by his office, Dub Architects—it moved four times in its first few years, each time leaving behind a newly renovated building, and accruing a bit more money to fund the next project. The firm continued to take on development projects, owned by sister company Five Oaks. Dub had a development project going at all times, to act as a levelling device for the firm’s workflow.

That’s still the case—Five Oaks projects make up between 10 to 30 percent of Dub Architects’ work in any given year. But over time, those projects have gotten progressively larger in scale. Five Oaks has completed 20 major projects, and its current work is its most ambitious, including a $70-million residential project with 400 terraced units in the historic Rossdale brewery and on an adjacent four-acre parcel, and the redevelopment of the 1968 Charles Camsell Hospital into a mixed-use project with 600 residential units.

Dub reconstructed the façades and key interiors of the historic Alberta Hotel adjacent to its original site in downtown Edmonton. Photo courtesy Dub Architects

Dub’s passion for self-initiated development work stems from both an entrepreneurial drive and a love of history. Fourteen of the projects he’s completed under Five Oaks, representing some $120-million of work, are historic renovations—the kind of project that conventional developers wouldn’t take on because they were too risky. This includes restoring Edmonton’s historic registry A-listed McLeod Building—a Chicago-style neoclassical office building replete with terracotta ornament.

In 1984, the turn-of-the-century Alberta Hotel was demolished to make room for a new federal office building. Thirty years later, Dub recovered its carved sandstone-and-brick façades, cupola, cornice and bar mirrors—and rebuilt the front part of the building, with a contemporary rear, 50 feet away from its original site. “The façade and hotel bar now exist as they did when Prime Minister Laurier came to declare Alberta a province, and apparently stayed at the hotel,” says Dub.

2nd Avenue lofts transforms Saskatoon’s abandoned Hudson’s Bay department store into 130 two-storey lofts, while retaining streetfront retail. Photo courtesy Dub Architects

In holding with an ethos that repurposing older structures is much more sustainable than demolishing then, Dub has also renovated several modern-era buildings, including converting Saskatoon’s 1960 Hudson’s Bay department store into condos.

The City Market Lofts reuses an existing exposed concrete structure from the 1960s to create 72 units of affordable housing. Photo courtesy Dub Architects

The success of Five Oaks has come from seeing long-term value in heritage buildings—and, more generally, in Edmonton’s real estate. This has put Dub in a position where he can give back to his community in significant ways. In 2018, he donated a $3-million, newly renovated apartment building to a group providing housing to homeless, pregnant women in Edmonton. The City Market Lofts reuses a market building from the 1960s, creating affordable housing for artists, and providing high-quality spaces that elevate the transitional neighbourhood, rather than contributing to its stigma. A new 10-storey office building, where Dub Architects currently resides atop a fashion-and-beauty college, sports one of the country’s largest vertical solar arrays.

Dub is philosophical about rolling with the gains and losses that come with this type of work. Early on, he converted a fire station from the 1950s as a new office for Dub Architects. Just as they finished it, someone offered him much more money to use the site for a new-build. “So we sold it, and they tore it down.” He expects his current conversion of the 23,225-square-metre Charles Camsell Hospital to lose money—it has been a complicated project, with a significant amount of asbestos abatement. But many interesting stories have emerged in the decade since the project began: it’s come to light that an earlier hospital on the same site was where Indigenous people were treated for tuberculosis in the 1950s, and often separated from their families in the process. “It’s been a financial disaster,” says Dub, “but it’s a significant Canadian history story, for good or bad. Movies have been made about this place—it’s a really interesting building.”

Toronto architect Tom Knezic has completed two renovations of Toronto row houses into highly energy-efficient rental triplexes. Photo courtesy Solares

Tom Knezic, Solares Architecture

Toronto, Ontario

Sustainability is at the top of the agenda for Solares Architecture, a Toronto firm co-founded by architects Tom Knezic and Christine Lolley. It’s also the driving force behind a series of development projects they’ve undertaken in the west end of Toronto.

A soft start to this aspect of their practice was setting up their office on the ground floor of a Dufferin Street fixer-upper, with their own apartment above it and a rental unit below. Later, they gut-renovated a house in Roncesvalles for their growing family, making it a showpiece for the space-efficient, environmentally conscious design that they bring to their clients, and including a rental unit in the basement.

Eco Flats #1—their first project developed fully as an investment property—was an effort to bring the same principles of considerate design and energy efficiency to the Toronto rental housing market. After leveraging their existing properties to purchase a local single-family row house, they gut-renovated the dwelling, converting it into three passive-house inspired apartments. The work included underpinning the basement, giving it a separate entrance and full-sized windows to make it more airy and light than typical basement units.

A three-unit renovation dubbed Eco Flats #2, completed last year, built on the lessons learned from the first. “The impulse of architects is to always take things to the next level of difficulty, but here, we had the discipline to do almost exactly the same project as before—but to do it better,” says Knezic.

A thermal image shows how their project, at left, conserves energy compared to its unrenovated neighbour, at right. Photo courtesy Solares

A big part of both projects was cutting the gas line—since natural gas is a potent contributor to carbon emissions—and going all-electric. Because the dwellings achieve a passive-house level of airtightness, they use very little energy. In Eco Flats #1, the first electricity bills came in at $30 per person. Eco Flats #2 takes 88% less energy to heat and cool than pre-renovation, and achieves a 96% reduction in carbon emissions.

The projects also allowed Solares to test-drive advanced building technologies, such as grey-water reuse systems, air source heat pumps, and electric heat pump hot water tanks. In the second project, Knezic specified Quebec-made Minotair compact air treatment units for each apartment—ERVs that also heat and cool the air, and are small enough to fit inside tenant closets overtop the laundry machines. In all, “these mechanical units weren’t much more expensive than conventional systems,” says Knezic. Moreover, he adds, they freed up the space normally occupied by a basement mechanical room. “That gave us an extra bedroom—so the decision paid for itself almost immediately.”

To reduce the use of high-carbon plastics and foams, Knezic experimented with using parging and plaster on the interior walls of Eco Flats #2 as a partial substitute for standard air barriers. To achieve a tight envelope without an extra layer of spray foam, he specified Aerobarrier—a substance similar to Elmer’s glue, that’s pumped as an aerosol into a pressurized home to fill cracks in the envelope.

For Eco Flats #2, Knezic optimized the sequencing of the trades to complete the project in under a year—a feat for a gut-renovation—minimizing the amount of time that the building was unoccupied by renters. “It shows that it’s not a choice between environment, speed, and cost,” says Knezic. “This was done in 10 months, and it makes money month over month.”

“There’s a mission to all of this,” he adds. “It’s a way to show people that we’re not kidding about this work. When we design houses for clients, we’re always saying that we should go a little further—we should go all-electric, we should insulate more. I can really advocate for these things because I’ve done it for myself.”

Curran’s first development project was a 19th-century furniture store in the downtown core, which he purchased with two friends and converted into  a mixed-use commercial building that includes Their + Curran’s studio. Photo courtesy Their + Curran

Bill Curran, Thier + Curran Architects

Hamilton, Ontario

Purchasing and designing one’s own office space is one starting point for architects to act as developers. That was the case for Bill Curran, whose firm occupies the top floor of a converted 19th-century furniture store in downtown Hamilton. Curran purchased the brick-and-timber loft building with two non-architect friends a decade ago. In addition to Thier + Curran’s offices, it now includes a half-dozen commercial and office spaces, with tenants such as the CBC, a café, and a beauty salon and supply store.

Curran has since developed two additional Hamilton properties: a Prohibition-era liquor warehouse that he adaptively reused as three loft-style townhouses, and a pair of joined main-street buildings in Hamilton’s Barton Village, with commercial units at street level and residences above.

Curran developed the townhouses on his own, while the Barton Village project, like his office building, was completed with others. The decision to find investment partners depends on the project, says Curran. “A bigger project demands more money, especially if it’s an older building in a sketchy neighbourhood,” he says, noting that banks will not finance vacant land, and don’t like empty or derelict buildings as investment properties. A loan is only available for the value of what’s already built on the site. “I’m looking for a gem in the rough—where you can see that the bones are fantastic, but to the untrained eye, it looks very, very unappealing. And the untrained eye includes the appraiser from the bank. So you have to work with them, to convince and educate them.”

Hamilton architect Bill Curran purchased a vacant Hamilton industrial building and adaptively reused it as a trio of loft-style townhouses. Photo by Industryous Photography

By working with buildings on the fringes, Curran’s work contributes to Hamilton’s revitalization. “Our office was one of the first buildings to be redeveloped as part of the renaissance on James Street North. Now our Barton Village building is also becoming a beacon in its community,” he says.

Curran has a vested interest in seeing his projects thrive, but as a proud Hamiltonian, he also carries a personal passion for each of them. The Barton building, for instance, once housed Gallery 435, known for its 35 years of Friday night art and music jam sessions—an event Curran loved. “We bought the Barton building selfishly,” he says, “to keep the Friday boozecan Openings going.”

The interiors make use of the industrial-era interiors. Photo by Industryous Photography

“It’s gratifying to buy and improve real estate and for it to be catalytic,” says Curran. “As an architect, you have the ability to make that happen.”

Financially, several of Curran’s developments depend on the gap between commercial and residential real estate prices in Hamilton. “Derelict commercial buildings are cheaper than houses, and I like their inherent character and how they’re put together,” says Curran. With housing prices on the rise, his properties have gained substantially in worth when upgraded into residences.

Curran estimates that the buildings he’s been part of have more than doubled in value from what he and his partners put into them. “This is my retirement fund,” says Curran. “I’m far more comfortable investing in real estate than in stocks or derivatives.”

Kobayashi + Zedda’s Bling development includes 18 residences, with a mix of ground-level access, walk-up, and penthouse suites.  The project was built in three phases to allow the architects to manage its financing. Photo Andrew Latreille

Jack Kobayashi, Kobayashi + Zedda

Whitehorse, Yukon

When Jack Kobayashi and Antonio Zedda set up their architecture firm in Whitehorse, most of their work was outside of the city. “Downtown Whitehorse was the domain of small-time developers doing mediocre buildings,” says Kobayashi. Many of these didn’t even involve an architect—a possibility since Yukon doesn’t have an Architects’ Act. “Anyone can do their own building—and they were.”

Like a musician who isn’t landing a record deal and decides to start an indie label, Kobayashi and Zedda decided to do downtown buildings on their own. Their first project, completed in 2001, was a multi-use condominium, with four residential units and a ground-floor dental office. They funded the project with help from family and resold it when completed. “It didn’t make us rich, but we liked doing it,” says Kobayashi.

Since then, they’ve completed a half-dozen more multi-use residential projects on their own, keeping a unit as their earnings each time. The most recent is an affordable rental apartment building that they will hold rather than sell off. “It’s a bit more challenging, as there’s no capital injection to pay down the whole building—we’ve got to carry the asset and live off the rental income,” says Kobayashi. “We’re at a certain level where we can do that—we could never have afforded to at the beginning.”

To help address Whitehorse’s need for affordable housing, Kobayashi + Zedda developed a 14-unit apartment building with 10 rent-geared-to-income units and four market rental suites. Photo Andrew Latreille

The projects are built by a sister company led by Kobayashi and Zedda, called 360 Design Build. “We run it off the side of our desk,” says Kobayashi, who says he spends 95 percent of his time on the main architecture practice, and the remainder running the design-build company. 360 has three full-time staff and also takes on some private projects—usually single-family houses designed by Kobayashi and Zedda. (To avoid stepping on the toes of local contractors, 360 doesn’t bid on any projects, either public or private.) “Building ourselves keeps us current,” says Kobayashi. “You’re seeing more of the spectrum of construction, and that informs your professional life.”

In addition to their new-build development projects, Kobayashi and Zedda also own Horwood’s Mall, where they’ve had their offices since 1995. The 4,100-square-metre building has sections that go back to the early 1900s, which is ancient by Yukon standards—“like Roman times,” says Kobayashi. Since purchasing the property eight years ago, they’ve been gradually restoring its heritage features and bringing up the design standard of its spaces, which house 40 tenants. Their vision is for Horwood’s Mall to become the town’s social and community hub, and they’re gratified to see it starting to attract local artists, start-ups, and other creative endeavours.

Kobayashi’s advice to architects thinking of taking on their own development projects? “Start with something small and keep building on that.” He adds, “As architects, we’re the perfect people to do this. We have the skill set, and then we hire ourselves out to other people who then have full control of the project.” Fundamentally, the only thing that separates developers from architects, he says, is their ability to take on risk. “The only thing holding us back is the risk factor. Find the confidence somewhere to do it; the door’s wide open after that.”

Humà’s MV development in Dorval, west of downtown Montreal, includes a mix of unit types from lofts to single family homes, all of which share access to landscaped grounds and indoor amenities. Photo courtesy Humà Design + Architecture

Aurèle Cardinal, Stéphanie Cardinal, and Ludovic Cardinal, Humà Design +Architecture

Montreal, Quebec

“When I was much younger,” says architect and planner Aurèle Cardinal, co-founder of Cardinal Hardy, “the developers didn’t want to build what we were drawing, because they thought we were dreaming too much.” So, he reasoned, “we’ll build the dreams, and then we’ll have more clients who believe in us.”

That impulse led Aurèle to lead a string of development projects in the Montreal region, first on his own, and more recently with his children—architect Stéphanie Cardinal and former banker Ludovic Cardinal. In all, they’ve built and sold some 1,350 units of housing, working on all aspects of the projects from purchasing the land, to finding outside investors, to managing construction and sales.

Aurèle’s first development projects in the 1980s were small-scale condominium buildings—a type uncommon at the time in Montreal, when most developers were focused on building three-storey walk-up rental apartments. The family has continued to innovate in bringing new typologies to the city. They’re currently completing the fourth phase of Espace MV, a multi-block development in Dorval that includes single-family homes, townhouses, and condo-and-loft buildings up to seven stories in height—all of which share co-owned amenity spaces.

The fourth phase of MV is in development, and includes both condos and townhomes. Photo courtesy Humà Design + Architecture

Stéphanie and Ludovic hadn’t originally set out to join their father in development. Stéphanie trained as an architect and specialized in interiors, starting her own firm, Humà, in 2006. For university, Ludovic was accepted into architecture and commerce programs, and was encouraged by Aurèle to choose finance. He worked as a commercial banker for 20 years.

In 2010, Cardinal Hardy was sold to IBI Group, which in turn sold its Quebec offices to Lemay in 2015. Aurèle then joined Humà to expand its architectural offerings and ability to support real estate development work. (A sister company owned by the Cardinal family, Gestion PCA, is also involved with the family’s development portfolio.) Five years ago, Ludovic also joined Humà, bringing financial expertise that allowed for more substantial involvement with larger development projects.

The trio estimates that their own development projects constitute about a fifth of Humà’s work. The majority of Humà’s work is for outside clients, primarily real estate developers, for whom it acts as a one-stop shop. Its diversified in-house expertise allows Humà to take on the marketing, branding, interior design, architecture, and construction supervision of developments, as well as financial reporting to investors. “All of these people are under the same roof,” says Ludovic, “it’s a super nice unity when everyone is rolling in the same direction—it’s very satisfying.”

Surrounded by water, a circular pavilion includes a luxe lounge and private gym for MV’s residents. Photo courtesy Humà Design + Architecture

Being involved in all aspects of a project—both in their own development work and for outside clients—allows the team to bring a greater depth of reflection to their designs, says Stéphanie. This was especially evident in Espace MV, where early on, the team decided to retain and adaptively reuse an existing brick-and-beam factory structure—a choice that informed later design choices throughout the site. “The fact that we could work for 13 years within the same spirit is added value for the project,” she says. Moreover, “it’s also added value for the profession to see a project within this holistic view.”

One measure of success, for Aurèle, is that many of the first residents of Espace MV are still living there. “You have to bring good solutions for people to stay on the land for that long; you have to have satisfied clients,” he says.

Ludovic says that architects’ interest in development is often a case of the grass being greener on the other side. In his analysis, when all is said and done, development is not necessarily more lucrative than architecture—each party contributes its own expertise, and collects a concomitant level of return.

But the opportunity to work together as a family? That’s priceless. “Cross-generational work is not done enough,” says Stéphanie. “To be able to integrate 35 years of our father’s experience into our work—it’s amazing.”

The post Developing Interests appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Goodbye tristesse! Habitations Saint-Michel Nord, Montreal, Quebec

Elsa Lam — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 13:00:06 +0000

In the revamped Saint-Michel Nord, fire stairs are designed as sculptural elements. Photo by James Brittain

PROJECT Habitations Saint-Michel Nord, Montreal, Quebec

ARCHITECT Saia Barbarese Topouzanov Architectes

PHOTOS James Brittain

One’s first impression of Habitations Saint-Michel Nord is one of surprise. Surprise at a symphony of super-sized cylinders—in reality, glorified fire exits—projecting from the front façades. The festive mood, as exemplified in the transformation of this major 50-year-old housing project, is indicative of a radical change of attitude towards social housing.The original buildings have been stripped of their dull-brown masonry and concrete façades, and are now clad in vibrantly coloured brick, with staircases to match. This unabashed celebration of life sends a clear message: social housing is nothing to be ashamed of.

The firm responsible for this achievement, Saia Barbarese Topouzanov Architects (SBTA), is well known for its substantial contributions to Montreal over the past decades. It is particularly associated with the city’s rainbow-hued Convention Centre expansion, the subject of considerable commotion when it opened in 2002. The firm’s lesser-known work—including numerous social housing projects—shows their unabated (and increasingly sophisticated) exploration of colour. It also shows their ability to get the most out of meagre budgets.

Underground parking allowed for extensive landscaping, including new trees and raised planters. Photo by James Brittain

Habitations Saint-Michel Nord, located northeast of downtown Montreal, was built shortly after the city’s social housing agency, the Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM) came into existence. From 1969 to 1979, with architect Guy Legault at its helm, the OMHM built more than 8,000 housing units for underprivileged families. [1] At the time, the euphoria surrounding Expo 67 was dwindling, and municipal authorities became more and more aware of the squalid living conditions prevailing in Montreal’s poorer neighbourhoods.

As a reminder, these were the years when activist Jane Jacobs and left-wing city planner Hans Blumenfeld [2] were actively engaged in public debates that would change Toronto (to quote the title of a book published by another major figure of that period, community organizer and former mayor John Sewell). [3] Poised to learn from Toronto’s experience in social housing, the fledging OMHM hired Hans Blumenfeld as a consultant.

Site aerial rendering

It was in this climate of effervescence—but also of trial and error—that architects Bobrow Fieldman designed Habitations Saint-Michel Nord. Some of the mistakes made in Toronto—such as creating inward-looking courtyards, which Blumenfeld had warned against—were reproduced in the Habitations. However, the 27-building complex had many interesting features. It provided tenants with a large variety of layouts, including maisonette-like two-storey apartments, corner units, and even some through-units—a type still considered a luxury by developers today.

According to SBTA partner Dino Barbarese, “Saint-Michel’s units were well-designed from the start and required only minimal improvements.” The 1972 project also included an underground garage, which extended below the buildings and made it possible to create landscaped grounds, rather than paving over the site for parking.

By 2015, however, the project was approaching the end of its useful life. Some of its 180 units were in such poor repair that they could no longer be occupied. The inner courtyards, which may have looked charming on architectural renderings, had gradually become enclaves for illicit activities, and a no-go zone for many residents. The OMHM was forced to take action. Several options were considered, including total demolition. Thankfully, the chosen solution—to rehabilitate rather than rebuild—would give the complex a new lease on life.

Several existing buildings were removed to create a pedestrian-friendly street dotted by gathering areas; a change in paving marks the footprints of the removed structures. Photo by James Brittain

Key to the site’s rehabilitation was the introduction of a central shared street, designed along the principles of the Dutch woonerf. The long city block was essentially split down the middle, creating connections between the residents and the surrounding community and increasing the safety of the area. Six of the original 27 buildings were demolished to make room for this new corridor, which allows for vehicular traffic, but is primarily a community-oriented space. To comply with a mandatory requirement, SBTA had to make up for the units lost in the demolition process, which they did through adding an extra floor to eight existing two-storey buildings.

Brick colour scheme

The most spectacular change, however, comes from the treatment of the façades. Inspired by the work of French-Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez, SBTA partner Vladimir Topouzanov chose four earth-toned brick colours, ranging from buff to burgundy; in some sections, the colours are interlaid, producing the illusion of seven distinct hues in all. The metal balconies and spiral stairs were painted accordingly. In a further effort to create a vibrant, dynamic environment, the progression of colours, from light to dark, is inverted on either side of the central street. Inside the buildings, the floorplans were not much altered, but the individual units were completely renovated and given more generous openings.

Previous services—including a youth centre, a multipurpose hall, a community restaurant and a daycare—were relocated to more closely connect with Robert Boulevard and René-Goupil Park, north of the site. These amenities are now open to the entire neighbourhood, encouraging a greater co-mingling between residents of the Habitations and others who live in the area.

Mature trees along 25th Avenue—part of the original landscaping—were retained. Photo by James Brittain

The OMHM, which masterminded the logistics for the entire operation, was exemplary in many regards. In addition to coordinating with several municipal services, the agency ensured a smooth transition for the residents. It took care of temporary relocation arrangements: finding appropriate apartments and monitoring school transfers, among other needs. The staff stood by during the entire design, construction and move-in process, keeping the tenants informed and intervening whenever necessary. In the end, 50 percent of the displaced families moved back to the renovated Habitations Saint-Michel Nord last summer. Dino Barbarese speaks highly of his client, saying, “We have rarely done a project of this size with so few hurdles. Everyone seemed to believe in it.”

In Montreal and beyond, numerous social housing projects from the 1970s are in dire need of renovation. The transformation of the Habitations demonstrates how in-depth rehabilitation can be—ecologically and economically—a more sustainable alternative to outright demolition. In the hands of SBTA, the challenge also presented an opportunity for novel aesthetic expression. Habitations Saint-Michel Nord is instructive not only for public housing providers, but also for private developers with aging assets—and considerably higher budgets at their disposal.

Kudos go to the architects who, over recent years and often for modest fees, have gradually changed the image of social housing in Montreal, while bringing dignity and hope to families. For far too long, the words “social housing” have implied drabness and sadness. No longer. Goodbye, tristesse!

1 Guy R. Legault, La ville qu’on a bâtie: Trente ans au service de l’urbanisme et de l’habitation à Montréal, 1959-1986. Éditions Liber, 2002.

2 Frédéric Mercure-Jolette, “Hans Blumenfeld: A Moderate Defence of Expertise in the Controversial 1960s.” Planning Perspectives, 2019, Vol. 34, No. 4.

3 John Sewell, How We Changed Toronto: The Inside Story of Twelve Creative, Tumultuous Years in Civic Life, 1969-1980. Lorimer, 2015.

Architectural writer Odile Hénault is a regular contributor to Canadian Architect. As a young co-op student, she worked for Montreal firm Bobrow Fieldman Architects, a few years after they had completed the construction of Habitations Saint-Michel Nord. She first became interested in social housing when she was the editor of Section a (1983-1986) and has written a number of articles on the topic since.

CLIENT Office municipal d’habitation de Montréal (OMHM) | ARCHITECT TEAM Dino Barbarese (RAIC), Vladimir Topouzanov (RAIC), Geneviève Deguire, Christopher Dubé, Hugo Duguay, Joël Hébert, Maxime Hurtubise, Yvan Marion, Louis-Guillaume Paquet, Karl Robert, Flavia Socol, Yvon Théorêt, Sophie Trépanier-Laplante | STRUCTURAL/CIVIL
Cima + | MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL AEdifica | LANDSCAPE Vlan Paysages | INTERIORS Saia Barbarese Topouzanov Architectes | ENVIRONMENTAL Wood | SECURITY Bouthillette Parizeau | CONTRACTOR Construction Cybco | AREA 22,800m2 | BUDGET $47.5 M | COMPLETION September 2020

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