112th Annual Meeting

How can conferences consider reciprocity towards the human and non-human communities who host them? How can we be better guests? What insights, actions, such as a beach clean-up, can offer for our architectural education and practice in terms of stewardship, environmental footprint and place making?

Disrupting the usual conference program, this action session engages momentarily in practices of reciprocity and care toward the land and water of K’emk’emeláy̓ / Vancouver. In collaboration with Sea Smart, knowledge keepers and community members, we invite ACSA attendees (and their friends and family) to join us in tending to the shoreline of Í7iy̓el̓shn (Sunset Beach) on Thursday, March 14, from 9 am to 1 pm. Equipment and light snacks will be provided. Spots are limited.

Cost: $20
What: Guests in the City: Beach Clean-up at Í7iy̓el̓shn (Sunset Beach) Tour
When: Thursday, March 14, 2024 @ 9:00am-1:00pm
Where: Ay-yul-shun Beach (English Bay)
Included: Gloves, Tools, Light snacks & refreshments
Tour Leaders: Rana Abughannam, University of British Columbia
Émélie Desrochers-Turgeon, Dalhousie University
Jenan Ghazal, Carleton University

The tour will be a walking tour of Vancouver’s housing from the 1890s to the present in the downtown core led by a local architect and an architectural and urban historian. Attendees will reflect on housing, settler colonialism, real estate, and affordability. The downtown, West End, South False Creek, Yaletown, and perhaps Olympic Village will be visited on the tour. The tour will use public transportation. It will be accessible for a range of walkers and will accommodate children, though it will cover a large territory so won’t be easy for anyone with significant mobility challenges. Wheelchair accommodation can be provided.

This walking tour will begin with a land acknowledgment (perhaps a visit to an Indigenous garden at the Museum of Vancouver). Focused first on the downtown core, we will visit the West End to examine late-19th century settler colonial city and the lumber baron’s houses and the 1960s era concrete towers of bachelor pads that was the first era of densifying the city. Next the tour will visit the 1970s developments in South False Creek, where a new approach to housing families and emphasizing non-market housing to protect and extend affordability aligned with a physical planning effort to integrate built and natural landscapes on a large city-owned-and-leased (not sold) brownfield redevelopment site. The tour will cross False Creek (public walk-on ferry) to see the landscape of supposedly Jane-Jacobs-inspired podium towers (1990s) of Yaletown and the more recent swoopy/branded towers of international architects, discussing the role of international finance and how financialization has shaped the housing crisis today.

Cost: $20 – SOLD OUT
What: Housing Financialization in Vancouver Tour
When: Friday, March 15, 2024 @ 9:00am-1:00pm
Where: Downtown Vancouver
Tour Leaders: Sara Stevens & Matthew Soules, University of British Columbia

Cost: $30
What: Steel Manufacturing & Design Tour
When: Friday, March 15, 2024 @ 12:30pm-4:00pm
Where: George Third & Sons and Butterfly Tower
Included: Lunch
Tour Leaders: Jeanne Homer & Christina Harber, American Institute of Steel Construction

“Object Translations” is an exhibition organized by the research collective Towards An Immigrant Architecture (TAIA) for the 112th Annual Meeting of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) ‘Disrupters on the Edge’. The exhibition will bring together diverse objects intertwined with immigrant cultures through acts of translation: transforming and reinventing each object through multi-media collages, video installations, and three-dimensional constructs. Each contribution will be accompanied by narratives that discuss the architect’s cultural heritage and how their work enacts a material or formal translation through the design process. The TAIA Collective will also host a community engagement program working with local organizations, such as the Powell Street Festival Society, to center the immigrant experience as a key reference point and reimagine established design pedagogies and practices.

The ACSA special session will take place Friday, March 15th from 5:30-9:00pm at BothKinds Project Space in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood and will introduce conference participants to a culturally significant area of the city that is frequently overlooked and marginalized. The collective will engage directly with local community members prior to the exhibition by conducting a creative workshop with groups of seniors, many of whom are first generation immigrants. Participants will bring an object to the gallery that reflects their cultural identity and/or immigrant journey. Personal stories connected to the objects will be shared and documented through an artistic workshop that will yield a series of cyanotype prints using custom armatures designed and built specifically for the exhibition. Each story and print will be added to an online archive and displayed in the gallery alongside works by members of the collective. The exhibition is conceived as an act of collective translation that creatively fosters discourse about immigrant cultures. It highlights the inequity of displacement, as well as the pervasive spirit of adaptation found in immigrant communities throughout the world.

Cost: This special session is free and open to the public.
What: Object Translations Exhibition
When: Friday, March 15, 2024 @ 5:30pm – 9:00pm
Where: BothKinds Project Space (602 E Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, V6A 1R1)

We invite you to join us to toast to the 2024 Architecture Education Award Winners and celebrate all our achievements. This  celebration event & dinner is open to all, to raise funds to support emerging faculty. This event is hosted by the ACSA College of Distinguished Professors (DPACSA), which was founded in 2010 to identify and disseminate best practices in teaching and support the career development of new faculty. Proceeds from the dinner will be used to support faculty travel to attend the ACSA Annual Meetings.

Cost: $200
What: 2024 Architectural Education Awards Reception & Emerging Faculty Fundraiser
When: Friday, March 15, 2024 @ 7:30pm
Where: Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre

Vancouver is home to both critical affordable housing shortages and innovative models for inclusive social and supportive housing. Join this workshop for a discussion of cutting-edge visions for social housing in Vancouver plus a tour of two recent projects showcasing design excellence in affordable supportive housing. The afternoon session will include a panel discussion featuring leading voices in the local housing conversation and highlighting key issues pressing upon the region. Featured housing approaches and designs are regionally specific and reflect local innovation, disrupting conventional housing frameworks. Presentations and discussion will likely feature representatives from the collaborative work of the Squamish Nation’s Sen̓áḵw project, the Vienna House and the Architects Against Housing Alienation collective, curators of the 2023 Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. A bus/walking tour will feature two recent supportive affordable housing projects, guided by local practitioners. The tour – in a country that has the right to housing – extends the work of the AIA Right-to-Housing Working Group. This eighth annual ASCA-AIA program is organized by the AIA Housing and Community Development Knowledge Community as part of the ongoing Avenues of Exchange, which seeks to connect practitioners and academics on pressing topics in housing and community development.

Cost: $30 – SOLD OUT
What: Sustainable Social Housing: Vancouver Approaches Tour & Workshop
When: Saturday, March 16, 2024 @ 9:00am-2:00pm
Where: Vancouver
Included: Lunch
Tour Leaders: Karen Kubey, University of Toronto
Christina Bollo & Ceara O’Leary, University of Oregon

All conference registrants are invited to join to the Opening Reception.

What: Closing Reception
When: Saturday, March 16, 2024 @ 6:00pm – 7:00pm
Where: University of British Columbia, Old Auditorium