Student work on exhibition at Waterloo City Hall
An exhibition of Waterloo Architecture third-year undergraduate student housing design, 'What could the future of Waterloo Region look like if deeply affordable housing was our priority?' is currently on view at Waterloo City Hall until October 27, 2024.
During the Winter semester of 2024, a third-year undergraduate design studio at the University ofWaterloo School of Architecture embarked on a collaboration with BUILD/NOW, an organization formed by regional not-for-profits, charitable organizations, homebuilders, construction association members, the business community, and academic institutions to offer a comprehensive vision of how a different approach to housing in the region can create uplifting and inspiring places to live for all segments of the population. The BUILD/NOW goal of building 10,000 affordable homes was studied and planned for on 5 specific sites throughout the region: 1) lands currently owned by the University of Waterloo near the Laurel Creek Reservoir, 2) lands surrounding RIM Park in Waterloo, 3) lands adjacent to Conestoga College in Kitchener, 4) Rockway Golf Course in Kitchener, and 5) lands in downtown Hespeler, Cambridge. Each site was chosen to be large enough to roughly accommodate BUILD NOW’s 10,000 unit target.
The student work - partially exhibited here - aspired to augment the BUILD NOW proposal by engaging with local community-based organizations and by studying the work of Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA, a group of activists, advocates and architects who represented Canada at the 2023 Venice Biennale in Italy), to propose entirely different forms of housing than those produced through the processes of colonization and hyper-commodification that have shaped the
housing system in Canada today. The housing designed within the studio offers the region 5 coherent examples of how future development can be planned for in a way that avoids the pitfalls that have led to our current situation.
The physical model and drawings exhibited is a sample of the collective work on one of the five sites - RIM Park in Waterloo. This includes the following students: Ella Caudle, Joudy Kusaibati, Priya Smyth, Anne Fu, Michael Kay, Erin Kim, Derek Shin, Sadie Berzins, Jenny Hu, Snow Jia, Dorcas Ng, Avory Lai, Areeba Saleem, and Ling Long Yang.
The teaching team included Adrian Blackwell (co-coordinator), David Fortin (co-coordinator), Rick Haldenby, Marie-Paule Macdonald and Quan Thai.
Special thanks to Scott Higgins, Mike Maxwell, Philip Mills, Sean Campbell, Joe Mancini, Amy Smoke, Bangishimo Johnston, Melissa Bowman, Jeff Wilmer, Matthew Day, Natasha Ng, Marjorie-Ann Knight, community members and reviewers who joined us throughout the year and to Michael Kay, Derek Shin, Erin Kim, Anne Fu, and Max Perry and Nabeeha Rahman for their impressive efforts in building the physical site model.