Minimum Cost Housing Group

The Minimum Cost Housing Group of the McGill University School of Architecture is a research unit with an international orientation that focuses attention on the human settlement problems of poor nations. Our current projects are:

Making the Edible Campus Winner of the 2008 National Urban Design Award of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, Canadian Institute of Planners, and Canadian Society of Landscape Architects.

Making the Edible Landscape (IDRC, UNHabitat and ETC): A three-year collaborative project aims to demostrate the value of including urban agriculture as a permanent feature in city planning and housing design. With funding suppport from International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Minimum Cost Housing Group of McGill University and the Urban Management Progam of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) will coordinate research being undertaken in three cities: Colombo, Sri Lanka; Kampala, Uganda; and Rosario, Argentina. The project is furthermore supported by ETC-Urban Agriculture Unit in the Netherlands. The results of these initiatives will be shared with 200 mayors at the World Urban Forum of the UN habitat in June, 2006 in Vancouver.

North American Sustainability, Housing and Community Consortium (NASHCC) (HRDC): A four-year continental exchange program in architecture to expose students from Mexico, the US, and Canada to urgent problems of urban housing and sustainable development in North American cities; students will engage in hands-on design and problem-solving situations that demand community-based multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural professional skills, in order to help create borderless working space and professionals.

EL1: A Study of Urban Agriculture in Montreal (IRDC): A project that started with the research of the MCHG students in the fall of 2002, this report is about alternative use of urban land, and in particular its use for food production in Montreal. EL1 refers to the visual, physical and social impacts of producing food on urban land. It sheds light on the joys of growing one's own food, and its neighborhood impacts. Hopefully, it will also inform planners, city officials and architects about the potential for gardening on under-utilized urban land.