Canada's Housing Crisis - Designing Better Buildings

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.
  
  

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