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.

Posters, fliers, periodicals, reports, and news clippings from watershed moments reveal peripheral positions and grassroots opposition in face of capitalism, colonialism, oppression, and war. The selected objects evidence how actors from the fields of design and construction have applied their skills to raise awareness of social injustices, used their influence as public intellectuals to critique abuse of authority and technology, or demonstrated their agency by withholding their labour and industry ties. The collective efforts of practitioners, students, and educators of the past are carried on in the resistances to systemic issues that persist today.

While the CCA Collection includes significant architectural drawings and models, the ephemera on display in Records of Protest highlights the weight of the profession’s responsibility and the force the discipline holds in shaping society.

Curatorial research: Irene Chin, Auden Young Tura, Lisa Belabed, with Laura Aparicio Llorente and Megan Marin
Conservation: David Stevenson and Anne Gauthier
Design development: Sébastien Larivière and Anh Truong

The CCA gratefully acknowledges the support of the ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.