Copenhagen consistently ranks high in international surveys for its standard of living. Aside from its stunning mix of architectural styles and a never ending list of fun activities, the city is a leader in city planning, environmental sustainability, and design. While this makes for a great co-op experience, living there is not cheap. From housing to dining out, your expenses can add up pretty quickly. But this doesn’t mean you can’t have a fulfilling and...
Waterloo’s third-year winter studio has always been an opportunity to explore the relationship between architecture and the city. The 2020 studio—“Our House is on Fire”— focuses on the intersection between two contemporary crises: the climate emergency and Toronto’s housing emergency. The challenge of the studio was to design a series of deeply affordable apartment buildings on City-owned and currently vacant sites along Sherbourne Street in the center of Toronto’s Downtown East. Each building was required to integrate complementary public programs at grade that would provide a network of support for low-income residents and form a single community land trust that would secure their affordability in the future.
At the Waterloo School of Architecture, the art of making is integral. Model-making and fabrication are a component of every studio course, often with a required final model. For some students, their interest has veered further towards the craft component of architecture. We wanted to interview these students to ask them—how can craft influence the design process? In the last part of this series we interviewed another one of our undergraduate students, Tomoki.
Architects and the colour black go together like brick and mortar. As first year students, we (Danielle, Melody, and Riling) wondered why. Here is our investigation of this phenomenon. (more…)
Monday and Thursday are studio days. On these days in particular, the third floor undergraduate studio is filled with a frenetic energy of design, research, and exploration. Students can usually be found talking excitedly with design professors and classmates in a habitat saturated with trace sketches, study models, and empty coffee cups. Every week we’ll share a completed project, churned out from this energetic studio environment. (more…)