In mid-October, downtown Toronto was host to a surreal sight—a 2.7-kilometre-long run of two-metre-tall dominoes. Made of lightweight concrete, the 8,000 oversized dominoes snaked down sidewalks, meandered through parks, and even wandered into buildings: a library, stores, a condo tower lobby.

Setting up the dominoes took the better part of a day. Then, at 4:30 pm, it was go-time: the first domino was tipped over, and the chain tumbled through the city.

The production was hosted by The Bentway and curated by Station House Opera, a British performing arts company that premiered Dominoes as a way to link the five host boroughs of the 2012 London Olympics. Since then, the site-specific performance has toured to cities including Copenhagen, Melbourne, Marseilles, and Malta. For Toronto, the artists chose a path tracing the development of the city’s west end: from the Victorian residential fabric south of King West, to the industrial-inspired Stackt Market, then weaving its way through the waterfront’s high-rise neighbourhoods before ending at Lake Ontario.

Putting together the event was a logistically complex undertaking, including negotiating with city agencies for crossing streetcar tracks, getting sign-off from more than 40 site partners, and setting up with help from some 300 volunteers. Near the end of the run, the line of dominoes crossed Lakeshore Boulevard. The busy street could only be closed for six minutes—a tense window in which time the dominoes were quickly set up, knocked down, and cleared away.

The enormous effort was worth it, says Ilana Altman, co-executive director of The Bentway. She explains that while The Bentway is anchored in its eponymous space—an urban park and public art venue under the raised Gardiner Expressway—the organization’s mission centres on revealing opportunities and connections in the urban landscape. “Dominoes helped Toronto to really see these possibilities in a compelling and convincing way,” says Altman.

The Bentway is looking to make those connections more permanent. Its own site is growing: its first phase, designed by Public Work, opened in 2018, and this fall, the organization named Field Operations and Brook McIlroy as the designers for its second phase. Earlier this year, Toronto City Council endorsed a public realm plan that outlines a comprehensive vision for the remainder of spaces below and adjacent to the 6.5-kilometre expressway.

Beyond the physical links that were created by the line of dominoes, the event created important social connections. “It was quite moving to see the level of interest we got from volunteers,” says Altman. “People were passionate and invested in it; people were meeting neighbours for the first time.”

On show day, my seven-year-old son and I delighted in rediscovering pockets of downtown, in chatting with the volunteers setting up the dominoes, and in seeing the clever ways that the white slabs had been laid to climb hills, zigzag through open areas, and even hop over a park bench. It was a sunny fall afternoon, and hundreds of people were out, engaging with an openness facilitated by the charming installation. As 4:30 pm approached, the crowds grew along with the sense of anticipation. My son and I were stationed at the end of the run, and cheered alongside a throng of Torontonians as the dominoes fell one by one—and the last domino splashed into Lake Ontario.

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A new exhibition has opened at the Mitchell Art Gallery (MAG) in Edmonton, Alberta.

The immersive exhibition, by artist Hazel Meyer and media historian Cait McKinney, is called GLAD YOU CLOSER HOME / NEW WHITE WHISKER MARY and imagines the spaces between the correspondence, amateur 8mm film recordings, and modernist buildings that architects Mary Imrie (1918 – 1988) and Jean Wallbridge (1912 – 1979) left behind. The title of the exhibition was borrowed from a telegram in the collection.

Imrie and Wallbridge operated the first architecture firm in Canada run by women at Six Acres, the home they built for their work and life together in west Edmonton.

Since 2014, Meyer and McKinney have been collaborating to explore their shared attachments to queer histories and accessibility politics through research, writing, video, and archival interventions. Together, they take up experimental methods for livening up archives related to sexuality and LGBTQ history.

McKinney and Meyer’s collaboration is rooted in how queer history lives in research and archives. Past projects have explored topics such as ruins, the feminist sex wars in 1980s Vancouver, and the Canadian Lesbian & Gay Archives porn VHS collection. Their work treats archives as sites for “fantasizing, questioning, and feeling amongst objects and ephemera,” and the relevance those items hold in the contemporary moment.

Alongside the exhibition, the MAG is also collaborating with various community partners to put a spotlight on the legacy of Wallbridge and Imrie.

At a time when homes they designed are being torn down to build new infill properties, these tours and talks aim to be a bridge between the legacy of these architects, their modernist buildings, visions for social housing, and the importance of queer history.

The exhibition will run from now until December 7, 2024.

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What are the boundaries of architectural practice? For three firms in Western Canada, they lie far beyond buildings. Patkau Architects, designer Omer Arbel, and Sputnik Architecture have developed branches of their work dedicated to the fabrication of products, furniture, lighting and artwork. All three of them deploy these parallel practices as forms of research, with a significant impact on their architectural thinking.

Patkau Architects began their fabrication practice over 30 years ago, with what John Patkau refers to as “analytical models” of their own built work—not intended as representations, but as tools for working through the formal characteristics of their buildings. As John puts it (with considerable modesty and a touch of irony) “our firm was never ‘successful’,” which led to slow periods when they had to generate their own activity. During these fallow periods, their “well-provisioned” workshop became the site for the analytical models, and eventually, at the instigation of Patricia Patkau, for bolder experiments with materials. A cluster of bent plywood shelters was one of the first full-scale prototypes to emerge from this work, developed as a contribution to Winnipeg’s Warming Huts project, then dispatched to London’s V&A Museum. That project’s experimentation morphed into the steel Cocoons for the Tokyo flagship store of fashion house Comme des Garçons. This was only possible because alongside the Patkau’s research into origami—the elusive quest for a sheet structure generated by a single fold and a single bend—they had developed original breakform processes, with new machines of their own invention. Their fabrication work has since expanded into furniture, lighting design, and production, most of it carried out in-house. 

While it’s clear that their formal discoveries are often made during hands-on testing of materials, the Patkaus don’t shy away from digital tools. Their competition entry for Daegu Gosan Public Library in Korea deployed parametric modelling software Grasshopper to translate sheet-inspired research into a reciprocal structural frame made of timber components. They took a similar approach for the Temple of Light in Kootenay Bay, British Columbia. Completed in 2017, this project evidences collaboration with other skilled makers: they worked with local, internationally experienced timber fabrication firm Spearhead. The Temple applies discoveries about form and material assemblies made on the library and other unbuilt projects, perching eight petal-like shells on existing foundations to enclose a sanctuary. While they are currently developing a products division distinct from their architectural practice, the Patkaus fundamentally see their fabrication work as research into the design and construction of architecture.

One of the many talented individuals who have spent time working in the Patkaus’ office is Vancouver-based designer Omer Arbel. Besides the Patkaus, Arbel has worked for architects including Enric Miralles and Peter Busby. From each of them, he took away a different experience of practice—from what he describes as the “operatic” mode of Miralles’ office to the “quiet prayer” of the Patkaus. But while Arbel came “within a hair” of getting licensed, he grew disillusioned with what he saw as the dominant role played by the architect in North America: as a service provider. 

A unique opportunity led him down a different path. While still at Busby’s office, Arbel independently produced four prototype furniture designs for display at New York Design Week in 2005. Uncomfortable with the number four (stemming from a personal sense of numerology), he felt he needed a fifth element, more as a compositional anchor than as a design for production—but his furniture fabricator had gone bankrupt. In the few weeks left before the event, he worked with friends to put together a hand-cast glass luminaire to be that anchor piece. It was a hit, and that piece—the first Bocci light—remains in production today. The success of this product eventually led him to launch the lighting firm Bocci with friend and client Randy Bishop. 

Since then, Omer Arbel Office has produced, besides an array of lighting products, glassware, furniture, set designs, sculptures, a book and—yes—architecture.  Rather than a name, each design bears an accession number—as though each is a distinct realization of an essentially undifferentiable and potentially infinite font of creativity. All of the work comes from direct and daring experimentation with materials. Arbel, perhaps drawing on his early experience with Miralles, seeks a “celebratory” approach to making, rather than what he sees as the overly critical culture nurtured in schools. In contrast to work born of an author’s imagination—including the products of parametric design—he finds it much more exciting to “let the form occur.” He reflects, “If you explore what materials themselves want to do, you can discover a much more radical form, with a fraction of the resources.” 

The result is a dizzying array of over 100 material and formal experiments, and counting. Arbel says of these experiments: “They fail all the time, they’re a total failure!” Yet it’s impossible to look at this body of work and not see success. From the extremely slow accretion of nickel to copper wire in the jewelry of 71.2, to the sandblasting of pine to produce chair 68.3, Arbel embraces growth and decay, creation and destruction, in equal measure. Seemingly uncomfortable juxtapositions of material—the blown glass and copper wire of vase 84.0, or the hay-cast, saw-cut concrete of Bocci’s headquarters 86.3—result in a strange, even excruciating beauty. In his clifftop house (94.2), he salvages cedar burls as concrete formwork and then, audaciously, repurposes them as cladding. Such works are testimony to Arbel’s willingness to risk everything: perhaps a glassblower’s attitude, applied to architecture.

Grains seem to be having a moment in maker culture. Hay—or in this case, flax straw—was also the focus of a recent project by Anvil Tree, the fabrication satellite of Winnipeg’s Sputnik Architecture. Peter Hargraves, founder of Sputnik, created Anvil Tree as a sister company that could help realize Sputnik’s designs, and a home base for his life-long interest in sculpture. Flax straw is the key material in Lantern, a project inspired by conversations about the European tradition of straw structures between Anvil Tree creative director Chris Pancoe and visual anthropologist and artist Vytautus Musteikis. Pancoe and Hargraves met Musteikis while building a room for Sweden’s ice hotel in 2022; they brought him to Canada to work with them on Lantern and continue the dialogue. 

Lantern was woven from agricultural waste and salvaged wood last fall as part of Holiday Alley, a Selkirk event celebrating creativity.
Left on display over the winter, it was set ablaze for this year’s spring equinox. The intention is to make the burning of a straw sculpture an annual community event in Selkirk, as it is in agronomy-based cultures around the world. 

Such social—even ritual—events are a forte of Anvil Tree. The firm is responsible for the fabrication of most of Winnipeg’s Warming Huts—an annual event for which Sputnik was a founding organizer, and for which the Patkaus built their bent plywood shelters in 2011. Anvil Tree carries out ice harvesting and installation for ice carving competitions in Winnipeg, as well as for rural events like the Trappers’ Festival in the Pas, northern Manitoba. Their grove of glowing bicycles, suspended from trees, has become a prominent part of Winnipeg’s Culture Days celebrations. 

While Lantern was assembled by hand, Anvil Tree is also dextrous with parametric modelling and plasma cutters. Lean In is the first of a number of anticipated artistic/urbanistic interventions for Sputnik’s masterplan in Fort Francis, Ontario, where they are working with Rainy River First Nation. A new box office for Winnipeg’s Dave Barber Cinematheque used plasma-cut perforated steel to solve several tricky service and security problems for Winnipeg’s main art-house cinema. They’ve also built a restaurant in remote Churchill, Manitoba—a tricky logistical challenge. In such work, the company demonstrates a tight symbiosis with the architects and interior designers of Sputnik Architecture. 

But Anvil Tree’s first love remains art. For artist Wayne and Jordan Stranger’s monument to Indigenous leader Chief Peguis at the Manitoba Legislature, the Strangers are casting the bronze for the 14-foot statue in Peguis First Nation. The steel interior armature was fabricated by Anvil Tree in their workshop in Winnipeg. 

It’s in this facility—a former welding workshop that now includes a woodworking studio, a metal shop, a finish shop and ancillary buildings for materials and equipment—that Hargraves plans to see the full realization of Anvil Tree’s mission. “The goal is to have this constant collaboration with artists that are here; and now, if they want to do something big, they have access to a workshop,” says Hargraves. The second-floor workshop spaces will be used to train visiting artists in fabrication techniques, as well as to host design-build studios for architecture students.

As they carry their architectural practices into new realms, Patkau Architects, Omer Arbel, and Anvil Tree manifest a broader definition of the Greek architektōn—master maker—than is encompassed by professional practice alone. From “quiet prayer” to operatic ambition, their fabrication practices provide a wealth of lessons in the artistic, technical and social potential of architecture.

Lawrence Bird, MRAIC, is an architect, city planner and visual artist based in Winnipeg. 

As appeared in the September 2024 issue of Canadian Architect magazine

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The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) is presenting HOME: A Space of Sharing and Strength, an exhibition which will highlight recent acquisitions made by the NGC that explore the idea of home as a “powerful but fragile site.”

The exhibition, which opened earlier this month, will run until December 15, 2024.

Six artists will be featured in the show, including Sarah Anne Johnson based in Winnepeg; Jimmy Manning, Inuk, based in Kinngait [Cape Dorset]; Siwa Mgoboza, Hlubi, based in Cape Town; Curtis Talwst Santiago of Trinidadian heritage, based in Edmonton; Frank Shebageget, Anishinaabe, based in Ottawa; and Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, born in Botswana, and now based in The Hague. All six artists wil depict the global reach of art practices based in local and community concerns.

The 16 works on view include photography, sculptures, paintings and prints that were acquired by the National Gallery of Canada between 2020 and 2024.

HOME: A Space of Sharing and Strength suggests that home is “a place of respect, enriched through shared experiences, values and memories.”

“This show invites visitors to spend time and reflect on the meaning of home in today’s context and understand how it might have a different definition for different people. The artists we highlight express home in diverse ways, inspired by their own experiences and roots,” said Andrea Kunard, senior curator, photographs collection at the NGC. “This exhibition is also a unique occasion to discover in a shared space how NGC’s newest acquisitions reflect some of the most pressing concerns in contemporary artistic practice.” 

In this exhibition, the artists will showcase how communities resist destructive legacies of government agendas by means of embracing memories of both home and community. They also depict how home can be a “non-human, natural site” that is shared between species.

“This exhibition presents these newly acquired works together in dialogue with decolonial curatorial methods and dynamic critical art practices rooted in concepts of place making and belonging,” said Rachelle Dickenson, associate curator, Indigenous ways and decolonization at the NGC. “From Inuk, Anishinaabe, Canadian and Hlubi artists comes an assemblage of unique perspectives of the meaning of home, and we are pleased to bring well-deserved attention to these artists at the NGC.”

HOME: A Space of Sharing and Strength is supported by the Scotiabank Photography Program at the NGC and is the result of a curatorial collaboration between the NGC’s Contemporary Art, Indigenous Ways & Decolonization (IWD) and Photography curatorial departments represented by Kunard.

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Soft Fits is a site-specific installation by Brooklyn-based WIP Collaborative in collaboration with local youth. It is situated under the trees at the edge of The Bentway Studio Terrace and is a project that was designed with teenagers in mind, and the ways that they interact with public space.

As a result, WIP Collaborative worked closely with local youth to create an inviting and inclusive environment that “blurs the boundaries between hard and soft public space.”

This installation is a series of public furniture units built with metal framework and fabric netting.

The project was inspired by the city’s cliffs, bluffs, and forest landscapes, and the installation features netted frames that form shared spaces under and between the trees, creating a relationship to the surrounding environment.

The design of Soft Fits was informed by surveys conducted with local teenagers. Many of the responses indicated that there are several public spaces that are intended to be used by either kids or adults, that do not fit what teenagers look for in a community space.

With varied heights, curvatures, and slopes, the pieces aim to encourage engagement for everyone. Hand-crafted woven textures and fringes introduce a soft materiality on the terrace, which invite users to engage through touch.

The Bentway Studio’s terrace is located on the east edge of Canoe Landing Park and is a ground-level, barrier-free space.

A work by Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Chloë Bass, is also featured in The Bentway’s summer exhibition.

The artwork, called Perspective Alignment, invites guests to reflect on our shared histories and collective well-being and consists of sculptural benches crafted from solid Ontario rock, each of which are engraved with poetic reflections.

The benches draw from the mental health concept of perspective alignment. They also aim to reflect on different forms of recovery, influenced by historical traumas, colonisation, policing, and the imposition of societal boundaries.

Each stone bench features its own engraved text and the silhouette of a tree local to the landscape at one time. According to The Bentway, the texts, taken together, make up a loose poem, which align multiple perspectives on recovery from across time.

The artwork is located across The Bentway site.

Softer City will be on display until October 6, 2024.

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Artist Kapwani Kiwanga’s installation in the Canada Pavilion at this year’s Venice Art Biennale is a stunning delight. Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and curated by Gaëtane Verna, Kiwanga’s Trinket features millions of suspended Venetian conterie, or seed beads, whose presence transforms the pavilion’s surfaces with their delicate, shimmering appearance. Enfolded within the beads’ elusive beauty is a provocative commentary upon the exploitative imbalances which fuelled colonial commerce, for which seed beads were often used as currency. Trinket thus reminds its viewers of Venice’s history as a centre for artisanal glasswork and expansionist mercantilism, thereby querying the sources of the wealth behind the city’s grandeur. 

The care with which the beads have been installed offers a beautiful homage to the BBPR-designed 1957 Canada Pavilion, one of the great works of postwar Italian modernism. While the pavilion is sometimes critiqued as a difficult space in which to exhibit, Kiwanga’s installation is perfectly calibrated to its surroundings. The details of the suspended strings of beads are exquisite, and bear the close scrutiny of an in-person examination. Just as the pavilion itself was thoughtfully designed around two trees growing on its site, the strings of beads have been carefully installed around exit signs, fire alarms and other accoutrements which punctuate modern buildings. A temporary raised floor, slightly removed from the walls, allows the beads to fall into a shallow reveal. The resulting effect emphasizes the vertical continuity of the iridescent bead surfaces. 

Displayed within the pavilion are several sculptures made from more beads, and from other valuable materials used in colonial commerce, such as blown glass, Pernambuco wood, copper, bronze, and palladium leaf. The resulting composition honours not only BBPR’s design, but also the Renaissance city’s tradition of using sculpture and painting to complete architecture.

Curated by São Paulo Museum of Art Artistic Director Adriano Pedrosa, this year’s Biennale was organized under the theme Foreigners Everywhere, and celebrates Indigenous, queer, and folk artists—many now deceased—whose works have not previously been shown at the Biennale. The theme stands in defence of multiplicity and outsider-ness (for we are all strangers in certain contexts) against current xenophobic trends in global politics and culture. While the national pavilions are free to chart their own courses, it is fruitful to reflect upon Kiwanga’s work through this lens. At the pavilion’s opening, Elissa Golberg, Canada’s ambassador to Italy, described Canada as a place where one finds foreigners everywhere. While such a comment invites further scrutiny (especially when seen from the perspective of Indigenous Canadians), one could find far worse places to begin defining our national identity.

While Kiwanga’s masterpiece is on display in Venice until November 24, 2024, another exhibition at the National Gallery in Ottawa this summer helps to complete our understanding of beadwork as a medium of material culture, artistic endeavour, and collective identity. Radical Stitch features Indigenous artists’ beading works—many of which are truly stunning—in a celebration of this medium of cultural self-expression. Taken together, Trinket and Radical Stitch elevate beadwork while inviting us to question: which materials have value, and why?

Architectural historian Peter Sealy is an Assistant Professor at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto.

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Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank will receive 71,000 cans of food from the AED industry, thanks to donations from the 22nd edition of CANstruction Toronto, a competition which aims to raise awareness and support Toronto’s hunger gap.

Since 1999, Canstruction Toronto has been bringing together the local design community to create canned sculptures for a competition food-raiser that gives back to people struggling with hunger. Each year, unique structures are exhibited to the public in Toronto and are eventually deconstructed, brought back to the Daily Bread Food Bank and distributed to people in need over the summer months.

This year, a total of 21 teams from different architecture and engineering firms across the city put their creativity to the test by building sculptures using cans of shelf-stable food.

Each entry was judged by a jury of industry experts during the Awards Ceremony. Some of this year’s designs include an illuminated Care Bear structure and a Terminator skull. This year also marked the introduction of a new award category: Most Cans Used, in which the winning entry used 9,972 cans.

To date, Canstruction Toronto has donated over 1 million pounds of food to Daily Bread Food Bank. This year, 71,000 cans were used across all 21 designs.

The total weight of food collected this year was 83,590 lbs, which is up from 67,138 lbs last year and is equivalent to an increase of 25 per cent.

Below is the full list of winners.

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Best Meal Award
Core Architects Inc.

Can-necting the Hungry City, which used 5,208 cans, represents the journey the  community is taking to arrive at a place where all have reliable access to food.

Honourable Mention Award
Gensler Architecture & Design Canada Inc.

Cantunator used a total of 4,630 items. Like the Terminator reimagined, this project aimed to hold the promise to lead humanity into an age of prosperity and abundance. This sculpture also aims to be a symbol of the positive potential of AI to address global challenges, including hunger and food security.

Structural Ingenuity Award
Diamond Schmitt Architects

Using 5,332 items, Sharing Can Bear Care, uses the popular Care Bear brand, and represents the image of Care Bears as their food sculpture. The team borrowed the imagery of the Care bears and the associated values and lessons taught to children in the show: care, love, bravery, friendliness, and compassion.

Best Use of Labels Award
DIALOG

Using 3,215 cans, Global Fever aims to raise awareness of global warming by reimagining the blue planet turning red and forming the red bulb of a thermometer.

Best Original Design Award
LEA Consulting and CS&P Architects

This project, which used 4,896 cans, is called Just Keep Swimming, which serves as a commentary on food security and sustainability. The can-structed fish aims to showcase how a single can of food is bigger than one may initially think. Using tuna also aims to reflects on the depletion of the ocean’s resources.

Most Cans Award
Turner Fleischer Architects Inc.

SOS: Hunger Emergency used 9,972 cans and is a bottle adrift in the sea of food insecurity crashing onto the shore and shattering, aiming to represent a call for help from 1 in 10 Torontonians who rely on food banks.

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Among the winning projects of this year’s Winter Stations is NOVA, an installation designed by a group of architects students at Metropolitan University (TMU) including Jake Levy, Emily Lensin, Luca Castellan, Nathaniel Barry, Sabeeh Mobashar and Mikayla Burmania.

Nova represents a star that crashed on top of a lifeguard station and illuminates Woodbine Beach at night. The project aims to highlight TMU’s past decade of Winter Stations, inspired by the origami, materiality, and form of Snowcone, Lithoform, and S’Winter Station.

The project also introduces 3D printing, a textile canopy, and a steel pipe connection to create a pavilion with “Resonance.” Additionally, the star pavilion encourages users to engage with their surroundings, and the lifeguard station allows them to access panoramic views of the beach.

“Enthusiastic students were excited to introduce 3D printing, modularity and prefabricated construction to NOVA and create a star that shields occupants from the strong wind and snow gusts experienced on the beaches,” said Levy.

“Being part of the 10th year of Winter Stations was truly incredible. TMU’s enduring legacy in this competition has been pivotal. Over the past six months, students have had the opportunity to explore new materiality and fabrication methods, and we express gratitude for the unwavering support from the University, the Department of Architectural Science, dedicated staff members, professors, and the Winter Stations community.”

Winter Stations was launched by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates, and Curio in 2014. In celebration of its 10th year, this year’s theme for Winter Stations is Resonance, which challenged designers to go on a journey to reinvent and reimagine cherished installations from Winter Stations’ history.

The selected winners saw their visions realized by the support of Anex Works, a Toronto-based fabrication group. NOVA, along with the other public art installations will be on display from now until the end of March and can be found at Woodbine Beach, Woodbine Park, Kew Gardens, and Ivan Forest Gardens.

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Winter Stations, launched by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates, and Curio in 2014 has launched the winning stations selected from hundreds of submissions.

This year, the theme for Winter Stations, which is back for its 10th year, is Resonance. As a result, designers were challenged to go on a journey to reinvent and reimagine cherished installations from Winter Stations history.

The selected winners saw their visions realized by the support of Anex Works, a Toronto-based fabrication group. The nine public art installations will be on display from now until the end of March and can be found at Woodbine Beach, Woodbine Park, Kew Gardens, and Ivan Forest Gardens.

The winning designs are being showcased alongside three student installations that were designed and built by the Toronto Metropolitan University, the University of Waterloo, and the University of Guelph, respectively. Two designs from the Winter Stations Archive are also on display.

“The launch of Winter Stations brought smiles to the hundreds of people, families, and dogs that came out to see this year’s exhibit. After ten years of consecutively bringing bright and bold art to Toronto’s public realm, the impact of Winter Stations resonates directly with our innate playful nature and we hope to continue this impact for the years to come,” said RAW Design architect Dakota Wares-Tani.

Plans are currently in development for more exhibits later in 2024, sponsored and hosted by Northcrest Developments.

This year’s competition was made possible by the support of RAW Design, Northcrest Developments, and the Beaches BIA along with CreateTO, Sali Tabacchi Branding & Design, Meevo Digital and Micro Pro Sienna.

The 2024 Winter Stations winners are:

We Caught A UFO! by Xavier Madden and Katja Banovic, Croatia and Australia

“We Caught a UFO!” builds upon the project “In the Belly of a Bear,” which used the lifeguard chair by lifting the public above ground into a cozy space, transporting them into a new world. This station reimagines these qualities by referencing the rumours and whispers of the many UFO sightings across Lake Ontario.

A KALEIDOSCOPIC ODYSSEY by Brander Architects Inc (Adam Brander, Nilesh P., Ingrid Garcia, Maryam Emadzadeh), Canada

A KALEIDOSCOPIC ODYSSEY invites viewers to step into an experience where they “challenge where reality ends and imagination begins.” Visitors are able to explore the limitless depths of perception with this adaptation of Kaleidoscope of the Senses, 2020.

Making Waves by Adria Maynard and Purvangi Patel, Canada

Making Waves is a whimsical piece of furniture that represents “the ways that simple actions can ripple outwards to ‘resonate’ across time and space, moving and impacting others in surprising ways.” The installation takes the form of an exaggerated couch and forms an unusual urban living room where neighbours can gather and sit by the water.

NIMBUS by David Stein, Canada

This station was inspired by the airy strands that make up the 2016 installation Floating Ropes. Nimbus’s playful shapes and colours evolve the concept and materials by adding  blue ropes hanging below a bubbly white structure. The station asks visitors to “consider the presence and absence of rain in our contemporary world by referencing both severe storms and flooding” as well as trends of lack of rain, drought, and desertification.

Bobbin’ by Max Perry, Jason Cai, Kenneth Siu, Simon Peiris, Yoon Hur, Angeline Reyes, Oluwatobiloba Babalola, Yiqing Liu, Kenyo Musa, Ali Hasan; University of Waterloo School of Architecture

Bobbin’ invites visitors to a place where moments and memories result in reflection. The seesaws draw from the playground-like Sling Swing and Lifeline projects and its form within the landscape reflects HotBox and Introspection. Each material has been sourced from previous student projects and salvaged materials from the community of Cambridge.

Nova by Jake Levy, Emily Lensin, Luca Castellan, and Nathaniel Barry; Toronto Metropolitan University – Department of Architectural Science

Nova is a star that has crashed on top of a lifeguard station and illuminates Woodbine Beach throughout the night. This station highlights TMU’s past decade of Winter Stations, inspired by the origami, materiality, and form of Snowcone, Lithoform, and S’Winter Station. Nova also introduces 3D printing, a textile canopy, and an elegant steel pipe connection to create a pavilion with “Resonance.”

WINTERACTION by University of Guelph – Department of Landscape Architecture (Afshin Ashari, Ali Ebadi, Jacob Farrish, Cameron Graham, Ngoc Huy Pham, Ramtin Shafaghati, Zackary Tammaro-Cater) and Ashari Architects (Amir Ashari, Sara Nazemi, Anahita Kazempour, Hakimeh Elahi, Yasaman Sirjani, Zahra Jafari)

WINTERACTION resonates with OneCanada and WE[AR] projects and is a dual installation in Iran and Canada that fosters solidarity and social interaction between the two nations. Visitors are invited on a journey through a labyrinth that appears when an AR app is activated on their phones, which symbolizes a challenging quest and leads from “confusion to enlightenment, to reach inner peace.”

The two stations set to make their return from the Winter Stations Archives are CONRAD by Novak Djogo and Daniel Joshua Vanderhorst, and Delighthouse by Nick Green and Greig Pirrie.

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Four projects have been selected for the 25th edition of the International Garden Festival in Grand-Métis, Quebec, called The Ecology of Possibility.

In celebration of its 25th anniversary, Ève De Garie-Lamanque, artistic director, has invited designers to imagine the future of the garden. A total of 216 projects were submitted by designers from 30 countries.

The four gardens selected for the 2024 edition include the following.

Couleur Nature by Vanderveken, Architecture + Paysage | Saint-Lambert, Québec, Canada

Couleur Nature is a study into the roles gardens play in society. The installation strives to juxtapose two visions of the garden. It compares the great areas of utilitarian lawn and individual leisure devices with poor social and ecological indicators with contemplative gardens with high reflexive and ecological indicators. Additionally, it demonstrates the “absurdity of a dominant mono-culture.”

FUTURE DRIFTS  by Julia Lines Wilson | United States

In the first year of the festival, priority plant species were identified for habitat protection in the St. Lawrence Vision 2000 Action Plan. Among these species was the Anticosti Aster, a cross between New York and Rush Asters. Despite habitat protection, the Anticosti and Rush Asters remain endangered species 25 years later. This garden poses the following as a question on the past and future: “If New York and Rush Asters crossed again, what would that look like? What possible futures can be sown by these species’ interactions?”

Rue Liereman / Organ Man Street by Pioniersplanters | Belgium

In densely populated and urbanized areas such as Flanders, the fraction of land occupied by domestic or private gardens is estimated to be 12 per cent which is equivalent to four times the total surface area of natural areas in the region. As a result, domestic gardens have the potential to help reduce the effects of climate change and stop the impoverishment of biodiversity as long as they are designed and maintained naturally.

Superstrata by mat-on | Italy

This year’s theme, The Ecology of Possibility emphasizes the value and interconnectedness of life forms and ecosystems. The garden proposal illustrates “the tension between nature’s freedom and humanity’s inclination to impose order” and uses a geological map as a metaphor. The installation highlights the co-creation of landscapes by human and non-human entities and showcases the interconnected nature of their interactions.

This year, three projects also received a special mention from the jury. They include Welcome, Yellow Bricks Garden, by Azzurra Brugiotti (Italy), En Équilibre, by Sonia and Natalia Dacko (Spain), and Aguas, by Jomarly Cruz Galarza and Virgen Berrios Torres (Puerto Rico).

This year’s jury included Ron Williams, architect and landscape architect AAPQ CSLA, FCSLA FRAIC, Jérôme Lapierre, architect OAQ, founder of Jérôme Lapierre Architecte, Marie Claude Massicotte, senior landscape architect AAPQ CSLA and member of the Festival’s board of directors, Alexander Reford, director of the Reford Gardens / International Garden Festival, Ève De Garie-Lamanque, artistic director of the International Garden Festival, and François Leblanc, technical coordinator of the International Garden Festival.

This year’s edition of the festival will take place from June 22 to October 6, 2024. In celebration of its 25th anniversary,  various projects including a symposium are on the agenda.

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Winter Stations, launched by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates and Curio in 2014, which is back for its 10th year, has revealed the four winning designs selected from hundreds of submissions.

The winning designs will be showcased alongside three student designs from Toronto Metropolitan University, Waterloo Department of Architecture and Guelph University as well as two designs from the Winter Stations Archive.

The competition aims to capture the imagination of designers, artists, and architects to create thought-provoking designs and will launch nine public art installations this season.

The lifeguard stands at Toronto Woodbine beach will once again transform as there are plans for six new stations along the east end beaches. Additionally, three stations, one 2024 winner and two from the Winter Stations Archives, will be displayed along Queen Street East at Woodbine Park, Kew Gardens, and Ivan Forest Gardens.

To celebrate its 10th milestone, this year’s theme is Resonance. Designers were challenged to go on a journey to reinvent, reimagine cherished installations from Winter Stations history.

“Over the past 10 years of Winter Stations, we’ve created incredible works of art that have moved people in incredibly meaningful ways during a season that can feel gloomy otherwise. We hope that the impact of bringing bright and joyful stations to Toronto’s east end continues to resonate,” said RAW Design Architect Dakota Wares-Tani.

The 2024 winning installations are set to launch on Family Day weekend and will be on display until the end of March with plans for more exhibits later in 2024 being sponsored and hosted by Northcrest Developments. Details will be announced in the late spring.

“Winter Stations is an incredible example of creating vibrant spaces through inspiring, interactive art. Aligned with our focus on sustainability and the intersection of creativity and play, we’re proud to be supporting this year’s work and providing a North York location for extended viewing of the winning designs by the public,” says Mitchell Marcus, Executive Director of Site Activation & Programing with Northcrest Developments.

This year’s competition is made possible by the sponsorship of RAW Design and Northcrest Developments along with CreateTO, Sali Tabacchi Branding & Design, Meevo Digital and Micro Pro Sienna.

The 2024 Winter Stations winners are:

We Caught A UFO! by Xavier Madden and Katja Banovic, Croatia and Australia

“We Caught a UFO!” builds upon the project “In the Belly of a Bear,” which used the lifeguard chair by lifting the public above ground into a cozy space, transporting them into a new world. This station reimagines these qualities by referencing the rumours and whispers of the many UFO sightings across Lake Ontario.

A KALEIDOSCOPIC ODYSSEY by Brander Architects Inc (Adam Brander, Nilesh P., Ingrid Garcia, Maryam Emadzadeh), Canada

A KALEIDOSCOPIC ODYSSEY invites viewers to step into an experience where they “challenge where reality ends and imagination begins.” Visitors will be able to explore the limitless depths of perception with this  adaptation of Kaleidoscope of the Senses, 2020.

Making Waves by Adria Maynard and Purvangi Patel, Canada

Making Waves is a whimsical piece of furniture that represents “the ways that simple actions can ripple outwards to ‘resonate’ across time and space, moving and impacting others in surprising ways.” The installation takes the form of an exaggerated couch and forms an unusual urban living room where neighbours can gather and sit by the water.

NIMBUS by David Stein, Canada

This station was inspired by the airy strands that make up the 2016 installation Floating Ropes. Nimbus’s playful shapes and colours evolve the concept and materials by adding  blue ropes hanging below a bubbly white structure. The station asks visitors to “consider the presence and absence of rain in our contemporary world by referencing both severe storms and flooding” as well as trends of lack of rain, drought, and desertification.

Bobbin’ by Max Perry, Jason Cai, Kenneth Siu, Simon Peiris, Yoon Hur, Angeline Reyes, Oluwatobiloba Babalola, Yiqing Liu, Kenyo Musa, Ali Hasan; University of Waterloo School of Architecture

Bobbin’ invites visitors to a place where moments and memories result in reflection. The seesaws draw from the playground-like Sling Swing and Lifeline projects and its form within the landscape reflects HotBox and Introspection. Each material has been sourced from previous student projects and salvaged materials from the community of Cambridge.

Nova by Jake Levy, Emily Lensin, Luca Castellan, and Nathaniel Barry; Toronto Metropolitan University – Department of Architectural Science

Nova is a star that has crashed on top of a lifeguard station and illuminates Woodbine Beach throughout the night. This station highlights TMU’s past decade of Winter Stations, inspired by the origami, materiality, and form of Snowcone, Lithoform, and S’Winter Station. Nova also introduces 3D printing, a textile canopy, and an elegant steel pipe connection to create a pavilion with “Resonance.”

WINTERACTION by University of Guelph – Department of Landscape Architecture (Afshin Ashari, Ali Ebadi, Jacob Farrish, Cameron Graham, Ngoc Huy Pham, Ramtin Shafaghati, Zackary Tammaro-Cater) and Ashari Architects (Amir Ashari, Sara Nazemi, Anahita Kazempour, Hakimeh Elahi, Yasaman Sirjani, Zahra Jafari)

WINTERACTION resonates with OneCanada and WE[AR] projects and is a dual installation in Iran and Canada that fosters solidarity and social interaction between the two nations. Visitors are invited on a journey through a labyrinth, which symbolizes a challenging quest and leads from “confusion to enlightenment, to reach inner peace.”

The two stations set to make their return from the Winter Stations Archives will be CONRAD by Novak Djogo and Daniel Joshua Vanderhorst and Delighthouse by Nick Green and Greig Pirrie.

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An Indigenous-led exhibition presented by the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, is currently on display.

The exhibition, called ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home, was originally organized by and premiered at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal.

ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home was co-curated by Joar Nango, Norway-based Sámi architect and artist, Taqralik Partridge, associate curator, Indigenous Art – Inuit Art Focus, Art Gallery of Ontario, Jocelyn Piirainen, associate curator, National Gallery of Canada and Rafico Ruiz, associate director of research at the CCA.

The exhibition highlights installations by Indigenous designers and artists and offers reflections on how Arctic Indigenous communities “engage with the land and establish empowered, self-determined spaces of home and belonging.”

Its accompanying publication, and programming, ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home aims to initiate long-term impact and foster new dialogues and perspectives on Northern Indigenous practices of designing and building that are not traditionally considered in architectural canons.

“Towards Home recognizes that architectural design in this country has been generally insensitive to Indigenous peoples’ traditions and cultures. Participating in this project, our Faculty hopes to broaden understandings and support our shared efforts towards fostering practices of land-based design,” said Jeannie Kim, associate professor at the Daniels Faculty and organizer of the Toronto exhibition.

Showcased works include Taqralik Partridge and Tiffany Shaw’s The Porch,Geronimo Inutiq’s I’m Calling Home, Nuna, an installation by asinnajaq in conversation with Tiffany Shaw and Offernat (Votive Night) by Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson.

The exhibition also facilitated the Futurecasting: Indigenous-led Architecture and Design in the Arctic workshop, which brings together nine emerging architectural designers and duojars (craftspeople) to discuss the future of design on Indigenous lands across Sapmi and Turtle Island. This workshop was co-curated by Ella den Elzen and Nicole Luke.

Contributors to the exhibition include asinnajaq, Carola Grahn and Ingemar Israelsson, Geronimo Inutiq, Joar Nango, Taqralik Partridge, and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory. The original exhibition design was by Tiffany Shaw of Edmonton, with graphic design by FEED, Montreal.

The exhition will be on display until March 22, 2024, in the Architecture and Design Gallery, located at 1 Spadina Crescent in Toronto.

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The federal government will be providing an investment of $25 million to help the Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) meet net-zero carbon operating standards.

The announcement was made by Minister Fraser and Stephan Jost, Michael and Sonja Koerner Director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario on November 14, and will help the new gallery showcase artwork while being energy efficient and operating without burning fossil fuel.

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) is Canada’s leading visual art museum that attracts roughly 1 million visitors each year. In order to accommodate its growing collection of modern and contemporary art, the AGO is building the Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery, which will increase the AGO’s total space available to display art by 30 per cent.

Over the last 10 years, the AGO has experienced growth in its collections, with over 20,000 works of art added in the past five years alone.

Along with meeting net-zero carbon operating standards, the five-floor, 40,000 square foot gallery space, will display the works of modern and contemporary artists from the present day as well as adapt to the needs of future generations of artists working across all media.

” Investments like the one announced today for the Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario ensure that community infrastructure is energy efficient and environmentally friendly. The federal government will continue working with our partners to minimize environmental impacts and build sustainable communities,” said Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities.

“The Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery is a net-zero carbon building that will allow us to showcase extraordinary art, from a wide range of cultures, in a world class building. The architecture team, donors, and now the federal government have joined forces to ensure the AGO will continue to be a leading global art museum,” said Stephan Jost, Michael and Sonja Koerner director, and CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontari0.

The Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery team is made up of Diamond Schmitt, Selldorf Architects and Two Row Architect.

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Winter Stations recently launched its 10th annual design competition and is calling on local and international designers to reimagine installations from the past to celebrate the milestone.

Winter Stations was launched in 2014 by RAW Architects, Ferris + Associates and Curio to challenge local and international designers to transform the utilitarian lifeguard stations along Toronto’s beaches into works of public art. The competition, which attracts more than 8,000 visitors each year, has seen entries from more than 90 countries.

The theme chosen for the 2024 edition is “Resonance,” in celebration of the 10-year milestone. Meant to “celebrate a decade of resonating with hearts and minds,” the theme aims to capture the artistic legacy and impact of Winter Stations while inviting the community to reflect on past installations.

“We are excited to be launching the 10th annual Winter Stations competition and bringing a milestone opportunity to showcase artists from around the world here in Toronto,” said RAW Design, architect Dakota Wares-Tani. “The theme for this year’s competition invites a reflection into the 10 years of Winter Stations and the impact a public art program can have. We encourage anyone interested to submit their design before December 1st.”

The event will take place outdoors in the expanse of the beach with designs that may be experienced up close, from afar, in person and virtually.

All 2024 installations will be temporarily built for six weeks and must be able to withstand Toronto’s winter weather. Installations will be unveiled on Family Day Weekend in Canada (February 19, 2024) and will be available for viewing until March 31, 2024.

Registrations are now open for the competition with the deadline for submissions on December 1, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. EST. Winners will be announced early January. There is no fee to enter the competition which welcomes entries from all around the world. The winning teams will be rewarded $2,000 (CAD).

Designers are  encouraged to visit the archive and choose a previous installation as a source to inspire their designs.

For more information, click here.

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As c\a\n\a\d\a’s leading voice in architectural journalism, and at a time when support for architectural criticism has waned, Canadian Architect’s review of Not for Sale! by Architects Against Housing Alienation at the Venice Biennale is important. We are grateful for this interest, and we appreciate Adele Weder’s detailed engagement with our work (see CA, August 2023). Her review is helping us hone our arguments and work to improve the quality of our project and its direction. 

However, we question the impression of our Not for Sale! campaign that your readership received and are writing here to share our perspective. Our project is ongoing and won’t end when the exhibition closes in late November. The exhibition is just one step in a long process of creating real change and new forms of advocacy that architects across c\a\n\a\d\a can participate in. In other words, it’s a “hot mess” for a purpose, and in the best way. 

First, we wholeheartedly agree that transforming the housing system is significantly a design problem and requires images as well as words. Second, the radically collaborative nature of the project is essential to its functioning as an inclusive campaign. It might indeed require a “dog’s breakfast” of different approaches to solve the magnitude of brokenness we face. Third, we think meaningful demands need to exceed what is currently possible in our political climate in order to change the conversation about housing. 

On our first point, each of the ten demands that comprise the campaign is richly illustrated with an architectural project, designed by a number of the country’s most celebrated architects, though the review unfortunately did not describe this work. We purposely designed the pavilion–the heart-quarters of a campaign to imagine possibilities for decommodified architecture in c\a\n\a\d\a–to be a “graphic riot”. It includes over a hundred architectural drawings, perspectives, and diagrams, in order to represent the many diverse voices who have come together to make a common campaign. The review states that the “modest” design transformation has two main features: the Land Back garden and the interior mezzanine, somehow missing a third architectural transformation: the exterior hoarding that blocks the pavilion for viewers approaching and presents them not with words, but images of a tent encampment in Vancouver, illustrating the real housing conditions for the most housing-insecure Canadians.

Second, this project is unique, not only because of its subject matter, but because of its collaborative formation. This collaboration is on display in the hoarding mentioned above, whose images were made for a documentary with the tent community, and the selection of images from that documentary was done with the community’s participation. Not for Sale! was initiated by six people who bring different skill sets to the project; although we all teach, some of us are designers, some historians, and half of us are registered architects. Indeed, the project is “overcrowded” (which seems fitting for a project about housing). Though the review lists some contributing architects, it omits Urban Arts Architecture’s Ouri Scott, Grounded Architecture, SOLO Architecture, and the work of David T. Fortin Architect—all Indigenous practitioners whose contributions are crucial for understanding both housing alienation and an architecture of connection–as well as SvN, whose senior partner John van Nostrand is the most experienced affordable housing architect in this campaign. 

We collaborated initially with thirty organizations, which form ten teams, each including an architect, an activist and a housing advocate—though the campaign has grown to over forty organizations and over a hundred contributors. The ten demands, which are the centrepiece of the campaign, emerged in a collaborative and bottom-up process. Hardly “compiled by academics,” the ten multi-disciplinary teams wrote and designed them, and they evolved over regular meetings with all participants. This campaign is a radical experiment in uniting architects, activists and advocates in what we hope is a new form of architectural activism, collaboratively created with direct ‘on-the-ground’ experience from across the country. What is perhaps most important is that the campaign has built a national conversation about architecture that includes people with other expertise who share similar and overlapping goals around housing justice in c\a\n\a\d\a. While the review doubts our ability to “enforce such demands,” its contributors are already doing the work—applying for grants, building coalitions of allied organizations, lobbying politicians and organizations, hosting events, and boosting the profiles of each campaign through diverse print and digital media. The project builds on this momentum and will continue to raise awareness and advocate for change. 

Finally, we want to underline that we strongly believe the project’s proposals, while ambitious, are realistic and realizable. The review is unconvinced by the Land Back team’s demand and also doubts the demand for a gentrification tax. Taxes very much like the one the Gentrification Tax team proposes were implemented in Vermont, New Zealand, Ontario, and Washington in the 1970s; the main distinction of this proposal is that it is earmarked so that the profits from housing sales fund housing affordability. There is nothing unrealizable about this proposition; it simply needs to channel an already existing political will. Nor is the Land Back demand of co-ownership of crown land unrealistic. It is an invitation to imagine a different future, one where First Nations leaders work with Canadian governments to reimagine how housing provision is addressed/redressed. The provocation of the team here is, in fact, designed to unsettle the settler imagination, and, in this, it seems to be working.

Our campaign makes ten demands that link c\a\n\a\d\a’s legacy of colonialism and the theft of Indigenous land to the deep inequality that characterizes c\a\n\a\d\a’s current housing system. We do this because today’s unsustainable ideas about the speculative value of property were formed through the process of land dispossession and because it is Indigenous practices that have so much to teach us about how to dis-alienate our homes. Government policies only change for the better because citizens make strong arguments that exceed the limitations of the current legislative and political system. Each team, the students working in the pavilion, and other members of AAHA, are all taking concrete actions toward their realization. As the review rightly points out, we are more concerned with this ongoing campaign than the exhibition itself, and we appreciate the words of encouragement for its success. We agree that our students will have much to teach us along the way—they will in fact be subject to the conditions for housing for longer than we will. We’re just not sure that they will settle for “realistic” adjustments that preserve the status quo.

-Adrian Blackwell, David Fortin, Matthew Soules, Sara Stevens, Patrick Stewart, Tijana Vujosevic (Organizing Committee, Architects Against Housing Alienation)

I reiterate my appreciation of the great challenge and complexity of addressing the housing crisis, and respect that the Not For Sale! team holds a difference of opinion on how to address that crisis. However, I must point out two inaccuracies in their letter of concern.

 First: I agree that the Indigenous perspective is significant, which is why I deemed it important to include curator Simoogit Saa Bax Patrick Stewart’s specific comments. But just as that doesn’t negate the three non-quoted curators, there was no “omission” of any of the other team member names supplied to us. Each of them—including Ouri Scott and David Fortin—are named in the credits. In fact, this complaint affirms my own critique of the project: the pavilion had so many contributors that it was impossible to highlight them all. Whatever insights they could offer—Indigenous and otherwise—tended to be lost in the crowd.

Second: Nowhere in my review do I suggest that co-ownership of crown land with Indigenous peoples is “unrealistic.” On the contrary, here is what I wrote: “If and when that land and its income-generating resources revert to Indigenous stewardship, the Canadian political economy will transform in a major way. Even if the transformation involves co-ownership, the governments’ power and financial strength will almost certainly diminish. You can support that consequence wholeheartedly as historic justice—a fair and necessary transition—but you cannot then assume that our governments will have the wherewithal to bankroll the manifesto’s funding demands for housing, urban revitalization, and reparation payments.” 

We do agree that architecture is political and that architects should have a far greater role in the political life of our cities and our country. For that to happen, we need to encourage more—not less—healthy and robust debate and disagreement, and we need to interpret and reflect each other’s views with accuracy.

-Adele Weder

See all articles in the November issue 

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The building sector accounts for nearly 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions: architecture is humanity’s most polluting activity. But, as Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism opens at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the entangled relationship between architecture and ecocide somehow feels lush with life. 

The exhibition is the first presented by MoMA’s Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment, directed by New York-based Canadian curator Carson Chan. The show underscores the Ambasz Institute’s expansive definition of architecture: going beyond buildings, the exhibition includes political events, works foregrounding material extraction processes and historical racial and economic conditions, and impressive forms of architectural images. While the anthropogenic climate crisis necessitates a radical rethinking of how we practice architecture today, Emerging Ecologies brings forward exciting ideas for what might be considered as architecture. It’s a smart curatorial move at the MoMA, delivering to new publics the imaginative potential of architectural exhibition. 

The 150-some models, drawings, and video works in the show range from the Cambridge Seven Associates’ iconic Tsuruhama Rain Forest Pavilion proposal to the Eames Office’s lesser-known, unbuilt National Fisheries Centre and Aquarium. It also nods to Canada, with fantastic drawings of Solsearch Architects and the New Alchemy Institutes’ Ark for Prince Edward Island. But while the Ark was built in 1976 (and sadly demolished in the 90s), most of the material in the exhibition is highly speculative, rarely involving actual buildings. Sometimes the act of not building is the point: one convincing instance documents a 1981 protest by the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation that ultimately prevented the construction of an environmentally destructive dam project. Can political protest be an act of architectural labour? More broadly, what new territories for productive architectural thinking can emerge when we look beyond architecture as the act of building? 

The exhibition tracks dreamy proposals for alternative architectural dimensions. Highlights include drawings of orbital space colonies commissioned by NASA in the 1970s (illustrations by Don Davis and Rick Guidice have arguably been canonized by this show, despite their existing pop-cultural influence) and inter-species habitation experiments (Ant Farm’s Dolphin Embassy, a floating insect wing that the group originally proposed in an essay for an American lifestyle magazine). 

The exhibition’s saturated aesthetic sensibility highlights the proliferation of images from late-20th-century American countercultural movements that have since become icons of humanity’s uncertain futures. In Emerging Ecologies, architectural speculation benefits from showy spectacle: the theme of “architecture and the environment” has never looked so cool. Many of the works in the exhibit recall the eco-digital landscapes of 128 bit-era cyber gaming worlds in Final Fantasy and Halo. Emerging Ecologies not only provokes nostalgia for the sixth-extinction-core aesthetic of those uncanny worlds, but also emphasizes the vast cultural impact of radical architectural experimentation.

Emerging Ecologies ultimately uses architectural fantasies of the past to turn towards today’s urgent environmental realities. Architecture’s environmental dilemma is that it falls on both sides of the problem/solution binary—the mentioning of which brings up a complicated mess of questions that seem to always elicit an impulse for actionable architectural activism. But the Ambasz Institute’s inaugural exhibition succeeds in its resistance of the standard fixation on environmental solutions, instead presenting a vibrant and vital articulation of architectural imagination.

See all articles in the November issue 

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