Canada's Housing Crisis - Designing Better Buildings
Canada's housing crisis demands better buildings — here are the changes that could improve apartment and condo life
The Conversation — Canada needs more housing, but it also needs better quality housing. Simple design changes can fix common complaints about apartment and condo living.
Summary
"Canada's housing crisis demands better buildings — here are the changes that could improve apartment and condo life" — Marianne Touchie, The Conversation (May 24, 2023)
The article identifies common performance issues in multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) and presents evidence-based design solutions that improve comfort, health, and energy efficiency.
The problem
Multi-unit housing can be more sustainable than detached homes, but in practice MURBs suffer from:
- Poor energy efficiency — often worse than detached homes
- Noise transfer — noisy neighbours, impact noise (stomping), and outdoor noise
- Odour transfer — smoke and cooking smells migrating between suites
- Thermal discomfort — overheating in summer, cold drafts in winter
Design solutions
Ventilation: Central pressurized corridor systems are unreliable. Better alternatives include central direct-ducted systems or, ideally, suite-based heat/energy recovery ventilators (HRVs/ERVs).
Air sealing: The leakiest walls are those separating corridors from suites. Developers should focus air-sealing efforts there, along with sealing stairwell doors and adding elevator vestibules.
Soundproofing: Airborne noise is partly addressed by compartmentalization. Impact noise requires acoustic underlay below finished floors. Outdoor noise is reduced by airtight exterior walls and smaller windows.
Thermal comfort: Large, poor-quality windows are a major driver of discomfort. Smaller windows with low U-values, exterior shading, and in-suite heat pumps (rather than central systems) provide better year-round temperature control.
The good news
Many of these solutions have multiple benefits: they improve resident comfort, save energy, and reduce environmental impact. Heat pumps can replace carbon-intensive natural gas heating. The article calls on residents and building owners to advocate for these design changes through developers and provincial building codes.
Vault connections
- The Ethics of Taxation in Toronto - Structural Inequities, Allocations, and the Common Good — Examines Toronto's housing affordability crisis and the structural underfunding of affordable housing, providing the policy context for why better building design matters.
- Millennials think they are worse off than their parents — Documents the housing affordability gap for younger generations in Toronto, illustrating the demographic pressure driving the need for more multi-unit housing.
- The Bauhaus School — The Bauhaus philosophy of functionalist design — form following function — is the architectural tradition behind the evidence-based design principles this article advocates for.
- The Difference Between Efficiency and Effectiveness — The article's distinction between simply building more housing (efficiency) and building better housing that actually works for residents (effectiveness).
- Anthony Vidler-The Architectural Uncanny — Vidler's concept of the "unhomely" in modern architecture provides a theoretical lens for understanding why poorly designed multi-unit housing produces feelings of alienation and discomfort in residents.
- From Walls of Wood to Walls of Glass - Northrop Frye’s Geography of Isolation — Frye's "condominium mentality" — architecture producing proximity without community — provides a literary-critical framework for the urban estrangement caused by modern multi-unit housing.
