Valley resident and architecture instructor Evelyne Bouchard is moving her classroom from McGill University to her hometown of Hemmingford for the semester… sort of.
Bouchard is teaching a course on multifamily housing in rural communities in the context of Canada’s housing crisis at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture. Her students will be focusing on Hemmingford as part of an elaborate project to develop diverse housing designs for six different sites in the village that emphasize sustainability, energy-efficiency, public spaces, and walkable communities.
As part of the project, students are required to engage with the community. As a first step, around 20 classmates travelled to Hemmingford on January 25 for an open house at the recreation centre. The room was busy, as locals were invited to share what they love about the town and their vision for its future development. They participated in several fun and interactive activities at different stations that encouraged them to think about their town and their own housing dreams.
Bouchard says her goal for the course is for it to be mutually beneficial. The project is not tied to a real construction project and is purely theoretical; this means students can build their designs and communications skills, while community members are able to talk openly with low stakes about the town and its future.
“It’s really nice, because we don’t really get to do this very often,” she says. “My hope is that this is the beginning of that conversation,” she adds.
Bouchard explains that while the housing crisis is affecting both urban and rural communities, smaller towns often struggle with limited budgets and resources when it comes to development. Hemmingford’s population grew by 9.8 per cent from 2016 to 2021; most of the housing developments built to meet this demand were single-family homes at the outskirts of the village. This type of development, while common in more rural settings, is not always affordable or suitable for meeting housing needs. As part of the project, students will need to integrate and address some of these social challenges in their design work.
“The student interest is really strong,” says Bouchard. “They are living the housing crisis. Whether it means they’re still living with their parents, or they have a bunch of roommates, it’s both personal and professional for them,” she explains.
All the students come from urban or suburban backgrounds “so they are also very curious to understand what a place like this is like,” says Bouchard. “They are coming in with no preconceptions, because it’s so new for them,” she adds.
Theo Hovsepian was among the students participating in the open house. He was very interested in learning about the history of each of the sites chosen for the project and of the town itself. “We are also getting a lot of insight into what people like and what they don’t like, and whether they think about the future,” he said, noting that community members were very open when it came to talking about building types they did not want.
The opportunity for students to give back and share their work with the community is something Bouchard feels strongly about – both for the learning opportunity and for being an important conversation starter.
The design teams will be back in Hemmingford on March 18 to update the community on their work and to get valuable feedback. An exhibition of the projects and the processes that led to their creation is also scheduled to take place at the end of the semester.
PHOTO Sarah Rennie
Students from the McGill school of architecture held an open house in Hemmingford on January 25 as part of a housing design project set in the village.