At the Venice Architecture Biennale, architects tackle the housing crisis

Opened in late May at Canada’s National Pavilion in Venice’s public gardens, the Not for Sale! exhibit consists of 10 'demands' that combine architectural, political and economic goals.Maris Mezulis

At this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, the most important architecture event in the world, Canada opened an exhibition in which architects and activists address the housing crisis head-on. Its title includes an exclamation point: Not for Sale!

As that punctuation suggests, the show comes with a call to action. Opened in late May at Canada’s National Pavilion in Venice’s public gardens, the exhibit consists of 10 “demands” that combine architectural, political and economic goals. Organized by a collective called Architects Against Housing Alienation (AAHA), it embodies a certain strain of progressive activism about housing – and reveals its limitations.

At this biennale, the ground is ripe for ambitious and politically engaged architecture. The event always brings together architects and curators from around the world to address a common theme. This year’s – titled “The laboratory of the future” – is curated by the Ghanaian-Scottish architect Lesley Lokko; it addresses decolonization and decarbonization, heavily featuring participants from Africa and from the African diaspora.

Not for Sale! – billed as “an architectural activist campaign for non-alienated housing” – shares a political and rhetorical bent with some of the other entries.

One of its demands is “land back,” through which Nisga’a architect Luugigyoo/Patrick Stewart, Squamish hereditary chief Xalek/Sekyu Siyam Chief Ian Campbell and Sarah Silva of the Squamish Nation’s Hiyam Housing call for federally controlled land to be returned to Indigenous groups and used to create intergenerational housing.

The exhibit, billed as 'an architectural activist campaign for non-alienated housing', shares a political and rhetorical bent with some of the other entries.Maris Mezulis

Another is “reparative architecture.” Toronto architects SOCA and the firm CP Planning, along with the neighbourhood group Keele Eglinton Residents, imagine new development on small lots that would bring housing and retail, owned by Black-led community land trusts, to all corners of Toronto’s Little Jamaica neighbourhood – cementing a presence for the existing Caribbean community.

A third proposes a cluster of cabins to accommodate homeless people on public land in Waterloo, Ont., providing support services and decent temporary accommodation. This group includes (among others) the courageous builder Khaleel Seivwright, architect John van Nostrand and A Better Tent City Waterloo Region.

That – and the other 70 per cent of the show – is a lot to pack into one smallish exhibition. But Simon Brault, chief executive officer of the Canada Council, which supported the exhibition after a juried selection process, suggests political ambition is the order of the day. “There are moments where architects or artists are at the intersection of their discipline and social change,” Brault said.

Indeed, the show’s organizers see their work as part of a campaign, supporting the “demand” teams in realizing their work. Fifteen students from UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture are working in the pavilion until July; they will be succeeded by students from the University of Waterloo.

But if this is a movement, what sort of change does it seek, exactly? What is “housing alienation”?

“We understand it in multiple ways,” explained architect and UBC professor Matthew Soules, one of six members of the organizing committee. “In the most simple sense, we see people as being distanced from the basic functions of housing, of shelter and a holistic sense of well-being.”

But the curators also use the phrase in a sense derived from Marxian economic thinking. “Much of the housing that is built today is designed first and foremost … for the purpose of speculation,” said Soules. “If you live in a new condo in downtown Toronto or downtown Vancouver, and are not living precariously… [the condo apartments’s] floorplan and its relationship to the public realm reflect the need for liquidity that the market requires.”

Fifteen students from UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture are working in the pavilion until July; they will be succeeded by students from the University of Waterloo.Maris Mezulis

In simpler terms: New condos are boxes in the sky, “separated from the ground … not easily a space where you can connect with your neighbours,” as Soules puts it in AAHA’s promotional video.

Anyone who follows big city politics has heard this rhetoric before. It’s insulting to apartment dwellers and has consequences in city planning. It’s what boomers say at community meetings when they’re trying to block a new apartment tower in their neighbourhood. Never mind that the new tower is frequently the only place new arrivals can live.

The ideas that frame Not for Sale! are part of a conversation on the academic left about housing and cities. The main thrust is that the real estate industry is responsible for the current housing crisis through “financialization” and the commodification of housing. New housing is a commodity and is “detached from the needs of a community,” as Soules told me. (AAHA’s social-media accounts, run by students, have disseminated some particularly cringeworthy takes from this perspective.)

Such claims are sweeping, and often rely on faulty data about empty homes – a phenomenon which is hugely overstated – and basic misunderstandings of housing economics. Until recently, it was a widely held position among progressive housing advocates that Vancouver and Toronto did not really have a shortage of housing.

But this rhetoric is ultimately irrelevant to most of the proposals in the show – which align around the building of much more public housing, especially on public land, particularly for and by Indigenous communities. These would be just as strong without their wrapper of academic sanctimony. With luck, these architects and activists will bring the urgency back to Canada and leave the exclamation points behind.