The Canada Council for the Arts has revealed the four proposals shortlisted for exhibition at the Canadian Pavilion at Venice's 2020 Architecture Biennale. Included are designs from emerging Canadian stars Common Accounts, Ja Architecture Studio, and the duo Thomas Balaban and David Theodore, who have teamed up for the project. Additionally, Carleton University’s Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism—which is led by Professor Jill Stoner—has been tapped as well. 

From an exhibition on Canada's waterscapes and inland bodies of water, to one on light wood framing, the shortlisted visions address ideas of identity, history and culture within the context of Canadian architecture. With an open ended prompt, the proposed exhibitions focus on topics ranging from the after life to Canada's role as a filming location and stand in for other places. Below is a snapshot of each team’s vision.

Fluid Boundaries: Ethical Imaginaries of Inland Waters
Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism (Ottawa, ON)

Fluid Boundaries is a partnership between the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, with colleagues from Geography + Environmental Studies and the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies. The proposal explores the liquid boundaries and thresholds of Canada. We aim to foster a critical position on Canada’s responsibilities to inland bodies of water, Indigenous nations, human and non-human agencies, and the legal-governance entanglements that shape our collective experiences of Canada as an idea and place. Our exhibition positions interactive liquid landscape models with speculative drawings and texts that elicit an ethical imaginary on how these waterscapes should be maintained, experienced and challenged.

Lightness
Ja Architecture Studio (Toronto, ON)

Architecture in Canada has a paradoxical relationship to light wood framing. With its simplicity, flexibility, and affordability, architects are able to conceive of spaces of considerable formal imagination, yet these same characteristics have placed light wood framing primarily outside the disciplinary boundaries of architecture and instead within the realm of building.

By examining Canada through the lens of this specific construction method, Lightness—Ja Architecture Studio’s collaborative submission for the Canadian Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Biennale—asks how we can explore the boundaries of the architectural imagination while connecting it to broader national issues such as ecology, regionalism, colonization, and settlement.

After Life
Common Accounts (Toronto, ON)

After Life interrogates the intensifying attention on the body in this moment characterized by its existential instability. With the prospect of humanity's demise under threat of environmental collapse at the planetary scale, the body is more present than ever—in architectural discourse, in social media, and in capitalism’s popular imaginary— and so too is the spectre of death as the motivating force of its ubiquity. Paradoxically, there is arguably no other time in history when the average human being has been as drawn to beautifying, hardening, and enhancing itself than now, confronted with the crisis of the body's ultimate disappearance.

Imposter Cities
T B A + David Theodore (Montreal, QC)

Canada’s architecture is film-famous. Global citizens know Canada’s architecture because they go to the cinema. But unlike Paris or Rio de Janeiro, our cities rarely play themselves in famous movies. Instead, filmmakers and television producers use Canadian locations to stand in for elsewhere. 

Curated by a collaborative team of architects, critics, and designers, Impostor Cities probes the complex identity of Canadian architecture by exploring the portrayal of our built environment onscreen. The exhibition offers fresh insights and an unusual look into how filmmakers transform our cityscapes and architectural icons that double for other places, other times, and other realities.