The CCA is reopening this week with The Things Around Us

After being closed since March, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) is finally reopening on Wednesday, Sept. 16 with the exhibition The Things Around Us: 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework, which runs in the Montreal museum’s main galleries through Feb. 14.

As explained by the CCA, “Rural Urban Framework (Joshua Bolchover and John Lin) and 51N4E (Johan Anrys and Freek Persyn) investigate new forms of cooperation and dialogue as crucial design strategies, questioning the role of the architect today. This exhibition and publication question the extents and certainties of architecture against backdrops of indeterminate notions of citizenship, unstable stages of urbanization, and insecure economies and ecologies.”

The Things Around Us: 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework features scenes from Mongolia, China, Belgium and Albania. See more details and excerpts below:

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A second sneak peak into our film as part of a larger video installation in The Things Around Us: 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework, starting this Wednesday. – Decomposed, dissected, and reassembled, context (according to 51n4e and RUF)— namely, the people, tools, policies, economies, times, and scales with which the architect interacts— not only generates the conditions within which to work, but also figures as the place itself ‘’in which’’ and ‘’with which’’ to operate from. – The film in question, called Untitled (The Things Around Us), is conceived as a catalogue of agents and agencies that the architects involved have been engaged in dialogue with. – In this particular excerpt, scenes from The Sheep episode illustrate the shift from nomadic culture to informal settlements in Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia), while The Fences highlights issues surrounding rights to own land for Mongolian citizens, where fences were quickly erected by landowners to claim their space following a 1992 revision to the constitution. The Register, on the other hand, addresses how the Chinese Hukou policy restricts citizens’ access to land, healthcare and education which is determined by their designation as rural or urban residents. – Credits/Crédits : The Sheep Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, © Rural Urban Framework The Register Boajing, Hunan, China, © Rural Urban Framework, © Zhen Zhou The Fences Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, © CCA #leschosesquinousentourent #51N4E #RuralUrbanFramework #CCAexhibitions #CCAexpositions #CCA

A post shared by CCA (@canadiancentreforarchitecture) on Sep 14, 2020 at 11:41am PDT

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A snippet from our film, which will be shown in our forthcoming exhibition as part of a larger video installation, The Things Around Us: 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework, starting next Wednesday. – Centrally featured in this exhibition is a montage of scenes across Mongolia, Belgium, China, and Albania. The territories blend into one another in a continuous narrative, while the research and design of the two offices, @51n4e and @ruralurbanframework become situated through encounters with a cast of characters. – The Waste, The Dump, The Asbestos are among the things foregrounded in order to question how we recognize and relate to the elements of our built environment within an expanded ecology of practice. – The Things Around Us will be exhibited in our main galleries from 16 September to 14 February. – Credits: The Waste, Brussels, Belgium, © Maxime Delvaux, 51N4E The Dump, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, © Anji Sauvé Clubb, © Rural Urban Framework The Asbestos, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France © Sertis Productions, © 51N4E – #Leschosesquinousentourent #51N4E #RuralUrbanFramework #CCAexhibitions #CCAexpositions

A post shared by CCA (@canadiancentreforarchitecture) on Sep 11, 2020 at 1:25pm PDT

For more about the CCA reopening and The Things Around Us: 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework, please visit the CCA website.

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