The housing crisis invites itself into the Canadian pavilion of the 18e international architecture exhibition of the Venice Biennale, on the initiative of a collective committed to proposing solutions to this problem which has no borders.
The Architects Against Housing Alienation collective was born in 2021 from the desire of six architects, artists and teachers working in British Columbia and Ontario to join forces to write a common candidacy for this major exhibition. Each year, it has more than 100 foreign participants and attracts some 300,000 visitors.
“We wanted to use this chance to see if we could draw more attention to the housing situation in Canada,” explains the Duty University of British Columbia School of Architecture professor Sara Stevens, joined in Venice on Wednesday.
The group thus created the campaign Not for sale!, which was submitted to the Canada Council for the Arts (CAC), responsible for orchestrating the country’s participation in the Venice Biennale, which this year takes place from May 20 to 26 november. After a series of steps that allowed the project to be on the short list of candidate initiatives for this prestigious exhibition, the organization’s jury decided in favor of it.
“Something that interested us was that it was a work proposed by a collective, not a single architect or a single firm of architects, really a collective that brings both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal perspectives”, some members of this group being from the First Nations, notes the director general of the CAC, Simon Brault. The jury was also seduced by the theme chosen, at a time when the housing crisis is “a problem that is very important in Canada, but I would say also internationally,” he notes.
Solutions
The Canadian pavilion was ready on Wednesday. At its entrance, large photos show in particular makeshift camps, which have become synonymous with the housing crisis, first in Toronto and, more recently, in Montreal. A large mural is covered with an enlarged photo taken during a demonstration for the right to housing held at Place Émilie-Gamelin, in the city center of Quebec.
Inside the pavilion is the result of 10 projects carried out by as many teams formed in different places in the country, each of which proposed a solution to the housing crisis. These include the idea of asking cities to develop social housing in their surplus buildings, or even that of prioritizing the development of community housing in central and dense sectors, rather than on the outskirts as is often the case.
It’s really this whole idea that the pavilion will be an exhibition space, but also a laboratory of ideas
These teams are made up not only of architects, but also of activists and representatives of community groups, some of whom are based in Montreal. “We wanted the architects to find a way to work with activists, people who are really on the ground to help people who are affected by the lack of housing or social housing,” explains Sara Stevens.
Visitors can walk around the pavilion and learn more about the different solutions to the housing crisis proposed by these groups, while well-documented films on this theme will be presented on the site. Manifestos will also be distributed to passersby who come to visit the pavilion, in an effort to raise awareness of the reality of the real estate market in Canada. “We really want this campaign to become a movement,” says Mme Stevens, who hopes that at the end of this exhibition, the collective thus created will contribute to housing projects intended for the less well-off “coming out of the ground”. “We want political change, that it be mobilizing”, she continues.
Students mobilized
About fifteen students from the University of British Columbia will also be present in this pavilion during the first three months of the exhibition in order to accompany certain members of the organizing committee of this project. Students from the University of Waterloo will then take over until the end of this six-month exhibition. The members of the collective have also built a wooden mezzanine “from scratch” where work tables and computers have been installed so that the students can “work and think there during the summer,” says Simon Brault.
“So it’s really this whole idea that the pavilion is going to be an exhibition space, but also a laboratory of ideas”, which seduced the Canada Council for the Arts, notes its outgoing director general. The international architecture exhibition is intended this year, by the theme chosen by the organizers, a “laboratory of the future” encouraging projects that go beyond the usual framework of the event.
“We are much more in a biennial that discusses social and political issues” compared to previous years, notes Mr. Brault. Thus, the climate crisis, sustainable development and the war in Ukraine are some of the themes that will be addressed by various participants during this biennale, which is more committed than ever.