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With a storied history and numerous successes under its belt, the 91��������’s  (SAPL) is charting a course for its next 60 years in a new downtown home, a course its dean hopes will continue to be rooted in one core value: being embedded with community. 

Originally founded as the , the intent was to be Alberta’s professional architecture school.

Against the backdrop of a growing environmental movement and the beginnings of transdisciplinary scholarship, the faculty expanded its vision to focus on “the big picture” with the cross-section of architectural, cultural, economical and social consciousness. 

Over time, new fields of study were introduced, including Canada’s first environmental design doctorate and Alberta’s only accredited programs in architecture and landscape architecture. 

Each shift — including renaming the faculty to SAPL in 2019 — deepened the school’s central belief that design should meet the world where the work is happening.

“We’ve created more than 50 years of graduates, and many have stayed in Calgary,” says current dean, , PhD. “As a result, we’ve changed the face of Calgary.”

Alumni contributions can be seen in the familiar sweep of Nose Hill Park’s pathways, the thoughtful pockets of public space threaded along Stephen Avenue, and the renewal of riverfront parks that balance recreation with ecological resilience. 

Their influence extends into neighbourhood streets and planning frameworks — the quiet, continual work that shapes how Calgary looks, feels and grows.

Dreaming in the downtown

Brown says the real magic for SAPL and UCalgary is how the community continues to embrace everything they do.

Through the — a strategic partnership between the City of Calgary and UCalgary — researchers and city employees have worked together on major challenges including transportation, waste reduction, youth crime, homelessness and poverty reduction.

“At over 1.5 million people, Calgary is big enough to have all the problems and big enough to have an infrastructure, but not so big that a small voice can’t have an influence,” Brown says. “That connection allows the city to lean on us to find solutions they wouldn’t be able to find on their own.”

Among those challenges has been the city’s downtown office vacancy rate, which was exasperated by the proliferation of work-from-home options following the COVID-19 pandemic.

With SAPL already having a footprint in the downtown with offerings in the Castell Building (the “old Central Library” to many) and the across from City Hall, which opened in 2018 after the library relocated its main branch down 7th Avenue, Brown started looking at a potential relocation of his entire faculty.

When the opportunity to move into the 37-floor NOVA Building — which was also known as the Nexen Building — further west along the city’s downtown LRT line came up, Brown says they jumped at the chance.

Building a sustainable future

“Location, location, location.”

As you walk up to SAPL’s new home, the old saying rings holistically true.

In taking a moment just to soak in the atmosphere around 801 7 Ave. S.W., you hear a CTrain whir by, smell the grills firing up for the lunch-time crowd, and see people from all walks of life go about their day.

It’s exactly what Brown envisioned when the school set the wheels in motion to move away from Main campus – not just to better understand the challenges we face, but to expose students and researchers to literally walk through the communities they serve.

“We’re all doing AI-generated, worldly things that look great in a digital space but aren’t actually making a difference,” says Brown. 

“There are people starving and displaced that we need to address, and new environmental realities we need to address. Cities are the place where there are the biggest problems and also the most opportunity for change.”

Not only was the new space large enough to create 1,200 new student spaces and free up 800 spaces on Main campus, but the building also allowed the school to get back into the heart of the community.

“It was this notion of, ‘How can we do better?’” Brown says. “How can we prepare the next generation of practitioners to do a good job, and in a way that isn’t isolated and has nothing to do with the real world?”

, students are now able to step outside and encounter the pressures and possibilities of urban life such as mobility, density, climate adaptation, accessibility and neighbourhood identity.

These notions are no longer abstract topics, as they are visible in real time in a district undergoing rapid transformation.

Brown says the concepts and ideas that students and researchers encounter will serve them well, no matter where their future takes them.

“We need to create cities that are more regenerative and come up with new ways of thinking about how we live and what we live and where live,” he says. “We need to think about the economy and how we switch from an economy where it’s in competition with nature to being one where they are reinforcing.”

As he looks ahead to the next 60 years, Brown hopes to see the faculty become best known for being the most community embedded design school, which he believes starts with holding true to their values of community connection and betterment.