Introduction

COMPETITION ORGANISERS
Toronto Affordable Housing Challenge
Official partner
Toronto Affordable Housing Challenge

The Toronto Affordable Housing Challenge is part of Bee Breeders’ Affordable Housing competition series. Run in partnership with ARCHHIVE BOOKS, this competition tasked participants with submitting innovative design proposals for tackling Toronto’s housing crisis. Toronto is among the ten most expensive major housing markets in the world – with housing prices still on the rise, even more inhabitants are being pushed out of this market. Intelligent, workable solutions need to be implemented. Bee Breeders asks the question: what role can designers play in proposing these solutions?

This design series poses that there is no one right answer to making housing affordable. Today, a host of new ideas and platforms are enabling people to own or purchase homes. These creative methods include everything from community co-living facilities to 3D-printed homes, stackable modular homes, and new forms of transit-oriented development.

There were no specific design or site requirements for this competition. Proposals were requested to be flexible, enabling accommodations for a variety of inhabitant types: single professionals, couples, families, or group living. The brief sought out designs for a pilot-phase concept for affordable housing, which could be carried out within Toronto to increase its housing stock.

The jury reviewed proposals that intelligently adapted existing infrastructure, considered community cohesion, and offered a range of sustainable and innovative design solutions. While this competition was conceptual in nature, weight was given to flexible schemes that could be feasibly adapted to various sites and residential unit types.

Bee Breeders collaborated with a regional and international interdisciplinary jury panel. The full panel included: Nicky Bruun-Meyer, a Toronto-based architect and cofounder of The Site Magazine; Persis Lam, an associate at Diamond Schmitt Architects, based in Toronto; Maya Mahgoub-Desai, Chair of Environmental Design at OCAD University and a practicing urban designer and planner with Moriyama Teshima Architects; Mauricio Quirós Pacheco, Assistant Professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture at the University of Toronto; Fotini Pitoglou, lead architect on hospitality projects at Toronto-based FORREC and executive member of BEAT – Building Equality in Architecture Toronto; Mark Sterling, principal of Acronym Urban Design and Planning and former director of the Master of Urban Design program at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture; Andreas Tjeldflaat, founder of Framlab, a New York and Bergen-based design studio; Jeremy Withers, a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Planning at the University of Toronto, whose research focused on housing policy; and Dan Wu, a product manager at Immuta, whose mission is legal and ethical data operations.

Selected winning designs will be featured in the ARCHHIVE BOOKS’ next issue of its publication series What is Affordable Housing? Bee Breeders and its jury panel thank all individuals and teams that submitted proposals.

We sincerely thank our jury panel
for their time and expertise

Maya Mahgoub-Desai

Chair of Environmental Design, OCAD University

Canada

Persis Lam

Associate Architect, Diamond Schmitt Architects

Canada

Fotini Pitoglou

Architect, FORREC

Canada

Daniel Wu

Product manager, Immuta

USA

Jeremy Withers

PhD Candidate, University of Toronto

Canada

Andreas Tjeldflaat

Founder, Framlab

Norway

Mark Sterling

Principal, Acronym Urban Design and Planning

Canada

Mauricio Quirós Pacheco

Architect and Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

Canada

Nicky Bruun-Meyer

The Site Magazine

Canada

Enter the next competition edition
Denver 
Single-Stair 
Housing Challenge

Design single staircase, multi-story residential housing in Denver

Affordable Housing Series 18th Edition ideas COMPETITION

1st Prize Winner

Project name

Cooperative Corners

We seek out very specific opportunities that allow us to test our latest thoughts and push our theoretical propositions forward. This competition was in line with our current research and spoke to topics that we feel are important for architects to explore. As this one was right in our backyard, we used it to test some new ideas we've been developing.

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Authors
Tristan van Leur
Samantha Eby
Country
Canada

2nd Prize Winner

Project name

Laneway Housing

Competitions are invaluable opportunities to research and test ideas that may not be possible to investigate within the confines of a project brief developed in an office or educational environment. Entering a competition deepens the knowledge of place, typology, and tectonic of architecture. Designers are asked to communicate an idea visually in a concise and compelling fashion. Through failures and successes, competitions are skill builders and thought-provoking bombs for those who participate.

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Authors
Giovanni Fruttaldo
Kimberly Carlisle
Noah Lemus
Country
United States

3rd Prize Winner

Project name

laneWAY OF LIVING: Green villages in the heart of Toronto’s urban fabric

Besides having a deep respect for the tradition of competitions in the field of architecture, we believe this kind of experience provides a perfect venue for showcasing ideas that can be heard by a large audience, having the potential to impact the architectural culture as a whole. We also firmly believe that each competition we have participated in represents a step towards a learning curve, affecting our practice and teaching deeply.

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Authors
Ana luisa Rolim
Isabella Trindade
Beatriz Bueno
Larissa Falavigna
Country
Brazil

BB GREEN AWARD +
BB STUDENT AWARD

Project name

Reading Between The Lines

Entering an architecture competition is the ultimate way to get your unique design approach and concepts challenged by a broad range of professionals from the field of spatial design. It is vital to always reflect on your work, and for us there is no better way than to have a skilled jury review your ideas. Moreover, a competition trains you to communicate your architectural ideas as efficiently as possible, since there is a limited availability of space and time to make your plan come to life. Developing this essential skill is something that you can only do by practicing it again and again.

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Authors
Bjarne Van der Drift
Gerjan Agterhuis
Casper Bovy
Country
Netherlands
+126 points Buildner University Rankings

Honorable Mentions

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Project name

GROW-LINE

Authors
Margot De man
Sarah Ives
Mark Grimsrud
Ron Noble
Country
Canada
Project name

Affordable Housing: from poverty to prosperity in Toronto

Author
Ana Cecilia Jiménez Salinas
Country
Mexico
Project name

(Not) Another Toronto Tower

Author
Jerry Hacker
Country
Canada
Project name

Park(ing) for Housing

Authors
Yunshih Canazzi-chen
Antoine Canazzi-chen
Country
Netherlands
Project name

Liminal Lanes

Authors
Kaili Sun
Carmen Kam
Country
Canada
Project name

HOMESCHOOL TORONTO

Author
Domenico Francesco Lio
Country
United States

Shortlisted projects

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Under The Gardiner

Maksym Humenyuk
Dan Van derhorst
Novak Djogo
Canada

A clear and equitable solution to Toronto's Affordable Housing Challenge: Three tier approach - Luxury, Mid-income, Affordable

Yvan Mackinnon

Done By Data

Canada

Reclaiming the Toronto Back Alley

Bachir Benkirane
Megi Davitidze
Fadri Horber
Canada

SEEDING COMMUNITY

Ning Lin
Ying Zheng
Canada

What If We Live in Our Laneways?

Kim Choy
United States

Responsive City

Reem Abdelaal
Rui Zhang

University of Toronto - Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, & Design

+22 points Buildner University Rankings!
Canada

Laneway Housing

Giovanni Fruttaldo
Kimberly Carlisle
Noah Lemus
United States

The Equilateral Aapartment

Sahar Pasha
Farhang Alipour
Pearl Cao
Canada

Smallville

Ying Yu
Ying Xu
Canada

Rooftop Villages

Wolfgang sebastian Kiehne
Cayetano garcia Cachay
Christian Bechara
Germany

Modular Network

Aye Myat thu
Olivia Dewi
Chi Nguyen
Australia

Affordable Housing: from poverty to prosperity in Toronto

Ana Cecilia Jiménez Salinas
Mexico

GROW-LINE

Margot De man
Sarah Ives
Mark Grimsrud
Ron Noble
Canada

Rewiring Toronto

Flóra Horóczi
Balázs Fürtön
Hungary

Park(ing) for Housing

Yunshih Canazzi-chen
Antoine Canazzi-chen
Netherlands

The Hexagon

Wael El gendy

dblio

Canada

Heritage Design as Political Instrument: Increasing Capacity and Resiliency in Toronto’s Single Family Heritage Stock

Shane Karkheck
Italy

Cooperative Corners

Tristan van Leur
Samantha Eby
Canada

Infinite³

Victoria Fedorova
Christos Trompoukis
Ziying Zeng

IAAC Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia

+22 points Buildner University Rankings!
Spain

Suburban Intra-Sprawl

Neerie Yu
Marcus Poon
Austin Yao
Canada

Erik Vodenik
Slovenia

HOMESCHOOL TORONTO

Domenico Francesco Lio
United States

Co-Living Pods on Gardiner Expressway

Somdatta Majumdar
United Arab Emirates

Self Organising Urbanism - Low Rise High Density, A Sustainable Solution To Affordable Housing In Toronto

Ashley Waitt
Bryan Espinoza ortiz
United Kingdom

THE SEAM – Strategy of Housing Affordability in Toronto

Daria Gridina

MOSCOW INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTURE

+22 points Buildner University Rankings!
Russian Federation

Post - SILO Effects

Oh Juhyeon
Yang Geon
South Korea

Junction Rail Living

Jonathan Espana
David Kim
Kyle Noronha
The Vu Nguyen
Canada

Reading Between The Lines

Bjarne Van der Drift
Gerjan Agterhuis
Casper Bovy

Technische universiteit Delft

+126 points Buildner University Rankings!
Netherlands

Greenline Toronto

Esteban Torres
George Wang
Paul Berkun-Drevnig
Canada

THE CO-LIVING HOUSE

Yizhi Zhang
Canada

Wall within Walls

Fengyi Wang
United Kingdom

Liminal Lanes

Kaili Sun
Carmen Kam
Canada

(Not) Another Toronto Tower

Jerry Hacker
Canada

Toronto Vertical Streets Co-Living

Yixin Yang
Linru Wang
Canada

Hub House

Daniel Lam
Michelle Choi
Canada

V-GEN

Amir Adibmanesh
Belgium

URBAN STACKS

Abigail Benouaich
United Kingdom

The Dominion Foundries Adaptive Reuse Co-housing Proposal

Leeann Pallett
Canada

HIDDEN DIMENSION

Duc huy Pham
Dianna marie Aquino
Vietnam