Removing Barriers to Decarbonize Our Cities
We have less than 10 years to make real progress to stay within 1.5 degrees of global warming. Given that buildings are responsible for almost 40% of global…
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Ideas
How to incentivize and accelerate low-carbon building designs, with lessons from…
Architects and planners must decarbonize the construction industry, and we have less than ten years to make real progress to stay within 1.5 degrees of global…
How to phase out fossil fuels in buildings and lessons from New York
Greta Thunberg often talks about how "our house is on fire" when referencing the global climate crisis and the precariousness of our planet. Taking inspiration…
The Lab Building of the Future is NEXT
The demand for lab space and science workplaces is skyrocketing in almost every market, increasing competition among science building developers. The…
Frank Gehry: “You don’t see what’s going on, until all of a sudden, there it…
In late June, we sat down with Canadian-born, L.A.-based architect Frank Gehry. Gehry was back in his hometown, Toronto, for the launch of Forma, a pair of…
Build it and they will come: Bringing small house to the Canadian long-term care…
If there was any doubt as to the role the built environment plays in safeguarding public health, it’s surely been erased by now. Over the last two years,…
In the Wake of Progress
Toronto’s Yonge Dundas Square is usually a canyon of advertising. But in a commission for this June’s Luminato festival, photographer Ed Burtynsky…
What will it take to go beyond net-zero?
The OAA Conference returned in person for the first time in two years, kicking off Wednesday, May 11th with a keynote panel discussing this year’s theme:…
Technical: Mass Timber Through a Life Cycle Lens
In 2020, I led a studio at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design that asked: How can we halve the carbon…
Editorial: Station Agent
In architecture competitions, the runner-up scheme is sometimes the most interesting one. That’s the case in the recent Re-imagining Railways design…
Longview: R.C. Harris Water Filtration Plant
In 1932, construction began on Toronto’s Victoria Park Water Filtration Plant and Pumping Station. Designed by architect Thomas Canfield Pomphrey and engineers…
Don’t Get Defensive
Recently, a bench I’d barely noticed on countless walks past acquired an eye-catching sticker labeling it a DESIGN CRIME. “This item is a design against…