The Stantec Gallery is a space for learning and exploration. Emerging design ideas across scales, materials and cultures contribute to a dialogue housed by the gallery. The 1,200 s.f. gallery located in the Professional Faculties building is open to everyone for inspiration — students, faculty and staff on campus, designers and planners, alumni, and general public. Together we are developing, testing, debating, and implementing the ideas of tomorrow.

This gallery is made possible due to the generous support of Stantec.

The City Building Gallery features exhibitions from SAPL researchers, community partners and alumni — and delves into broad explorations and discussions about city building. Pop-up events and workshops complement the exhibitions. With 6–8 exhibitions a year, you'll find lots to discover and experience. If you're interested in city building, you'll want to visit this space often! 

We're always open to ideas for exhibition programming. If you have an idea for an upcoming show, connect with our gallery curators.

The window display along both sides of the City Hall LRT platform is a collaboration between City Building Design Lab and City Hall to continue showcasing student work during the pandemic. As an inside/outside gallery, installations are projected onto the C-Train platform.

LID and Zaha Hadid Architects  – Vertical Urbanism

Location: HKDI Gallery, Hong Kong Design Institute
January 19 – April 3, 2022

SAPL’s Laboratory for Integrative Design (LID) contributed four pieces to the Vertical Urbanism in 3D Exhibition: 

• Digital Activated Bending Plate Replica, Scale 1:2, 2021
• Curved Laminated Spatial Structure Node Element
• Scaled Model of Spatial Curved Laminated Timber Structure for Digital Futures 2021
• Digital Timber Bend Plate Study

Design 
Dr. Alicia Nahmad Vazquez

Fabrication & Assembly Team
Guy Gardner, Anagha Patil, Matt Walker, Jo-Lynn Yen, Youness Yousefi, 

Block Week Exhibition 

Location: Stantec Gallery
March 24 to April 15

What's the connection between a defunct airplane hangar and printing paste? They're ways for SAPL students to explore design and materiality. This exhibition includes student work led by nine experts on diverse topics from deep green retrofits, printing paste, Indigenous housing, and digital wood things, to municipal planning law and principles of historic conservation.

Leap into the Void

Fall 2021 Block Week Exhibition

Location: Stantec Gallery
November 17 – December 13, 2021

There exists a desire to escape from the rigid confines of the architectural canon that is prevalent in society today. Leap into the void and explore an immaterial, ephemeral, and flexible version of architecture, design, and planning. Students embarked on a week-long journey in re-examining and challenging assumptions and notions of tradition and convention. This exhibition showcases innovative explorations in inquiries related to affordability, resiliency, culture and space, leadership, and hybridization. 

The Equitable City

Location: Stantec Gallery 
January 31 – February 11, 2022

The Equitable City explores the relationship between social equity and spatial equity at the scale of architecture and urban design. The six featured design projects engage topics such as food security, homelessness, multiculturalism, and Indigenous futures in a manner to recuperate the capacity for design to catalyze change.

A collaboration between architects in the Calgary-based firm MBAC and graduate students of the University of Calgary’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape.

FlowState: translated prototypes

Location: SAPL X CITY HALL gallery
December 22, 2021 to February 2022

Over the fall semester, students in the Integrative Casting course (ARCH680) explored a range of design and manufacturing techniques that leverage translations between the digital and physical worlds. They worked collaboratively to produce a series of prototypes that incorporate natural biomaterials including mycelium and hemp, recycled bioplastics, and organic waste, to create intricate designs for objects and spaces. These designs encourage speculation about how materiality, tectonics and ornament can be integrated to respond to performance characteristics including structure, acoustics, occupant comfort and circular design principles.

Students:
Sam Baril, Gregory Campbell, Davin Cheng, Jennifer Choi, Caleb Derksen, Berfin Evrim, Jordan Livermore, Natasha Louie, Rica Migrino, Rayhan Muniff, Alex Neumann, Vivian Ton. Ed Wang. Jessica Wang, Percy Yeung
 
Instructor:
Guy Gardner

The Calgary Archive: Gillmor Theory Block Week Exhibition

Location: Calgary Central Library
December 1 – 30, 2021 

Cities are cultural landscapes — physically disjointed, spatially fragmented, and uneven terrains. To understand how cultural landscapes work, students worked with seven women who recently immigrated to Calgary. The groups mapped foodways systems, or places, memories, activities, and destinations associated with the production, distribution, and consumption of food. They explored how food helps newcomers retain/adapt their culture, and how food memories and practices transcend national boundaries and time. Discover how the smells, sounds, tastes, and sights of food conjure up memories and experiences of place through story maps, recipes and an interactive website.

The Calgary Archive is a collaborative creation of community members and architecture students at the University of Calgary. This project was completed as part of the Gillmor Theory Block Week Course at the University of Calgary in March 2021. Students were tasked with interviewing community volunteers who emigrated to Calgary and mapping their stories in unconventional ways.

CBDX B(ORD)ERL(AND)S – International Design Proposals 

Location: Stantec Gallery
September 8 – 30, 2021

Borders are spaces of transition. Whether political and imposed through human agency, or natural and made manifest through geographical features, borders are associated with civilization’s greatest challenges. How we choose to choreograph and intersect these transitional spaces will reveal much about our priorities. The theme for the second CBDX international design competition, BORDERLANDS, invited participants to consider: How can designers intervene in borders? View the exhibition of top 25 proposals.

Making Waves

Location: City Building Gallery
August 17 – September 22, 2021

This exhibition represents student design and fabrication work related to the Summer Intersession course led by Phil Vandermey (SPECTACLE BUREAU). Students created multiple urban design elements to be deployed in SPECTACLE BUREAU’s proposed design for the plaza in Chinatown around Jae Sterling’s Mural for Calgary Urban Projects Society (CUPS) (1st Street and 2nd Avenue SW).

Codex for Civilization in a City

Location: City Hall LRT Gallery
July 12 to September 30

This project aims to ask a radical question: Can global material flows be mined for opportunities for revitalization of the urban at a local scale? Or, worded differently, What planetary-scale movements and trends can be operationalized to choreograph and reinject new industry- and therefore vibrancy— into struggling city. Codex for Civilization in a City is a videographic essay comprised of a series of maps and geospatial-based data representations that outline, project or speculate on a new possible opportunity of industry -or “potentiality” -for the City of Calgary.

Course: Urban Systems
Program: Master in Architecture 
Instructor: Alberto de Salvatierra

Mediated Drawings
An AI that imagines and Freddie the Robot Artist 

Location: City Building Gallery
July 12 – 16 from 5 to 8pm

Did you know you could ask a robot to draw the central library, Stephen Ave, or other places and art in Calgary? Freddie the Robot is performing live and you can make a request!

Select an art, urban or surprise Calgary corner from mediateddrawings.ai, allow an AI to reimagine it, and watch Freddie draw live in the windows of the City Building Design Lab and post a selfie #MediatedDrawings #YYC🤖 #SAPL. Freddie’s performances can also be viewed online at youtube.com/c/ucalgarysapl and on Instagram @ucalgarysapl

Credits

Dr Alicia Nahmad Vazquez

With Carter McHugh, Sam Baril, Guy Gardner, Anagha Patil, Darryl Pollock, Scout Windsor (UofC SAPL) and Li Chen (Generative Technologies)

The Laboratory for Integrative Design from the University of Calgary's School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

Mediated Drawings is a project and artistic installation sponsored by SSHRC.

YES Virtual

Location: Online
May 19–June 11

The three-part Year-End-Show exhibition delivered online recognizes the hard work of all students through a rolling multi-month Instagram Show, studio work from the past term, and a website featuring the Class of 2021. 

Location: CBDLab X CITY HALL (east window)
March – April 2021

Softbuilt: Lightweight Paper & Fiber Composite Structures, is an exhibition of lightweight, foldable, portable, origami models and fiberglass structures that includes process photos, potential architectural applications and other drawings. The exhibition represents a week of student design work with origami using paper and fiber composite materials. The block week was led by Dr. Felecia Davis, assistant professor at the Stuckeman Center for Design and Computation within Penn State, director of SOFTLAB, and SAPL's 2021 Taylor Lecturer, with Guy Gardner, SAPL's Robotics and Fabrication Specialist.

Keywords: origami, light weight structures, fiber composites

Location: Virtual gallery and CBDLab X CITY HALL 
February – April 2021

The competition call asked, “How might matters of equity and activism, ecology and environment, and health and wellness converge, and unfold, within our future cities? Top entries were exhibited virtually and at the CBDLab X CITY HALL Gallery. Entries will also be published in the inaugural annual volume later this year.

Location: Virtual Gallery and in-person broadcasted from the windows at the CBDLab and City Hall
October – December 2020

Design in Motion: Three Installations surveys work by 20 students who participated in the Robotic Fabrication course led by Guy Gardner, and Regional Landscape studios led by Kris Fox. The advanced fabrication course explores thematic inquiry and design related to environmental design topics.

Videos from the Regional Studio tell the tales of prairie landscapes in Southern Alberta, and how the intersection of land, memory, meaning, spirit of place and spirituality can inform design decisions at a landscape scale.

New videos were released on SAPL's Instagram account every Tuesday at 20:20 for the duration of the exhibition.

Virtual gallery →

Exhibition runs from March 17 until May 20

Led by Lisa Landrum and Kris Kelly-Frere, this exhibition showcases student work from the block week titled “Arch Agency: The Future of Architecture and Human Thriving”.

This block week course speculates on the future of architecture and architectural agency through experimental play, social innovation, ethnographic adventure, videography, mise-en-scène, performance and storytelling. It challenges participants to explore their own sense of purpose and place in shaping the future of human thriving in a volatile and uncertain world. Students will have acted as creative protagonists for a public Canadian Architecture Forums on Education (CAFÉ) forum on March 12, while collaboratively producing multimedia manifestos to be displayed in the film installation.

The exhibition will share student manifestos, and outcomes of experiments in public perception of architectural potential through the creation of an interactive video installation.

Exhibition runs from March 17 to May 20.

This exhibition is made possible by Stantec.

Exhibition runs from March 13 until April 17.

Join SAPL after a whirlwind week of exchange and making. Students, professionals, faculty, and visiting instructors present visuals, prototypes, structures exploring the following themes:

• Industrial Landscapes: Mass Timber 
• Justice, Representation and Equity in Architecture
• Crossing Cultural Boundaries: Indigenous Dwelling/Shelters
• Portable & Responsive Textile Shelter: Translation & World-Making
• Sustainability and Historic Preservation

January 28–March 6

Explore the design and fabrication of a prototype, set in an architectural context. Displaying work from the Teknion-McCrum's Integrative Design (EVDS 683) course led by instructor Khalid Omokanye, the exhibition takes aspects of an architectural project and develops a component or piece for it, either through complement or contrast. The underlying concepts are derived from the student’s architecture studio project, and students are challenged to further develop an idea from the theoretical realm into a physical object.

February 5–March 5
City Building Gallery

Considered one of today's most influential and innovative architects, in addition to his role as director of SCI-Arc, Diaz Alonso is the founding principal of HDA-X (formerly Xefirotarch), a multidisciplinary design practice based in Los Angeles. Praised for its work at the intersection of design, animation, interactive environments, and radical architectural explorations, HDA-X combines these disciplines to create plans for sculptures, architectural ventures, and various objects.

November 7–January 17
Stantec Gallery

This is an exhibition about ideas on the board. Often what one sees and experiences is the finished design, but the iterative design process makes up about 90% of what architecture, planning and landscape architecture students spend their time engaged in. This is a chance to discover the edgy, raw ideas students are generating in studio and in the workshop, before the final cut.

November 7–January 2020 
City Building Gallery

Mass Timber construction is taking off across North America. This exhibition examines the future of this material through leading examples from architecture and engineering firms across Canada including Acton Ostry, Moriyama + Teshima, MJMA, Patkau Architects and Entuitive Structural Engineers, along with The Mass Timber Institute.

The opening event is part of the Russell Acton Design Matters lecture pre-reception.

October 30–November 24
City Building Gallery

This multi-media exhibition featured 25 award-winning social housing projects in Europe (shown in London and New York), complemented by UCalgary design research on sustainable housing. The exhibition features four short films, newly commissioned interviews with key practices in London, Amsterdam, Vienna and Paris that offer an urban context for housing with commentary on architecture trends, culture and traditions. 

The exhibition, Housing Design Excellence: European Narratives public panel, and Future of Affordable Housing symposium celebrated National Housing Day on November 22, 2019, and is part of the Future of Housing Research Initiative

October 3–28 
Stantec Gallery

Fourteen graduate students led by assistant professor Francisco Alaniz Uribe travelled to Switzerland and spent time in the city and canton of Zurich. They were hosted by colleagues from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zürich) at their Hönggerberg campus. Supported by site visits, guest lectures and exposure to local resources, students were assigned to analyze the built environment, document and understand the use of the public realm, and suggest design interventions.

The exhibition chronicles their critical analysis process leading to the proposed designs, and includes hand drawings and sketches of public spaces and their use, as well as short films describing the mapping process.

October 3–28 
Stantec Gallery

A 16-foot wood timber “grid-shell” structure was designed and fabricated by students in the SAPL course Advanced Topics in Architecture (EVDA 683) during the fall 2018 term. The course was led by assistant professor Mauricio Soto-Rubio and was tailored to second-year graduate students in architecture. After the pavilion was designed, it was assembled by the SAPL third-floor student lounge. This trial installation allowed students to become familiar with the process of installing the pavilion off-campus. In spring 2019, a community organization called Makespace contacted the faculty seeking to sponsor a pop-up pavilion for the Inventures Conference, billed as the “unconference” for creative minds. The structure would become a temporary living room for their rooftop factory party.

September 26–October 14
City Building Gallery

How can architects use new technologies to address our cities’ biggest challenges?

Kristen Forward (MArch’18, MEDes’19), Seyi Arole (MArch’18, MEDes’19), and Hayden Pattullo (MArch’18, MEDes’19) present their recent thesis work that introduces new design methods and concepts for mitigating waste in the building industry. Through 16 months of industry collaboration and academic research, this year’s graduates from the SAPL’s Mitacs-supported MEDes thesis program exhibited research on the potential integration between recent sustainability concepts in architecture and emerging computer-based tools and techniques, such as robotics and parametric design.

September 5–Sep 25
Stantec Gallery

Design is a collaborative venture, and studio is at the heart of creation. This exhibition showcases top student works from the 18 winter term studio courses of our professional graduate programs: architecture, planning and landscape architecture.

From explorations about the responsibility of design in society to the rethinking of regions, the work thoughtfully engages critical thinking. 

September 6–22
City Building Gallery

To celebrate the achievements of more than 2,900 alumni, SAPL announced its first annual Alumni Exhibition. The exhibition showcased a sampling of work from graduates across the years.

The exhibition also celebrated Prof. R. Douglas Gillmor’s legacy to the architecture profession and our city. Founding director of our architecture program, Prof. Gillmor was a compassionate and thoughtful studio teacher who shaped generations of Calgary practitioners. The Gillmor Block Course was named in recognition of his substantial contribution.

July 29–August 22
City Building Gallery

The series Above/Below was inspired while free-diving on the west coast of Haida Gwaii. Above/Below was originally published as a collaborative photo-essay in Northword Magazine by photographer Joseph Crawford and artist Allison Smith, and has since evolved into a group exhibit. This is a multi-media show that combines Joseph Crawford’s underwater photography, Allison Smith’s visual art and written essay, and a short co-created film, Hands In the Water.

June 27 to July 16
City Building Gallery

Combined/Between is an exhibition by Yves Poitras (MArch'15) that explores how we can reach across conventional typologies to stitch together the gaps in our urban fabric and create new opportunities to live work and connect.

March 28–ongoing
Stantec Gallery

Intense, furious, limitless. Architecture, planning and landscape architecture students participated in six intense courses facilitated and supported by local and international guest experts to explore inquiries about the future of libraries, hybrid scales of visual communication, site storytelling and urban heritage conservation. This exhibition presents their findings, ideas, and design visions through varying techniques, media and digitization. 

View the feature exhibition of our March block week courses.

May 1–14
City Building Gallery

The annual Year-End-Show (YES) is put on by our students. YES is the annual celebration of Masters of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture students’ hard work. "Making Our Mark" on Calgary is their celebration as they activate new spaces, possibilities, and futures.

It's the Biggest YES Ever. Explore the 15,000 s.f exhibition.

January 25–February 15
Stantec Gallery

The setting is Southern Alberta, a place that is both living and dying…The prairie landscape of Southern Alberta provides and destroys, bringing both abundance and scarcity. It was the fallacy of abundance that was sold to those who settled in this region and led to speculative items such as Palliser’s Triangle declaring it an arid region unsuitable for agriculture. But a later assessment by John Macoun declared it a land of abundance, and so westward homesteading began.

The MLA studio told the tales of two places and the rivers that run through them: the Highwood River as it runs through the town of High River and the general area around Drumheller and the Red Deer River. 

February 28 –March 23
Opening: February 28, 2019
Stantec Gallery

Design is a collaborative venture, and studio is at the heart of creation. This exhibition showcases top student works from the 16 fall term studio courses of our professional graduate programs (architecture, planning and landscape architecture), the architecture study abroad studios (Tokyo and Barcelona) and the interdisciplinary urban design studio (Portland, OR).

November 14–December 31
Stantec Gallery

Where you live is one of the most significant choices you make in life from a social, ecological and economic perspective.

This exhibition showcases innovative explorations by students, faculty and industry members in housing. Investigative inquiries range in location from North America and Central America to Europe, and deals with diversity of cultures, climates, and crucial issues such as affordability, equity and resilience.