Curiosity Archives - Azure Magazine

6 Projects Pushing the Boundaries of Sustainable Design

Elizabeth Pagliacolo — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 12:51:00 +0000

Earth Forest Campus — Barcelona, Spain

PHOTO: Iwan Baan

Until recently, 3D-printed construction and traditional earth buildings existed at opposite ends of the technological spectrum. But an innovative Forest Campus in Barcelona’s Collserola Natural Park, developed by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) with international architecture firm Hassel, combines the best of both worlds, marrying cutting-edge techniques with vernacular design. The product of over one decade of research, the 100-square-metre structure is a full-scale prototype for sustainable and affordable construction. Though 3D-printed architecture is typically made of carbon-intensive concrete, the Forest Campus was printed...

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3 Books Expand on Topics From Azure’s Human/Nature Conference

Sydney Shilling — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 12:32:00 +0000

Lo-Tek: Design by Radical Indigenism by Julia Watson

When it comes to the future of sustainable architecture, the natural inclination is to turn to emerging technologies as tools to reduce our environmental impact. Julia Watson, who coined the Lo-Tek movement, believes that in order to move forward, we need to look back to the multi-generational wisdom of Indigenous peoples. By embracing the vernacular, she argues, we can not only resist the idea that Indigenous practices are primitive but also harness the benefits of place-based design that works with rather than against its context. Four chapters hone in on different climates — mountains, forests, deserts and wetlands — highlighting case studies from 18 countries...

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Architecture, Creativity and Power Collide in “Megalopolis”

Eric Mutrie — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 12:31:00 +0000

“Don’t let the now destroy the forever.” That is the philosophy preached by Cesar Catilina, an architect played by Adam Driver in Megalopolis, the messy magnum opus from director Francis Ford Coppola that hit theatres this fall. The main idea: To create a utopia, you must dream big — and knock down anything in your path.

In the Q and A that followed the movie’s Toronto International Film Festival screening, Driver said that he based his performance in part on Robert Moses. In one early scene, Catilina goes rogue and demolishes a building without the proper approvals. (The movie’s setting is a bizarro version of New York dubbed New Rome, reaffirming that the male obsession with the Roman Empire was no passing TikTok fad.) As...

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Two Weeks To Go! AZURE’s Human/Nature Conference

Azure — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 14:35:53 +0000

It’s right around the corner! On October 24 and 25, a curated lineup of architects, urbanists, policy-makers and designers is set to converge in downtown Toronto. Taking place at the Waterfront Campus of George Brown College, the two-day AZURE Human/Nature conference will bring together an impressive array of Canadian and international talents, harnessing interdisciplinary knowledge from around the world to address the issue of climate change through design.

Get Tickets!

Featuring a diverse series of CEU-accredited Keynotes, Panels and Workshops, the Human/Nature conference talks will be complemented by social gatherings and networking opportunities, an immersive field trip organized in partnership with the Toronto Society of Architects, as well as exciting co-programming with the Architecture and Design Film Festival.

Keynotes

Julia Watson

Susan Carruth

Four world-leading designers will deliver keynote presentations. Our opening speaker is an acclaimed New York-based landscape designer and and author. Julia Watson is a leading proponent of what she describes as “LO–TEK,’ a design philosophy (and a best-selling book of the same name) that embraces site-specific, highly local strategies — adopted by Indigenous peoples around the globe — as a wellspring of contemporary design thinking.

To cap Day 1, Susan Carruth, a partner at 3XN/GXN, will deliver a talk examining the Copenhagen-based firm’s world-leading portfolio of low-carbon and recycled buildings. A leading specialist in behavioural design, Carruth will also explore GXN’s innovative research practice, which integrates material and environmental sustainability with a distinctly human-centred ethos.

Kongjian Yu

Tommaso Bitossi

On Day 2, the visionary founder of Beijing landscape firm Turenscape, Kongjian Yu will share insight from his globally renowned “Sponge Cities” concept of regenerative landscape design. Guided by a rigorous triple bottom line — which integrates environmental, economic and social benefit into every built project — he boasts a portfolio that includes the award-winning Fish Tail Park in Nanchang City and Tongnan Dafosi Wetland Park. He is also the winner of the 2023 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize.

Finally, Tommaso Bitossi of Transsolar — the climate engineering company that has collaborated with firms including Renzo Piano Building Workshop, KPMB and MASS Design Group, to name a few — will explore how a synthesis of design and engineering can reshape our shared environments and our daily lives.

Panels

Our multi-perspective plenary panels bring together Canadian and international expertise for a global design audience. Acclaimed Vancouver-based Indigenous architect Alfred Waugh, together with Tsleil-Waututh Nation Councillor Dennis Thomas, will discuss a landmark project to redevelop the 90-acre ʔəy̓alməxʷ/Iy̓álmexw /Jericho Lands site in Vancouver’s West Point Grey neighbourhood as part of the ʔəy̓alməxʷ/Iy̓álmexw /Jericho Lands: Indigenous Urban Futures panel. In Forecast for Hotter Cities, meanwhile, our international panelists — including Rasmus Astrup of Danish landscape firm SLA, and Dorsa Jalalian of DIALOG — will share design-driven (and socio-political) strategies for mitigating rising urban temperatures.

La Quebradora Water Park in Mexico City, a landmark project by panel speaker Loreta Castro Reguera of Taller Capital. PHOTO: Aldo Díaz

How do we develop furniture and textiles for a cleaner planet? Featuring Caroline Cockerham of Cicil Rugs, Justin Beitzel of Common Object and Stephanie Lipp of MycoFutures, Circular Design for a Circular Economy will present ways of closing the loop through design, manufacturing, shipping, storage and end-of-life strategies.

Finally, The Green Public Realm, featuring Pat Hanson of Toronto’s gh3*, Loreta Castro Reguera of Mexico City’s Taller Capital, SpruceLab’s Sheila Boudreau, and Paul Kulig of Perkins&Will, will spotlight projects that make the most of our shared outdoor spaces.

Workshops

Complementing our plenary keynotes and panels, 12 immersive and collaborative workshops will deep dive into specific projects and practices. Architects including affordable housing champion SmartDensity, net-zero civic design specialists specialists MJMA, and adaptive reuse innovators Giaimo will share their expertise across a range of typologies and context. Perkins&Will and KPMB will explore emerging tools for assessing carbon, and LGA Architectural Partners and MabelleArts will discuss the integration of community wellbeing and food security into design practice.

MJMA’s Churchill Meadows Community Centre is among the impressive case studies presented as part of the Human/Nature workshops. PHOTO: Scott Norwsorthy

Led by Gensler, a look at healthy, low-carbon interiors will explore strategies for combining wellbeing and sustainability in fit-outs, while the innovative duo of Arper and PaperShell will share their experiences using bio-based materials in furniture design. Tackling the public scale, the Lemay team will offer a look at Montreal’s public realm and transit infrastructure, which holds vital lessons for the rest of North America. What’s more, authors and thought leaders including American mass timber specialist Lindsey Wilkstrom and healthcare design visionary Tye Farrow will share the thinking that informed their acclaimed recent books.

***

More information about the AZURE Human/Nature is available here. Tickets are on sale now!

Human/Nature keynotes are sponsored by Keilhauer, Stone Tile and Italgraniti. Plenary panel sponsors are Ciot, Formica and Architek. Workshop sponsors are Ligne Roset, Scavolini, TAS, Ege Carpets, Mitrex, Andreu World and Arper. The TSA-led field trips are supported by Nienkämper. The social gathering sponsor is Urban Capital.

The conference is presented in partnership with George Brown College / Brookfield Sustainability Institute, MaRS, Lemay, Flash, GFI Investment Council Ltd., Instituto Italiano di Cultura Toronto, and Small Change Fund. It is supported by the City of Toronto.

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ADFF Toronto Returns Alongside AZURE’s Human/Nature Conference

Stefan Novakovic — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 13:51:45 +0000

On October 23-26, the annual Architecture and Design Film Festival (ADFF) returns to Toronto’s TIFF Lightbox for three days of architectural cinema. This year, the festival’s evening and weekend programming complements Azure’s own Human/Nature conference, which takes place at the Waterfront Campus of George Brown College on October 24-25. It promises to be a weekend of design.

Interested in both events? Buy your tickets to AZURE Human/Nature today, and use the discount code ADFF2024 get a free pass to attend the opening night film of ADFF Toronto — as well as the festival party — on October 23. A tribute to the life of a Canadian icon, Ryan Mah and Danny Berish’s documentary Arthur Erickson: Beauty Between the Lines inaugurates this year’s festival with an in-depth exploration of one of the 20th century’s most iconic and influential architects. The screening will be introduced by architect Brigitte Shim, followed by a Q&A with Mah and Berish, and capped off with ADFF’s opening night party.

Following the conclusion of the AZURE Human/Nature conference on the evening of Friday October 25, a weekend of sustainable design leadership will begin with the ADFF screening of Biocentrics, which follows trans-disciplinary biologist and activist Janine Benyus on her journey to promote nature-inspired design innovation. The screening will be followed by a panel featuring DIALOG partner — and biologist-turned architect — Craig Applegath, as well Two Row Architect’s Matthew Hickey, and moderated by AZURE’s Elizabeth Pagliacolo.

On Saturday, October 26, our co-programming with ADFF continues with the joint screening of Where We Grow Older and Living Together: The Story of De Warren. The two documentaries tackle aging and co-living respectively, both analyzing pressing social issues through a spatial lens. The screenings will be followed by a discussion featuring LGA Architectural Partners co-founder Janna Levitt and Kindred Works managing partner David Constable, moderated by AZURE’s Stefan Novakovic.

The full ADFF Toronto schedule is now available online, along with the complete list of speakers. Following the Toronto showcase, ADFF comes to Vancouver and Los Angeles in November, followed by a first-ever festival in Mumbai in January 2025.

AZURE’s Human/Nature Conference takes place at the George Brown College Waterfront Campus on October 24-25. More information is available via our dedicated website. Tickets are on sale now!

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AZURE Talks: Spanish Design in Canada Comes to Hart House on November 8

Azure — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 17:12:01 +0000

From large yet exceptionally slim panels and ventilated facades to heated floors and emerging self-cleaning technologies, the evolving world of Spanish ceramics presents new opportunities for aesthetic evolution and environmental leadership. A global leader in both design and technology, the Spanish ceramic sector harnesses sustainable, recyclable and naturally sourced ceramics to break new ground in architecture and interior design. United under the Tile of Spain banner, 11 of the country’s leading producers are coming together for an exhibition showcasing the breadth, versatility and sustainability of Spanish tile — as well as the growing presence of Tile of Spain products across the North American market.

Taking place at the University of Toronto’s Hart House on November 8, the free exhibition will be complemented by a talk exploring the design possibilities offered by the Tile of Spain portfolio and the emergence of a Spanish-Canadian design culture. Moderated by Azure senior editor Stefan Novakovic, the talk will feature two of the country’s most acclaimed emerging designers, Aránzazu González Bernardo and Nicolas Koff, who will share their insights about Spanish ceramics and Spanish-Canadian design culture.

Educated at the at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura in La Coruña, Spanish architect and Odami co-founder Aránzazu (Arancha) González Bernardo leads one of North America’s most acclaimed emerging studios. Established by González Bernardo and Michael Fohring in 2017, Odami is celebrated for its distinct merging of Spanish and Canadian design sensibilities, creating elegant yet culturally rich work elevated by a passion for materiality and craft. Selected as one of AN Interior’s Top 50 Architects and Designers of 2023 and lauded as Designlines Designer of the Year in 2022, the studio has quickly emerged as a leading North American design practice, thanks to projects such as the Aesop stores in Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood and Palisades Village in Los Angeles. Odami’s award-winning residential interiors also make prominent use of ceramics, with the firm’s Beaches House showcasing rigorous aesthetic unity — and a distinctly Spanish sense of texture — in its eye-catching bathroom.

A co-founder of Toronto-based architecture practice Office OU, University of Pennsylvania alumnus Nicolas Koff leverages a background in architecture, landscape architecture and regional planning to lead one of Canada’s most exciting emerging practices. The firm’s diverse portfolio ranges from co-housing to artist studios across Ontario, while also encompassing educational facilities in the Czech Republic, and a recently completed landmark, the National Children’s Museum of Korea. Clad entirely in Spanish ceramics, the latter cultural complex is defined by its terracotta facades, which were designed as uneven triangular extrusions that would only be glazed on one side, creating an alternatingly soft or vivid look as one walks around the building.

Alongside the panel discussion, the event will also explore the evolution of the Spanish ceramic industry, and the themes — including environmental stewardship, respect for labour rights, attention to detail, investment in innovation, tradition and cultural heritage — that define the brands united under the Tile of Spain banner.

Today, Tile of Spain is used by more than 100 companies as a seal of guarantee of a product made in Spain manufactured under the highest quality standards. On November 8, Tile of Spain will be represented by an exhibition featuring 11 companies: ADEX USA, Azteca, Cevica, Decocer, Estudio Cerámico, Natucer, Peronda Group, Porcelanosa, STN Cerámica, TAU, Vives Cerámica.

Tile, Trends & Tapas takes place at Hart House on November 8. Registration for the free event is open now!

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Fredric Jameson and the Meaning of Architecture

Stefan Novakovic — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 13:30:34 +0000

A couple of years ago, I spent a few days in Montreal. One evening, a visit to a rooftop restaurant unfurled a spectacular vista, with the wraparound terrace taking in the view from all sides. A few of us, strangers and tourists, gathered to watch the late summer’s slow golden hour light weave through the city and across the harbour. Amidst the pleasantries, I gestured to the riverfront and the unmistakable form of Habitat 67. Not one for small talk, I turned to the guy next to me. There, I said, gesturing to the shoreline, stands one of the most important buildings of the 20th century.

“What makes it important?” It was a simple question, and one that came from a place of seemingly genuine curiosity rather than doubt or skepticism. It threw me for a loop. I didn’t know how to answer, running through a rambling mental rolodex. The architect, Moshe Safdie, was just 24 years old, still a grad student, when he won the commission, a stark contrast to today’s conservative procurement culture. But come on, who wants to hear about procurement? Eventually, I stammered out something along these lines: The project was a capstone of Expo 67, distilling the era’s watershed sense of civic optimism within a futuristic form. And as anyone can see, it’s a unique-looking building — and a natural conversation-starter.

I got a polite nod in return. I tried reaching for more: The project was also an attempt to integrate the form of a post-war American house (complete with a private green space) within a dense urban paradigm. As Safdie himself had put it, “for everyone a garden.” I felt a sense of relief — at least this was something. I can’t remember if we talked about anything else, but that was the end of architecture. It was a fleeting exchange, a conversation with a stranger I’d never see again.

As time passed, the encounter increasingly felt like a metonym for a broader professional failure. I’d been an architectural journalist for almost a decade, but one of the rare occasions when someone invited me to explain design, I came up flat. Most of the time, people don’t ask. With answers like these, who can blame them? And to be honest, I wasn’t writing about architecture so much as around it. Measured in online readership, my most successful pieces tended to focus on the spatial and political organization of the built environment — whether via the revival of public housing, zoning codes, the rise of community land trusts, or the geography of online shopping. To be published in a magazine, it all had to look good, of course. But beyond immediately tangible material realities — like the carbon savings of adaptive reuse or ease of circulation — or the edict that form follows function, the question of what it all meant seldom involved aesthetics. And anyway, it’s a lot easier to get people excited or incensed about a new bike lane than about how a building looks.

Then I read Fredric Jameson. Best known for his seminal 1991 book Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism — expanded from a 1984 essay of the same name — the critic and political theorist was renowned for his analysis of art and literature through a historical lens, situating cultural expression within a macro-economic context. For Jameson, understanding a painting or a novel also meant understanding the economic order it came from, a process that then revealed — often surprising — political ideologies of the system that produced it. In particular, Jameson focused his attention to the aesthetic break from modernism that characterized the latter decades of the 20th century, arguing that the turn to historical pastiche, irony and fragmentation reflected the era’s post-industrial, neoliberal economy.

The best known analysis is hinted on the book’s cover — and first articulated in the 1984 essay. Jameson establishes a dialectical comparison between Vincent Van Gogh’s Shoes and Andy Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes. Van Gogh’s 1886 painting depicts a pair of worn-out work boots, bent out of shape, laces strewn, and deposited on a floor. We can practically picture “the whole object world of agricultural misery, of stark rural poverty, and the whole rudimentary human world of backbreaking peasant toil,” Jameson writes. Whatever backdrop we conjure, the artwork invites what Jameson describes as “hermeneutical” readings. The shoes aren’t just shoes, they are “a clue or a symptom of some vaster reality.”

Warhol’s Diamond Dust Shoes tells a different story. Jameson describes the composition as “a random collection of dead objects,” shorn of the contextual depths of Van Gogh’s brush. And where Peasant Shoes can — like much of the artist’s oeuvre — be interpreted as a straightforward ode to the working class, the black background of Warhol’s 1980 painting resists such spatial politics. Floating as disembodied entities in space, the postmodern Diamond Dust Shoes are little more than objects to be admired. Inasmuch a material context can be gleaned in the darkness, it is the technological form of the film negative — the material of representation itself — rather than any lived world. Like the mechanical reproduction of film, the cluster of shoes is depicted as a collage of copies, becoming little more than an infinitely replicable representation. We can intuit nothing about the wearers or their lives.

Shoes, Van Gogh, 1886.

According to Jameson, stylistic differences between the two paintings are reflections of deeper socio-economic realities. While postmodernism frequently remains regarded as an ahistorical and playfully disembodied aesthetic, Jameson situated its roots in the system of “late capitalism.” Today, the term is popularly used as a synonym for neoliberalism — and its attendant erosion of the social welfare state — but it more specifically refers to the distinct but closely related rise of the post-industrial knowledge economy. For us consumers, visible wealth — if not real economic value — was increasingly accumulated through the trading desk and fax machine rather than the wheat field and the factory floor. At the same time, expanding global shipping networks fueled a new consumer economy, built on cheap labour in the global south and driven by debt, credit cards and computers here. (Jameson, incidentally, was himself a charmingly late adopter of technology, reportedly using both hands to navigate a mouse across the screen like a Ouija board).

What about architecture? For Jameson, the built environment is a unique locus of ideology. Compared to a painting or novel, the architectural profession is more explicitly beholden to capital and finance, underscoring its connection to economics and ideology. And just as art moved from modernist minimalism and abstraction to Warhol commercialism, architecture evolved from Miesian simplicity and the International Style into eclectic symbolism and postmodern collage. But beyond the canon, the postmodern movement was more acutely reflected in the vernacular architectures famously celebrated by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown in their 1971 manifesto Learning From Las Vegas. For Venturi and Scott Brown, the legibility — and the sheer fun — of kitsch made it a salve against an elitist architectural culture. If Warhol could elevate everyday products like Campbell’s soup cans into art, then why shouldn’t exuberant truck stops and fast food tourist traps be celebrated as populist architecture?

In Jameson’s analysis, both soup cans and roadside spectacles reflect the same vapid celebration of consumer culture. The simulacra of a Las Vegas Sphinx or Eiffel Tower offer no incisive political parody — or statement about their predecessors — only the empty pastiche of playtime. Although he recognized the harms of modernist dogma and the originality of Venturi and Scott Brown’s arguments, Jameson warned that the disassociation of postmodern aesthetics was a hindrance to political consciousness. The theme park architecture of Las Vegas may be fun to behold, but the experience can be disorienting.

The Westin Bonaventure Hotel in 2022. PHOTO: Another Believer (Creative Commons).

The criticism wasn’t reserved for vernacular — the metier of Jameson’s 1984 essay and 1991 book ranges from Disneyland to Frank Gehry. An analysis of John Portman’s Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles translates the argument into a spatial logic. Completed in 1977, the high-rise hotel is arguably the Platonic epitome of Portman’s atrium typology. Inside, transparent glass elevators and dramatic escalators create a mechanized ballet. To fully experience the building, the visitor yields to its spatial logic — being at the heart of the action requires standing still and letting the moving parts do their work. “[T]he Bonaventura aspires to being a total space, a complete world, a kind of miniature city,” writes Jameson, likening the complex to Toronto’s Eaton Centre. Moreover, there is no clear circulation to the place, a fact reflected by its unsuccessful retail program. And while the building has four entrances, each feels tucked away and almost hidden. On the street, meanwhile, passersby are met by a glass wall that reflects the city back on itself.

The Westin Bonaventure interior in 2022. PHOTO: Another Believer (Creative Commons).

Like so many Las Vegas attractions, the Bonaventure proved an enduringly popular tourist destination. It appeared in film, too, from 1990s dad thrillers like In the Line of Fire and True Lies to Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar and the recently released A24 cult horror film MaXXXine. Yet, the Los Angeles hotel seemingly replicated the same urban hostility of its despised International Style predecessors. Here, Jameson elucidates a crucial difference. Le Corbusier’s doctrinal brand of modernism asked us to cede the older “fallen city” in exchange for a promised utopia, but the postmodern world lacks such overt ideology, and is instead “content to ‘let the fallen city fabric continue to be in its being.’”

The seemingly unstructured form of postmodern culture is a political reality in itself. If the artwork is detached and placeless or the building is disorienting, its genesis can be found in our broader inability to navigate the “great global multinational and decentred communicational network in which we find ourselves caught as individual subjects,” writes Jameson.

Over 30 years after the book’s 1991 publication, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism remains a touchstone of literary and critical theory. Released a year later, Francis Fukuyama’s massively influential The End of History saw the conclusion of the Cold War as an emphatic terminus: Western liberal democracy won. It is tempting to read postmodern thought in this vein, too, with all of Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomes and differences spreading out into randomized infinities in a world no longer bound by dialectical struggle. Yet, Jameson effectively wrestled the postmodern genie back into the bottle of history. Though seemingly liberated from ideology and order, postmodern form was itself the product of a socio-economic system. History keeps coming.

For Jameson himself, the critique of postmodern culture forms a mere chapter in an astonishingly rich body of work. Earlier in his career, Marxism and Form (1971) and The Political Unconscious (1981) established the groundwork for a Marxist reading of aesthetics; the latter book famously opens with the admonishment to “always historicize,” and argues that the political meaning of art — and architecture — typically resides beyond the creator’s conscious intentions. Though Jameson did not pioneer historicism as a mode of criticism, he arguably pushed it further than any other architectural thinker. Together with Manfredo Tafuri, Jameson shaped a Marxist understanding of built form for the 21st century. And while both critics saw architecture as a reflection of history and capitalism, Jameson — foremost a literary philosopher — saw the potential of art to offer hints of a better world.

It all changed the way I think about design and culture. Reading Jameson’s descriptions of Portman’s hotel and Frank Gehry’s Los Angeles home, my thoughts turned to my childhood in 1990s Prague. Then and now, Gehry’s Dancing House was the building of the decade. Initiated in the wake of the Velvet Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the complex was built as an office for a Dutch insurance company and completed in 1996. Instantly recognizable for its asymmetric shape and kinetic rhythm, it was always obvious that the building was a symbol of a new world order and Czechia’s hopeful place within it. Not for nothing, the Soviets never built anything like it.

The Dancing House in Prague. PHOTO: Danny Alexander Lettkemann (Creative Commons).

Together with local partner Vlado Milunić, Gehry explained that the dance between the building’s two volumes — nicknamed Fred and Ginger — represents the transition from a more static Communist existence into a dynamic western one. Yet, a broader historic view reveals deeper ideological truths. Reflecting the scale and window rhythm of its Baroque and Art Deco neighbours, the design creates a sense of continuity with its pre-Communist surroundings. There is an obvious aesthetic departure, but one that clearly picks up on the context of historic Prague.

It is a dialogue between the handsomely restored relics of centuries past and a form that beckons the new millennium. To my mind, cohesion between the varied neighbouring buildings — Dancing House sits on a prominent corner lot — implies a natural and even inevitable evolution, suggesting that Czechia was always destined to be part of the West, and that newly introduced forms of capitalism find a local precedent in the pre-Communist era. Not coincidentally, it is a visual dialogue that omits the Soviet-era apartment blocks that house the majority of the city’s population. If the 19th century was always destined to evolve into the 21st, what happened in between was an aberration. Compared to Gehry’s own symbolic reading, a historicist view of aesthetics offers a politically and culturally richer understanding of the building and what it means. Form can tell us something — even something surprising — about the world we live in.

Crucially, following Jameson’s school of thought allows us to translate aesthetic and cultural paradigms into a more broadly intelligible language. Although the complexity of theory is often viewed as an obstacle to public understanding of design, it can also reveal a bigger picture. You don’t need to know much about architecture — or even be interested in it — to appreciate material political implications.

After trying to parse the meaning of Dancing House, I found myself fixated on Canadian chef Susur Lee. When my family moved from Prague to Toronto, Lee was at the height of his powers, leading the trend of fusion cuisine that swept the city. Was the food great? I couldn’t tell — just like so many of us can’t tell if a building is any good. I’ve never known much about fine dining, and I don’t have a particularly refined palette. I didn’t really understand it in a culinary sense. Yet, after reading Jameson, I tried to grasp it as a cultural logic within a historic framework. Combining elements of East Asian street food and traditional French techniques in a relaxed North American setting, Lee’s gastronomy reflected Toronto’s emergence as a proudly diverse, cosmopolitan city. For the first time, I felt like I got it.

Fredric Jameson.

Even at the end of his life, Fredric Jameson remained endlessly productive, releasing three new books, including a forthcoming posthumous title, in 2024 alone. He died at the age of 90 on September 22, leaving behind a rich and influential legacy of thought. Even though a Jameson essay will almost inevitably leave me brushing up on my Adorno and Althusser, his work unfailingly retained a sense of wit and honesty, combining an elevated academic language with conversational and humorous moments, all supported on a deftly intricate scaffold of storytelling. “He would always use this lecture-like technique, which I imitate a lot, of introducing some concepts or texts at the beginning of the essay and then sticking a pin in them, trusting the reader to hold that thought — it’ll come back, often like a magic key, later,” writes Kate Wagner in The Nation.

So anyway, back to Habitat 67. What do we see through the lens of history? Built at the height of the Cold War, the project can be understood as the expression of dialectical struggle. In the post-war decades, the Soviet Union launched a momentous building campaign, delivering a scale of housing that lifted millions out of poverty. It was incumbent on the American-led west to imagine a response — one that combined the scale of the Soviet Project while celebrating the culture of individualism and freedom that defined American life. These competing imperatives are synthesized in the form of Habitat 67, which meets the scale of a Soviet housing block while expressing the individual presence of every family home. Although it never spurred a viable paradigm for mass construction, its form elucidates a complex ideological narrative — one that tells us something important, and something surprising, about the state of the world it came from.

The post Fredric Jameson and the Meaning of Architecture appeared first on Azure Magazine.

Quebec’s International Garden Festival Redraws its Borders for 2025

Stefan Novakovic — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 01:39:43 +0000

Since its inaugural edition at the turn of the millennium, the International Garden Festival at Reford Gardens has evolved into one of North America’s leading avenues for exploring new ideas in landscape design and architecture. Over the past 25 editions — including the 2024 festival, which is on until October 6 — the annual fair has announced its 2025 theme of “Borders,” with a call for proposals now open for the festival 26th edition.

An aerial view of the festival grounds during the ongoing 2024 edition. PHOTO: Jean-Christophe Lemay.

Open to all landscape architects, architects, visual artists, and multidisciplinary teams from across Canada and around the world, the International Garden Festival offers an opportunity for multi-disciplinary explorations to shape the future of our shared landscapes. In 2025, the International Garden Festival “invites designers from all horizons to rethink the notion of borders in today’s post-colonial context, and to transpose their reflections into a garden-environment that blurs disciplines, renegotiates preconceived ideas about the garden/landscape, and actively dialogues with the visitor.”

Vanderveken, Architecture + Paysage, “Couleur Nature.” PHOTO: Martin Bond.

The open and expansive brief allows for a wide range of spatial and contextual responses to map a changing terrain. “Constantly renegotiated, borders also act as passageways, places of encounter and exchange,” the brief notes. Submissions to the 2025 International Garden Festival are open until November 4, with the complete details of submission and selection criteria — including site locations on the Reford Gardens grounds — outlined via the festival’s official website.

Vanderveken, Architecture + Paysage, “Couleur Nature.” PHOTO: Martin Bond.

In the meantime, the landmark 25th edition remains on display until early October. Dubbed “The Ecology of Possibility,” the 2024 fair showcases a total of 27 gardens, including six new installations — and two extramural projects — created for this year’s festival. Exploring the social responsibility of public landscapes, the new gardens include the playful and thought-provoking “Couleur Nature” — a sort of swimming pool in reverse — by Quebec’s own Vanderveken, Architecture + Paysage, as well as installations by Belgium’s Pioniersplanters, American designer Julia Lines Wilson, and Italy’s mat-on, as well as a new permanent project (“Pergola”) by Quebec’s Jérôme Lapierre Architecte.

mat-on, “Superstrata.” PHOTO: Martin Bond.

Situated on the shores of the St. Lawrence and Mitis rivers at the gateway to the Gaspé Peninsula, Reford Gardens was originally cultivated by gardener and plant collector Elsie Reford between 1926 and 1958. Now designated a national historic site, the riverside landscape has been home to the International Garden Festival since 2000. Led Marie-Josée Lacroix, Denis Lemieux, Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec, and Alexander Reford, the annual festival has seen nearly 190 contemporary gardens exhibited on the grounds over the course of its 25-year history.

An off-site installation in France, “Bruissement d’ailes”, 2024, Bernard Chapuis & Georges Vafia, Festival International des Jardins du Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire. PHOTO: Jean-Christophe Lemay.

The deadline for submissions to the 2025 International Garden Festival is November 4, 2024 at 17:00 EST. The full details are available via the festival’s official website.

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Azure — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:11:36 +0000

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Essential Architecture Talks and Lectures for Fall 2024

Stefan Novakovic — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 16:24:22 +0000

While the last of the summer weather still lingers, the fall semester is underway. Alongside the return to classes, architecture schools across North America are also gradually announcing their fall/winter 2024 public programs, with a wealth of talks, lectures and exhibitions now scheduled. Below, we round up a selection of events — most of which are free to attend — at universities across Canada and the United States.

Toronto Metropolitan University, Department of Architectural Science

Opened on September 5 and on until October 10, the Buone Nuove/Good News – Women In Architecture – from MAXXI to MET exhibition anchors TMU’s fall schedule. Alongside the popular traveling exhibit, this semester’s public lectures include the likes of Omar Gandhi (October 3) and Alison Brooks (October 31), while talks by Claire Weisz, Sarah Lynn Lopez and Chris T. Cornelius have already been announced for early 2025.

Rice University School of Architecture

A characteristically eclectic and thought-provoking program for the Houston-based institution includes lectures by visual artist David Wiseman (September 23), as well as architects Sebastián Adamo (October 2), Sean Canty (October 9), Farshid Moussavi (October 16) and Joshua Jih Pan (November 1), to name just a few. In addition, the 13th edition of the school’s influential PLAT journal launches with an event on November 11.

Carleton University Azrieli School of Architecture

Ottawa-based design enthusiasts can look forward to an October 2 lecture by Toronto-based architect Heather Dubbeldam. Organized by the Azrieli school in collaboration with the Ottawa Regional Society of Architects, the talk — titled “Building Impact: Architecture, Research and Advocacy” — will take place at the Ottawa Art Gallery, kicking off the 2024-2025 FORUM Lecture Series.

University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design

In Philadelphia, the busy fall schedule includes a talk by artist, writer and photographer Virginia Hanusik (September 16). While the impressive roster features multiple lectures and events per week, a few highlights include a September 25 lecture by Lina Ghotmeh, as well as Marina Tabassum’s address on “Displacement of Architecture and Transition,” taking place on October 9. A November 6 talk by Steven Holl is another highlight — among many others — for an action-packed semester.

University of Toronto Daniels Faculty of Architecture

While a talk by SO-IL recently kicked off the fall lecture series, the accompanying “Urban Domesticity” exhibition remains on show at 1 Spadina Crescent’s Larry Wayne Richards Gallery until October 25. Meanwhile, the fall lecture schedule continues with the September 25 “Future Ancestor” talk by architect — and citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin — Chris T. Cornelius.

Columbia University GSAPP

This year’s busy fall program includes lectures by Mariam Issoufou (September 26), Marina Tabassum (October 10), Kate Orff (October 21), Minsuk Cho (October 30) and Edourda Souto de Moura (November 7). Throughout the semester, the Lectures in Planning series complements the architectural talks, while a series of multi-disciplinary Actioning Summits bring together a wealth of experts — encompassing design, art, history and civic activism — to tackle pressing cultural and socio-economic issues through the lens of the built environments.

McGill University Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture

Berlin-based designer and Deadline Architekten co-founder Matthew Griffin comes to Montreal on September 26, followed by legendary landscape architect Laurie Olin, who will deliver a talk on November 12. Rounding out the fall program, details of a lecture on lighting – taking place November 25 – are set to be announced in the coming weeks.

Harvard Graduate School of Design

The GSD’s packed fall 2024 calendar includes a September 24 talk — titled “Building with Care: Feminist Perspectives on Design in Conflict” — by Malkit Shoshan, Tatiana Bilbao and Elke Krasny. The lecture series continues with Signe Nielsen (September 26), and a pair of events (October 9 and 10) marking the much-anticipated release of Richard Sennett’s book Democracy and Urban Form. Later in the semester, Anne Whiston Sprin will deliver this year’s Frederick Law Olmstead lecture on October 29.

University of British Columbia SALA

On the west coast, the Vancouver-based School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture kicks off the 2024-2025 lecture series with “The DNA of Belonging: False Creek South” on September 25, with further events set to be announced soon.

University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning

Architecture and Labor author Peggy Deamer comes to Ann Arbor on September 30, while the likes of Bjarke Ingels (November 1) and Eyal Weizman (November 18) round out a can’t-miss fall program. In addition, the school’s Climate Futures Symposium takes place on October 17-18, “exploring the ways architecture and planning can help to bring about a better future for people and the planet.”

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Looking for more fall events? Taking place in downtown Toronto on October 24-25, Azure’s inaugural Human/Nature Conference will bring together thought leaders from across Canada and around the world to share proven strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change. Tickets are on sale now!

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