In 1867, Victor Fournel published a work in which he described the flâneur as (translated roughly) the image of the public, of the city, the antipathies and admirations of the crowd, public esprit; basically the figurehead of contemporary urban experience. A flâneur is, by definition, a time waster: someone who uses their time not for […]

A photo essay by Samuel Ganton.

The River is for Washing Carpets Safira Lakhani Contemporary peacebuilding, notably as it is practiced in Afghanistan, consistently fails to address local needs in favour of international priorities for global security. Despite the significant presence of foreign agencies and aid mechanisms in the country, peace in Afghanistan remains elusive. Any semblance of peace achieved is neither durable, nor sustainable, particularly because of […]

The Library A Social Infrastructure Parisa Kohbodi For many centuries, the mission of the library as a civic institution has been seen as the collection and dissemination of information. Likewise, the library typology continuously responds to the dominant paradigm of information and communications technologies. Following the digital revolution of the late twentieth century, information has […]

The Other Place: Building a Retreat of One’s Own Brock Benninger How is one to ground themselves in an increasingly virtual and abstract world? The Other Place offers a complimentary environment to daily life. Here one can establish the necessary critical distance from the conditions which define day to day life, and gain the perspective […]

Mapping the City Narative of Memory and Place Desiree Geib How do we discover a new place and begin to get acquainted with it? In Canadian cities, the sense of place can be difficult to grasp. The relative youth of the built form of the cities and a constant influx of new people from […]

The University of Waterloo’s Hyperloop student team, “Waterloop,” is advancing to the final round of the SpaceX competition. The team includes students from Architecture, Engineering, and Physics. This August, the team will bring their built pod design prototype to be tested on a one-mile track outside of SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

Studio Soundtrack features five songs selected by a student at Waterloo Architecture. This week, Samuel Ganton takes us deep into the strange world of Scandinavian traditional folk music, serving up a smorgasbord ranging from electronic to orchestral.

This fall, Paniz Moayeri and Haneen Dalla-Ali created an installation to shed light on the experiences of newcomers to Canada. Bright Whispers is a forest of lanterns, each inscribed with a different story of immigration, written in the native language of the story teller. Samuel Ganton invites us to take a closer look at the installation, and reflects on the significance of these stories for Canada and for this moment in history.

Studio Soundtrack is back! Courtesy of Niki Farfel. There’s nothing like falling in love with a song. But after hearing the same song over and over again, you can’t help but hate it. This week, Niki brings back some of the favorites, in a whole new way. Get ready to fall in love - this week is all about remixes.