The CCA Master’s Students Program encourages students at Canadian architecture schools to take up urgent questions of public relevance to the built environment in Canada and beyond. Through a three-month collaborative project, participants actively engage with the CCA’s collection, participate in seminars and other pedagogical activities, and articulate their own understanding of architecture as a public concern.

In the Postcolony: Everyday Infrastructures of Design is a three-year thematic cycle that examines how architecture and urbanism continue to respond to the long echoes of colonial practices of spatial dispossession. Each summer a group of three Master’s researchers narrow their focus to a particular territory that continues to be subject to what Achille Mbembe describes as the resonances of the “banality of power”—everyday infrastructures that shape public life. Spanning geographies and time scales, the thematic cycle articulates the complicity of architectural and urban design in colonial, settler-colonial, and postcolonial power dynamics, while also offering emancipatory potential through the projection of more equitable spaces of public engagement.

Participants will be selected by a CCA internal committee. Selected candidates will work collaboratively on a common research project, with advising and support provided by the CCA’s Associate Director of Research.

Students currently enrolled in professional and post-professional master’s programs—Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture, Master of Environmental Design, or Master of Urban Design— in Canada are eligible to apply, regardless of citizenship.

Selected candidates are expected to participate in a three-month residency at the CCA during the summer, for which they will receive a stipend of CAN $7,500 to cover travel, housing, and living expenses while in Montréal. The award is non-renewable.

The call for applications is now closed. The next call for the 2023 Master’s Students Program will be issued in February 2023.

For questions regarding the program, please contact studium@cca.qc.ca.

For updates on the Master’s Students Program, please subscribe to the newsletter.

This program is generously supported by the Power Corporation of Canada.

The diversity of our institution is at the core of our creativity and strengthens our research efforts. While all qualified candidates are invited to apply, we particularly welcome applications from persons with disabilities, Indigenous, Black, and other people of colour, of all genders, and LGBTQ+ persons. Applicants who require accommodations for any part of the application process can contact vsamson@cca.qc.ca to receive confidential assistance.

Past years

2021
2020
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003