Abstract

Women are one of the fastest growing populations experiencing homelessness in Canada, and within Canadian urban centres there are limited affordable, safe and sustainable housing options for women. Interdisciplinary collaborations are critical to respond to this growing crisis. This paper describes working at the intersection of architectural and interior design, social work research and art to generate research and advocacy with the intention of advancing the development of housing spaces for women experiencing homelessness. We draw on findings from [in]visible project, a community-based research project with women (inclusive of cis, trans, 2-spirited), without children in their care, who experience long-lasting homelessness living in a mid size Canadan city and focus on the data whereby participants were asked to describe their preferred and ideal housing. We show how architectural drawings and renderings bring these spaces to life and capture the modest requests that homeless women describe as important attributes of their ideal home and space. The scenes are based on drawings of existing spaces chosen as case-studies: a vacant storefront, a residential hotel room, a small apartment, a room in an old farmhouse. Coupling the narrative research with the architectural drawings vividly illustrates the infrastructure needs of women experiencing homelessness, and calls attention to the potential for re-adaptive reuse by local developers and city planners. Our study has important implications for scholars working from across disciplines who are interested in collaborative arts-based research grounded in shared commitments to social change and advocacy.

Presenters

Stephanie Davidson
Assistant Professor, Interior Design, Toronto Metropolitan University, Ontario, Canada

Mary Elizabeth Vaccaro
Student, PhD Candidate, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

The Arts in Social, Political, and Community Life

KEYWORDS

Art as Advocacy, Housing and Homelessness, Architectural Drawings, Adaptive Reuse

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