The Little House That Grew

At the end of the 1990s, home ownership usually required a big income and a move to the suburbs. Then two McGill architecture professors began to ask what people could live with -- and without -- in order to have a place of their own. They came up with the design for the affordable and adaptable Grow Home. Since then, 10,000 models have been built across Canada, while versions of it have been exported around the world.

"My wife tells me that I should have my own ministry," jokes Avi Friedman. A brief conversation later, and it's easy to see why. Friedman is an evangelist. The religion is low-cost housing, and the pulpit his position as head of the Affordable Housing Program in McGill's School of Architecture, and as co-creator of the program's most famous project, the Grow Home, an inexpensive, adaptable house for new buyers.

Friedman's small, cozy and efficient office illustrates many of the concepts he applied to the Grow Home: space is limited, and yet there still seems room to expand. Shelves ascend the walls, leaving plenty of floor space for comfortable movement while surrounding him with the professional journals and books that are the common tools of the academic trade.

But Friedman's office also houses certain features few professors can claim: numerous files of press clippings, awards from diverse groups, and copies of his own journalistic writings. Friedman is both a professional and a popular phenomenon; his work, like that of former colleague and collaborator Witold Rybczynski, is accessible and engaging. Not surprisingly, his congregation is growing.

He writes a regular column for the National Post, which is then syndicated through the Southam chain of papers. And McGill-Queens Press has just published his new book, The Grow Home, which recounts the tale of the housing revolution that hit the market ten years ago.

Of course, Friedman doesn't carry on his ministry alone. The program takes in between seven and ten students each year, from around the globe. Spring 2001 witnessed seven students graduate, representing Quebec, the United States, China, Chile and Colombia. "Over the ten years of the program," says Friedman with something verging on joy, "close to one hundred students have graduated, going to different places around the world to spread the word."