Book review: Architecture + Itinérance—Pratiques inclusives pour une ville solidaire
How can architecture help the unhoused? Working with Architects without Borders’ Quebec chapter, a group of researchers have set out to document examples of best practices, collating them into a catalogue of techniques intended for designers, organizations, and policy-makers working with people experiencing homelessness.
Architecture + Itinérance: Pratiques inclusives pour une ville solidaire
By Sarahlou Wagner-Lapierre, Élizabeth Prince, Véronic Lapalme, and Sonia Blank; edited by Carolyne Grimard and Élène Levasseur (Architecture sans frontières Québec, 2023)
REVIEW Elsa Lam
How can architecture help the unhoused? Working with Architects without Borders’ Quebec chapter, a group of researchers have set out to document examples of best practices, collating them into a catalogue of techniques intended for designers, organizations, and policy-makers working with people experiencing homelessness.
The well-being of the unhoused is at the heart of the strategies presented, which address a range of spaces used by this client group, from warming shelters to social housing. The focus of the publication is on positive examples of places that both enhance cities and provide valuable essential services for the unhoused.
Bridgman Collaborative’s Pop-Up Washroom in Winnipeg, and Sustainable | Architecture for a Healthy Planet’s Friends of Ruby Home in Toronto are among a half dozen Canadian examples, pointing to the need for amenities in public spaces and the value of collaborative design processes, respectively.
The majority of the examples are projects from the United States and Europe. These include La Ferme du Rail by Grand Huit Architects, a mixed-use project in Paris that includes housing for vulnerable people, a restaurant, and a student residence adjacent to a railway station. Shelter from the Storm, by Holland Harvey Architects, is a London, UK project that adaptively reuses a grocery store as a shelter and exemplifies how such an environment can be warm, welcoming, and secure.
As it concludes, the book offers several avenues for further research. Can prefabrication and modular design aid in reducing the costs of building for the unhoused? How can we better understand the needs of groups such as Indigenous and LGBTQIA2S+ communities, who are overrepresented amongst Montreal’s unhoused? Can zoning bylaws be made more inclusive for people experiencing homelessness? The present publication offers a solid foundation for continuing to explore these questions.
An English translation of this publication is in progress.