Open Collections

Abstract

This project develops the architectural theorist George Baird's (1939-2023) concept of “The Political Economy of Construction” to explore Vancouver’s housing crisis. The research objectives were to produce an expansive holographic multi-subjectivity of “Vancouver’s Political Economy of Construction” through interviews. The first section describes a series of moving image-based projects in the evolution of what the author calls “The Prototype,” a rigorous wandering with a camera based on Guy Debord’s “Theory of the Dérive.” Each Prototype is an experiment and a struggle with established heuristics of a material body, such as one year of new construction in Toronto. The second part is a collection of interviews attempting to construct “Vancouver’s Political Economy of Construction,” including George Baird, architects, a carpenter, planners, a renter, housing activists, developers, an engineer, a macroeconomist, and an immigration lawyer. The afterword reflects on the success and failure of the project: perhaps it should have been longer with more interviews to produce the desired effect.