ACO NextGen

ACO’s statement re: Ontario Place, and the Ontario Science Centre.

ACO NextGen is currently seeking students, recent graduates or emerging professionals with an interest in heritage to join us on the ACO NextGen Executive Board! Visit our link in bio to apply.

Participant Registration for the 2024 NextGen Job Shadow is extended to Friday February 2nd at 11:59pm EST.

Don't miss out, learn more and register: https://forms.gle/X3xdo7y9v9TcBn9p8

Calling all students and emerging professionals! Don't miss out on the 2024 ACO NextGen Job Shadow! Learn more, and register: https://lnkd.in/ghvaBYyf

Host Registration is now open for the 12th Annual Job Shadow program February 19 - 23, 2024!

Host a student or emerging professional virtually or in-person. Past hosts have included architecture and engineering firms, government bodies and diverse non-profits. To register or learn more, visit the link in bio!

Host Registration Deadline: Wednesday January 17, 2024 at 6pm EST.

Don’t miss out! In partnership with the National Trust for Canada and ACO NextGen, ICOMOS Canada has organised a panel discussion on perspectives from emerging professionals on the labour market and education in heritage.

This free webinar will take place over zoom on September 28th, 2023, at 12pm EST.
Learn more, and register via link in bio!

Student, recent grad, and NextGen tickets for the upcoming Heritage and Housing Symposium are half off! Join ACO Toronto for their annual heritage symposium Saturday September 23 at the Ontario Science Centre.

ACO Toronto's Heritage and Housing Symposium Join ACO Toronto for our one-day 2023 Symposium, Heritage and Housing, on September 23 at Ontario Science Centre!

For the past few years, ACO Toronto has hosted an annual heritage symposium - a one day event filled with talks and panel discussions from a wide variety of perspectives on a specific relevant theme. Past themes have included Main Streets, Modernist Schools, and Demolition. While this event has been put on hold in recent years due to the pandemic, we are excited to bring this event back in-person this Fall. Our 2023 theme is Heritage and Housing and the event will take place Saturday, September 23, at the Ontario Science Centre. Save the date!

You may remember that we already hosted our 2017 symposium on Centennial projects at the Ontario Science Centre, and while we typically offer a new venue every year, due to the recent Province of Ontario plans to demolish the building, this landmark is once again incredibly relevant to our theme. To explore this topic of Heritage and Housing, the symposium will be broken down into 3 sessions: addressing affordability, responding to the climate crisis, and the future of our growing city. Each session will have a diverse range of speakers, including professionals (emerging and established), architects, developers, planners, artists, and academics. The symposium is an opportunity to foster open conversations, learn about different perspectives and new ideas, and work collaboratively towards solutions that we are facing in Toronto. We'll be announcing more details in the coming weeks, including registration, and hope to see you there!

ACO Toronto is hosting a free lecture on heritage and housing May 18, 6:30pm at Centre for Social Innovation! Meghan Elliott of New History will be sharing an adaptive reuse case study of a historic jail transformed into rental apartments in St Louis, MN. First 3 photos are after, next 3 photos are the space before restoration. Register on Eventbrite! Link in bio. https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/heritage-and-housing-learning-from-leijona-tickets-620139533037?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

ACO Toronto invites you to their first guest lecture in a series on Heritage and Housing with Meghan Elliott who will share insights from the recently completed conversion of the historic St Louis County Jail in Duluth, Minnesota into 33 units of mixed-income housing. The event takes place in-person May 18, 6:30pm, at Centre for Social Innovation - Spadina, Toronto. Free but spots are limited so registration on eventbrite is required https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/heritage-and-housing-learning-from-leijona-tickets-620139533037?fbclid=IwAR0Gt1vQFAsQob7l7qQah6TyMKIafYL4nqO-C7Rthk84trERlXpQ-wSTDps

Heritage and Housing: Learning From Leijona Join ACO Toronto for its launch event on all things heritage and housing!

During the charrette Daniel Rotsztain, MLA ("the Urban Geographer", Artist in Residence, ERA Architects Inc.) will be taking our participants on a guided tour of the study area.

Bio: Daniel has thoughtfully designed and will host a guided tour of the subject site and its surrounding contexts. Daniel is an artist, writer, and cartographer whose work explores our relationship to the places we inhabit. Daniel’s work has appeared in Spacing Magazine and the Globe and Mail. His interest in social infrastructure and cultural heritage lead to the creation of plazaPOPS, an award-winning community-lead approach to creating low-cost, high-impact and accessible gathering spaces within the privately-owned parking lots of strip mall parking lots in Toronto’s inner suburbs

Two days left to sign up for ACO NextGen’s 10th annual Design Charrette!

This year, we are excited to welcome the following judges to our event:

Sharon Vattay, Ph.D., C.A.H.P.
Principal, GBCA Architects

Sharon Vattay, Ph.D., CAHP, is an architectural historian who brings to GBCA a diverse set of skills offering expertise in the assessment and management of heritage resources. Prior to joining GBCA as an Associate in 2008, Sharon was a Heritage Planner (in the cities of Hamilton and Vaughan) and Lecturer at the University of Toronto.


Michelle Bullough, M.Arch, HBAS
Intern Architect, Giaimo

Michelle is an Intern Architect with five years of experience working at a range architecture, urbanism, and landscape architecture firms in Canada, the USA, France, Spain, and Indonesia. Whether collaborating on the adaptive reuse masterplan of a castle or the design of a winter sports education facility for youth, her work has focused on crafting contextual and sustainable places for community growth.

Introducing our speaker for the ACO NextGen Design Charette next Saturday May 6th!

Nicole Nomsa Moyo is an Intern Architect, Urban Designer, and Contract Instructor (Design Studio). She has a passion for human-centric design, master planning, innovative and disruptive sustainable development, community engagement processes, intelligent future thinking and Africa her beloved continent.

To learn more about her work, follow the link in our bio to her website/portfolio!

This year marks the ACO NextGen 10th annual Design Charrette! Here’s a look back on some of our past charrettes.

Registration has been extended until May 3rd, 2023 at 11:59pm! Link bio!

ACO Toronto urges the Province of Ontario to repair, restore, and care for the Ontario Science Centre instead of moving it to Ontario Place. This important landmark building has significant cultural, social, architectural, and environmental value. Read ACO Toronto’s statement:
https://bit.ly/ACOTO-OSC
First two photos by , following images from Archives of Ontario

Registration is open for the 10th annual NextGen Design Charrette! Join us as we reimagine 820-830 Church Street to weave an underused site back into Toronto’s diverse urban fabric. How can we thoughtfully design between the layers of our built heritage and socioeconomic needs?

Link in bio to register.

1959 ➡️2023: The corner of Young and Church St., Toronto.

Here’s a sneak peak of NextGen’s up coming Design Charette. Stay tuned for more info tomorrow!

Calling all students and emerging professionals - Participant Registration is still open for the 2023 ACO NextGen Job Shadow!

Meet and make connections with professionals in heritage, museums, architecture and engineering fields, learn about their work and careers, meet other NextGens and get your work published on the NextGen Blog!

This year we are excited to have more than 30 host organizations participate with a wide range of in person and virtual opportunities.

Register at the link below until February 4th at midnight - don't miss out!
https://forms.gle/n6U6APTXnVyqJ28G6

Participant registration is open for the 11th annual Job Shadow! Deadline Feb 4, 2023.
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Meet and make connections with professionals in heritage, museums, architecture and engineering fields, learn about their work and careers, meet other NextGens and get your work published on the NextGen Blog!
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Register now at https://forms.gle/arCTdPoEymtGGBPn9

Host Registration is still open! Last year, more than 30 organizations generously shared their time and heritage industry insights with our students and emerging professionals. Host in person, or virtually. For further details and to register visit our link in bio.

Metrolinx plans to cut down the historic Osgoode Hall trees to excavate a large hole for the Ontario Line station.

This Thursday, December 15 @ 1pm, join MPP Chris Glover, City Councillor Ausma Malik, Councillor Josh Matlow, and more at Osgoode Garden to hear the latest.

Good alternatives are possible!

Petition to Stop Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act

This legislation has been delayed and will be brought back to the Legislature on Monday, November 28. Sign the petition now!

From ACO Chair Diane Chin:

Whether intended or not, the changes proposed for the Ontario Heritage Act (OHA) in Bill 23 will make it practically impossible to protect most of Ontario’s identified heritage properties. This can only be seen as a knee-jerk response to a vindictive attack by the development industry on our heritage system. There was no consultation or consideration of the destructive impacts of these proposals across Ontario.

Why drop a cluster bomb of changes into the heritage system that will not create a single unit of affordable housing? The proposed changes to the OHA must be dropped from Bill 23.

Two of the proposals stand out. Forcing communities to drop “listed” properties from their heritage registers if they are not designated in two years and requiring that the standard for designation of properties be hiked from at least one of Ontario’s heritage criteria to two.

Sign the Petition Stop the attack on heritage: Kill Bill 23

ACO NextGen is currently seeking several students, recent graduates or emerging professionals with an interest in heritage to join us on the ACO NextGen Executive Board until 2024.

Apply now!

Call for ACO NextGen Executives: 2022-2024 ACO NextGen is currently seeking several students, recent graduates or emerging professionals with an interest in heritage to join us on the ACO NextGen Executive Board until 2024. The following po…