Ottawa Architecture Week 2025

Ottawa Architecture Week
September 29 – October 3, 2025
Ottawa Architecture Week: Festival of Design and Imagination is an annual week-long festival that welcomes everyone to explore architecture, urbanism, art and design in Ottawa. It is presented by the Ottawa Regional Society of Architects (ORSA) with the help of local volunteers and businesses.

OAW 2025 THEME
Mapping the Market: Spatial Anchors & Planned Histories
The ByWard Market stands at the intersection of history and possibility. One of Ottawa’s oldest neighborhoods, it has long been a site of cultural exchange, architectural layering, and collective memory. But as the city grows and development accelerates, we are called to ask:

How do we honour the past while imagining a future that is inclusive, sustainable, and rooted in place?

This year’s Ottawa Architecture Week (OAW) explores the idea of mapping memories in the ByWard Market—not only as a way of preserving what was, but as a strategy for guiding what could be. Buildings, streets, and public spaces carry stories: of commerce and community, of migration and resistance, of celebration and loss. What happens when these physical anchors are altered or erased? And how can new design practices, planning approaches, and community engagement tools ensure that the future of the Market remains rich with meaning?

Bringing together architects, urbanists, artists, and storytellers, this conversation around the OAW events will reflect on the Market’s evolving identity and look ahead to what it might become. We invite everyone—from long-time residents to first-time visitors—to join in reimagining the ByWard Market not just as a historic site, but as a living, breathing urban landscape where memory and innovation can coexist.

Recurring Event: Yes

Start: 09/29/2025 / End: 10/03/2025
Website: Ottawa Architecture Week 2025

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