Learn About Resiliency-Related Concepts While Earning Continuing Education Hours

Join the OAA this month for two free, live, and publicly accessible webinars exploring the ideas behind this year’s selections for the OAA’s SHIFT2021 Resiliency/Architecture Challenge.

The biennial SHIFT Challenge is an aspirational program that spotlights how the architecture profession can offer innovative approaches to addressing societal issues. You can register now for the pair of moderated talks, which will also feature Q&A opportunities and live closed captioning, as well as 1.0 or 1.5 Structured Learning hours for licensed members. The events are also open to the public, and we encourage you to share the registration links with those who might be interested in the topics.

Of the registrants for both sessions, there will also be a draw to win one of 50 free subscriptions to Azure Magazine.

November 16:
SHIFT2021 Challenge: Resiliency in the City
11 am to 12:30 pm
Azure Magazine’s senior editor Stefan Novakovic moderates this free, 90-minute deep dive into a trio of Toronto-based ideas that have applications for other urban centres.

Architect Naama Blonder shares her concept for the Mini Mid-Rise, and explains how it could both boost Toronto’s main streets economic activity post-pandemic and increase the much-needed housing supply with an incremental approach to intensification.

Using Koreatown as a case study, a team led by architect Steven Fong explains why any top-down initiative to help the beleaguered commercial strips of Toronto’s diaspora enclaves needs a bottom-up plan to address the viability of small storefront buildings.

Three M.Arch candidates from the University of Toronto—Victoria Cardoso, Erman Akyol, and Eugenia Wong—offer their take on revitalizing the Ontario Place lands, offering ways to contribute to the liveability and appeal of a multicultural, sustainable, and equitable province.

Together, these speakers will explore their concepts and seek common themes that show how architecture professionals can use their skills, education, and thinking to provide new ideas for a changing world.

To register, click here.

November 30
SHIFT2021 Challenge: The Resiliency of Changing Communities
1 pm to 2 pm
Architect Joe Lobko moderates this free, one-hour look at two selections from the SHIFT2021 Resiliency/Architecture Challenge.

Intern architect Holly Sutton explores how an industrial site can become a sustainable, inhabited landscape that brings renewed life to struggling communities. Through design, her project attempts to integrate large-scale community planning with environmental remediation strategies.

Then, an interdisciplinary team led by architect Gordon Stratford offers a strategy for improved accommodations for essential agriculture workers who provide our communities with food. Their submission focuses on design as a mechanism for achieving a healthy, nurturing, adaptable, and vibrant home-away-from-home for foreign worker communities.

Each of these projects reveals the direct positive impacts that thoughtful and sensitive design can have on communities.

To register, click here.