Breaking Down The Wall

Calgary’s downtown is evolving quickly, but many of its residential developments still follow a familiar pattern: continuous street walls that define edges but often limit interaction. This panel challenges that approach.

Presented as part of Design Week Calgary 2026, this discussion explores how architecture, landscape, and urban design can better respond to the rhythms of the city through its people, movement, and everyday life. Instead of treating buildings as isolated objects, the panel asks how design can act as social infrastructure, shaping relationships at street level and contributing to a more connected urban fabric.

Using built and under-construction projects as a lens, the conversation will look beyond façades and floorplates to ask how design can disrupt the continuous, familiar experience of the city’s urban developments. The panel will connect these design strategies to Calgary’s broader planning context, including urban design guidelines, approval processes, and intensification goals.

The focus is not on a single project, but on a shift in mindset: from building form to urban experience.

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Tickets: Paid admission includes one complimentary drink during the opening cocktail reception.

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Come for the conversation. Stay for the friction, the ideas, and the future of Calgary from the street wall up.