Students from the University of Waterloo have claimed the top three awards in the 2024–2025 Architectural Student Design Competition Award of Excellence, showcasing innovative observation platform designs that blend structural artistry with environmental storytelling.
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.
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.
Reflections on Open Space: Metastable, precarious, resilient
This talk will outline a conceptual approach to current architecture offering precarious instruments that can indicate possible emerging realities. A tough and resilient optimism can be expressed within new kinds of form-language that are delicate, and open. What is coming in our future? How can we speak of the future when the world seems almost unspeakably insecure?
Luca Vasconcelos Ricci and Nicole Cao 2025 AIA COTE Top Ten Award for Excellence and Innovation in Sustainable Architecture
Two student-led research teams from the University of Waterloo School of Architecture presented their work at the 6th International Conference on Structures and Architecture (ICSA2025), held in Antwerp, Belgium.
Anne Clock highlights the work of the class of 2025 4B Comprehensive Building Design Studio in the first of a new series of Waterloo Architecture student articles in Cambridge Today.
All Flourishing is Mutual: Re-Imagining the Cambridge Farmers' Market
A Student Showcase by The University of Waterloo School of Architecture Class of 2025
September 22 - 27
Cambridge City Hall, Ground Floor - Bowman Room
55 Dickson Street
On behalf of the various committees who have supported this exhibition and Elizabeth, please join us this Friday for a Lecture and The Chair Exhibition closing event. The evening will start at 6:00 pm
Guest lecture: Lina Lahiri, Sauerbruch Hutton