Housing the Unhoused
A regenerative solution to our city’s ongoing homeless crisis

Join us as part of Future Neighbourhood, an immersive feature exhibition at IDS where we are showcasing an ambitious pilot program that brings together nonprofits and home builders to supply transitional and temporary housing solution designed to be low-cost, rapidly built, and deployed on vacant lots. They are designed as the first step towards safe, stable, long-term housing options, including modular, supportive or rent-geared-to-income (RGI) options.

As part of our work for inclusive communities, we designed cabins for Two Steps Home from sustainable, healthy and low carbon materials that are optimized for efficiency, durability and designed to be transported and reused across multiple locations as sites are developed for permanent housing.

SvN - Site Planning & Cabin Architecture
Two Steps Home - Non-for-Profit Housing Provider
Cabn - Cabin Fabrication

A special thank you to Goodee for loaning the Emeco Reclaimed chair and noted household items for exhibit display, and to Lightform for the donation of the Stix LED light fixture.

Living Streets
Creating Places to Help Our City Thrive

When we think about urban public space, we typically imagine parks, plazas or greenways. But by size, a city's most significant category of public space is actually its streets, meaning that they contain the potential to truly define a city’s identity and to forge relationships between our many citizens, businesses, and cultures. Toronto has a vast network of over 5600 km of streets; this seminar will discuss the potential to use these as a platform for action, as an incredible asset that can be used to improve our City. The design of place-based streets can allow us to address deeper social engagement within and across communities, build climate resilience and improving our public health.

Join Senior Associate Dennis Rijkhoff as he outlines how to set a practical agenda for improved street design through a greater understanding of bringing together policy, planning and urban design, architecture and landscape architecture, and public engagement to strengthen the resiliency of our urban environment.

Shotgun Urbanism
A new typology of missing middle housing in Pensacola, Florida

Pensacola, the westernmost city in the Florida panhandle, is facing an acute housing shortage and increasing impacts from climate change. Hudgin's Acres, once the domestic and spiritual home of the local black community, offers an opportunity to design affordable housing that captures the inclusivity and community of the original family homestead.

Join Principal Sony Rai, Associate Camille Mitchell, Associate Chester Rennie, and Architectural Assistant Mariam Abdelrahman as they showcase the exploration of local vernacular housing typologies that informed the local response to climate and building culture, and a new model of missing middle housing addresses housing and ecological crises in the context of the Southern United States.

This presentation is on behalf of the Nike Onile Art and Design Foundation and supports its vision which is to preserve and promote redefining the boundaries of artistic expression and design.