YOUNG ARCHITECTS FOR CHANGE

Design Competition

Design for Change is YAC’s flagship initiative. The goal where we bring high school students from all around Metro Vancouver to participate in this free architectural competition.

With Design for Change 2025, we partnered with the Museum of Vancouver to host this community competition. Alongside with our judge panel from UBC SALA, Petit Architects, About Here Videos, HEIA Studios, VCC, and Langara, Design for Change 2025 had over 50 high school students participating in the competition.

For the teams, they were tasked to find a solution for the “Missing Middle Housing Crisis”, an ongoing problem in Vancouver regarding affordability. What is the Missing Middle you may ask. Its the design of housing where it sits in between single unit houses and high rises. Here in Vancouver, a vast amount of land is dedicated to only single unit homes and skyscrapers, not enough multi unit homes. With steps forward to ensuring that multi unit homes are being built for the growing population of Vancouver, it will allow more people to be able to afford living here in this city.

On May 25, 2025, teams arrived at the MOV to begin their competition. Teams were able to meet industry professionals, professors, and community leaders during the judging. With UBC SALA’s Bachelor of Design Chair Joseph Dahmen, VCC Architectural Instructor Farhad Falahian, Petit Architects’ Lead Educator Sara Escuredo, About Here Uytae Lee, Architect Colin Clark, and Langara Design Instructor David Alba, each team received comments and improvements of their work.

With careful consideration, our judge panel decided on 3 teams that most met the criteria of this competition. With First place being (Team Hello: Daisy Chen), Second Place being (Team: Metropolitan Pigeons: Audrey, Sara, and Alice), and Third Place being (Team: Hot Glue Troop: Evelyn, Kian, Curtis, and Johnathan). We want to congratulate all teams for their hard work and dedication!

Awards to our winning teams included a $500 voucher sponsored by TUEX Education, and a summer internship with Petit Architects. We hope that all teams had a great time with us at the MOV, and we want to thank all the organizations that supported the event.

Host: Museum of Vancouver (MOV)

Organizer: Young Architects for Change

Sponsors: MOV, TUEX Education, & Petit Architects

Judges: Joseph Dahmen (UBC Bdes Chair), Farhad Falahian (VCC Architectural Instructor), Sara Escuredo (Petit Architects Lead Educator), David Alba (VCC Design Instructor), Uytae Lee (About Here Videos), and Collin Clark (Architect at HEIA Studios).