The arrival of a new school year brings forth a feeling much too familiar to UBC students: The stress and anxiety associated with locating an affordable place to live in the Vancouver rental market. Many organizations have worked to advocate for solutions — but what is the role of the people who design the places we live?
Established in 2021, Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA) is a national collective co-founded by UBC associate professor of architecture Dr. Matthew Soules. Formed in response to the Canadian housing crisis, AAHA bridges together the realms of activism and architecture.
AAHA spent this past summer in Italy representing Canada at the 18th Venice Biennale of Architecture, a renowned international exhibition of architecture. In their exhibit Not For Sale!, AAHA presented its ten demands and proposed strategies for addressing the Canadian housing crisis.
Dr. Soules and a selected group of UBC architecture students traveled to Venice for three months to further develop the demands and engage with the international community. Nastaran Sedehi, a second year student in the Master of Advanced Studies in Architecture program, was one of fifteen UBC students taking part in the summer studio.
Sedehi felt drawn to participate in the Biennale exhibit because of “this idea of interdisciplinary practice in architecture … architecture as activism, or architecture as a practice that can address real issues going on in society and the city.”
She spoke of the importance of architects being conscious of the ways in which they are perpetuating or rejecting the norms of the contemporary housing system.
“If we make architects become more aware of what they are doing, like whose benefits they are contributing to, and who is excluded from architectural practice,” Sedehi said. “This is activism going on in architecture.”
The information presented by the collective was often met with surprise from international visitors, who were unaware that Canada is in the midst of a housing crisis.
Sedehi and other participating students were tasked with designing strategies to achieve the AAHA’s housing justice demands. The demands vary in nature, but feature an overarching theme of decommodifying the housing system. Among them are calls for Indigenous sovereignty and housing security, reducing gentrification-induced displacement, as well as creating more affordable, service-accessible and community-centered housing.
Aside from the reward of advocating for housing solutions, being immersed in an international environment and learning from other professionals was invaluable to the young architects' education.
“Before I went to Venice, I thought many ideas [couldn’t] be implemented in the real world. But after I went there, and saw many projects actually happened, now I'm like, ‘Wow, these are possible things, [they] are idealistic, but they are possible,’” said Sedehi. “It opened new horizons for me as an architecture researcher, designer and student.”
“Everyone is talking about this, from your neighbor, to the person who sits next to you on the bus — they are all talking about how unaffordable [living is] ... I finally felt like I'm being helpful and I'm doing something that can be helpful in this situation.”