The winners of the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s Interuniversity Charrette 2018 are being announced today at the Université du Québec à Montreal. For the 23rd edition of the annual competition, which was titled Housing One by One, students from various design disciplines were challenged to unite prefabrication and architecture by inventing an adaptable construction kit that addresses the need for affordable housing.
Participants were asked to choose a specific site that was already familiar to them, and were encouraged to develop projects that activate unused urban or suburban spaces, creating new density patterns for existing neighbourhoods. The objective: envisage how a basic one-square-metre unit could be developed to result in diverse housing patterns.
The winning team, composed of undergraduate students from Ryerson University, created an imaginative design that puts unused city spaces to work by populating them with affordable housing units that are functional and customizable. Their project, titled In-Between, uses honeycomb-like hexagonal shapes to arrange interlocking modules that can fit the space and capacity needs of the site.
An accomplished jury that included architects, journalists, and researchers evaluated proposals submitted by forty-two teams composed of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as recent graduates. The jury noted that the quality and diversity of proposals was remarkable and generated stimulating discussions during judging. They also felt that the notion of prefabrication in architecture highlights many challenges, notably adaptability, relationship to site, and simplicity of production.
THE WINNERS
First Place — In-Between: Elizabeth Young, Shengnan Gao, Alvin Huang, Justin Arbesman, Nicole Burdynewicz (Ryerson, undergraduate)
Second Place — Retrofitting Suburbia: Andrée-Anne Théorêt, Nancy Elias, Rosalyn Dunkley (McGill, graduate)
Third Place — Loger un par un: Laura Arnold, Elysabeth Maisonneuve, Valérie Langevin (Université de Montréal, undergraduate)
THE JURY —Jury members were: Alexandre Blouin (Founding Principal Blouin Tardif, OAQ, OAA, MIRAC), Andréanne Chevalier (Journalist, Le Devoir), Koen De Winter (Associate Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal), Roger-Bruno Richard (Architect and Professor, Université de Montréal), Theodora Vardouli (Assistant Professor Peter Guo-hua School of Architecture, McGill University).
All of the projects in the Interuniversity Charrette competition are viewable on the Charrette website, linked here.