Through exhibitions, publications, public events, and research initiatives, the CCA fills the gaps between mainstream architectural culture and academic discourse. Three research fellowship programs—the CCA-WRI Research Fellowship, the CCA Virtual Fellowship, and the CCA Research Fellowship—are now accepting applications for the year 2023.
We view our curatorial initiatives as means to address a variety of issues pertinent to architectural discourse and modern society because we are an international research institution. The digital turn in architectural design and communication processes, the profession’s changing context and its relationship to various and developing communities—as well as processes of colonization and decolonization—the place of photography within visual and design culture, particularly in the digital era, and architecture’s relationship with the environment are all recurring themes. Applications that examine these subjects in both historical and modern registers are invited.
Researchers, architects, and curators who wish to conduct multidisciplinary study on architecture, urbanization, landscape, and/or design at the CCA are eligible for our research fellowship programs. We appreciate interdisciplinary methods for studying the built environment that span anthropology, Indigenous studies, and other fields. We are most interested in unique and noteworthy initiatives that advance both critical readings and creative research, media, and/or designs, even if suggested research projects may heavily draw on the CCA Collection as a primary source.
CCA-WRI Research Fellowship
Above/Below/Between: Light on a Damaged Planet
Application deadline: September 25, 2022
Both the CCA and the Window Research Institute share a recognition of the many meanings and architectural mediations of light, which are only becoming more salient in our time of ecological challenges. New practices, designs, and other social and material manifestations of architectural design that are above, below, and between; atmospheric, underground, and mindful of the increasingly degraded environments all around us are being produced as a result of this emerging ecological reality. Our collaboration with the WRI to provide favorable settings for in-depth research into the phenomena of light is the result of this affinity. The WRI retains a specific concentration on light and windows, in their technological, cultural, and societal dimensions, whereas our institution monitors an ever-expanding diversity of architectural issues. This collaboration marks a new form of fellowship for the CCA.
The aim of the second CCA-WRI Research Fellowship is to continue exploring the various connections between architecture and the shifting material composition of the visible spectrum. Three CCA-WRI Fellows will be welcomed in 2023 for study stays of up to three months. These Fellows will focus on the second factor in the spread of light across our solar societies: below, and the subterranean with its relative lack of light. Designing underground areas is still a problem, whether it’s for data storage, shopping, or protection from war and natural disasters. The CCA has a special collection of items connected to the University of Minnesota’s Underground Space Center (USC). In response to the 1970s oil crisis and the need for more effective ways to heat and cool homes, the USC, created in 1978, was founded with the goal of studying “earth-shelters.” This is just one entrance point into a wide range of CCA Collection items that can explain how current solar harm experiences have a long history in design.A one- to three-month stay at the CCA will be made available to CCA-WRI Fellows between June and October 2023. Each Fellow will have access to a personal workspace, earn a CAD 5000 monthly stipend, and be given additional funding to cover travel costs.
The selection committee includes Giovanna Borasi (CCA Director), Rafico Ruiz (CCA Associate Director, Research), Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (Co-Founder, Atelier Bow-Wow/Professor, Tokyo Institute of Technology/WRI Board of Directors Member) and Jungyoon Kim (Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard GSD).
Find out more about the program and application requirements here.
CCA Virtual Fellowship Program
Embodied Visions: Photography Beyond the Technical Image
Application deadline: September 25, 2022
We are now accepting applications for two virtual fellowships, each of which will last for six weeks. Fellowships may take conducted from September through December 2023 or between March and May 2023. The fellowship’s structure encourages us to think long-term about how digitized CCA Collection material may provide fresh historical configurations and relevant interpretations, as well as how it might have a wider impact on architecture scholarship.
In order to explore how more expansive definitions of “vision” may go beyond what Vilém Flusser refers to as the “technical image,” the 2023 edition of this program, Embodied Visions: Photography Beyond the Technical Image, invites new directions, readings, and interactions with photographic works housed in the CCA Collection. The program aims to frame vision as an open terrain for inquiry that can transcend beyond human proprioception and proceed towards wider modes of embodiment through its numerous practices, media, and archives (algorithmic, land-based, and more). Making images and having vision work together to see, experience, and record the world.
The two chosen 2023 Virtual Fellows will do research that engages the CCA Collection with resources stored elsewhere to examine how the modern built environment fosters documentation practices that come from both human and non-human agents.
Find out more about the program and application requirements here.
Research Fellowship Program
Application deadline: September 25, 2022
A one- to two-month residency at the CCA will be made available to research fellows between June and August 2023 with the intention of building an on-site community of researchers, particularly in relation to our doctoral research residency program. Each Fellow will have access to a personal workspace, earn a CAD 5000 monthly stipend, and be given additional funding to cover travel costs. Our Curatorial Committee will decide the length of the residency in consultation with each applicant to best support their study based on the nature of the planned research activity.
Find out more about the program and application requirements here.
Canadian Centre for Architecture
1920 rue Baile
Montréal Québec H3H 2S6
Canada
