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Thursday, October 9, 2025

Architecture Schools Unite to End Housing Alienation Through National Superstudio

Associate Professor Adrian Blackwell and Professor Dr. David Fortin are among the key organizers of a bold, collaborative initiative for the 2025–2026 academic year: a Superstudio focused on ending housing alienation. This nationwide effort brings together students and faculty from 14 institutions, including the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, to explore design solutions that address housing unaffordability, disrepair, precarity, and homelessness.

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Thursday, November 13, 2025 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm EST (GMT -05:00)

Arriscraft Canada Brick Speaker Series: Andrew Ruff

Andy Ruff is the Research Director at Gray Organschi Architecture and the Timber City Research Initiative, where he focuses on developing a comprehensive approach for incorporating timber construction into cities, an approach which simultaneously addresses regional material flows, economies of carbon generation and sequestration, the development of new industrial processes, and the complex spatial, architectural, legal, and logistical challenges of constructing timber buildings in dense urban centers.

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Thursday, October 23, 2025 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Arriscraft Canada Brick Speaker Series: 11x17

Architects do not make buildings, and they certainly do not make materials; they specify. The “out of stock” sign, often considered as a hiccup in procurement, is in fact a threshold where the ethical reach of architecture becomes visible, yet remains perpetually at risk of collapse.What if architecture is never fully available? What happens when specifying itself no longer leads directly to the production of a building? Drawing on 11 x 17’s recent projects, this lecture explores a material politics of “unavailability” and speculates on new modes of architectural practice that consider how form, material, and labor entangle to produce an architecture of resourcefulness. 

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Friday, September 12, 2025

Waterloo Architecture Alumni roundtable on Behind the Build

Recorded live this past March at the University of Waterloo before an audience of students, alumni, and colleagues. Four graduates returned to share their journeys: Carol Phillips (Moriyama Teshima Architects), Lisa D’Abbondanza (Arcadis), Robert Kastelic (Atelier Kastelic Buffey—AKB), and Drew Mandel (Drew Mandel Architects—DMA). Together, they reflected on choosing Waterloo, the impact of its cultural history curriculum and Co-op program, and graduating into a recession that demanded resilience, initiative, and a willingness to work anywhere.

Listen on Apple or Spotify

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Thursday, September 25, 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Projects Review 2024 - 2025 Opening Reception

Join us for the opening of Projects Review, the annual exhibition showcasing undergraduate and graduate work from the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. This year’s collection celebrates student projects that critically engage with a wide spectrum of architectural discourses.

Come celebrate the creativity, research, and vision of our students.

Refreshments will be served. All are welcome.

Thursday, May 22, 2025 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Opening reception, Masterworks 2025: Tracing Time

Masterworks is an annual showcase of exemplary graduate student work that intersects a selected research/design topic proposed by a graduate alumnus.

The 2025 exhibition, Masterworks: Tracking Time was curated by Elizabeth Ann Lenny (BAS '19, MArc'21) opens Thursday, May 22, 2025 and features work by:

  • Vincent Chuang
  • From Earth to Earth to Earth (Joanne Yau and Liyang Zhang)
  • Yoon Hur
  • Elizabeth Lenny
  • Ali Salama
  • Madeleine Audrey Sze Mun Wong
  • Martha Trivett
  • Bianca Weeko Martin
  • Yi Chen Zhang
  • Hiba Zubairi

 The event in the Riverside Gallery at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture runs from 6:00 - 8:00 pm and includes light refreshments by disko coffee.