End Housing Alienation Now! A Cross-Canada Superstudio to End Housing Alienation
Architecture schools across Canada are coming together in the 2025–2026 academic year to teach design studios around a shared goal: Ending housing alienation. Fabricating Otherwise, a graduate studio taught by Associate Professor Shawn Bailey will participate in this Superstudio, which meets a momentous pedagogical challenge: To prepare tomorrow’s designers to meaningfully contribute to improving housing for all.
Fabricating Otherwise builds on last year’s Trickster-themed inquiry into Indigenous homemaking and housing futures by shifting focus to fabrication as a holistic, cultural, and ecological act. Rooted in Métis ways of knowing and guided by Indigenous values of reciprocity and relationality, the studio explores how architecture (and how we make architecture) can address the interwoven crises of housing, climate, and alienation.
Read more on Fabricating Otherwise here
At the heart of the Superstudio format is the belief that there is a profound strength in numbers and that all big challenges require collaboration. Thirteen higher learning institutions are participating in this Superstudio to share knowledge, inspiration, and foster solidarity. Participants in the Superstudio we will be engaging with a wide range of knowledge and techniques, inventing new design methods and solutions, and building a movement for change.
At each participating school, one or more studios or courses will be dedicated to the theme of ending housing alienation. A nation-wide kickoff event on September 6 will be the first event to bring all students and instructors together for discussion and sharing of course content and topics. Throughout the term, there will be lectures and events that will be held online and/or recorded that will be shared with students across all schools, as well as a shared set of resources (readings, videos, websites, and other media) that students can refer to. At the end of each academic term, the design solutions created by students from across the country will be shared in a digital exhibition.
The outline of the project, including a list of the courses at each university as well as the shared principles and structures, is available now on the Superstudio website: https://superstudio.aaha.ca/.
Participating Institutions:
- Athabasca University
- British Columbia Institute of Technology
- Carleton University
- Dalhousie University
- Laurentian University
- McGill University
- OCAD University
- Toronto Metropolitan University
- Université de Montréal
- University of British Columbia
- University of Calgary
- University of Manitoba
- University of Toronto
- University of Waterloo
The Superstudio is organized by the collective Architects Against Housing Alienation, who represented Canada at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. The collective includes Adrian Blackwell (Associate Professor, Waterloo School of Architecture), David Fortin (Professor, Waterloo School of Architecture), Matthew Soules (Professor, UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture), Patrick Reid Stewart (Patrick Reid Stewart Architects), and Sara Stevens (Associate Professor, UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture). The Superstudio is supported by sponsorship from the Canadian Council of University Schools of Architecture.
Contact:
Adrian Blackwell
Email: adrian.blackwell@uwaterloo.ca
Phone: (416) 709-1471