
Photo Credit: Jackson-Triggs Estate Winery, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario (detail)
KPMB Architects, completion, 2001
Photo credit: Eduard Heuber/Arch Photo Inc.
Museum London presents: Architecture, Sustainability and Local Identity: film and discussion about the future of architecture, suburbia and urban development.
Friday, May 9 at 7:30 pm
FILM SCREENING
Lecture Theatre
Radiant City: A Documentary about Urban Sprawl
Followed by a Q & A with directors Gary Burns and Jim Brown
Venturing into territory both familiar and foreign, directors Gary Burns and Jim Brown turn the documentary genre inside out, crafting a vivid account of life in The Late Suburban Age.
Burns and Brown rummage through a toybox of cultural references, from Jane Jacobs to The Sopranos, to create a provocative reflection on why we live the way we do. Riffing off sitcoms and reality TV, they play fast and loose with a range of cinematic devices to consider what happens when cities get sick and mutate.
Radiant City was recently awarded the Genie for Best Documentary.
Saturday, May 10 at 1 pm
LECTURE
Lecture Theatre
James Howard Kunstler has long been recognized as a fierce critic of suburban sprawl and the high costs associated with an automobile-centric culture. He is the author of The Geography of Nowhere (Simon & Schuster, 1993) and Home from Nowhere (Simon & Schuster, 1996). Most recently, he authored The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.
“The future will require us to build better places, or the future will belong to other people in other societies.”
– James Howard Kunstler
Saturday, May 10 at 3:00 pm
PANEL DISCUSSION
Lecture Theatre
Local Identity and Regional Responses to Sustainable Architecture
Balancing environmental, social, and sustainable design has the potential to transform everyday life and is already reshaping the fields of architecture and product design. This panel discussion will explore such topics as the role architecture plays in defining humanity’s relationship to its physical and cultural context, nationally and with a local focus on the City of London. Among the issues discussed will be contemporary and future urban design, sustainability, the development of green buildings and the protection of heritage streetscapes.
Moderator:
John Nicholson, principle architect with the award winning firm Malhotra, Nicholson and Sheffield Architects Inc.
Panelists:
Brian Dust is an associate architect with the award winning Vancouver firm Neale Staniszkis Doll and Adams Architects.
John McMinn is an associate professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Architecture. In 1992 he was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Prix de Rome in Architecture. His professional interests include architectural and environmental design, poetic tectonics, contemporary urbanism and vernacular landscapes.
Marco Polo is an assistant professor at Ryerson University and is the editor of The Prix de Rome in Architecture: A Retrospective, published by Coach House Books (2006). Polo’s areas of specialization include Canadian architecture since 1945, regionalism in Canadian Architecture and the cultural dimensions of sustainability.
Together Polo and McMinn curated the exhibition 41 to 66: Regional Responses to Sustainable Architecture, organized by Cambridge Galleries. A version of this exhibition will represent Canada at the prestigious Venice Biennale in Architecture from September 14 to November 23, 2008.
Saturday, May 10, 5:30 to 7:30 pm
COMMUNITY FORUM
Lorraine Ivey Shuttleworth Community Gallery
Community members are invited to discuss the changing landscape of London in a conversation led by City of London urban designer Sean Galloway.
NOTE: All sessions of ARCHITECTURE, SUSTAINABILITY AND LOCAL IDENTITY are offered free of charge, although space is limited. To reserve your ticket please RSVP by calling 519.661.0333. Tickets will be available at the door the day of the program.
Museum London is located at 421 Ridout Street North, London, Ontario. For general information please contact us at 519.661.0333.
Museum London
** if you travel into Canada, make sure that you have the proper ID.