Architecture Sans Frontières Québec (ASFQ) will be hosting two annual events later this month.
The second edition of the Architecture + Itinérance conference will be taking place this month in Montréal. The name of the conference translates to “architecture and homelessness” and will be returning to Agora du Coeur des sciences (Hydro-Québec) de l’UQAM on November 22, 2023.
In addition to the conference, the ASFQ will also be hosting its annual fundraised called La Soirée des Grands A which will make a comeback on November 29, 2023, to celebrate their 15th anniversary.
The conference will feature panels and workshops which will provide an opportunity to explore what it means to “inhabit the city beyond housing.” Various stakeholders, community workers, researchers, planning professionals and those who have experience with homelessness will have the opportunity to share insight on the issues surrounding urban encampments and the accessibility of so-called public spaces.
At the conference, the organization will reflect on the potential of planning to transform urban spaces by taking into account the well-being of people who live in the city differently.
“Is public space truly “public”? People forced to inhabit public space are routinely excluded from urban spaces and displaced to the city’s margins,” writes the ASFQ. “While planning can be complicit in this repression (e.g., hostile, defensive design), it can also contribute, in solidarity with people experiencing homelessness, to creating places where they can find their place and define their collective interests – places that are open to all, truly ‘public’.”
For more information on the upcoming events, click here.