This exhibition presents American architect Ben Nicholson’s search for order, meaning, and logic in a world of art, science, and mystery. The Laurentian Library in Florence, a masterwork by Michelangelo designed in 1524–25, contains fifteen pairs of terra cotta panels bearing complex geometric patterns that have been long hidden from view. Nicholson studied the panels at(...)
Octagonal gallery
11 December 1996 to 9 March 1997
Uncovering Geometry: Ben Nicholson at the Laurentian Library
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This exhibition presents American architect Ben Nicholson’s search for order, meaning, and logic in a world of art, science, and mystery. The Laurentian Library in Florence, a masterwork by Michelangelo designed in 1524–25, contains fifteen pairs of terra cotta panels bearing complex geometric patterns that have been long hidden from view. Nicholson studied the panels at(...)
Octagonal gallery
PH2018:0005:031
Description:
Photograph by Stefano Graziani of the following work: Gordon Matta-Clark, floor plan for Office Baroque, 1977, blue ballpoint pen on graph paper, 42 x 59.5 cm, PHCON2002:0016:059, Gordon Matta-Clark collection, Canadian Centre of Architecture, Gift of Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, © Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark Questioning Pictures is a 36 photograph project commissioned by Fondazione Prada, Milan. Artist Stefano Graziani investigates archival and conservation systems in a number of museums. Through photographing museum objects, Graziani, focusing on the relationship between photographs, the museum objects and the power structures at play within institutions. The museums include the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montréal, Canada; Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, UK; the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Museum Insel Hombroich in Neuss, Germany; the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, Italy; and the Plaster Cast Gallery at Museo Canova in Possagno, Italy.
2017
Questioning Pictures: Photograph of floor plan for Office Baroque, blue pen on graph paper by Gordon Matta-Clark, 1977
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PH2018:0005:031
Description:
Photograph by Stefano Graziani of the following work: Gordon Matta-Clark, floor plan for Office Baroque, 1977, blue ballpoint pen on graph paper, 42 x 59.5 cm, PHCON2002:0016:059, Gordon Matta-Clark collection, Canadian Centre of Architecture, Gift of Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, © Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark Questioning Pictures is a 36 photograph project commissioned by Fondazione Prada, Milan. Artist Stefano Graziani investigates archival and conservation systems in a number of museums. Through photographing museum objects, Graziani, focusing on the relationship between photographs, the museum objects and the power structures at play within institutions. The museums include the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montréal, Canada; Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, UK; the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Museum Insel Hombroich in Neuss, Germany; the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, Italy; and the Plaster Cast Gallery at Museo Canova in Possagno, Italy.
PH2018:0005:033
Description:
Photograph by Stefano Graziani of the following work: Gordon Matta-Clark, floor plan for Office Baroque, 1977, blue ballpoint pen on graph paper, 42 x 59.5 cm, PHCON2002:0016:058, Gordon Matta-Clark collection, Canadian Centre of Architecture, Gift of Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, © Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark Questioning Pictures is a 36 photograph project commissioned by Fondazione Prada, Milan. Artist Stefano Graziani investigates archival and conservation systems in a number of museums. Through photographing museum objects, Graziani, focusing on the relationship between photographs, the museum objects and the power structures at play within institutions. The museums include the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montréal, Canada; Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, UK; the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Museum Insel Hombroich in Neuss, Germany; the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, Italy; and the Plaster Cast Gallery at Museo Canova in Possagno, Italy.
2017
Questioning Pictures: Photograph of floor plan for office Baroque, blue pen on graph paper by Gordon Matta-Clark, 1977
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PH2018:0005:033
Description:
Photograph by Stefano Graziani of the following work: Gordon Matta-Clark, floor plan for Office Baroque, 1977, blue ballpoint pen on graph paper, 42 x 59.5 cm, PHCON2002:0016:058, Gordon Matta-Clark collection, Canadian Centre of Architecture, Gift of Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, © Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark Questioning Pictures is a 36 photograph project commissioned by Fondazione Prada, Milan. Artist Stefano Graziani investigates archival and conservation systems in a number of museums. Through photographing museum objects, Graziani, focusing on the relationship between photographs, the museum objects and the power structures at play within institutions. The museums include the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montréal, Canada; Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, UK; the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland; Museum Insel Hombroich in Neuss, Germany; the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona, Italy; and the Plaster Cast Gallery at Museo Canova in Possagno, Italy.
Through a commission from the CCA, three contemporary photographers spent six years interpreting the work of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903), North America’s most important landscape architect. *Viewing Olmsted: Photographs by Robert Burley, Lee Friedlander, and Geoffrey James* presents 155 photographs from this commission to offer visitors an opportunity to understand(...)
Main galleries
16 October 1996 to 2 February 1997
Viewing Olmsted: Photographs by Robert Burley, Lee Friedlander, and Geoffrey James
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Through a commission from the CCA, three contemporary photographers spent six years interpreting the work of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903), North America’s most important landscape architect. *Viewing Olmsted: Photographs by Robert Burley, Lee Friedlander, and Geoffrey James* presents 155 photographs from this commission to offer visitors an opportunity to understand(...)
Main galleries
1973: Sorry, Out of Gas
1973: Sorry, Out of Gas captures the architectural innovation spurred by the 1973 oil crisis, when the value of oil increased exponentially and triggered economic, political, and social upheaval across the world. Featuring over 350 objects including architectural drawings, photographs, books and pamphlets, archival television footage, and historical artefacts, it maps the(...)
7 November 2007 to 20 April 2008
1973: Sorry, Out of Gas
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1973: Sorry, Out of Gas captures the architectural innovation spurred by the 1973 oil crisis, when the value of oil increased exponentially and triggered economic, political, and social upheaval across the world. Featuring over 350 objects including architectural drawings, photographs, books and pamphlets, archival television footage, and historical artefacts, it maps the(...)
articles
Material Witness
The Lives of Documents, Photography as a Project, Stefano Graziani and Bas Princen, Susanne Kriemann, conversation, oral history, radioactive landscapes
11 March 2024
2016 Visiting Scholar Farhan Karim presents his research: In the recent development of architectural history, the involvement of Western architects in emerging postcolonial nations has been reviewed within the broader geopolitics of decolonization and global cold war. That analysis is certainly correct, as far as it goes, but what is needed historiographically is nuanced(...)
Shaughnessy House
7 July 2016, 6pm
Visiting Scholar Seminar: Farhan Karim
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2016 Visiting Scholar Farhan Karim presents his research: In the recent development of architectural history, the involvement of Western architects in emerging postcolonial nations has been reviewed within the broader geopolitics of decolonization and global cold war. That analysis is certainly correct, as far as it goes, but what is needed historiographically is nuanced(...)
Shaughnessy House
David Howes, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University, applies a sensory studies approach to the analysis of a series of interiors he has encountered in the course of his anthropological and archival research. These range from a men’s house in the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea to the exclusively feminine(...)
Shaughnessy House
26 February 2015 , 6pm
The Sensory Interior
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David Howes, Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Sensory Studies at Concordia University, applies a sensory studies approach to the analysis of a series of interiors he has encountered in the course of his anthropological and archival research. These range from a men’s house in the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea to the exclusively feminine(...)
Shaughnessy House
Learning from... Rome
Filmmaker and photographer Armin Linke reveals the societal changes, cultural complexities, and beauty of contemporary Rome through two short films and architectural photographs from his archives. The first film focuses on a moment of natural choreography as some 100,000 starlings fly against the backdrop of the city of Rome. Linke presents a selection of photographs,(...)
Paul Desmarais Theatre
5 March 2009
Learning from... Rome
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Filmmaker and photographer Armin Linke reveals the societal changes, cultural complexities, and beauty of contemporary Rome through two short films and architectural photographs from his archives. The first film focuses on a moment of natural choreography as some 100,000 starlings fly against the backdrop of the city of Rome. Linke presents a selection of photographs,(...)
Paul Desmarais Theatre
Archaeology of the Digital: Complexity and Convention is the third exhibition related to the development of a strategy for collecting and preserving digital archives at the CCA. The Archaeology of the Digital program comprises twenty-five projects for which digital materials are integral to an understanding of the design process. For projects included in the first two(...)
11 May 2016 to 16 October 2016
Archaeology of the Digital: Complexity and Convention
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Archaeology of the Digital: Complexity and Convention is the third exhibition related to the development of a strategy for collecting and preserving digital archives at the CCA. The Archaeology of the Digital program comprises twenty-five projects for which digital materials are integral to an understanding of the design process. For projects included in the first two(...)