Giovanni Chiaramonte, photographer. Toronto-Dominion Centre seen from the street, Toronto. 1999. Chromogenic colour print, 11.6 x 23.7 cm. CCA Collection. PH1999:0133 Gift of the artist

The Power Corporation of Canada Awards encourage students at the Masters level in Canadian architecture schools to take part in a collaborative project of three months at the CCA Study Centre.

2014 Call for applications

Looking at Canada: When Architecture Meets Societal Changes

The focus of the 2014 Power Corporation of Canada Awards Looking at Canada: When Architecture Meets Societal Changes is on some of the ways in which Canadian architecture has responded to critical societal movements from the 1960s to the 1980s through to the present. This theme arises from the recognition that the representation of local identity in post-WWII Canadian society has been shaped by certain essential convictions — among them the idea that mediation as well as “fairness and inclusion” (two key concepts identified by John Ralston Saul in his celebrated A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada, 2008) are factors that determine the character of the Canadian built environment. The architectural outcome of this attitude has been monumental, although it frequently operates on a small scale, through a focus on human interaction and the impact of human activities on the city and landscape.

A more concrete understanding of space as a medium for representing local identity becomes possible when examining a selection of projects marking the decades from the 1960s to the 1980s through to the present day, and when considering these projects alongside the role played by architects such as Arthur Erickson, to mention one of the most prominent, in the production of the Canadian built environment.

In their own ways all these projects engage with the community and mediate spaces that are at the same time public and private, interior and exterior, urban and landscape. These projects can also be analyzed with regard to certain significant changes that occurred in Canadian society at the time. This is the case, for example, with the change in access to higher education, which occurred in the mid-1960s with the arrival of the so-called “knowledge explosion.” This shift necessitated an expansion of spaces devoted to education, resulting in the construction of new universities and new facilities on existing campuses. Here the iconic language of the megaform was deployed directly as multi-layered landscape, allowing a sophisticated mediation of climate, public space and inward/outward expression.

Eligibility and Terms of Residency

The three Master’s students who will participate in the 2014 Power Corporation of Canada Awards program are expected to address and interpret the phenomenon outlined above. During their three-month residency, they will do research in the CCA Collection as follows:

Two weeks of introduction to the literature, with the production of a bibliography and a methodological report.

Three weeks of digging into archival documents.

Seven weeks during which the students — operating, in a sense, as cyber-flâneurs in our interconnected information society — will work together on the elaboration of a magazine-format project. This will consist of illustrated essays (a co-authored introduction and three individual texts) that can be distributed in electronic format, eventually to be made available as layout/catalogue for a virtual exhibition.

The students will be assisted during this period by two supervisors, with whom they will meet regularly. The students are expected to produce the layout of the e-journal, prepare a final presentation on the result of their work and generate a report on their residency experience in relation to the different phases of the research work.

All students currently enrolled in professional and post-professional Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture, Master of Environmental Design, or Master of Urban Design programs in Canada are eligible for this award, regardless of citizenship. The Power Corporation Award provides a total stipend of $7,000 CAD to cover the travel, housing, and living expenses of each recipient for a 3-month residency in Montréal from 1 June to 31 August 2014. Three recipients will be selected to work together and in collaboration with CCA curatorial staff. The residency and research project must be completed by Sunday, 31 August 2014. The Award is non-renewable.

Application guidelines 2014

Application

Applications are opened until Wednesday 30 April 2014 (EST). Please click here to apply.

> via The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)