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OAW 2018 will be be hosting a Powered by PechaKucha even at the Ottawa Art Gallery on Friday, Sept. 14 at 6:30 p.m. in the Alma Duncan salon on the 2nd floor.

Powered by PechaKucha events are one-off events that are separate from regular city-based PechaKucha Nights, and are usually held as part of festivals and conferences, but can also act as standalone events. These events include presentations that use the PechaKucha 20 images x 20 seconds format. Find out more at PechaKucha.org.

The nights are all organized around a broad theme and it’s up to the speakers to interpret and present their perspective on it. Our theme for this year’s OAW PechaKucha Night is Gimme Shelter. In fitting with OAW 2018’s focus on affordable housing / housing affordability, the evening will be a wider exploration of the concepts of housing and home.

There will be a cash bar available at the event. 

This event is free and open to everyone. 

There was a time when Ottawa's Metcalfe Street had a feel that was not unlike Montreal's Golden Square Mile. As early as the 1910s, apartments began to spring up and they began to not only redefine Metcalfe, but Centretown more generally. 

While this is a short walk, it packs in a whole lot of history and is in many ways one of the few streets where Ottawa's hidden love for apartments is apparent.

This walk will be led by Christophe Ryan, a local historian who has always been interested in Centretown, and especially Metcalfe Street.

We'll meet at the corner of Gladstone and Metcalfe.  From there, we will walk north on Metcalfe to the corner of Laurier Ave. W. We do not anticipate any significant accessibility challenges on this route, though that is a reflection of my privilege. The narrowness of the sidewalks (thanks to 1950s traffic planning) and condition of the sidewalks may present challenges. Written materials will be provided upon request.

For more information, please visit the event listing on the Ottawa Jane's Walk website.

OAW is partnering with the New Urbanism Film Festival and Capital Pop-Up Cinema to put on an outdoor movie night featuring a series of documentary shorts about housing.

The evening will feature screenings of the following short films: 

• Built to Last (NUFF trailer)

• I'd Rather Stay

• Last Dance on the Main

• blight

• Caroline Woolard Flips the Real Estate Script

• Arlington Passages: Natalie

• Bill

• CNU25.Seattle: Pocket Neighborhoods Tour

• LA's Forbidden City

• Borrowed Light

• Saga City

• The event will take place in the courtyard at 7 Clarence Street on Thursday, Sept. 13 at 7:00 p.m.

This event is free and all are welcome.

A portion of proceeds from the evening’s events will be donated to Operation Come Home’s HousingWorks program.

HousingWorks is a supported housing program for at-risk and/or homeless youth aged 16-29. Each participant program is paired with a housing worker for up to one year to help them find and maintain safe and affordable housing. HousingWorks debuted in 2015, and now assists up to 15 youth per year on an ongoing basis.

Operation Come Home is an employment, education, and support centre for homeless and at-risk youth aged 16 and up. Learn more about the organization on their website.

About 7 Clarence Street

The NCC has introduced this contemporary building as part of a much larger project to restore five heritage buildings in and around the Tin House Court. The new building at 7 Clarence, designed in close collaboration with the local community, also features universal accessibility, as well as sustainable design (in compliance with LEED® standards).

The building at 7 Clarence has been designed for flexibility of use—to house exhibits, offices or boutiques—but, even more importantly, to form a fitting gateway to the Tin House Court, a gateway that is in keeping with the historic character of the other buildings in this important heritage neighbourhood. This site became the 2017 International Pavilion where each diplomatic mission exhibited and promoted its country’s relationship with Canada.
 

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“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors.” 
--William Blake

The Carleton University Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism will be presenting selected student works from this year’s Director’s Project, also known as the Murray and Murray Competition, at 7 Clarence.

2018 is the Carleton University Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism's 50th anniversary and the annual Director’s Project / Murray and Murray Competition looks ahead to the next 50 years, at architecture’s expanding role in an ever-more complex and interconnected world, through the element (literal or metaphorical) of the door.

Here are some of the questions posed to inspire the students’ response: Is a door merely a break in a wall, an absence? Is it the presence of opportunity? An instrument of isolation? A threshold to new territory? An invitation or a prohibition? A way in or a way out? A guardian of privacy or a portal to shared experience? Is it enigmatic? Frustrating? Seductive? Promising? Seductive?

Students chose for their drawing a year between 2019 and 2068, and one of the following eight themes—Doors facing NORTH. Doors facing SOUTH. Doors to REFUGE. LABELED doors. LOCKED Doors.Doors of (IM)MIGRATION. EXIT Doors. Doors between US and THEM. Students also wrote a haiku to accompany the drawing.

Housing co-ops are diverse, affordable and vibrant places that are home to 250,000 Canadians. They bring people and communities together and are a part of the solution to Canada’s critical affordable housing shortage. But they are sometimes referred to in housing circles as a ‘best kept secret.’

We'll go behind the doors of housing co-ops and gain an insider’s view into this unique model of affordable, community-oriented housing. On this tour, we will visit two housing co-ops in Sandy Hill, Co-op Voisins and Conservation Co-op.  Learn about the award-winning design features of each and walk away with a better appreciation for this unique form of housing.

The walk will be led by Cynthia Mitchell, a co-op keener and a proud member of Co-op Voisins.

We’ll meet in the front walkway of Co-op Voisins (440 Wiggins Pvt, south of Mann Ave. east of Chapel Cres, near Robinson Field). After the tour there, we'll proceed to Conservation Co-op (140 Mann Ave).

For more information, please visit the event listing on the Ottawa Jane's Walk website. 

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This is a walking and urban sketching tour at a few locations on a route in the diverse neighbourhood of Hintonburg. Hintonburg is a community in which to live and work, and is a desirable, central, and walkable destination for food, shopping, and entertainment. It is an area that has a lot of history, and the diverse mix of housing and other buildings showcase this transforming area that continues to add architectural diversity to its urban context.

Within the past decade, it has become a trendy central area of the city where new urban infill projects add diversity to the layer of heritage buildings and older homes. Traditionally, housing in the area was characterised by small lots and one-hundred-year-old wood clapboard homes, particularly at north of Wellington Street. That is not continuous but a strong character of the area that is changing amidst creative solutions to constrained sites and the broader discussion of maintaining affordability in housing while enabling architectural and zoning creativity.

This tour will meander through Hintonburg, along Armstrong and Wellington Streets, and cross-streets, to give a broad sense of this neighbourhood, its history, transitioning urban fabric and housing, as well as a rich understanding of some of its character buildings and new urban infill projects creatively inserted into this area.

The tour will be led by Linda Hoad, a Heritage Ottawa and Hintonburg Community Association Board Member who has extensive knowledge of the area. There is a sketching component, as you wish, led by a local Ottawa artist and urban sketcher, Colin White at a few stops on the route, including at the interesting and award-winning infill project, the Hintonburg Six. There, Jim Colizza, a principal of Colizza Bruni Architecture, will provide commentary on the project history and details.

Tour end stop is at the Hintonburg Public House, around 7:30pm, for some food, drinks and discussion.

This tour is rain or shine.  If weather is inclement, the sketching component and stop duration may be affected however would be decided on at that time only, per best interests of the tour and participants.  Space on the tour is limited, so we encourage committed interest by registrants, so that we can open up the spot to a waiting list entry as space is limited.

Join us for a site tour of the new Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation (CCOC) building currently under construction at the corner of Arlington Avenue and Lyon Street North.

The three-storey, 16,000-square-foot building will be a mixture traditional townhouses and apartments, and it presents a redevelopment of the previous housing on the site to offer more family-oriented rental housing in Centertown.

Designed by Anthony Leaning of CSV Architects, the building is a passive house and meets a high standard of energy efficiency in order to reduce its ecological footprint. 

Several representatives from the project will join us to lead to the tour:

Anthony Leaning, Architect, CSV Architects
Ray Sullivan, Executive Director, CCOC
Kiefer Maracle, Development Project Manager, CCOC

Please note that because this is a tour of an active construction site, you must wear steel-toed boots and a hard hat during the tour. These will not be provided at the site, so we ask that you bring your own.

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You must register for this event via the Eventbrite link by Monday, Sept. 10 at 5:00 p.m,

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Come join the celebration and opening night of Ottawa Architecture Week 2018 on Monday, Sept. 10 at the Sussex Contemporary Gallery at 7:00 p.m.! 

The evening will feature a vernissage by local artist and photographer Daniel F. Effah. Effah's work will explore OAW 2018's theme on affordable housing through a series of photographs centring on the lives of the people in some of Ottawa's most controversial and praised examples of affordable housing.

Additionally, the evening will also feature a short presentation by the Ontario Association of Architects (OAA) Housing Affordability Working Group. The group brings together architects to explore how regulatory fixes can help address the issue of housing affordability.  

This event is free and open to all. There will also be a cash bar on site.  

A portion of proceeds from the evening’s events will be donated to Operation Come Home’s HousingWorks program.

HousingWorks is a supported housing program for at-risk and/or homeless youth aged 16-29. Each participant program is paired with a housing worker for up to one year to help them find and maintain safe and affordable housing. HousingWorks debuted in 2015, and now assists up to 15 youth per year on an ongoing basis.

Operation Come Home is an employment, education, and support centre for homeless and at-risk youth aged 16 and up. Learn more about the organization on their website.

About the Artist

Daniel F. Effah is a Ghanaian visual artist and photographer currently residing in Ottawa, Canada. Inspired by the works of both past and contemporary masters, his work amalgamates both his Ghanaian culture with the contemporary, to render stylized images that evoke the duality of the past and present.

He pays particular attention to portraiture, capturing the emotions of his subjects. He experiments with various styles with artistic mediums with hopes to create conversations about the African Diaspora. View more of his work at http://www.artofeffah.com/

The swamp that become Lowertown was cleared and occupied first by the Irish, and was later inhabited by working class French Canadians. By the 1960s, the area was considered to be blighted.  All levels of governments took on the Lowertown East Urban Renewal project, using a process of ‘eminent domain’ to remove landowners as well as tenants to open up the area for redevelopment.  This was one of the largest and most expensive single urban renewal projects in the history of Canada. As the $35 million “phoenix style” bulldozing boondoggle proceeded, one small group of citizens fought to save a small piece of the French community, keep it more or less in place in Lowertown, and keep the French spirit alive. The result of this effort was the Parc Beausoleil Housing project.

The walk will explore the extent of planning misdirection, planned highways through the area (fortunately unimplemented), the mis-use of eminent domain to clear out people and businesses as well as the buildings, and the help that came forward to try and repair the damage.  At the 'celebrations' on the completion of the fourteen-year-long urban renewal project in Lowertown in 1982, one politician called the entire project “stupid.” 

We will meet in front of the ByTowne Cinema (northwest corner of Rideau St and Nelson St.).  From there, we'll walk north on Nelson through the back routes over to the road named after the Co-op, Beausoleil Drive.  We'll walk east on Beausoleil toward Macdonald Gardens to the Parc Beausoleil Co-op Housing neighbourhood.

This walk will be led by Patrick Chen. Patrick studied Architecture at McGill and Regional Planning at the University of Ottawa before joining the City of Ottawa in 1973 as a planner.  He established the Urban Design Department within the city administration, and collaborated with colleagues at the Regional Government to ensure citizen input was obtained on various planning issues.

For more information, please visit the event listing on the Ottawa Jane's Walk website.