Competitions are often accused of generating controversies, yet what if the projects themselves, at the urban scale, unveil vulnerability and controversies. The Lower Don Lands competition, launched in February of 2007 by the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation (TWRC), in cooperation with the Toronto and Region Conservation (TRCA) and the City of Toronto, was an international competition looking for ideas to bring the river back to the city, after many years of seeking to reframe the industrially focused site. This competition of a public space project, with the unique opportunity of harmonizing the riverbanks to the urban space, was exemplary not only for designers, but for the citizens too, as this was the realization of a longstanding community ambition. [...] more

Since the year 2000, more than fifteen architectural competitions aimed at rethinking libraries have been organized in Quebec. The recent Gabrielle-Roy library competition is a perfect example of this desire to change institutions dedicated to knowledge. Architecturally, it questions the contemporary trend towards dematerialization, which has been particularly explicit here due to the formal and massive architectural expression of the old library designed by Gauthier Guité Roy decades earlier. It also questions the paradoxical desire to create spaces that are well adapted to specific uses while being very flexible and versatile. [...] more

Patkau's winning submission for the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery (1986) is one of those architectures that sounded the end of the 60s monolithic modernity, as well as the 80s dissonant postmodernism. Kenneth Frampton recognized early on that the Patkau's architecture was the sign of a new tectonic culture… [...] more