The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has just announced its acquisition of architect Toyo Ito’s early-career archive.  

The trove entails drawings, models, and sketches related to his practice Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects (founded as Urban Robot) from 1971 until 1989. The CCA says the donation will help researchers establish a better through line from the 2013 Pritzker Prize winner's early-career work in dialogue with its other archival holdings. The decision was made in September after 82-year-old Ito apparently determined he could not find an “appropriate place” in his home country in which to store the collection, according to The Yomiuri Shimbun. 

In a press announcement, Ito said: “The CCA is an architectural museum and research center 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.”

Projects included in the donation are the Aluminium House (Ito’s first design after leaving the offices of his mentor Kiyonori Kikutake), the White U house from 1976, the House at Koganei, and 28 others.

Ito’s donation follows Moshe Safdie’s gift last year to his alma mater McGill University to make Montreal one of the premiere destinations in North America for architectural historians and other scholars. The CCA was founded in 1979 by Phyllis Lambert and is currently directed by Giovanna Borasi, who also serves as the institution's Chief Curator.

In a statement, Borasi said finally: “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 center — 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.”

Donations of archives of Bernard Tschumi, Agrest and Gandelsonas, and Studio Works will also follow. 

A related June 2023 conversation with Ito, architecture critic Makoto Ueda, historian Koji Ichikawa, and fellow architects Maki Onishi and Yuki Hyakuda can be found here.