Figures of Architecture

Architecture is often understood through finished buildings. ‘Figures of Architecture’ asks students to look closer at the things that make architecture possible: the materials, assemblies, and methods that are often concealed, overlooked, or misunderstood once a building is complete.

Curated by Paloe, a creative community for architecture students and designers, this student design competition challenges emerging designers across Ontario to bring the unseen “figures of architecture” into focus through the lens of climate resilience and adaptation. As temperatures shift, rainfall intensifies, and extreme weather becomes more common, change happens not only at the scale of the city, but in the wall, the joint, the material, and the connection: the way something drains, shades, breathes, insulates, flexes, repairs, or comes apart.

Students respond through two streams. In the Built stream, three finalists receive fabrication budgets to realize 1:1 installations and prototypes exploring materials, assemblies, and methods of making. In the Digital stream, students create a single still image illustrating how buildings, streets, landscapes, and neighbourhoods across the Greater Toronto Area might adapt to a changing climate.

The exhibition brings the Built finalists and selected Digital submissions out of the studio and into a public setting at The Bakery in Liberty Village, alongside students, architecture and construction professionals, industry partners, and the wider design community. Winners will be celebrated at a closing event and Paloe awards ceremony on January 29.

Free and open for all to visit, ‘Figures of Architecture’ is a public conversation about materials, making, climate, and the future of design, centred on one question: how do we design for a climate that is no longer static?