Temporary exhibition
To Build Law
from Dec 11, 2024 to May 25, 2025
Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)
The exhibition To Build Law and its accompanying documentary conceived by Francesco Garutti and directed by Joshua Frank, follows bplus.xyz (b+) and station.plus (s+) as they establish a policy lab, HouseEurope!, to propose industry reforms and shift cultural norms. To Build Law closely observes the b+ team during various phases of conceptualization and development of a European Citizens’ Initiative meant to incentivize renovation over demolition and new construction. Through this bottom-up legal tool, architecture becomes an open process of establishing partners, drafting legislation, filming stories, strategizing communications, coordinating campaigns, collecting votes, and building a movement.
To Build Law is the second chapter of Groundwork, a three-part film and exhibition series exploring the conceptual development and field research of contemporary architects cultivating alternative modes of practice.
b+ is a collaborative architecture practice that evolved from the eponymous studio of Arno Brandlhuber. With additional partners Olaf Grawert, Jonas Janke, and Roberta Jurčić, the office rebranded as a statement of collective thinking. Together with political scientists, writers, economists, filmmakers, lawyers, artists, students at station.plus (Institute for Design at the Department of Architecture, ETH Zurich), and other collaborators, b+ works toward the social and ecological transformation of the built environment.
Curator: Francesco Garutti
Curatorial Assistant: Irene Chin
Research: Matthew Kalil
Graphic design: HIT
Design development: Sébastien Larivière, Anh Truong
Films directed by Joshua Frank
Exhibition
Temporary
Prices
Adult : $10.00
Seniors : $7.00
Students, children, Friends of the CCA : Free
Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)
Address
Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)
1920, Baile street,
Montreal, QC H3H 2S6
Regular Schedule
From Jan 1 to Dec 31
Monday
Closed
Tuesday
Closed
Wednesday
11:00 - 18:00
Thursday
11:00 - 21:00
Friday
11:00 - 18:00
Saturday
11:00 - 18:00
Sunday
11:00 - 18:00
Holidays Schedule
Holidays follow the regular schedule
Facilities
Temporary exhibition
from Nov 15, 2024 to Mar 23, 2025
Being There: Photography in Arthur Erickson's Early Travel Diaries
The exhibition examines Arthur Erickson’s exchanges with people, places, landscapes, buildings, rituals, and ideas during his early travels in Europe and North Africa between 1950 and 1952, and in Asia in 1961. Drawing on a prescient understanding of site and environment, Erickson was convinced that architecture must be experienced to be understood. He knew that travel and the privilege of being present in different places would be a lifelong preoccupation and crucial to his continuing growth as an architect and thinker.
Incoming exhibition
from Apr 25, 2025 to Oct 26, 2025
Oscillating Spaces
The Rhône Glacier, located high in the Swiss Alps and accessible via the Furka Pass, can only be visited from the summer solstice to the autumnal equinox, roughly 120 days a year. For the rest of the year, time stays still: the pass is closed, the landscape is covered with snow, and there are no human visitors. Despite the limited time it can be accessed, the Rhône Glacier and the Furka Pass are layered with natural and cultural histories. The site is shaped by the entanglement between the environment, spirituality, and local traditions; the genesis of glaciology; military and transportation infrastructure; Alpine tourism; and the construction of the sublime.
Incoming exhibition
from Mar 19, 2025 to Nov 30, 2025
Records of Protest
Architecture is a political medium. Buildings define social relations and reify power dynamics. In turn, the profession has an immense capacity to either maintain hegemonic value systems or propose new orders.
The Groundwork series, currently on display in our Main Galleries, features the ongoing political endeavours of contemporary architects. Their stories demonstrate approaches to advocacy and activism in face of ecological collapses and social crises. While their processes are represented in this series through documentary film and research fragments, Records of Protest is a display of archival material from the CCA Collection exploring how architects in the past engaged with crises of their time.
Incoming exhibition
from Oct 16, 2025 to Mar 15, 2026
How Modern : Biographies of Architecture in China 1949-1979
Between the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and the implementation of Reform and Opening policies in 1979, architecture was a key part of the country’s vision for socialist modernity. While this political focus shaped a variety of formal and spatial strategies in the built environment, driven by shifting policies throughout these three decades, modern Chinese architecture has largely been perceived as stunted and not progressive. Many misconceptions of this history persist even today: that nationalization and collectivism denied architects creative freedom, that projects were more focused on industrial productivity than design quality, and that the state’s emphasis on a “national style” limited the diversity of modern architecture.