Monoambiente

The Canadian Centre for Architecture is an international research institution and museum premised on the belief that architecture is a public concern. The CCA produces exhibitions and publications, develops and shares its collection as a resource, advances research, offers public programs, and hosts a range of other activities driven by a curiosity about how architecture shapes—and might reshape—contemporary life. The CCA invites collaborators and the wider public to engage with its activities, giving new relevance to architectural thinking in light of current disciplinary and cultural issues. Physically anchored in Montréal by its building, park, and sculpture garden, the CCA work within other contexts through its projects, programs, and collaborations that take place elsewhere. Founded as a new type of cultural institution by Phyllis Lambert in 1979, the CCA is currently directed by Giovanna Borasi.

Curatorial text by Inés Molinari

The Other Architect is an exhibition about professional diversity—diversity not in terms of styles or approaches, but in the very definition and implementation of architectural doctrine.

Through a compilation of archival documents, the exhibition curated by the CCA presents a series of architectural experiences that draw on such diverse compositional languages as scientific research, audiovisual media, performance, and even social activism, among others.

Rather than watering down the definition of the architect into a collection of experiences, the exhibition and the very idea of diversity serve to explore the shared positions that underpin the profession in its most experimental aspects.

Since it was founded five years ago, Monoambiente has been committed to shrugging off the labels imposed on the work of architects and designers. With an almost militant voluntarism, we set out to fill gaps. In this particular case, we aim to expand this Euro-American exhibition to include voices from Latin America.Together with Florencia Rodríguez, we have compiled a short and intentionally incomplete list of regional practices that, from our point of view, fit within the thematic families proposed by Giovanna Borasi, chief curator of the CCA and of The Other Architect.

Once again, we look to the unexplored, to growth, to acknowledging those who use their praxis as a search, which we believe projects architecture toward a plurality that helps us to redefine this discipline far beyond established dogmas, posing new questions that may be as simple and banal as:What is the architect today?

Curatorial text by FRAM

Located at the opposite end of the spectrum from the set of practices curated by the CCA, whose common denominator lies in redefining traditional ways of operating in the profession: on the basis of our daily work as an architectural firm in a fairly traditional sense of the word, our proposal in designing this show means placing ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being “the other architects.”

In response to the specific challenge of designing the spatial and material support for The Other Architect, we intend to further the spirit of those practices insofar as redefinition of the pre-established. Spatially reconfiguring the gallery, understanding space as primary characteristic—that which is inherent to the gallery’s name—monoambiente, or one-room apartment. As the gallery defines it in its foundational manifesto, the one-room apartment is “[a] minimal marketable and inhabitable typology; the prodigal son of real-estate growth, the one bedroom apartment often represents access to one’s own dwelling, emancipation, and the idea of a piece of “land” that we can call home.”

As opposed to the show’s resoundingly theoretical content, the specific action of placing two walls (basic elements in architectural construction) at a right angle immediately reconfigures the spatial experience of walking into the gallery. Heightening the museum-like nature of the show, the act of reformulating the interior’s limits makes it possible to divide the material to be exhibited into sectors, thematic “galleries” suggestive of the CCA’s originals.

In the framework of the Ciclo Colaboratorio, then, the gallery as institution has grown stronger due to the expansion of its borders, and the growth that that entails requires leaving behind the typology with which it came into being. What we propose, then, as part of this process is that, in 2016, one room (Monoambiente) expand in space to become three rooms.

FRAM arquitectos

Architecture office formed in 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by Franco Riccheri and Augustin Mendiondo.

Architects from the Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Urbanismo of the Universidad de Buenos Aires (FADU-UBA), both work as teachers of that university since 2011/2009.

Also, since 2015 FR is assistant teacher at the diploma course at the Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (FAU-UNLP) and AM begins the postgraduate course in Specialization in Teaching at FADU-UBA .

The detached small and medium-scale housing program is a recurring practice in the office since its begining, developing and building projects in Buenos Aires and in the province of Rio Negro, in Argentina.

They are also actively involved in regional and national competitions. His works and projects have been published in national and international digital and print media.

As part of the exhibition #16, in the framework of the Ciclo Colaboratorio de Galería Monoambiente, a series of conferences were held at MONTE. The Other Architect conference, curated together with the Canadian Center for Architecture, was the third in this cycle.

Giovanna Borasi is director of the Canadian Center for Architecture, architect, curator and editor.
Since 2005, she has been involved in curating exhibitions at the CCA, and has edited the books in relation with the particular point of view of how environmental and social issues are influencing urbanism and architecture today.

The lecture, given as part of the exhibition The Other Architect, attempts to demystify the ideal of architecture as related to construction, and allows us to imagine the discipline as a field of intellectual enquiry. The exhibition presents various cases that challenge the precepts and final objectives of the discipline, placing architecture within the field of ideas. It allows for a new reflection on the role of the architect in contributing to the creation of a cultural agenda.

This cycle of conferences was made possible thanks to Florencia Rodríguez and Pablo Gerson, directors of Monte.

As part of the exhibition #16 different universities were invited.

In these meetings, and sometimes as a product of mere chance, Rosario Marquardt and Roberto Behar, exhibitors of exhibition 12, and the FADU workshop of the University of Uruguay, accompanied by architect Diego Perez, participated. The architect Ariel Jacubovich together with the University Talca of Chile commanded by the architect Germán Valenzuela, and students from the Universidad Austral.

Through this exchange programme between students and architects, through the exhibition The Other Architect, the aim is to understand architecture not only as a practice that is inevitably related to construction, but also as a way of thinking and observing the present.