When the Institute for Northern Housing Innovation opens in Sudbury next fall, it won’t just be a repository where research is compiled into reports that sit on a shelf to gather dust.
A key part of its mandate will be to help develop successful technologies and, in collaboration with industry, ready those technologies for use in the residential construction industry.
“We really want to work towards technology transfer and commercialization,” said Dr. Steven Beites, the institute’s director.
“We can begin to act as an incubator and facilitate the transfer of successful innovations to the marketplace.”​
​Launched in July, the institute is an initiative of the McEwen School of Architecture at Laurentian University. Its goal is to find practical solutions for sustainable and affordable housing for Northern Ontario and beyond.
Along with Beites, founding members of the institute include Émilie Pinard of the McEwen School; Marc Arsenault of the Bharti School of Engineering and Computer Science; Jordan Babando of the School of Social Sciences; and Meng Cheng Lau of the Bharti School.
It’s being supported with $1.25 million in funding from the Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security; FedNor; the Greater Sudbury Development Corp.; and Desjardins’ Community Development Fund.
Some of that funding will be put toward a 3,000-square-foot addition onto an existing workshop at the School of Architecture in downtown Sudbury, Beites said.
It will serve as the institute’s home and double as an advanced construction technology lab that will be outfitted with high-tech equipment including robotics, materials testing machinery, and simulation programming.
Funding will also support community outreach initiatives, workshops and other events, and day-to-day operations, including the hiring of research assistants.
The concept for the institute was some time in the making, Beites said, inspired by his ongoing work with students.
Over the last five to six years, he’s hosted graduate studios that involve bringing in design expertise — an architectural consultant, an engineer — to work on a housing design for a non-profit organization.
“They’re incredibly rewarding projects, to be able to work on real projects, co-piloting housing solutions,” said Beites, whose more recent work involves the development of a cable-directed parallel robot for use in construction.
“But the difficulty is that you’re trying to fit a community project within an academic term of three months. And the reality is, there’s many challenges associated with that.
“When community projects deserve a longer period of time, it’s very hard to compress them in that timeframe.”
He’s also travelled with students to Europe to meet with researchers and practitioners that are leaders in fields like affordable housing, low-carbon construction, advanced automation and housing.
Bringing that knowledge back to Sudbury, which they then shared with the city and the local design community, kickstarted some momentum, Beites said.
It led to an idea: “Why don’t we develop an institute that will focus on northern housing innovation, and that will allow us to work with communities on longer project timelines?”
Beites envisions the institute working on multiple projects at a time, serving as the link between community and industry.
SEE: Real-world project challenge brings out the best in Sudbury architecture students
The institute can work with industry partners to help develop technologies or new housing materials; host workshops on mass timber, sustainability, bio-based materials or modular housing; and advocate for government policies that support new building techniques, he said.
And the goal isn’t to gatekeep this information. Beites said the institute will publish their research, maintain a robust online presence and active social media channels, and host public workshops to ensure their work is broadly shared.
“I think, in order for us to solve housing, it has to be this mentality of sharing of solutions, both from sustainability and affordability,” he said.
“So it’s a very open, transparent institute where a lot of these findings and information will be made available.”​
​Now that the institute has launched, efforts have begun to set up a website, start building the expansion, and make way for the new equipment. Beites said the institute is also looking to collaborate with other institutions and research centres, as well as securing grants and other partnerships for longer-term funding.
But the founders are excited, he said, to start working with communities and industry partners on affordable and sustainable housing solutions.
“What's really great is we've got a team that are focusing on other areas of housing that are just as important, in terms of social implications, the effect on families, on children, on education, on the unhoused,” Beites said.
“So it's a really interesting position to be in at the institute where we can focus on the technical, but at the same time, we have expertise when we're thinking of the implications from a broader social perspective.”
