2.0 ConEd Learning Hours

1:30 p.m. ‐ 3:30 p.m.

This session will inform participants about Not for Sale!, Canada's official entry at the Venice Biennale in 2023. The Organizing Committee for this housing campaign assembled 10 teams from across the country—each composed of architectural firms, housing activists, and housing advocates—to offer visions for housing futures that transcend and reject the commodification of home. Together, the collaborative is known as Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA), and the Not for Sale! campaign offers examples of how architects are working with activists to demand changes in the way we think about housing while designing alternatives together.

The three Ontario‐based AAHA teams will share their work and offer thoughts about where architecture and activism need to intersect in order to address the housing crisis that has been unfolding across the country over many decades.

Learning Objectives

David T Fortin, PhD, OAA, SAA, MAA, Architect AAA, AIBC, MRAIC, LEED AP
Professor
Waterloo Architecture, University of Waterloo

David Fortin is a professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture and an architect in the provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of Edinburgh in 2009 and has since taught undergraduate and graduate courses in architectural design, history, and theory in the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada. David was the inaugural Associate Director of the Maamwizing Indigenous Research Institute and the Director of the McEwen School of Architecture from 2018 to 2021. He is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario and member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) Indigenous Task Force. He has twice been selected with colleagues to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale (2018, 2023). His research and practice focus on questions surrounding speculative futures, Métis architecture and design, and the relationship between design practice and reconciliation.

Adrian Blackwell
Associate Professor
Waterloo Architecture, University of Waterloo

Adrian Blackwell is an artist, designer, theorist, and educator whose work focuses on the relationship between physical spaces and political economic forces. He is one of six co‐organizers and designers of Architects Against Housing Alienation's Not for Sale! campaign, which occupied the Canadian Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture. He has been invited to exhibit has art and architecture in the Shenzhen, Chengdu, Toronto, and Chicago Biennials. Blackwell's research focuses on the nature and potentials of public space, the exclusionary function of private property, and the utopian possibilities of architecture. Recent publications include “The City from Sign to Medium: Private Property, Public Space, and the Pragmatics of Architecture” and “Planning a Value Network of Exploding Infrastructures and Imploding Centers in Shenzhen." He is leading funded research projects on the long‐term quality of multi‐unit residential buildings in Waterloo Region, using tiny homes to address housing insecurity, and on the history of land division and urban formation in Canada. Blackwell has taught architecture and urbanism at Chongqing, Michigan, Toronto, and Harvard Universities, in an associate professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, a founder and editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape / Political Economy and co‐editor of the current issue 12, “c\a\n\a\d\a: delineating nation state capitalism” (with David Fortin). 

John van Nostrand, FRAIC, FCIP
Director
Two Steps Home

John van Nostrand is the director of Two Steps Home, and the founding partner of SvN Architects + Planners. Since 1978, he has been the driving force behind the firm’s integrated architectural, planning, landscape, and urban design practice. Over the past 40 years, SvN has focused on housing‐for‐all‐incomes, land settlement, and infrastructure in cities and landscapes undergoing constant growth and renewal. He served as Chair of the Boards of the Home First Society and Houselink Community Homes in their early days. In 2018, he created Parcel Developments to focus on evolutionary housing and its application to entry‐level housing for all incomes. Most recently, John created Two Steps Home to address homelessness more directly. John’s work and writings have been well‐recognized at home and abroad, and his awards include the World Leadership Award for Town Planning (1992), the Daniel Burnham Award from the American Planning Association (2008), and numerous local and national Awards of Excellence in Architecture, Planning, and Urban Design. In 2004, John was awarded the Jane Jacobs Award for “Ideas That Matter” and the OAA’s Order of da Vinci in recognition of his exceptional leadership in the profession, and the education of, and service to, its communities.

Tura Cousins Wilson
Architect
Studio of Contemporary Architecture (SOCA)

Tura Cousins Wilson is an architect, educator, and cofounder of the Studio of Contemporary Architecture (SOCA), based in Toronto. He is inspired by creating uplifting spaces of beauty and contends that architecture’s power lies in its ability to transform collective imaginations and narratives into reality. His professional experience and interest span a variety of scales and types including housing, cultural spaces, heritage, urban design, exhibition design, and public art. Tura is equally passionate about the impact of small‐scale architecture and exploring the craft and intimacy of private residential design. Tura received an undergraduate degree in architecture from Toronto Metropolitan University, a master’s degree in architecture, urbanism, building sciences from Delft University of Technology, and is an architect in both Ontario and the Netherlands. He is a founding member of the Black Architects and Interior Designers Association in Canada (BAIDA) and currently a sessional instructor at the University of Toronto and Toronto Metropolitan University.

Conrad Speckert
Intern Architect
LGA Architectural Partners

Conrad Speckert is an intern architect at LGA Architectural Partners in Toronto with degrees from McGill and Waterloo. His graduate research proposed a building code change to allow for single-staircase buildings and has evolved as CMHC-funded research project to change the National Building Code of Canada. He joined LGA as project manager for “ReHousing the Yellowbelt,” a collaboration with the University of Toronto to study gentle densification and support multiplex zoning reform across residential neighbourhoods. He is well-versed in the design of “missing middle” and mid-rise residential buildings, having previously worked for architects in Toronto, Vancouver, Berlin, and Tokyo.

Ali Shamas Qadeer, BA, MFA
Associate Professor
OCAD University

Ali Shamas Qadeer is a designer and educator based in Toronto. After completing a BA in philosophy and religious studies at McGill University, he developed an independent design practice in New York City before returning to school to complete an MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2014. His work focuses on algorithmic form‐making, interaction design, the intersection of design labour and political economy, as well as digital surveillance. After returning to Canada in 2014, Ali joined the faculty of OCADU where he is an Associate Professor in the graphic design program. In his teaching practice, Ali champions a critical approach that always refracts through a practice of formalism and material production.

Leighana Mais

Leighana Mais was raised on Eglinton West since she was three and has a wealth of memories, experiences, and knowledge of her community. Her experiences aren't all light and fluffy, but filled with cultural experiences, trauma, loss, belonging, and involvement in community. She truly believes Eglinton West has sculpted much of who she is today. Leighana shares her story of her resilient community, overlooked for decades— only now receiving attention when residents came together to empower themselves after recognizing all of our systemic hardships. Leighana has been an active volunteer in her neighbourhood, Little Jamaica, since she was a pre‐teen. She graduated from Centennial College School of Business in Business Administration and has a strong passion for community and entrepreneurship. Leighana excels at mobilizing people toward positive change, utilizing her diverse experience in community development, project coordination, and marketing to inspire and empower community members. With more than 15 years of experience in event coordinating and communications, Leighana is well‐versed in community engagement, advocacy, and empowerment. She founded the Keele and Eglinton Residents group and established the Little Jamaica Community Coalition, aiming to connect resources for community benefit, including a Community Land Trust for affordable housing and ownership, and food sovereignty initiatives.