Future Social: Design Ideas, Essays and Discussions on Social Housing for the ’hardest-to-house’

Homelessness is a serious problem throughout the world and Vancouver is no exception. In 2009, students of the University of British Columbia's School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture produced a series of essays that generate innovative design ideas for Supportive Housing that meaningfully contribute to solving the problem of homelessness, envisioning innovative and exciting new types of design for this serious issue. This book is a collection of their essays that grapple with the issue of housing the homeless of the Downtown Eastside. As editor Matthew Soules, professor at UBC and director of Matthew Soules Architecture, writes, "they aim to glance at a future Vancouver in which its model urbanism folds in the ways that architecture can respond to the issue of homelessness with superior social housing."
It is the hope that the essays within this book inspire a real and positive impact for the betterment of Vancouver's social conditions and built environment. And, taken collectively, it is the hope that the writing and the design propositions shed a little new light on the topic and the possibilities of social housing for the homeless in Vancouver, in British Columbia, and beyond.

Matthew Soules, MAIBC, is the director of Matthew Soules Architecture (MSA) and an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbiaa (TM)s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. MSA works on diverse projects, from the very small to the very large, and in contexts ranging from the dense and urban to the wild and remote.
Soules was born and raised in Vancouver, and upon completing his undergraduate studies at UBC, attended Harvard University where he received a Master of Architecture degree. Prior to starting MSA, Soules worked with leading architects around the world, including Rem Koolhaas in the Rotterdam headquarters of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in New York City, and Arthur Erickson in Vancouver. Soules has been an invited design critic at numerous institutions including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Rhode Island School of Design. His writing has been published nationally and internationally in magazines and journals, including Harvard Design Magazine, Praxis, and Topos.