In the late 1940s, when William Lyon Mackenzie King’s Liberal government began publishing “catalogues” filled with floor plans for modest homes meant to relieve a crippling post-Second World War housing crunch, the federal officials overseeing the initiative adopted a conspicuously modernist, suburban and mass-produced aesthetic.
Distributed by Central (later Canada) Mortgage and Housing Corporation offices across the country from 1947 well into the 1950s, the catalogues were filled with single-family homes in various permutations, including “strawberry boxes,” bungalows, backsplits and semis. Many came fitted out with iconic postwar features, such as carports and picture windows.
Homebuyers could select a design, pay $10 and become eligible for federal and bank mortgage incentives. The result was that across Canada, subdivisions built in the late 1940s and 1950s were populated with tens of thousands of strikingly similar small houses.
Since the Trudeau Liberals announced last January that they would resurrect housing design catalogues as a means of accelerating the construction of missing-middle type homes (duplexes, fourplexes, sixplexes and accessory dwelling units, or ADUs), the architects working on this iteration have sought to modernize an idea that proved remarkably successful 60 years ago, albeit adapted to 21st-century realities, e.g., that adding gentle density within existing neighbourhoods is preferable to building new subdivisions in farmer’s fields.
The core of the exercise is to develop code- and zoning-compliant accessible designs for ADUs, duplexes, triplexes and sixplexes that homeowners or small builders can download, customize and adapt to local conditions, such as lot sizes or setback rules. The catalogue will live on CMHC’s website and include digital models of each design.
The drawings and structural elements will have all been prescreened by architects and engineers so they require less vetting by municipal planners. What’s more, where supply chains permit, contractors working with these templates will be able to construct the dwellings using prefabricated components, such as wall assemblies produced in a factory.
But unlike the original CMHC catalogues, this new program emphasizes the importance of creating designs that reflect the local diversity of residential forms, from the Toronto and Vancouver Specials to Montreal’s distinctive triplexes. “There are similarities across the country, but there are regional issues,” says architect Janna Levitt, whose Toronto-based firm, LGA, is co-ordinating a national team of architects and consultants working with CMHC on the catalogue. “Each region is coming up with some regional responses.”
The team, selected through a request for proposal process, includes Montreal-based Kanva, 5468796 Architecture in Winnipeg, Edmonton-based dub architects and Michael Green Architecture in B.C. Halifax-based architect Jane Abbott, co-founder of Abbott Brown, is another member, and her firm’s mandate is to develop designs for the four Atlantic Canada provinces.
She mentions some well-known vernacular elements in East Coast residential architecture: street-facing front doors, steep-pitched roofs and wood siding that can resist blustery weather. “We try as much as possible to work within that kind of visual language that you see in older buildings here,” Ms. Abbott says.
B.C., in turn, has a well-established tradition of multiunit dwellings in residential neighbourhoods, and its entries in the catalogue will likely reflect those typologies, says Chris Knight, studio lead at MGA. “Kelowna is a good example of a unique regional fourplex model.”
All the designs are expected to be low-carbon homes that use materials and energy sources suited for both the regional environments and climates. The consultants are stress-testing their templates with energy modeling and life-cycle analysis in order to ensure a low-carbon profile.
Solutions will vary. In the case of the Atlantic Canada, Ms. Abbott says those designs will be configured around air-source heat pumps instead of the traditional heating oil furnaces that are still common in Eastern Canada. By contrast, the B.C. entries will likely reflect that province’s leadership role in “passive house” construction, which emphasizes tightly sealed building envelopes. Mr. Knight points out that a growing number of B.C. firms make prefabricated components that can satisfy passive house performance specifications, and will likely be in a position to supply materials to the builders who want to construct from these designs.
However, Ms. Levitt says the catalogue designs that evoke the residential traditions of one region can be erected elsewhere, provided they comply with local building codes.
What remains to be seen is whether CMHC is able to build a national database of residential zoning rules that will allow catalogue users to automatically customize their projects right down to municipal minutiae, such as setbacks – a feature that would potentially allow contractors to bypass some of the most time-consuming elements of the approvals timeline.
“Designs will be based on typical lot sizes and common municipal planning requirements that facilitate gentle density including four units as-of-right bylaws in place as a result of Housing Accelerator Fund agreements,” CMHC said in an e-mail. “This design approach makes it possible for local governments to focus building permit reviews on unique site conditions (e.g. local flood conditions) rather than zoning and the standardized designs themselves.”
Once the catalogue is released into the world, the market will render its verdict. CMHC said that earlier in the year it conducted a targeted consultation with end users, such as developers and municipalities, to inform the development of the catalogue. Now, thinking ahead to the formal release early next year, Ms. Levitt can envision specific benefits to the “citizen developers” who want to transform a lot with a single-family home into something denser.
“There’s a lot of advantages for the small developer,” she says. “It derisks the preconstruction, predesign phases. It synthesizes all the preconstruction phases so that you can download a set of drawings that is a reasonable reflection of what you want, with all of the performance criteria, mechanical, electrical, structural specifications, climate zone, what your walls need to be like. It also allows you to do your own costing.”
None of this will skirt the meat-and-potatoes aspects of every building project: buying land, hiring a general contractor, lining up tradespeople. But if it works, the catalogue should allow those who want to try it a chance to reach to the starting line faster, and with less cost.
Almost exactly a year ago, British Columbia’s housing ministry announced that it would create a catalogue of “standardized designs” for various small-scale residential projects, including townhouses, accessory dwelling units and triplexes.
“Having standardized building designs available can help streamline the permitting process,” housing minister Ravi Kahlon said in the statement at the time, noting that the release of these templates expands on the NDP government’s housing reforms, which includes as-of-right approvals for fourplexes on single-family lots.
The 82-page online catalogue, which includes 10 templates with detailed floorplates, went live in mid-September. A ministry spokesperson says plans from the catalogue have been downloaded almost 900 times in the two intervening months.
The consultants include Leckie Studio Architecture & Design, b collective, energy modeller Carbon Wise, planning consultancy Wiser and Christine Lintott Architects, which specializes in biophilic design. The catalogue includes a pricing estimates report.
The catalogue doesn’t offer the kind of working drawings that planning departments normally vet. “The level of detail and completion is really more directed toward a development permit approval versus a true set of building permit drawings,” says Chris Knight, studio lead for MGA, the Vancouver architectural firm that’s been working on the federal project.
As with CMHC’s new catalogue, B.C.’s move is meant to streamline the design and permitting process by making available customizable plans that have been prevetted for compliance with B.C.’s 2024 building code and can be adapted to various lot sizes found in municipalities around the province.
“Homeowners and builders may choose from a variety of roof shapes and exterior finishes, so all the design options – ranging from duplexes to quadplexes to laneway homes – can blend in seamlessly with existing neighbourhoods,” said a spokesperson in an e-mail.
The wrinkle, still to be worked out, is whether municipal planning departments, when presented with applications derived from the catalogue, will figure out how to hasten the vetting and review processes, which can be lengthy and expensive, especially for small builders.
“Building officials will become familiar with the plans the more often they are built, allowing for an easier and faster building permit approval process,” the ministry spokesperson said. “The plans will also save builders and their trades, time and delays, as they become familiar with building the same designs.”
