The Little House That Grew (Page 3)

Making a Difference

The Next Home (right), built on campus during McGill's 175th anniversary in 1996, allowed purchasers to buy one, two or three floors. A Grow Home development in the Montreal municipality of St. Laurent. PHOTO: credit

He singles out areas in Notre-Dame-de-Grace (where he makes his home), the Plateau, Little Burgundy and Mile End. "I take students for walks and they all agree these are wonderful places to live. Then I try to get them to appreciate what makes a space unique, to put the community under a microscope. Is it scale, proportions between buildings, the presence of tall trees, the material used in the buildings that have sustained effects of time, is it the people, is it the overall location?" The past, he stresses, teaches important lessons.

Perhaps the most profound lesson stresses the importance of housing. "It is the foundation upon which you build responsible society," Friedman insists. "This is what drives my work." Early in his career, Friedman designed homes for private clients but found the experience unrewarding. "I was hired to do what they wanted and spend their money. But when you do housing, you don't know who is buying the home eventually. I am making houses, not homes. But eventually there will be a place where people are born, live and die; there will be kids walking on the street. There will be a community, which I believe has a very important role in what shapes us."

Friedman strives to encourage his students to envision the social impact of housing developments. This past year, three groups of students designed separate 1,000-unit affordable housing communities, including parks and small commercial areas, for the Ville de L'Assomption. On April 23, bankers, architects, urban planners, zoning officials, developers and the mayor of L'Assomption, Lionel Martel, convened on the McGill campus for the year-end presentation of the projects. "The designs are very interesting,"agreed a suitably impressed Martel. "We'll discuss these ideas in council."

The project, Friedman notes, would bring in 2,000 new jobs and $100 million to the municipality - "a tremendous economic benefit," he enthuses. And while he doesn't anticipate that one of the student designs will be adopted, he does believe that L'Assomption will eventually develop a low-cost housing community as a result of participating in the program. And so the word, and the work, is spread further.

The success has not gone unremarked. Friedman and the Grow Home have been honoured repeatedly by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and he has been recognized by the continent-wide Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture for his teaching. Last year he won the Manning Foundation Award for Innovation, and in 1998 the United Nations bestowed upon the Grow Home its Habitat Award, given annually to contributions to housing. And among the hipper accolades, Wallpaper magazine has anointed Friedman one of ten people "who will change the way we live." All the evidence indicates that Friedman's message is getting across - that efficient and affordable housing is critical for the growth of a healthy society.