Competition brief

Surplus Properties For Housing!

Design Competition

Surplus Properties For Housing!

Key Dates

Registration deadline: December 6, 2023 12:00 AM
Submission deadline: March 6, 2024 12:00 AM
Winners announcement: March 6, 2024 12:00 AM

*All times are in UTC

Prizes

Prize pool 2600 USD

Who is AAHA?

Architects Against Housing Alienation is a collective formed in 2021 that started Not for Sale! as a campaign to end housing alienation. The campaign is centered on the work of ten teams, from across the land now known as ca ada, who have created ten demands and proposals. The collective include activists, architects, and advocates who bring expertise, experience, connection, and compassion to issues of housing justice. This collaborative effort aims to add momentum, new synergies, and a shared focus to the ongoing and remarkable work to create a radically new housing system.

Surplus Properties For Housing!

Halifax is in crisis. The number of unhoused people is growing exponentially due to the cost of living and lack of affordable housing, but at the same time there are numerous government-owned surplus properties which have been sitting vacant for up to decades. AAHA demand that the government make these assets available for public good through the development of affordable housing. The jury is seeking innovative social housing projects that utilize these vacant surplus properties to fill in gaps in the socio-urban fabric of Halifax. Winning entries will be showcased in Dalhousie University, Halifax, as well as receiving a share of the $2,600 prize fund.

Adrian Blackwell teaches as an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, and has taught architecture and urbanism at universities in Chongqing, Michigan, Harvard and Toronto. His practice involves photography, video, sculpture, urban theory, and design, responding to the political and economic forces inscribed in physical spaces. His projects unfold alongside research focused on the local and global effects of neoliberal urbanization and the inherent paradoxes of public space and private property. Blackwell’s work has been exhibited at artist-run centers and public institutions across the globe, the most recent of which was with the Canadian Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale.

Eric Jonsson is a program coordinator with the Downtown Halifax Navigator Street Outreach Program, which provides support to motivated street-involved and unhoused persons by assisting them in securing and maintaining employment and housing. The program achieves this through partnerships with community agencies such as Downtown Halifax Business Commission, Spring Garden Area Business Association, and their business members.

Florian Summa is an architect and co-founder of SUMMACUMFEMMER Architects in Leipzig. After his studies at RWTH Aachen and ETH Zurich, he has worked at Lütjens Padmanabhan and Caruso St John. From 2015 to 2018, he was a research assistant with Adam Caruso at ETH Zurich. In 2020 Florian Summa held a visiting professorship at the Technical University of Munich, from 2020 to 2022 a professorship at the Technical University of Graz and in 2022 a visiting professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 2023, he was part of the Curatorial Team for Open For Maintenance, the German Pavilion, at the 18th Architecture Biennale in Venice.

Sudhir Suri is an architect and partner at L’OEUF Architects, with a great expertise in integrated and sustainable design, at multiple scales and typologies. His unique perspective is based on intimate work with the social context and great technical versatility. He believes that transforming the complexity of our cities into beauty and resilience is paramount to the success of our species, and reinventing our vision of the city is necessary. Sudhir has taught architecture and urban planning at several universities, including the University of Waterloo, McGill, UQAM and Université de Montréal. Suri, along with L’OEUF Architects, was part of the Architects Against Housing Alienation initiative and the Canadian Pavilion at the 18th Architecture Biennale in Venice.

Susan Fitzgerald is the Design Director and a Managing Partner at FBM. She is also a part-time Associate Professor at Dalhousie University's Faculty of Architecture and Planning. ‍Originally from the UK, she is both an architect and an interior designer involved in teaching, research, and practice. Her work has been featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2023), the Lisbon Triennale, RAIC Academic Summit, World Congress of Architects and her writing published by UCL Press (2023), Routledge Press (2022), Refuge Press (2020), among others.

Anne Cormier is the co-founder of the award-winning Montreal-based firm Atelier Big City (Cormier Cohen Davies architectes), as well as a Professor at the School of Architecture at the Université de Montréal, where she served as Director between 2007 and 2015. With Atelier Big City, Anne Cormier has won several distinctions, including the Prix de Rome from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Grand Prix d’excellence from the Ordre des Architectes du Québec. She has presented and exhibited her work in Quebec and abroad. She is a member of the National Capital Commission’s Advisory Committee on Planning, Design and Realty in Ottawa. She regularly sits on other committees dedicated to excellence in architectural and urban projects and on architectural juries. She received the UBC Margolese National Design for Living Prize in 2018.

Inspired? Check out these competitions