How can architecture meaningfully bridge inherited traditions and contemporary realities? Join us for a talk with architect Olayinka Dosekun Adjei, co-founder and creative director of Studio Contra.
11 June 2026, 6pm to 7:30pm
Reworking Material, Craft, and Form in Contemporary West Africa with Olayinka Dosekun Adjei
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How can architecture meaningfully bridge inherited traditions and contemporary realities? Join us for a talk with architect Olayinka Dosekun Adjei, co-founder and creative director of Studio Contra.
Where—and how—do we want to live as we grow older? Will our neighborhoods, our buildings, our cities be able to meet our needs? The evening begins with a screening of the documentary Where We Grow Older (CCA, 2023, 30 min), which explores how architecture and urban planning can respond to the challenges of an aging population. The screening will be followed by a(...)
Paul-Desmarais Theatre
5 February 2026, 6pm
Film and conversation: Where Will We Grow Older?
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Where—and how—do we want to live as we grow older? Will our neighborhoods, our buildings, our cities be able to meet our needs? The evening begins with a screening of the documentary Where We Grow Older (CCA, 2023, 30 min), which explores how architecture and urban planning can respond to the challenges of an aging population. The screening will be followed by a(...)
Paul-Desmarais Theatre
articles
The planet is the client
Looking beyond North America, the series Meanwhile, in… considers the role of changed contexts in shaping postmodernisms elsewhere, by assembling case studies from other countries, with other cultural concerns and other contingencies.
Paul-Desmarais Theater
7 February 2019, 6:30pm
Meanwhile, in Frankfurt: With André Bideau
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Looking beyond North America, the series Meanwhile, in… considers the role of changed contexts in shaping postmodernisms elsewhere, by assembling case studies from other countries, with other cultural concerns and other contingencies.
Paul-Desmarais Theater
The 2024 Toolkit for Today explores imaginative, material, and methodological paths to collectively navigate how queer and trans* theory can offer critiques of power that allow for the revision of some of the core concepts and ontologies of architectural history.
22 July 2024 to 26 July 2024
Toolkit for Today: Cross Wor(l)ds/Queer Wor(l)ds
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The 2024 Toolkit for Today explores imaginative, material, and methodological paths to collectively navigate how queer and trans* theory can offer critiques of power that allow for the revision of some of the core concepts and ontologies of architectural history.
events
Learning from... London
Kieran Long presents a story about the difficulty of describing a city in all its richness. London contains stories and meanings that are alive to its citizens, but apparently too difficult to talk about, too rich, and too messy to be allowed to affect those who decide how the city changes. The deafness of developers, politicians and architects to these narratives is so(...)
Paul Desmarais Theater
10 March 2011 , 7pm
Learning from... London
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Description:
Kieran Long presents a story about the difficulty of describing a city in all its richness. London contains stories and meanings that are alive to its citizens, but apparently too difficult to talk about, too rich, and too messy to be allowed to affect those who decide how the city changes. The deafness of developers, politicians and architects to these narratives is so(...)
events
10 March 2011
7pm
Paul Desmarais Theater
research
The 2023 edition of the Virtual Fellowship Program invited new directions, readings, and interactions with the photographic works held in our Collection with a view to charting how broader understandings of ‘vision’ may exceed what Vilém Flusser names the ‘technical image.’
March 2023 to April 2023
Virtual Research Fellows 2023
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The 2023 edition of the Virtual Fellowship Program invited new directions, readings, and interactions with the photographic works held in our Collection with a view to charting how broader understandings of ‘vision’ may exceed what Vilém Flusser names the ‘technical image.’
research
March 2023 to
April 2023
This critical reading of exemplary projects from the CCA Collection reveals everyday spatial and power dynamics that have created middlegrounds but that have not often been acknowledged. Beyond restitution, how can architects participate in imagining more just futures for sites of dispossession?
Hall Cases Keyword(s):
Middleground, hall cases, Rafico Ruiz, Louise Paradis, indigenous, sovereignty, Ella den Elzen, Camille Saade-Traboulsi
10 February 2021 to 13 March 2022
Middleground: Siting Dispossession
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Description:
This critical reading of exemplary projects from the CCA Collection reveals everyday spatial and power dynamics that have created middlegrounds but that have not often been acknowledged. Beyond restitution, how can architects participate in imagining more just futures for sites of dispossession?
Hall Cases Keyword(s):
Middleground, hall cases, Rafico Ruiz, Louise Paradis, indigenous, sovereignty, Ella den Elzen, Camille Saade-Traboulsi
How are computational optics operating in and through the built environment? How have they become so ubiquitous and taken for granted, completing the desires of fulfillment centres and the legibility that computation craves? What computational logics, imaginaries, and frameworks lie outside of their dominant modes of perception and commoditization? Join us on Thursday 17(...)
17 July 2025, 6pm
Toolkit for Today: Defying Computational Cravings
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How are computational optics operating in and through the built environment? How have they become so ubiquitous and taken for granted, completing the desires of fulfillment centres and the legibility that computation craves? What computational logics, imaginaries, and frameworks lie outside of their dominant modes of perception and commoditization? Join us on Thursday 17(...)
archives
Level of archival description:
Collection
AP172
Description:
The Mies in America Research Collection documents an exhibition and publication project produced by Curator and Architectural Historian, Phyllis Lambert (1927-), and associated researchers between 1996-2002. The project explored German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's (1886-1969) contributions to the American architectural landscape following his immigration from Germany to Chicago in 1938. The resulting book, a collaboration between the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Whitney Museum of American Art, was published in 2001. The exhibition ran from 2001-2002 with stops at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Canadian Centre for Architecture, (Montreal), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago). The Mies in America research collection consists of correspondence, research, and administrative, manuscript, and curatorial files created by Phyllis Lambert and the project team for the book and exhibition project Mies in America, originally housed in the Mies research office at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Throughout the process, the team of researchers consulted previously unstudied material on Mies van der Rhoe from major repositories across North America, including drawings, collages, photographs, project documents, letters, and extensive interviews , which are represented in photocopy throughout the collection to document the research activities as well as curatorial choices and manuscript development. Subsequent curatorial decisions based on this research are detailed through notes, correspondence, manuscript drafts, and object lists as the book and exhibition projects took shape. Original annotations, edits, and comments made by Phyllis Lambert and her research associates are present throughout. The administrative activities of the research team are also documented through correspondence, research assistant assignments, research trips, and photography requests. Files from the assistant curator (Cammie McAtee), and research assistants (primarily Elspeth Cowell, Nathalie Senecal, and Deborah Miller) are integrated throughout the collection.
1957-2002
Mies in America Research Collection
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AP172
Description:
The Mies in America Research Collection documents an exhibition and publication project produced by Curator and Architectural Historian, Phyllis Lambert (1927-), and associated researchers between 1996-2002. The project explored German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's (1886-1969) contributions to the American architectural landscape following his immigration from Germany to Chicago in 1938. The resulting book, a collaboration between the Canadian Centre for Architecture and the Whitney Museum of American Art, was published in 2001. The exhibition ran from 2001-2002 with stops at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Canadian Centre for Architecture, (Montreal), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago). The Mies in America research collection consists of correspondence, research, and administrative, manuscript, and curatorial files created by Phyllis Lambert and the project team for the book and exhibition project Mies in America, originally housed in the Mies research office at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Throughout the process, the team of researchers consulted previously unstudied material on Mies van der Rhoe from major repositories across North America, including drawings, collages, photographs, project documents, letters, and extensive interviews , which are represented in photocopy throughout the collection to document the research activities as well as curatorial choices and manuscript development. Subsequent curatorial decisions based on this research are detailed through notes, correspondence, manuscript drafts, and object lists as the book and exhibition projects took shape. Original annotations, edits, and comments made by Phyllis Lambert and her research associates are present throughout. The administrative activities of the research team are also documented through correspondence, research assistant assignments, research trips, and photography requests. Files from the assistant curator (Cammie McAtee), and research assistants (primarily Elspeth Cowell, Nathalie Senecal, and Deborah Miller) are integrated throughout the collection.
archives
Level of archival description:
Collection 172
1957-2002