Venice, -, Italy

This National Ideas Competition was launched the 19th of October, 1994 and organized on an anonymous basis by the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Canadian Council of University Schools of Architecture and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada under the supervision, and with the support of, the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Commerce. With the theme of, "Reciprocity: Emerging Territories in Canadian Architecture," this event would permit to select sixteen winning projects with the mandate to represent young Canadian architecture during the 1995 Venice Biennale International Exhibition of Architecture. It consisted of designing a conceptual project for a Canadian pavilion of architecture in Venice (at least 800m3) that would house an architectural exhibition. Participants were to collaborate with a representative from an exterior discipline (visual arts, dance, philosophy, history, biology, computer science, literature, environmental science, etc.). The projects elaborated should therefore suggest, in images and in writing, a particular vision of the notion of reciprocity between architecture and other disciplines. Young architects, recent graduates and students from the ten Canadian schools of architecture participated in this competition.

The Venice Biennale International Exhibition of Architecture (which in 1995, would coincide with the Art Biennale) was rescheduled to the following year, due to a combined lack of funding and space. The sixteen winning projects were presented during the Biennale of 1996 in conjunction with an exhibition dedicated to the work of Patkau Architects.

(CCC text)