CCA Screening and Panel: To Build Law
Much of what we build (and how we build it) is actually shaped by laws and public policy. From building codes to zoning and heritage by-laws, these frameworks have an enormous impact on what gets built and what is lost along the way. Buildings are held as assets, torn down, and redeveloped, with limited consideration of community and environmental impacts. Evidently, a systemic shift in the way we build and value our built environment is urgently needed.
Join us on Monday, January 19th, for a special screening of To Build Law, the documentary produced by the Canadian Centre for Architecture that follows the work of the German collective of architects Bplus through the making of their latest project HouseEurope!. This project is a European initiative to propose a new set of laws at the European Parliament, meant to incentivize renovation over demolition and new construction.
The screening will be followed by a conversation reflecting on the film's themes in the local Vancouver and BC context, focusing on the role of legislation and legal frameworks in shaping the value of existing buildings and on how they could and should be changed.
Panelists
Alexandra Flynn  | Dr. Alexandra Flynn is Associate Professor, Director of the Housing Research Collaborative, and Associate Dean of
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Betsy Agar  | Betsy is the Director of Buildings Policy at Efficiency Canada. Having been licensed in Ontario as a building science engineer before building science was cool, Betsy has drawn on her technical background advocating for building decarbonization and adaptation over the last 10+ years. Born and raised in Ontario, she moved her family to North Vancouver nearly 15 years ago and now calls both provinces home. Betsy is grateful for the privilege of living, working and playing on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.
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Joseph Dahmen  | Joseph Dahmen is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia and Director of the Biogenic Architecture Lab, which he founded in 2021. An expert in biogenic materials for architecture, his research addresses the ecological impacts of architectural materials, which account for roughly forty percent of global resource consumption. The Teardown Index, a paper he co-authored with data scientist Jens von Bergmann in 2017, argues that tearing down single-family homes and replacing them with more efficient structures of the same type increases overall carbon emissions in the city due to the embodied carbon payback period. |