THE EPHEMERAL CITY

La ville éphémère

ephemeralcity@irhanet.org

IRHA (L'Institut de recherche en histoire de l'architecture )

2009-2010

/SENSATION/TRANSIENCE/PERFORMANCE/

INTERACTION/PLAY/PUBLICNESS/

"Life is an endless journey across a world which is changing so rapidly that it seems other.”

Constant, "New Babylon” (1974)

IRHA is a non-profit research network comprised of the CCA, McGill University, University of Montréal, and Concordia University to investigate issues related to the history and theory of architecture, design and urban practices. For the year 2009-2010, IRHA will focus on the theme of the Ephemeral City - how contemporary urban space is increasingly shaped by new dynamic and temporary forces from economics to design and new technologies.

The modernist city that was formerly dictated and constructed chiefly by architecture and planning models is increasingly being confronted daily by temporal forces: the dynamics of unstable financial markets and fluctuating economic patterns of consumption and leisure, the rise of ecological processes and practices, the transformation of public space by the methods of branding, interaction and multi-sensory design and last, but certainly not least, the dissemination of new ubiquitous technologies of surveillance and monitoring that are rapidly revising our concepts of urban construction, fabrication, orientation and experience.

The Ephemeral City thus aims to grapple with issues in the urban context of Montréal related to temporal, performative phenomena that go beyond programs, plans, models and other static representations of the urban environment. Research proposed will focus on broader concepts such as performativity in urban space, the role of transience, liminality and improvisation in the city and its citizenry, the different interpolations of ecology and sustainability, urban experience economies generated by marketing in collaboration with design practices perception and sensation/sentience that goes beyond visual perception and co-structuration between inhabitants and the urban environment as a result of new technologies.

In the 1960s, radical individual architects and collectives like Superstudio, Haus-Ruckert-Co, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Archigram, Archizoom, the Smithsons, Reyner Banham, Hans Hollein, the Metabolists and Constant Nieuwenhuys, to name but a few, already began to employ ephemeral techniques to alter urban conceptions of urban space. Temporary actions, demonstrations, performances and interventions were designed to shift the political-social relations between what Michel de Certeau described as the bureaucratic, "strategic” structures of the city and its "tactical” inhabitants. While these architects and designers turned toward the ephemeral to challenge the very essence of architecture as a form of knowledge made possible through the concrete act of building itself, this embracing of temporal processes took place in the general context of societal upheaval of the 1960s, particularly in Europe and North America.

Now marked by the same atmosphere of societal metamorphosis, the urban spaces of the twenty-first century are distinguished from their 1960s counterparts by new kinds of intertwined, time-based phenomena that increasingly destabilize and constitute complex relationships among the economic, cultural, social and technical. The awareness of ecological crisis and the urban citizens’ role in its containment, the transformation of urban spaces by marketing and design and the shift towards what Mirko Zardini described as "a rediscovery of phenomenology, experience, the body, perception and the senses” that goes "beyond the realm of the visual” (Zardini 2006), all demand new concepts and frames of analyses for architectural theory, history and practice. Actions, interactions, participations and adaptive processes now characterize the conditions of urban space. Architect and University of Calgary professor Branko Kolarevic describes performative architecture as that which can "respond to changing social, cultural and technological conditions” and in which "culture, technology and space form a complex active web of connections, a network of interrelated constructs that affect each other simultaneously and continually” (Kolarevic 2007).

As a discipline assumed historically to be constituted by permanence, architecture is increasingly being challenged to envision built space in "indeterminate ways, in contrast to the fixity of predetermined, programmed actions, events and effects” and through forms in which technical and social behaviors dynamically emerge through how its inhabitants or participants’ temporally use and transform the urban realm. Indeed, with the everyday as a performative platform and the quality of urban ways of living hanging in the balance, it is clear that the problematic of the contemporary urban built environment can no longer be confronted through isolated disciplines alone. The Ephemeral City thus aims to bring artists, designers, architects, planners, anthropologists, sociologists economists, cultural theorists and other thinkers from the Montréal academic and cultural communities together to think through the hybrid ecological, economic, cultural and social "imbroglios” that are historically and conceptually marking and making the city in the twenty-first century.

Keep reading...

Chris Salter

The IRHA project for 2009-2010 will be comprised of the following activities:

(1) A series of public forums to be held one Thursday each month at the CCA, each focused on one of the sub-themes under the ephemeral city umbrella These public forums aim to bring together faculty researchers, graduate students and architects/designers/artists from the four universities as well as the greater Montréal artistic and design community and the general public. The themes and forum dates will be announced on this website as well as the CCA site and other appropriate online dissemination contexts.

(2) A concluding discussion/symposium with past participants and national/international guests will mark the end of the IRHA activities for 2009-2010. This symposium will also be hosted at the CCA and take a broader look at the repercussions of the overall theme on the question of practice. The symposium will involve a mix of panels and round tables as well as a potential "poster session” like demo of projects and concepts developed over the course of the year.

(3) An online website for both public dissemination of IRHA activities and a networking tool for the broader Montréal research and artistic/architectural/design communities.

(4) A series of seven commissioned essays highlighting the seven core IRHA themes. These online essays will complement the monthly forums at the CCA by going into further depth on the pertinent topic. An open call for proposals will go out at the end of September to graduate students in the Montréal architecture, design and new media communities. The essays can be either in English or French.

(5). A series of small commissioned prototypes, "proof of concepts,” models, sketches or concepts that highlight specific thematics during the year. These works will be featured in the context of the IRHA forums at the CCA and/or shown on the project website. An open call to graduate students in the Montréal architecture, design and new media communities will go out end of September.

IRHA Public Forums 2010

IRHA Public Forum #6, March 25, 2010
6:00-8:00PM, Shaughnessy House
Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)

The Branded City

Speakers:

Erik Adigard, Designer and Principal, M.A.D.
(http://www.madxs.com)
Louis-Charles Lasnier, Principal, Atelier Louis-Charles Lasnier
(http://www.louischarleslasnier.com)
Daniel Gill, Professor, Institute of Urbanism, University of Montreal

What does it mean when physical communities become pages in Facebook? When Twitter feeds construct social space? When branding and design turn the city into a gigantic shopping mall? When graphic design becomes architecture and architecture becomes graphic design? The 6th IRHA forum for 2009-2010 turns its focus onto the ways in which design, branding and new social networks reinvent, repurpose and redistribute urban space between the built space and data.

IRHA - Forum public no 6, 25 mars 2010
18h00 - 20h00, Maison Shaughnessy
Centre Canadien d'Architecture (CCA)

La ville : image de marque

Conférenciers:

Erik Adigard, designer et directeur, M.A.D.
(http://www.madxs.com)
Louis-Charles Lasnier, directeur, Atelier Louis-Charles Lasnier (http://www.louischarleslasnier.com)
Daniel Gill, Professeur, Institut d'urbanisme, Université de Montréal

Qu'est-ce qui se joue, quand des communautés physiques deviennent des pages sur Facebook, quand les flux Twitter construisent l'espace social, quand les stratégies de marque et le design transforment la ville en un immense centre commercial, quand le design graphique devient architecture et l'architecture design graphique ? Le sixième forum du programme 2009-2010 de l'IRHA s'attarde sur la manière dont le design, les stratégies de marque et les nouveaux réseaux sociaux réinventent, réorientent et redistribuent l'espace urbain, entre environnement bâti et données virtuelles.

IRHA Public Forum #7, Wed. April 7, 2010
The Sonic Commons: Architecture, Sound and the Ephemeral City

"my eyes...my ears..."
Sonic Performance by O+A (Bruce Odland (New York) and Sam Auinger (Berlin)) and concluding Roundtable with Douglas Moffat (architect/artist, McGill), Al Bregman (Professor Emeritus, Psychology and Auditory Perception, McGill), Lilian Radovac, Ph.D. Candidate in Communications, McGill University, and Chris Salter.
Co-Presentation: IRHA (L'Institut de recherche en histoire de l'architecture) and Elektra/ACREQ

NOTE: There will be two identical performances since audience space is EXTREMELY limited.
Performance 1: 19h - 20h30
Performance 2: 21h - 21h30

THE EVENT IS FREE BUT RESERVATIONS ARE REQUIRED DUE TO EXTREMELY LIMITED SEATING: email reservations-oa@irhanet.org and state which performance you would like to attend and how many people in your party.

Location:
Concordia University
Engineering And Visual Arts Complex
1515 St. Catherine St West
Room: S3-845

What would it mean to build the city based on what he hear rather than what we see? Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger (O+A) have become internationally known through their observation of the urban soundscape and making sound installations in public spaces around the world for more than 20 years. " my eyes...my ears..." is a performance piece that deals with perception, memory and the failure of the "sonic commons." Based on their unique dual binaural recording process, (4ears), this 40 minute performance immerses the audience in an extremely detailed spatial and surreal 4 dimensional audio environment. The piece brings to the foreground issues of why our soundscape sounds like it does, how it affects us and allows us to hear the city the way that both O+A hear it-simultaneously.

Composed and performed by Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger (http://www.o-a.info)
Commissioned and Produced by Electronic Music Foundation.
Additional Production Support from EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institue.
Sponsors: KulturLand Oberösterreich, Linz Kultur, SKE austro mechana
Acknowledgements: IRHA 2009-2010, Hexagram Institute

IRHA – Forum public no 7, merc. 7 avril 2010
The Sonic Commons: Architecture, Sound and the Ephemeral City

« my eyes...my ears... »
Performance acoustique donnée par O+A (Bruce Odland [New York] et Sam Auinger [Belrin]) et se concluant par une table ronde
Co-présentée par : l’IRHA (Institut de recherche en histoire de l'architecture) et Elektra/ACREQ

REMARQUE : Deux performances identiques seront données en raison du nombre EXTRÊMEMENT limité de places assises. Performance 1 : 19 h – 20 h 30 Performance 2 : 21 h – 21 h 30

L’ÉVÉNEMENT EST GRATUIT MAIS LES RÉSERVATIONS SONT NÉCESSAIRES EN RAISON DU NOMBRE EXTRÊMENT LIMITÉ DE PLACES ASSISES : envoyez un courriel à l’adresse reservations-oa@irhanet.org et indiquez la performance à laquelle vous aimeriez assister ainsi que le nombre de personne de votre groupe.

Lieu :
Université Concordia
Engineering and Visual Arts Complex
1515, rue Ste-Catherine Ouest
Salle : S3-845

Que signifierait la construction d’une ville en fonction de notre ouïe plutôt que de notre vue? Bruce Odland et Sam Auinger (O+A) se sont fait connaître internationalement par leur observation de l’environnement sonore urbain et en parcourant le monde depuis plus de 20 ans pour confectionner leurs installations acoustiques au sein d’espaces publics. « my eyes...my ears... » est une performance qui traite de la perception, de la mémoire et de l’échec des « communes acoustiques ». D’une durée de 40 minutes, leur performance basée sur leur procédé unique d’enregistrement binauriculaire double (4 oreilles) baigne l’auditoire dans un environnement sonore quadridimensionnel, spatial et surréel aux détails infinis. Cette pièce met à l’avant-plan un questionnement sur les causes de l’environnement sonore que nous percevons ainsi que sur la manière dont il nous affecte, et nous permet d’entendre la ville telle que l’entendent O+A simultanément.

Composition et interprétation : Bruce Odland et Sam Auinger (http://www.o-a.info)
Commande et production : Electronic Music Foundation.
Soutien supplémentaire à la production offert par l’EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center) au Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Commanditaires : KulturLand Oberösterreich, Linz Kultur, SKE austro mechana
Co-présentation : IRHA (Institut de recherche en histoire de l'architecture) et Elektra
Remerciements : IRHA 2009-2010, Institut Hexagram

IRHA Public Forum #4, January 21, 2010
6:00-8:00PM, Shaughnessy House
Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)

Sensory Architecture

Speakers:
- David Howes, Anthropology, Concordia University
- Sheryl Boyle, Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, Carleton University
- Marco Frascari, Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, Carleton University
- Federica Goffi, Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, Carleton University

Everyone talks about the "look of architecture." Why not the smell, or sound, or taste? That elusive quality called the atmosphere of a building is produced by the interplay of all the senses. Continuing the discussion of "sensorial urbanism” that was started by the Sense of the City exhibition in 2005, and has been growing in volume ever since, the January IRHA forum will feature the work of three faculty members from Carleton University centering on sensual building.

The speakers will be introduced and the discussion moderated by David Howes, Concordia University

IRHA Public Forum #5, February 18, 2010
6:00-8:00PM, Shaughnessy House
Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA)

Public Space?

Speakers:
- Howard Davies, Atelier Big City
- Hal Ingberg, Architect/Artist, Montreal
- Shauna Jansen, Ph.D. researcher, Concordia University

What are the differences between permanent art and temporary architecture sited in the urban context? How does material, perception and temporality transform public space? What happens when artistic interventions and contexts performatively reinvent architectural shells from the past?

The 5th IRHA forum for 2009-2010 turns its focus onto the urban spaces of publicness: do they still exist and does architecture posing as art and art posing as architecture suggest new directions for a reinvention or transformation of the ephemeral city.

Howard Davies / Hal Ingberg / Shauna Jansen

2009

IRHA Public Forum #3, December 3, 2009
Maison Shaughnessy
6:00PM

Game City: Urbanity, Game Spaces and Ubiquitous Play

Speakers:
Jason Crow, M.Arch, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Architecture, McGill University
Thomas Soetens, artist, WORKSPACE UNLIMITED
Kora Van den Bulcke, architect, WORKSPACE UNLIMITED

What can games and gaming experience reveal about the city? How does play in public spaces differ from solitary play. What new aesthetic social practices might arise as a result of the mixing between the physical urban space and the digital realm. This forum will feature research and artistic projects that take gaming beyond the single computer screen and into the urban realm, both real and imaginary.

IRHA Public Forum #2, November 12, 2009
Maison Shaughnessy
6:00PM

Interactivity: The City as Performative Space

Alessandra Ponte, University of Montréal
Patrick Harrop, University of Manitoba/Concordia University

New digital technologies increasingly are being deployed by architects, artists and designers in order to transform dead public spaces into new urban zones of performance and play. In effect, the city has become a responsive environment set in motion by pedestrians and new technologies.The second IHRA forum will investigate how concepts of interaction brought on from digital technologies meet concepts of social interaction. At the center of the forum will be artistic and design projects that also suggest new possibilities of interacting in public space.

IRHA Public Forum #1, October 8, 2009
Maison Shaughnessy
6:00PM

Architecture, Urbanity and the Temporary

Alberto Pérez-Gómez, McGill University
Chris Salter, Concordia University
Cecile Martin, Independent Artist, Architect and Curator

The 21st century city that was formerly dictated and constructed chiefly by architecture and planning models is increasingly being shaped anew daily by temporal forces: the dynamics of unstable financial markets and fluctuating economic patterns of consumption and leisure, the rise of ecological processes and practices, the transformation of public space by the methods of branding and multi-sensory design and last, but certainly not least, the dissemination of new ubiquitous technologies of surveillance and monitoring.

The first IRHA forum will investigate the ethical, political and ecological stakes in this new urban theater of temporariness, instability and transformation.