Season 3 (2023)

Kayla Browne and Kate MacGregor – February 7

TBD – April 30

TBD – Sept 11

TBD – Nov 6

Wednesday February 7, 2024

WE GOT 99 PROBLEMS
and Housing is All of Them

This past fall, in response to the mounting housing affordability crisis our city is facing, the collaborative team at BOLD + XYC embarked on an exploration of creative market-driven affordable housing solutions with graduate students from SAPL. This is a wide-reaching issue, affected by policy all levels of government, and intertwining with complex societal challenges and architectural constraints. This will not be resolved with a one-size-fits-all approach; we need multiple solutions enacted simultaneously across a range of scales and contexts.

In September, the City re-opened discussion on their Housing Affordability Task Force report, eventually passing the recommendations, which largely focused on increasing much-needed support to the non-profit sector. But this only addresses a small fraction of the problem facing our city.

On the evening of February 7, firm leaders Kayla Browne and Kate MacGregor will present their speculative projects resulting from the semester of research, diving into architectural ideas for how we, as Calgarians and designers, might work towards affordable living in our city. Intended to provoke discussion, the lecture will be followed by a casual reception with snacks and non-alcoholic drinks.

PAST LECTURES:

Wednesday September 27, 2023

STARTER HOMES*
Miscellaneous Tactics for Affordability

Jonathan Tate
Principal of OJT

Open Concepts returns on September 27 with Jonathan Tate, principal of New Orleans-based architecture firm Office of Jonathan Tate. His practice is simultaneously dedicated to curiosity and exploration, while remaining grounded in the particularities of site, the constraints of budget and the practicalities of construction.

Jonathan will discuss his work in a realm that Calgary is currently struggling with: Market-Driven Affordable Housing. In 2014, O_JT completed construction of 3106 St Thomas, a small house in his home city of New Orleans, in partnership with developer Charles Rutledge. This was the first test of his Starter Home* thesis, which sought to subvert the typical single-family home development machine and rethink the architect’s role in the making of housing. Since then, he has expanded his agenda, creating affordable, entry-level homes for the speculative market that combat gentrification, enable economically diverse communities, densify under-utilized neighbourhoods, and provide an equitable path to home ownership for all.

O_JTs work in the realm of affordable housing over the last decade is complemented by their larger cultural, commercial and planning projects, each of which upholds the values of the firm: creating architecture that first and foremost belongs in and contributes to its surroundings – buildings that challenge the status quo while recognizing the design lineage of their context.

Tuesday June 27, 2023

MANY NORTHS:
Reveling in Architecture’s Entanglements

Lola Shepard
Principal of LATERAL OFFICE

 

On June 27, Lola Shepard invites us to revel in the possibilities of how architecture might be emboldened to move beyond the traditional definition of the discipline – building as object, profession as service – by engaging and responding to provocations originating outside of its boundaries. We, as users and inhabitants of the built environment, inherently recognize the importance of ecology, economics, culture and politics in the function of our spaces and cities. In her talk, “Reveling in Architecture’s Entanglements”, Lola explores a new model of practice and method of architectural knowledge generation that embraces, challenges, and responds to its societal context.

Together with partner Mason White, Lola is a founding principal of Lateral Office, a Toronto-Based architecture firm with one foot firmly in the built environment and the second in the realm of research and academics. Their work in both spheres has largely centred around rural projects in the Canadian North; in 2017 they published Many Norths: Spatial Practice in Polar Territory, a book which delves into the complexity – historical, logistical, climatological, economical – of building in these remote communities, and proposes new ways in which architecture might adapt to push itself beyond what is simply affordable or expedient, and reconcile the conflicts between progress for a young, rapidly growing population, and the traditions and knowledge of people who have inhabited this land for thousands of years.

April 19, 2023

WELCOME HOME:
Unresolved Legibility in Residential Types

Clark Thenhaus
Principal of ENDEMIC ARCHITECTURE

At WELCOME HOME, Clark Thenhaus will present his research into the prototypical (North) American single family house, exploring stylistic appropriation, banal eclecticism, and the generecism produced by architecturally irreverent forces… and how that might become a productive ground for reinterpretation of how we recognize and understand our homes and the everyday spaces that we spend our lives in.

Clark Thenhaus is the Principal of Endemic Architecture (located in San Francisco, CA)  and professor of architecture at California College of the Arts. His firm explores the careful manipulations to familiar building types, materials, or elements to foster the  ‘almost familiar.’ They transform what is expected, and therefore often overlooked – windows, scuppers, chimneys, gable roofs, porches – to shift the arc of architectural attention.