Date

2004

Author

Peker, Ali Uzay

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This article surveys the foundation process, architecture and facilities of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal, Canada. CCA’s principal task was to create a channel of knowledge between recorded visual culture and written discourse of past architecture, i.e. architectural memory, and architectural practice in the contemporary world. The traditional concept of museum as a repository of objects was considered nonpertinent to the Centre that was from the beginning conceived as a ‘house of comprehension’. CCA’s acquisition policy necessitated related purchases that aimed at the creation of sections in the collection from which an overall view about a period, trend, group and architect can be obtained through interdisciplinary research. Hence, CCA’s temporary thematic exhibitions and their accompanying publications focus on specific issues that stem from premediated accumulations of collection material. The building and gardens of CCA transmit the mission and message of the Centre as a storehouse of architectural knowledge. Peter Rose’s design for the building superbly fits to the traditional urban environment of the Shaugnessy Village. The building embraces the historical Shaugnessy House and also rephrases its basic formal characteristics in the language of modern architecture. The façades of the nineteenth century row houses and institutional buildings in the encircling district were another source of inspiration. At the end, the instruments of modern technology and architectural space standarts prescribed by a modern museum building became properly embedded in a historically meaningful milieu. With its two wings on the east and west and itself placed as a backdrop, the CCA building displays the Shaugnessy House to the city as an architectural model, an exhibition object deprived of its original function. This idea of ‘architectural’ presentation is relevant to the primary function of the Centre as a museum for architecture. This duality occupied the designers, Peter Rose and Phyllis Lambert, from the beginning of their project. They looked for an appropriate solution to the dichotomy of past and present, which faced them while designing a modern building to be inserted in the old Shaugnessy Village. The attempt to reconcile is also discernible in artistarchitect Melvin Charney’s sculpture garden fronting the Shaugnessy House. Charney reconstructed the Shaugnessy House in the form of an arcade and the columns behind the arcade represent the core-themes of world architecture embraced by CCA. The garden formulates the message of the Centre as a museum of architecture implanted in a historical urban milieu within the limits of a modern city. The garden is an interpretation of contrasting architectural realities inherent in the city of Montréal.

Subject Keywords

Mimarlık tarihi ve nesneleri, Mimarlık merkezi, Mimarlık müzesi, Yapı tanıtımı, CCA (KMM), Koleksiyon

URI

http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/archive/0258-5316/2004/cilt21/sayi_1-2/1-31.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/51033

Collections

Department of Architecture, Article