What does it cost to stay in the city you call home?

Set inside a lived-in Vancouver laneway house, this site-specific exhibition and conversation explores the intersection of design, economics, and belonging in one of Canada’s most challenging housing landscapes.

Originally built as a rental home, this laneway house has since become home to two Smallworks employees and their young families—with three children spending their early years growing up here. It is not a housing concept on paper, but a real place where millennials have built a life.

Through a fireside conversation with Q&A, informal exhibition, and walk-through of the home and yard, Smallworks invites you to examine the changing meaning of homeownership, independence, and family living. The conversation is hosted by the current resident, an architectural designer who designs laneway houses for others, while living the reality of one herself with her young family of four.

As housing costs reshape what is possible for a generation, laneway houses ask bigger questions: How much space do we need? What resources can families share? What does it mean to stay rooted in your community?