This is an audio-introduction to the exhibition How Modern, on view at CCA from 20 November 2025 to 5 April 2026.

The exhibition How Modern: Biographies of Architecture in China 1949-1979, produced and curated in collaboration with M+ Museum in Hong Kong, reconsiders these assumptions. The exhibition takes the multimedia documentation of architectural production under the socialist Chinese regime as a point of departure, illuminating specific social and cultural microhistories that are not evident in purely textual historical sources. These social biographies of projects—characterized by material and technical inventiveness, continuities and discontinuities with social, economic, and political inclinations, and direct and indirect influences from within and beyond the Eastern bloc—challenge prevailing assessments of design and architectural practice in Mao's China as monolithic, hermetic, and autocratic.

Examining more nuanced histories and narratives behind projects from the undocumented perspectives of design institutes, architects, and inhabitants, the exhibition extends the CCA's research into new readings of modern architecture and practice across different geographies, cultures and sociopolitical contexts.

The exhibition is organized by the CCA in collaboration with M+, Hong Kong.

You are listening to the audio-introduction of With an Acre.

With an Acre follows architect Carla Juaçaba as she develops a museum and community space in solidarity with Flor de Café, a collective of smallholder farmers in Minas Gerais. Inspired by the temporality of Indigenous collective structures and the form of highway billboards that mark the extended rural landscape in the region, Juaçaba proposes a landmark on an elevated plantation overlooking the town of Nepomuceno. Light and tactical construction will provide a space for sharing knowledge, offering a symbolic stage of resistance while leaving a minimal trace on the earth. The pavilions will frame views of the region, but more importantly will set a vision for the future of the territory.

With an Acre is the third chapter of Groundwork, a three-part film and exhibition series exploring the conceptual development and field research of contemporary architects cultivating alternative modes of practice.

To Build Law

This is an audio-introduction to the exhibition To Build Law, on show at the Canadian Centre for Architecture from 10 December 2024 to 22 May 2025.

According to a 2020 report by the UN Environment Programme, the construction industry accounts for at least 38 per cent of carbon emissions globally, operating with narrow methods geared toward profit. Buildings are held as assets, torn down, and redeveloped, with limited consideration of community and environmental impacts. Meanwhile, housing crises escalate. Evidently, a systemic shift in the way we build and value our built environment is urgently needed.

To Build Law follows bplus.xyz (b+) and station.plus (s+) as they establish a policy lab, HouseEurope!, to propose industry reforms and shift cultural norms. The film closely observes the b+ team during various phases of conceptualization and development of a European Citizens' Initiative meant to incentivize renovation over demolition and new construction. Through this bottom-up legal tool, architecture becomes an open process of establishing partners, drafting legislation, filming stories, strategizing communications, coordinating campaigns, collecting votes, and building a movement.

To Build Law is the second chapter of Groundwork, a three-part film and exhibition series exploring the conceptual development and field research of contemporary architects cultivating alternative modes of engagement with new project sites.