CCA: Architecture or not?

Vincent Desmarais Adam

How many times have we heard in school “To be an architect you should be good in math, you should be good in this and that and that”? We don’t talk about architecture enough. People want to be doctors because we talk about them and we know a lot about them, but we don’t know enough about the work of architects.
The Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) is the third biggest architecture centre in the world, with more than 215 000 books, 5 500 photo and 100 000 prints and drawings in its collection. So how well is the CCA known to the citizens of Montreal, the city where is located? During a series of interviews, I discovered that some people didn’t know about the CCA even if they were at 5 minutes away.
I wonder if potential visitors miss the CCA because the building appears to be conservative and unwelcoming (that is what my grandparents said). I think the CCA looks like a bank or the Canadian secret service headquarters.
I know windows are usually a problem for museums but the CCA is not a fort. The CCA should be a museum with more windows. Like other architecture institutes, maybe this would help the CCA be better known in Montreal: right now, people are afraid of the building. But the real reason (I mean the REAL reason) why people don’t want to learn about architecture is because we don’t want people interested in it.
Is it because people don’t care about architecture or because they think architecture is only for the educated? Or do they not know how to access what is there?

The CCA has had more than 138 exhibitions in 28 years, but how many people know this? We can’t say this is the fault of the communications department of the CCA, they have made a lot of efforts, but do they make them in the right places? “We do some publicity on the website, and it’s the best way to expand the international public, but we also do publicity in some focused magazines,” said the CCA Marketing Coordinator. I realized that the CCA is doing a lot of publicity at the international level and in the world of architecture, but not to the local citizens. CCA uses new technology like Facebook, podcasting and online conferencing, and its collection is being digitized on its website to reach the young and the international community; the web is good for their publicity because it’s free and accessible to everyone, and while they are also creating books about their collections, and about their exhibitions, do we know who is buying them?

How different are the two mission of the CCA? One is saving and the other is showing. In fact, is the real problem the accessibility of the collection? On one side there are researchers who use the collection as a proof of the past, and they need it protected for them. On the other side, there’s a museum that uses the collection to show a part of history that people need to know and see.

Exhibitions of contemporary material are  chances to add new object in the collection and make the collection bigger.

Another problem was how architecture is perceived by the population. A lot of people think that architecture is a passion and that one needs to be privileged to become an architect. There are other people who think that architecture is totally useless and that there are more important things to do. The public does not know enough about all the different kinds of architecture. In 2006 CCA did an exhibition called ‘’Sense of the City’’, and in fact a sense of the city is a kind of architecture, urban architecture, but who knows this? Architecture should be integrated as a part of culture and a part of Quebec history.

The problem is larger than one museum: we are not talking about architecture enough and the government does not give enough money for architectural education. Quebec citizens don’t want pay for new architectural project probably because we are traumatized by the Olympic stadium ( it was a wonderful project but it cost to must money and now it’s useless.)

How can we get overcome these problems?