Architecture with Vulnerable People in Turbulent Times 1968 – 2018

August 6, 2018

Allan Cain was invited as keynote speaker on the 50th year commemoration of the founding of the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo. Allan, in one of the first groups of students, spoke about the significance of 1968, the year that the social movement for the “Right to the City” was launched. He spoke about participating in the first school field trip to Chicago that year, that was designed for an immersion in ‘modern-movement architecture’ but resulted in his introduction to radical student politics of the SDS and a life-long passion for urban-blues music. Allan spoke about founding Development Workshop with a group of grad-students at the AA and their four and a half decade trajectory of building with vulnerable communities in turbulent times in war-torn and post-conflict countries in the Sahel, the Middle East, Southern Africa and South East Asia. Fifty years later Allan is still engaged in the right to the city movement and challenged students with a social and activist view of the practice of architecture.