February 8, 2012

Exploring the Canadian identity

SOPHIA SENGSURIYA

Migrating Landscapes, a nationwide competition and exhibition where architects and designers explored how immigration and migrations affects them, is shown when it was displayed at the B.C. Regional Exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver.

KELLY LAPOINTE

staff writer

Migrating Landscapes, a nationwide competition and exhibition series, is exploring the influence of migration and immigration on Canadian architects and designers.

Johanna Hurme, a founding partner of 5468796 Architecture and one of the three young Winnipeg-based organizers and curators of Migrating Landscapes, said many designers don’t often think about their heritage and personal migration story.

“Even if it’s evident in our work, we aren’t aware of it, it’s not a conscious thing,” she said.

“I’ve heard from many competitors that this is something that they really took the luxury of thinking about and trying to figure out what it means for each one of them.”

The exhibition features videos, where each young entrant talks about how their personal experiences of migration have affected them as designers, together with architectural models of dwellings that reflect these experiences.

The videos and models will be placed into a wooden exhibition infrastructure, representing an act of settling into a new landscape.

There were 120 project submissions across Canada.

Migrating Landscapes is organized and curated by 5468796 Architecture + Jae-Sung Chon.

Hurme hopes the competition, which is aimed at architects and designers younger than age 45, will raise the profile of architecture in Canada.

“We understand architecture as being one of the primal modes of how we express our culture in our country. It isn’t just about art or dance or literature or poetry, but it’s also about what we build,” she said

“That’s actually one very clear mode of culture.”

Hurme, who was born in Finland, said it’s hard to even determine what Canadian architecture is.

“It is based on this pluralism that really welcomes and celebrates differences and migration,” she said.

“That’s one of the basic things we as Canadians can export to the world.”

Chon shared his own thoughts on the matter.

“What makes Canadian context different is its willing openness towards such condition, a resilient mechanism that takes such condition as opportunities rather than losses; a belief that something better can be forged within such condition,” he said.

Regional winners will be selected by a jury and will move on to a national competition and exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in March and April.

There, a high-profile national jury of Eleanor Bond, Ian Chodikoff, Anne Cormier, Bruce Kuwabara and John Patkau will select the architectural ‘Team Canada’ that will represent that nation at the 13th annual Venice Biennale in Architecture from Aug. 29 to Nov. 25, 2012.

The team will compete for the coveted Golden Lion for Best National Participation.

The Venice Biennale in Architecture has been described as the Olympics of Architecture.

Hurme hopes it will be a chance to really showcase Canada’s architecture talent.

“I think we have strengths that haven’t been well recognized,” she said.

Chon said it’s been encouraging to receive so much support from outside of the profession.

“We hope this project opens up many more dialogues with the public in the future, strengthening the design-culture landscape in Canada,” he said.

There will be Speaker’s Corners set up at the regional exhibitions, where anyone can share their story about their migration background.

“Almost the second question anyone asks in Canada is what’s your family history or background,” explained Hurme.

“We’re very interested in those migration stories because we’re trying to map out Canadian identity through the medium of architecture.”

The exhibition has wrapped up in Vancouver and Calgary and recently opened in Halifax and Montreal.

It will then move on to Toronto.

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