Enabling Spatial Agency and Participatory Spacemaking

Essay, Middle Density, Nicole Cao, Politics and economics, Urban Paradigms.

Accessibility, Affordable Housing, Alternative Domesticity, Collective housing, Comfort, Community, Cooperation, Essay, Flexibility, Inclusivity, Participation, Programmatic coexistences, Spatial Ideologies.

Project by Nicole Cao, architecture student at the University of Waterloo.
The project won the Azure Magazine A+ Student Award for 2023.

“Solar Steps” is a proposed affordable residence featuring a triple-story ETFE greenhouse atrium that explores how threshold materiality and operability could create new forms of collective living that empower residents to engage in the making of their own spaces. Sited in Brampton, Ontario, the project was created for a third-year design studio led by professor Adrian Blackwell at the University of Waterloo entitled “Humans are more important than real estate”.