Allan Teramura is the past president of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.

That the federal government is taking an interest in housing design is welcome news, as it’s an issue it has long ignored. Housing has largely been left to the market, with any initiatives to improve affordability coming in the form of tools to enable first-time buyers to borrow money more easily. 

The federal government plan to create a catalogue of designs for multiplexes, student and senior residences, and other residential buildings is a reboot of a policy from the years following the Second World War, when the Central (later Canadian) Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) created “pattern books” of house designs to accelerate the construction of badly needed homes. Designed by up-and-coming young architects, they offered sophisticated, modern designs for people who wouldn’t ordinarily consider procuring professional design services.

Today, the situation is far more complex. Rural land adjacent to cities is largely in the hands of developers, who have a pre-established model for exploiting its commercial value, which does not include one-off, nonmarket projects. Providing them with templates they can copy-and-paste into place is not likely going to change that.

Reconciling the competing demands of more economical construction, difficult sites, conflicting regulations, and the need for radically improved energy performance is a difficult challenge, but it’s not rocket science. It is, however, architecture, and there are architectural solutions.

Building significantly more housing in today’s complex urban and climate reality may require large direct investments in public housing, pilot projects in co-ordination with local jurisdictions, and other bold initiatives. Solving the housing crisis will require acceptance of risk, political leadership, and most of all, creativity.