Staff with the Halifax Regional Municipality will research the option of hiring a municipal architect whose position will be funded by the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) and who will have input on the design of housing built with that funding.
Coun. Kathryn Morse presented a motion to council on Tuesday requesting a staff report on hiring a municipal architect. Morse writes that architect could “raise the bar” for development in the municipality and help create housing that would fit into the city’s heritage districts and communities.
From Morse’s motion:
Potential benefits of hiring a City Architect (as Edmonton and other cities have done): better integration of public and private space as the city densifies; better integration of new buildings with HRM’s transportation plans and future affordable housing needs; better sustainability standards to support HalifACT; better procurement processes for public buildings.
Architect could create standards on suburban development
During council’s meeting on Tuesday, Morse said such a position could help with the housing boom in the city over the next several years. HRM is receiving $79 million from the federal government through the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) to increase housing stock in the city. The municipality has already received the first payment of $18 million.
As the Examiner reported in April, through the HAF, municipal staff have a goal of building 15,000 units of housing each year for the next three years to meet targets required under the HAF. HRM will make changes to planning strategies and land-use bylaws to allow for increased housing stocks. Some of those changes include allowing four housing units per lot and increasing density in residential areas and near university and college campuses.
Morse said a municipal architect could assist with the design of a diversity of housing required in the municipality.
“In talking with our planning team and others about this motion, they felt this could be especially beneficial during the suburban plan process where we don’t have a lot of standards that were developed for the centre plan yet, but we will be having a lot of new buildings,” Morse said.
“My hope is that through having an architect on the team, we will be able to have even stronger negotiations as we move through the Housing Accelerator Fund project.”
Councillors Patty Cuttell and David Hendsbee asked that the staff report include details on how the position of municipal architect would work with council’s design review committee, heritage advisory committee, and municipal building inspectors.
Morse’s motion passed unanimously.
Also on Tuesday, council set May 21 as the date for a public hearing on the Housing Accelerator Fund. People will be able to attend that session in public and virtually. Written submissions can be sent to the clerk’s office at clerks@halifax.ca by 10am on May 21.
The public had a chance earlier this year to submit feedback on proposed changes to municipal planning documents. The municipality received more than 700 submissions of correspondence and five petitions over one month.
Halifax had a city architect up until about 10 years ago? I think the last one was Dan Norris who was mostly focussed on heritage issues. Since then all the design related decisions and policy at HRM have been made and written by planners. Almost none of them would be considered to have any valid design training, with the possible exception of Andy Fillmore.
For three years in the downtown Design Review Committee the recommendations from a panel that included 4 architects and 2 landscape architects were subsequently interpreted by planners. This to the extreme degree that one approved design ended up built with a totally different colour exterior from that presented to the panel.
Architecture includes colour. Planning doesn’t. A city that says it values architecture should have a City Architect. And if you don’t recognize this, you’re a part of the problem (if you think the repetitive glass towers we see everywhere is a problem).