The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) announced the addition of the early works of Toyo Ito to its archives. Ito is known for transcending the boundaries of architecture while also speaking out about social needs.

The CCA Collection includes ideas, provocations, inspirations, and trials and errors that have formed the basis of international research, exhibition and publication program. Containing more than 200 archival holdings, the collection has continued to grow over the years with the donation of works by international architects, historians, and critics that document the history, culture, and production of architectural ideas.

According to the CCA, Ito’s decision to donate his archives follows an intention to continue encouraging new research into his work, while also putting it in dialogue with the other artifacts and bodies of work in the CCA Collection.

“The CCA is an architectural museum and research centre I have the utmost trust in. Upon this donation, I received requests from many Japanese architects and researchers, asking if it is possible to keep those archives in Japan. However, I have the confidence that CCA offers unparalleled accessibility for future researchers from around the world to study my works,” said Ito.

Ito was born in 1941 in Gyeongseong (now Seoul), Korea and graduated from the University of Tokyo. He then worked alongside Itsuko Hasegawa, for Kiyonori Kikutake, a central figure in the Metabolist movement. He founded his studio Urban Robot in Tokyo in 1971, which was later renamed Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects.

Ito constructed private house projects that expressed aspects of urban life in Japan throughout his early career. His most remarkable early conceptual contributions were made through projects of this scale and include White U (1976), a house he designed for his sister and her children. This project, which is known for its lightness and openness, is an icon of experimental residential architecture in Japan.

The archival donation to the CCA includes the work produced by his Tokyo-based office between 1971 and 1995.  The donation to the CCA also includes the Aluminium House (URBOT-001), Ito’s first design (1971) published in Toshi Jutaku, the Useless Capsule House (URBOT-002), and the House at Koganei (1979).

“Much of our work originates in the collection, both in our curatorial practice—selecting and applying a contemporary lens to collection material in order to discuss issues of present and future relevance—and in our activity as a research centre—seeking ways to multiply the connections and relationships within this body of material, making it as widely accessible as possible, and facilitating dynamic interpretations of the history of our environment,” said Giovanna Borasi, director and chief curator of the CCA.

Ito has already shared his ideas at the CCA several years ago, during the Anyplace conference that the institution hosted in 1994.

For more information, click here.

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Montreal’s International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) is pleased to launch a new section of its program: FIFA Connexions, a series of talks and workshops open to art, culture, and creative professionals as well as the general public. Launched as part of the 37th edition, these inter-professional study days will offer an opportunity to explore themes of current interest: the creation of new business models for production and distribution of documentaries on art in the digital age, the links between architecture and image, and digital tools for developing a taste for art among young people.

This year’s workshops include:

FIFA CONNEXIONS | Distinctive Models for Broadcasting and Producing Media and Digital Arts in the Public Space

March 21, 09:30 -Noon | Agora Hydro-Québec. Cœur des Sciences de l’UQAM

Panelists: Mouna Andraos, Co-Founder, Daily tous les jours ; Jean-Christophe Yacono, Creative Director, Director and Photographer, 4U2C (Groupe Cirque du Soleil); Pascale Daigle, Director of Programming, Partenariat du Quartier des spectacles ; Thien Vu Dang, Co-Founder and Executive Director, MAPP_MTL; Isabelle Riendeau, Cultural Development Officer, Bureau d’art public and artist Jonathan Villeneuve.

With the participation of Bureau d’art public de Montréal, 4U2C (Cirque du Soleil Group), Daily tous les jours, Quartier des spectacles, MAPP_MTL, Bureau d’art public and Jonathan Villeneuve

In partnership with Conseil québécois des arts médiatiques (CQAM) and Regroupement des arts interdisciplinaires du Québec (RAIQ)

Presentation in French.

FIFA CONNEXIONS | Connexions Lunches | Architects Producing Films: Review of Early Experiments

12:30 PM -1:30 PM | Agora Hydro-Québec. Cœur des Sciences de l’UQAM | Free admission

Myriam Berthelet, TV and documentary producer and director; Marc-André Carignan, columnist in politics and municipal affairs at Radio-Canada, Kollectif/Radio-Canada and Sophie Couture, Associate Director, Digital, Canadian Centre for Architecture.

Presentation in French

In partnership with the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Kollectif.

FIFA CONNEXIONS | Images of the architecture | Visual representation of architectural projects.

March 21, 2 PM -3:30 PM | Agora Hydro-Québec. Cœur des Sciences de l’UQAM | Prix d’une séance

Panelists: Jean Beaudoin, architect, Intégral Jean Beaudoin (IJB) ; Sophie Gironnay, Co-Founder, Artistic and Executive Director, Maison de l’Architecture du
Québec (MAQ) and Olivier Blouin, architect and photographer.

Moderation by Philippe Lupien, Architect and Editor in Chief, Revue ARQ.  Presentation in French.

With the participation of Intégral Jean Beaudoin, Maison de l’Architecture du Québec (MAQ) and ARQ.

FIFA Connexions | Architecture Focus | Masterclass with Gilles Saucier, MOAQ, MOAA, MAIBC, FRAIC, MAAPQ, MCAGBC. In partnership with Ordre des Architectes du Québec (OAQ)

March 21, 4PM-6 PM | Agora Hydro-Québec. Cœur des Sciences de l’UQAM | Screening Fee

Architect, professor and critic guest will give a Masterclass on the relationship between architecture and picture. Gilles Saucier, Co-Founder and Principal , Saucier + Perrotte will be introduced by Nathalie Dion, President of Ordre des architectes du Québec (OAQ).

SPECIAL EVENT |  |  FIFA x KOLLECTIF PARTY | ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN

March 21, 6 PM-10 PM. |  Agora Hydro-Québec. Cœur des Sciences de l’UQAM | PWYC. In collaboration with Kollectif.

FIFA CONNEXIONS | Developing a Taste for Art among Young People through Digital Tools

March 22, 9:30 AM – NOON | Agora Hydro-Québec. Cœur des Sciences de l’UQAM | Screening Fee

Panelists: K. Goldstein, Choregrapher and Artistic Director, KeatBeck Cie; Julie Jaque, Production Manager, Centre Pompidou (Paris) ; Audrey Genois, Executive Director and Julia Roberge Van Der Donckt,

Education and Audience Development Coordinator – MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image ; Stéphanie Lagueux, Coordinator, Studio XX ; Hervé Tullet, Author and Illustrator and Florence Roche, Co-Founder Executive Producer, TOBO. Presentation in French.

With the participation of Centre Pompidou, Compagnie KeatBeck, Momenta Biennale de l’Image, TOBO et Studio XX. In partnership with Youth Medias Alliance.

FIFA CONNEXIONS | Connexions Lunches | Expo Idéale Workshop  

March 22, 12:30 PM-1:30 PM  | Agora Hydro-Québec. Cœur des Sciences de l’UQAM | Free admission

In partnership with TOBO, Hervé Tullet will present visual creation workshops until the completion of a collective Ideal Expo. A workshop combining creativity and interactivity for all, of all ages and all creative horizons. Workshop conducted in French.

For over three decades, the International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) has been recognized as the largest festival of films on art in the world. Every March, for more than 35 years, FIFA has brought together the latest documentaries on art, in addition to a selection of virtual reality works. The festival features films on visual arts, music, literature, dance, photography, architecture, and digital arts. For its 37th edition, lovers of film and art in all its forms will appreciate an eclectic international program characterized by strong and captivating themes: engaged art, art and science, history and culture, music and dance, and elegant portraits of unforgettable artists. For the full program, visit the FIFA website here.

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Toronto —The Bentway Conservancy is delighted to announce that on April 1, 2019 Ilana Altman and David Carey will assume joint leadership of the Bentway as Co-Executive Director, Programming & Visitor Experience, and Co-Executive Director, Partnerships & Communications, respectively.

The duo joined the Bentway in 2017 – Altman as Director of Programming and Carey as Director of Development. Bentway Board Chair Mazyar Mortazavi says, “As the Bentway evolves as a destination for cultural experiences and a leader in urban transformation, we are excited to benefit from Ilana and Dave’s individual areas of expertise. They understand the needs of the Bentway firsthand and have the commitment and creative vision to steer us towards an exciting future.”

An expert in leading start-up initiatives for the performing arts, Founding CEO Julian Sleath has made the decision to resign, but will stay on until May 17, 2019, supporting Altman, Carey, the Board, and the Bentway team during this transition.

Mortazavi added, “Julian stewarded The Bentway through its design and construction, helping to build enthusiasm with stakeholders, building a terrific team, and initiating operations through an incredible first year. The extraordinary success of the Bentway so far has been realized through Julian’s depth of experience and while his enthusiasm and passion will be missed his leadership has provided the foundation for the future success of the Bentway. We wish him the best of luck in his future endeavours.”

Through the 2019 spring and summer season, the Bentway continues its diverse and exciting programming with New Monuments for New Cities (an open air art exhibition organized in collaboration with the High Line Network); a new dance commission by famed Montreal-New York choreographer, Noémie Lafrance; the return of the annual block party; a new community dining program that will treat diners to a variety of culinary cultures; as well as regular free weekly programming including yoga and tai chi classes, and the “Sunday Social” with music, games, food and beverages.

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The Montreal-based Maison de l’architecture du Québec (MAQ) is calling architects, artists, curators and researchers to submit exhibition and event proposals for the 2019-2020 season.

Established in 2001, the MAQ is a venue that nurtures the architecture culture in Quebec and Canada, in collaboration with practitioners active in the here-and-now. It hosts exhibitions, workshops, publications, discussions, and educational activities.

This season, the MAQ is calling for proposals focused on two questions:

What distinguishes Montreal, Quebec, and Canada’s architecture?

What are the issues of current concern for architecture and urbanism?

More information on submission requirements, selection criteria, and the spaces available for exhibitions is available here (in French only). Submissions are due May 1, 2019.

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Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is now accepting applications for its 2019 Summer Institutes. The Summer Institute is an international post-graduate artist research program for professional artists and thinkers working in all disciplines and media, including architecture. One of the summer’s two sessions will be facilitated by Norwegian- Sámi artist/architect Joar Nango for an intensive session focused on Indigenous architectures. The session runs from August 6th until August 16th.  Applications are due Monday, March 25.

Foregrounding Indigenous approaches to design and alternative models of social space, Nango will lead participants through a series of texts, discussions, guest lectures, workshops, and studio time for the first week, engaging local, Winnipeg-based, Indigenous architects and thinkers. Participants will be encouraged to produce individually, with the possibility to work with Nango on a new piece by the Winnipeg Rivers, generating a reciprocal engagement to producing work in the second week. The seminar and workshop is open to visual artists of all kinds as well as writers, critics and scholars.

A number of other visiting artists, curators and theorists will visit the Summer Institute for additional lectures, discussions, and studio visits still to be determined. Plug In ICA invites applications for participants who will work collaboratively in a peer-to-peer environment based upon their own interests and projects, as well as by exploring and aligning their work with collaborative or group activities which will be planned during the session.

This critical discursive opportunity will take place in Plug In ICA’s purpose-built facilities, with an adjoining workshop, art research library, gallery, bookshop and café. Plug In ICA is located at the heart of downtown Winnipeg and adjacent to the Winnipeg Art Gallery within walking distance to various amenities for new visitors to the city.

There is no application fee for this program and everyone is welcome to apply. The standard tuition fee of $300.00 CDN has been generously covered by Winnipeg’s Johnston Group. All other costs associated with participating in this program are the responsibility of the participant: meals, accommodation, travel, travel insurance, materials and related production costs. Participants must also be Plug In ICA members in good standing, for an additional fee of $35 CDN (artist members). Applicants will be notified of their acceptance by the end of April 2019.

Application forms can be downloaded from our website. If you have any difficulties, please contact Erin Josephson-Laidlaw. All applications should be sent to Erin@plugin.org

Joar Nango is an architect, builder, artist and self-publisher. Nango’s work often explores the division between design, architecture and visual art and uses improvisation as method and process. Nango has been part of a number of exhibition projects throughout Canada and elsewhere. Among which includes, the Ottawa Art Gallery, Vancouver’s Western Front, Gallery Deluxe in Halifax, The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, Norway and Sydhavn Station in Copenhagen, Denmark. He recently presented European Everything at Documenta14 in Athens and Kassel in 2017. As well as facilitating the Summer Institute, Nango is one of the participating artists for the 2019 iteration of Winnipeg’s public art project STAGES.

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Hamilton architects DPAI have proposed a futuristic green tower at the intersection of a six-lane highway and the Niagara Escarpment. The conceptual project—called Fibroblast Tower— imagines an intervention whereby architecture is used to heal physical, urban, environmental, and socio-political wounds from the past. “This is one of our efforts to create and elevate a better public dialogue about design in Hamilton,” says DPAI Principal and CEO David Premi.

The Fibroblast Tower is a prosthetic intervention that is designed to begin the healing process of a natural ecosystem, the Niagara Escarpment. Seen as a barrier, the residents of the City of Hamilton have attempted to conquer this World Biosphere Refuge by scarring its surface with roads, paths, and funicular railways to overcome travel challenges. The result is a dysfunctional relationship where the escarpment has become a symbol of the City’s political and environmental shortcomings.

The Niagara escarpment

The Niagara Escarpment was the result of unequal erosion. Over time, the soft rocks weather away or erode by the action of streams. The gradual removal of the soft rocks undercuts the resistant caprock, leaving a cliff or escarpment that runs predominantly east/west from New York, through Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois.

The escarpment is both a connector and a divider. It connects land and water, nations, urban and rural environments along its length. It provides a conduit for wildlife. The Bruce Trail runs the length of the escarpment from Queenston on the Niagara River to Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula, providing a venue for uninterrupted nature walks of 890 kilometers in length. The breadth of the escarpment divides the environments above and below, creating a barrier for travel and movement of goods.

The Niagara Escarpment is a UNESCO designated World Biosphere Reserve and is heavily protected from further damage caused by roads, ski areas, resorts, railways, buildings, and wind farms.

Historical interventions and wounds in Hamilton

The city of Hamilton intersects with the escarpment in such a way that the north end of the city is below and the south part above. Affectionately referred to as “The Mountain” by its residents, many roads or “mountain accesses” join the urban core below with the suburban expansion above. The escarpment has thus become a living metaphor for the deep political and cultural schism between the urban and suburban residents of the city.

In Hamilton, surface roads bridging the upper and lower cities are badly eroded and require constant maintenance.  As a geological feature that’s still forming, the Niagara escarpment is a very active land feature. A failure to understand falling rocks and erosion are an immutable geologic process has resulted in a chronic “colonized wound” – exacerbated by pathogenic automobile traffic and political divisiveness, making healing difficult.

Healing: Fibroblast Tower

The Fibroblast Tower plays both a practical and symbolic role in healing the practical, physical, social and political divisions that the escarpment exacerbates. It accommodates pedestrian, automobile and public transportation, while connecting cycling infrastructure above and below. It reconnects the wildlife highway and provides new bird habitats to support the natural ecosystem. It allows the escarpment to live, breathe, and erode as a living landform, in harmony with the animal and human inhabitants that live near or on it.

The habitable environments in the tower provide democratic and universal access to multi-modal transportation, recreation, and spectacular views for all residents, regardless of ability or whether they live in the upper or lower city. More importantly, it allows opportunities for upper and lower city dwellers to commune with one another on many different levels.

As the tallest free-standing structure in the region, it will be visible from many vantage points on land and water more than 100 kilometers away. It serves as an important symbolic landmark of a newly unified, connected, and healing city.

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“In a city of monuments that rise,” wrote Yale University student Maya Lin in 1981 of her Vietnam Memorial design, “this will be a memorial that recedes.” Since her minimal composition was realized, architects have struggled to advance memorial design through similar abstraction. During this same recent period, following the example set by Guggenheim Bilbao, every aspiring world city seeks to lay claim to a work by a globally famous architect. The two trends occasionally coincide in a single work, as they do in Daniel Libeskind’s National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa.

Libeskind’s project, located on unceded ground at the intersection of Wellington and Booth streets, is indeed monumental. Its concrete walls rise in powerful canted planes, enclosing a set of unroofed spaces with acute angles that, seen from above, resemble a Jewish star. In many ways, the monument reprises the design vocabulary of Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin, a significant work in which the geometries are linked to street addresses of key Jewish and non-Jewish Berliners. In the Ottawa monument, assigned messages have overwritten the actual site’s invisible and meaningful pasts—its almost ageless Indigenous history, and the more recently razed neighborhood known as LeBreton Flats.

Those who write about this monument tend to enumerate its symbolic moments: the tilting walls signify oppression, the flame signifies remembrance, the staircase signifies hope. This kind of willful narrative has become all too familiar in how the public “learns” contemporary architecture. Constructions that are intended to keep memory alive didactically teach us what to think, and even what to feel. They have become their own kind of propaganda.

In counterpoint to the symbolic components of the architectural design are six photographic images by Edward Burtynsky, each featuring a specific Holocaust site. Transferred to the concrete walls in specially formulated paint and exquisite detail, the images introduce a haunting immediacy. Though large, the images are not monumental. Instead, they relieve the stone surfaces of their abstraction. One wonders if these images—instead of being painted on specially constructed walls—might have been introduced almost randomly around the city, to more effectively remind us of other places, and other times.

In 1944, before the end of World War II, art historian Kenneth Reid penned a short piece titled “Memorials? Yes!—but no monuments!” He concluded his attack on monument-building by writing: “But let us not again clutter up our villages and towns and cities with the sort of mediocre and even tawdry ‘monumental’ monstrosities that have been left in the wake of all our earlier wars.” Both then and now, it is not the talented sculptors and architects of these contemporary works who are to blame; they are practicing their craft. Instead, it is a matter of urban policies and their makers, who wilfully decide priorities, and assign hierarchies to the spaces of our public realm.

In 1989, I visited all six of the sites of the Nazi extermination camps. Their expressions of memory span an architectural spectrum—from the chilling preservation of the camp and extermination buildings of Auschwitz-Birkenau to the contemplative stone-studded fields of Treblinka. None of these, as least in any obvious way, bore a prominent architect’s name. Indexed directly to their respective sites of trauma, each memorial’s “authorship” is history itself, edited perhaps, but not overtaken by symbol. How might this have been possible on the unceded land of LeBreton Flats? Might it be still?

Jill Stoner is Director of the Azreili School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University.

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The Interior Designers of Canada (IDC) are inviting designers to participate in this year’s IDC Design Symposium, which will be held in Vancouver on September 12-13. Following on the success of last year’s inaugural Design Symposium in Toronto, the two-day event will bring together interior design professionals from across the country. Ahead of this year’s symposium, the IDC is now inviting design professionals to participate.

There are many ways to get involved with the Design Symposium and Canada’s interior design advocacy association:

• Propose your ideas for amazing speakers and workshops for this year’s symposium.
• Submit your project to the national Value of Design Awards competition
• Contribute to your industry and the future of interior design in Canada by joining the 2019-2020 IDC Board of Management.
• Nominate a designer who has made a significant contribution to the interior industry to IDC’s College of Fellows.

Submissions for speakers and workshops at this year’s symposium are due by March 28, while Value of Design Awards entries will close on April 26, with a discounted early bird deadline of March 29. Nominations to the 2019-2020 IDC Board of Management are also now open, as are nominations to the IDC’s College of Fellows.

More information about the 2019 IDC Design Symposium is also available via the IDC website, linked here.

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The Living Architecture Systems Group (LASG) is celebrating the halfway mark of its multi-year SSHRC Partnership Grant with a Symposium from March 1-3, 2019 at OCAD University (OCAD U) in Toronto. Approximately 60 LASG researchers from Canada, USA, Europe, Australia and New Zealand will gather with friends, collaborators and students to share their works in progress.

On Friday, March 1, LASG researchers and graduate students will give presentations, hold poster sessions and engage in discussions. That evening, eminent interaction theorist and designer Paul Pangaro, Professor of the Practice in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, will deliver a keynote address on interaction design that includes iconic works by Gordon Pask.

Presentations will continue through Saturday, March 2, including a noon keynote presentation by Katy Börner, Distinguished Professor of Engineering & Information Science at Indiana University. An evening dinner reception at the LASG studio will feature a demonstration of an immersive sound, light and motion environment, accompanied by multiple prototypes in progress by the Amsterdam 4DSOUND collective.

On Sunday, March 3, Toolbox Dialogue Initiative of Michigan State University will conduct “Capacity Building Through Structured Dialogue,” a workshop that focuses on demarcating concepts relating to living architecture and collaboration and communication methods. Carole Collet of Central Saint Martins UAL will lead a workshop called “Scoping the Future of Design, Architecture and Living Systems,” that positions the current state of research in design, architecture and living systems.

On view throughout the symposium in OCAD U’s George Reid Room is Resurgence of Organicism, an exhibition curated by Sarah Bonnemaison of FILUM LTD and Dalhousie University. The exhibition explores principles of Organicism in architectural theory and design, past and present.

Three publications by Riverside Architectural Press will be launched at the Symposium. Current work in progress and interviews by LASG researchers will be consolidated in White Papers 2019, and symposium presentation abstracts will be published in a volume of Symposium Proceedings. The Resurgence of Organicism exhibition catalogue, edited by Sarah Bonnemaison, will be presented in partnership with Dalhousie Architectural Press. The support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), University of Waterloo, OCAD University and multiple partners is gratefully acknowledged.

The LASG is an interdisciplinary partnership of academics, artists, designers and industry partners dedicated to researching and developing next-generation architectural environments. Environments produced by this group are now showing qualities that come strikingly close to life, transforming the built world. These experimental works can move, respond, explore, learn and adapt. The LASG disseminates its work through exhibitions, publications and events.

The LASG Symposium 2019 details including schedule and program will be regularly updated on www.lasg.ca. For more information contact info@lasg.ca or 416-766-8284.

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Six “Terrains de jeu” from Canada, France, Germany and Italy will offer fun for everyone during the summer of 2019. Child-friendly without being childish, adventurous without being unsafe, the interactive spaces chosen for the 20th anniversary of the International Garden Festival will offer a colourful and creative playground of curated spaces.

The International Garden Festival is pleased to announce the names of the designers selected by the jury for the 20th edition presented at Les Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens, from June 22 to October 6, 2019. Visitors will be invited to explore the twenty-seven contemporary gardens, and enter the interactive spaces created by more than eighty-five landscape architects, architects, designers and visual artists.

The 6 new gardens of the 2019 edition of the Festival, selected from 154 projects submitted from 28 countries, are:

Dirt ground by Silvia Bachetti & Agnese Casadio – Bologna, Italy

Le dernier petit cochon by APPAREIL Architecture — Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Forêt by Mathilde Leveau & Ronan Virondaud — Quebec City, Quebec, Canada & Le Mans, France

The Colors of Métis by SOWATORINI Landschaft [Sebastian Sowa, Gianluca Torini] & sevengardens [Isabella Smolin] — Berlin & Essen, Germany

Making Waves by Ted Kesik, Cornel Campbell, Thevishka Kanishkan, Reesha Morar & Anton Skorishchenko — Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Ici et ailleurs by José Luis Torres — Montmagny, Quebec, Canada

Two projects also received a special mention from the jury:

Le grand hamac by Intégral Jean Beaudoin [Jean Beaudoin, Myriam Leclair, Gabriel Paquette-Méthé], Montreal, Quebec, Canada

komerebi by Adrian Haibara Sanchez & Isabella Millington, Madrid, Spain

The jury was composed of Claudia Campeau, architect and co-designer of the installation Paysage euphonique created for the 2017 edition of the Festival, Jamie Reford, Master in Landscape Architecture student at the University of Toronto, François Leblanc, technical director, International Garden Festival and Alexander Reford, director, Reford Gardens and International Garden Festival.

The International Garden Festival is the leading contemporary garden festival in North America. Since its inception in 2000, more than 180 contemporary and ephemeral gardens have been exhibited at Grand-Métis and as extra-mural projects in Canada and around the world.

More information about the International Garden Festival is available via the official Reford Gardens website, linked here.

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Carole Lévesque went in search of Montreal’s terrains vagues, abandoned or undeveloped patches of land, such as empty lots and wild greenspaces. The exhibition La précision du vague is the result of three and a half years of work carried out by this professor at the UQAM School of Design. Working with a team of assistants, she created a kind of atlas of terrains vagues, using various representational modes to document these often neglected spaces: photography, digital database, video, sound, perspective drawings, collection of found objects, herbarium, and landscape elevations. Together they form an exhaustive representation of places that are generally considered empty and devoid of interest.

The terrain vague has long been a favourite location for temporary interventions, improvised agriculture and, more recently, citizen appropriation. It is not the terrain vague itself that is usually of interest, but rather its availability: the developer sees it as a business opportunity, the architect as a site for a grand project, the activist as a place to defend an ideal, and the citizen as an opportunity for rebuilding socialization. But what would happen if we focused more closely on the place in itself? And above all, what would happen if, by paying less attention to the terrain, the lot, a space determined mainly by its availability for building, our attention were focused more on the vague, i.e. its lack of definition, and its elusive relationship to our experience of the city?

La précision du vague by Carole Lévesque comprises 42 hours of walking, just over 5,000 photographs collated in 120 collages, a database covering more than 150 characteristics, 144 minutes of film and sound recording, 75 objects, 90 plant specimens, 100 hours of surveying, 400 hours of perspective drawings, and 1400 hours of hand drawn sketches to produce six landscape elevations. The project of representing the terrains vagues is realized through this long, slow documentary accumulation and its attentive gaze is achieved through the production of these six landscape elevations: six large drawings, six precise records of what was observed, a drawing for each day of walking, creating unity out of a fragmented experience. These drawings, where the gesture of the hand, the lines of the technical pen and the grain of the paper reconcile the visible and the tactile, near and far, time and space, are constructions, “machines” that transform our view of these precious, lost and found landscapes.

The exhibition allows us to follow this process of discovery, a journey of research and creation that is akin to a real performance. Invited to share this singular experience, to enter into more than a hundred improbable places, the visitor rediscovers these spaces often linked to the large rail lines or asphalt roads across the island of Montreal. Examining them closely, we realize that these spaces are no more undefined than the built environment. They are not gaps in the map, let alone gaps in memory. They play a role in the development of the city; they are part of the landscape, the critical inverse. The terrain vague is the sensitive springboard of the imagination, providing an alternative view of the world that we build day by day.

More information about La précision du vague is available via the UQAM Design website, linked here.

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A highlight of my student years was meeting American architect Michael Graves. Not just meeting him, but spending significant time with him. The date was September 1985 and a bunch of us were on a study trip to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), following the Alvar Aalto symposium in Jyväskylä, Finland. Considering his absolute superstar status at the time, Graves was pretty relaxed with us. He roamed the streets and sketched buildings like a regular guy; we all sat together on the bus, leaning over seat backs so we could talk as a group. Graves regaled us with stories of visiting the Reagan White House; he was particularly delighted when a Soviet architecture student had never heard of him, clearly loving the moment of anonymity. And at the USSR-Finland border, where we were detained for many hours, he did a sketch in that classic MG style in my sketchbook. To this day, it remains one of my most precious possessions.

Personal memories like these from the 1980s make me feel right at home in the current exhibit at the CCA, Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths. Including 420 objects and images, there’s a memory trigger from 1965-1990 around every corner.

Apart from sparking my own nostalgia, this show is big and it includes some big objects. For example, a Peter Eisenman stair (shockingly bright green) and his railing from House I are here. Next to the railing, in the middle of a gallery, is an oval window from the now-demolished Prentice Women’s Hospital by Bertrand Goldberg in Chicago. There’s also a reconstructed kiosk from the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. In a nearby corner are some colourful carpets that Graves designed for the Disney corporation.

Images included in the show, if not large in size, had a big impact in their day. We know Madelon Vriesendorp’s illustrations from the cover of Delirious New York. A map from the Learning from Las Vegas studio reminds us that the book originated as a course. Frank Gehry’s own house in Santa Monica is represented in two models, illustrating how model-making is anything but an objective copying of a building.

This cursory inventory of Architecture Itself may give the impression that the exhibit is a mere assemblage of random building fragments and famous images. Nothing could be further from the truth. Architectural educator and curator Sylvia Lavin has carefully arranged the exhibit into six galleries that together articulate a complex argument debunking fundamental myths of postmodernism. Each gallery has an innovative theme, illustrating that postmodernism is not what you thought.

For example, the gallery dedicated to “Bodies Return”—with the railing and the Goldberg window—shows how postmodern buildings contributed to progressive reforms such as abortion rights and women’s architectural education. In the superb audio accompaniment for this gallery, Lavin explains how clients and other stakeholders in this period saw themselves as part of the architectural production team. Over in “Signs and Signals,” Lavin shows how Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and others designed for technologies such as cable television and early computer systems. In the most academic gallery, “Little Things of Knowledge,” the exhibit highlights the considerable overlap of architectural practice with the rise of architectural history in professional schools. In this gallery, a room-length table shows off “postmodern instruments of knowledge production”—also known as books-in-box-sets, field notes, 35-mm slides, photographs, and university theses and dissertations. (My university office is full of stuff like this, although I don’t generally think of it as potential material for museum exhibitions.)

All to say that Lavin’s themes contribute enormously to our understanding of postmodern architecture, which until now has been mostly known through a handful of books. Lavin takes a material history approach that juxtaposes the icons with behind-the-scenes, everyday items like typed letters, bills, patents and posters. The message is that postmodern architecture was not just about pretty pictures, but also about real-life concerns such as building codes, profits and getting tenure.

Another gem from the brilliant audio guide, for example, is Lavin admitting that one of her favourite objects in the show is Charles Moore’s bill to a client for $23.11, as commission for furniture he bought from Knoll. Similarly, a letter from James Stirling to gallery-owner Leo Castelli reveals the architect’s worries about about how his work would be shown. These guys really sweated the small stuff. Who knew?

Especially courageous is Lavin’s look at the contradictions in postmodern architecture. California’s Sea Ranch, for example, often pitched as an early foray into ecological design, is here shown as exclusive, gated, and car-dependent. In a gallery next door, Mike Reynold’s “earth ships” made from beer cans are the centrepiece for complicated real-estate arrangement of time-sharing rather than house-buying—a culture we associate with fancy golf courses more than with off-the-grid hippy living.

The exhibit is a powerful teaching tool. What a treat for students to learn from these provocative objects and to probe the meaning of architecture designed by their parents’ generation. Less effective parts of the show are the sections on postmodern exhibitions and the role of the art gallery, including the CCA itself. Lavin makes the point that the museum hosting the exhibit—the CCA—shaped postmodernism by its neo-neoclassical architecture, its early influential exhibits on figures like Eisenman, and its collecting of gems like a Piranesi drawing. So, the CCA is hosting an exhibit about how other CCA exhibits were important. It’s a bit too self-referential—but very postmodern!

Another challenge for visitors is that sources for the myths debunked in the show are not identified. The presumption is that we all think about postmodernism as autonomous, and that the exhibit shows a different way to see it, as connected. Who or what made us think about postmodern architecture as autonomous? I asked Lavin, and she responded: “The framing of architecture as autonomous, and therefore as a thing in itself, took place through the way architecture was drawn (as contextless axonometric for example), when buildings were described as ‘immaterial,’ or as images.” The keenest of current architecture students will understand this. But ultimately, this show speaks most clearly to me and my generation—those of us who grew up on this stuff. We thought this way. These things make us remember. And in looking back, Architecture Itself convinces me that postmodern architecture was anything but just itself.

Annmarie Adams, FRAIC, jointly appointed in the Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture and Department of Social Studies of Medicine, McGill University, teaches the history of postmodernism to first-year architecture students.

Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths is on display at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal until April 7, 2019.

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The Warming Huts are back! Presented by Artis REIT, Winnipeg’s popular winter installations return for 2019, with engaging new installations. Started in 2009, Warming Huts: An Art + Architecture Competition on Ice has been melding world-class design and art with Winnipeg’s famous winters. This year, seven new installations hit the ice:

By Invitation:

TERJE ISUNGSET — Ice Musician — Bergen, Norway

Terje Isunget has combined natural elements in his music using wood, stones, and metals in their original forms for years before he pioneered the use of ice as instruments in 1999 when he was commissioned to compose a piece using ice for the Lillehammer Winter Festival. Terje has also performed for the Ice Hotel in Sweden and on international television. He will perform with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra as part of the New Music Festival at The Forks using instruments made from Red River ice.

PAVILION SUB-ZERO — Sputnik Architecture with University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecture — Winnipeg, MB

Pavilion Sub-Zero will feature a shimmering, colourful cloud floating above performers and audience members in The Forks Historic Port, the heart of the Red River Mutual Trail. With feature performances by invited artist Terje Isungset and members of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Pavilion Sub-Zero celebrates ephemeral qualities of the frozen river scape, through live performances, and the opportunity be together.

A new tensile structure will support “the cloud” of screens that will animate the entire space with colours and varying levels of luminance creating an infinite array of patterns on the ground. Loosely based on the traditional star blanket, the cables will define the space in which visitors can enjoy a variety of performances and even perhaps enjoying a beverage from the adjoining venue for the Festival du Voyageur.

Continuing in the tradition of collaborating with artists from around the world, this year’s pavilion will feature and ice bar and sculptures created by renowned ice architect Luca Roncoroni, as well as performances for the opening night of Winnipeg New Music Festival by Terje Isungset who will perform on instruments made from Red River ice. The ice sculpture gallery and bar will be protected from the damaging rays of bright Manitoba sunshine by the cloud floating above.

The project is being developed with students and faculty at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecture.

Warming Huts v.2019 Competition Winners:

HOVERBOX — Simon Kassner and Wilko Hoffmann — NAICE Architecture — Berlin, Germany

A large white box hovers over the ice; in the box, there a peoplewalk about, bide their time, or seemingly hover over the floor. What is happening? The visitor enters a labyrinth turned upside down by way of one of the two narrow openings leading inward. Corridors snake through the body of the building and end at benches. The visitor wanders around, optically cut off from the outside world, disoriented, and only perceives the legs and feet of other visitors. Sudden encounters bring strangers together, secret visual contacts through holes in the walls next to the
benches invite visitors to spy on their surroundings, difficult to recognize. A play involving distance and proximity.

HUTTIE — Jennie O’Keefe + Chris Pancoe — Winnipeg, MB

Huttie is Winnipeg’s anthropomorphic warming hut destined to delight both the young and old. Inspired by the retro cult children’s T.V. series H.R. Pufnstuf, river trail visitors will be transported into Huttie’s technicolor splendour. Once inside, visitors are encouraged to relax and seek warmth on a plush gliding tongue while taking in the psychedelic cascading interior on its mouth. Huttie – it’s your friend when the weather’s rough!

WEATHERMEN — Haemee Han + Jaeyual Lee — JAEMEE Studio — Jersey City, USA

Weatherman is a series of interactive art sculptures mimicking familiar man-made massing around the scenery along the Red River Mutual Trail – Snowman. The scale of weathermen varies from 5 feet tall non-occupiable objects to 10 feet tall pavilions with hollow structure inside, which can be occupied by people and function as warming huts. Composed of sculpted and stacked insulation foams inside and plaster coating outside, weathermen are painted in various colours in warm tone palette. Introduction of warming palette of colour in barren, frigid environment enlivens the site with visual and physical presence of warming huts. “Weathermen” are laid out in a simple 4 x 4 grid where they are all positioned on same ground elevation at the beginning of the installation. As snow piles up around the installation during winter storms, visitors can speculate amount of precipitation by using weathermen as a measuring tool with familiar human scale. Strategically placed mundane objects recreated in unexpected scale and colour can bring out curiosity and resurface one’s childhood winter memories. “Weathermen” aims to become a colourful warming hut invoking visitors’ past memories and creating new ones simultaneously.

Additions:

ARCTIC TOPIARIES — Winnipeg Art Gallery x Michael Maltzan Architecture — Los Angeles, USA

In celebration of the future WAG Inuit Art Centre, Michael Maltzan Architecture (MMA)’s design for the Warming Huts v.2019 is a family of carved forms that are as dynamic in their sculptural shape as they are in the negative space created between them. The huts are constructed as a kind of snow “topiary”, varying in height and diameter. Created from snow and ice, they integrate and are created from their environment. The glow of the light coming from within their walls can be seen from outside, transforming the huts into beacons of warmth and safety for the community of Winnipeg. MMA is the architecture studio selected to design the WAG Inuit Art Centre, opening in 2020.

WHAK — University of Manitoba, Faculty of Architecture, Third Year – Winnipeg, Manitoba

WHAK (Warming Hut for Anish Kapoor) is an art gallery space situated on the ice, pulling in skaters to experience the Mirrors of Anish Kapoor. The cube form alludes to Kapoor’s Stackhouse, his project for the 2017 Warming Huts edition, which incorporated thesame dimensions of five meters on each side. WHAK creates a delay in the experience through a sequence of differentiated spaces before the visitor finally approaches the artwork, generating curiosity and anticipation for what is inside. The whole space was proportioned based on Kapoor’s four-feet concave Mirrors, gradually unfolding into the gallery space. In this way WHAKis site-undefined but specific to the Mirrors. The white exterior blends into the landscape, and the black interior pulls the passersby in. While WHAK hits the ice this year, Anish Kapoor Mirrors are expected to occupy the space in 2020.

More information about Warming Huts 2019 is available via the official website, linked here.

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The Museum of Modern Art announces a major donation of material representing nine innovative built and unbuilt projects developed and realized between 1994 and 2018 by Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron. The works have been given to the Museum by the Jacques Herzog und Pierre de Meuron Kabinett, Basel, a charitable foundation established by the architects in 2015. The 23 physical objects and accompanying digital assets—sketches, study models, presentation models, and architectural fragments, as well as digital drawing sets, photographs, and videos—were carefully selected in close collaboration with the architects to demonstrate not only the final design output, but also the design process behind each project. These works join four Herzog & de Meuron architectural projects from 1988 to 1997 and one design object from 2002 already in the Museum’s collection.

“For more than three decades, Herzog & de Meuron’s practice has been a singular and defining voice in the discourse of contemporary architecture,” said Martino Stierli, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at MoMA. “Thanks to the generosity of the office and the Jacques Herzog und Pierre de Meuron Kabinett, we will be able to include these key works of contemporary architectural production in our changing collection displays when the Museum opens its newly expanded galleries in 2019.”

The nine projects entering MoMA’s collection demonstrate the breadth and depth of Herzog & de Meuron’s contributions to contemporary architecture. As with most of their work, some of these projects have challenged conventions of architectural materiality (Dominus Winery, Yountville, Napa Valley, California, 1995–98), structure (1111 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, Florida, 2005–10) and typology (Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany, 2001–16; 56 Leonard Street, New York, New York, 2006–17). Herzog & de Meuron have looked beyond the confines of traditional practice to enrich their architectural work, which is often the result of close collaboration with artists.

In the projects showcased in the recent gift, these collaborations have involved artists Thomas Ruff (Eberswalde Technical School Library, Eberwalde, Germany, 1994–99), Michael Craig-Martin (Laban Dance Centre, London, UK, 1997–2003), and Ai Weiwei (National Stadium, The Main Stadium for the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing, China, 2002–08). Finally, Herzog & de Meuron’s long engagement with Basel’s vital art world and with artists such as Joseph Beuys and Rémy Zaugg has decisively informed their large repertoire of architectural projects designed to allow visitors to experience modern art in novel ways. Two such projects, one private residence (Kramlich Residence and Collection, Oakville, Napa Valley, California, 1997–2018) and one museum (CaixaForum, Madrid, Spain, 2001–08), are included in this selection.

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Aiming to continuously rethink and re-examine the scope and the boundaries of “curating architecture,” the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) solicits ideas for projects that take innovative curatorial approaches and experimental formats.

The Emerging Curator program offers the opportunity to propose and curate a project at the CCA related to contemporary debates in architecture, urban issues, landscape design, and cultural and social dynamics. The project is to be developed during a residency of three months at the CCA.

The CCA encourages a wide range of proposals for curatorial projects with a broad scope. Proposals must bring an innovative curatorial model to the contemporary discourse on architecture. The CCA seeks proposals that use the curatorial project as a tool to foster ideas, to question relevant positions, to introduce new research themes, and to critique current modalities, with the ultimate goal of advancing new thinking for architecture and the built environment. Particular attention will be given to projects that intend to locate the discourse of architecture within a broader context across disciplines and practices.

The output of the proposal may follow many trajectories, and the result may be as varied as an editorial project, a program of seminars and research colloquiums, a series of public events or workshops, the production of visual content to be explored through the web and social media, or a physical or virtual exhibition. Interdisciplinary and collaborative practices are encouraged.

The selected candidate will become acquainted with the CCA’s institutional knowledge and vision, explore the institution’s resources and the collection holdings, and apply her/his curatorial direction to develop the proposed project. The CCA will provide guidance towards the project’s realization in accordance with the curatorial direction of the institution.

The residency should take place between September 2019 and May 2020 and can be divided into several sessions. The project should be completed by fall 2020.

The deadline for applications is 1 March 2019.

More information about the Emerging Curator program is available via the official CCA website, linked here.

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After appearing in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, ArchiteXX’s Now What?! exhibition opens February 12 at the McGill University Peter Guo-Hua Fu School of Architecture. Now What?! Montreal will feature new content researched by students and faculty at McGill University.

Now What?! Advocacy, Activism, and Alliances in American Architecture since 1968 is the first exhibition to examine the little-known history of architects and designers working to further the causes of the civil rights, women’s, and LGBTQ movements of the past fifty years. The exhibition content, conversations, and stories will inspire a new generation of design professionals to see themselves as agents of change by looking at the past to see new ways forward.

The civil rights, women’s, and LGBTQ movements impacted every facet of US society, including architecture and design. Now What?! links the US design community to larger social and political movements of the late 20th century, placing design practice in the foreground and engaging viewers in critical conversations of history, progress, and the built environment. Now What?! acknowledges national and grassroots efforts by a wide coalition of organizations and professionals to change the face of architecture and design in the US.

In recent years, there has been a new wave of initiatives and advocacy emerging in the US that draws attention to these critical issues. This exhibition writes the overlooked histories of activist architects and organizations who were—and still are—at the forefront of the profession’s participation in larger social and political movements over the last 50 years, and suggests ways forward. This intersectional and interdisciplinary look at the design professions draws historical connections and serves as the only comprehensive narrative of activism in US architecture and design that spans these generations and disparate causes. Now What?! offers an in-depth look at diversity and activism in the design professions since 1968 while crafting a space for public debate and dialogue that is interested in looking back as much as projecting forward.

Now What?! is scheduled to travel through 2020 continuing to incorporate the local histories of the different cities it visits and telling the largely unknown history of how architects and designers have responded to the major social movements of the late 20th century until today.

The exhibit will run from February 12 to March 1. More information is available at this link.

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