Sessions in which Jade Manbodh participates
Saturday 28 May, 2022
Through twenty-eight encounters, site history is explored differently; colour becomes a lens of site analysis that traces social, economic, and environmental accounts of materials, while challenging the familiarity of linear narratives and the perception of time and space. Traces of colour are stripped from written, verbal, and spiritual histories of industrial ruins. Extracting this spectrum of pigments creates material ambiguity where constructed divisions between what is human versus wh...
Sessions in which Jade Manbodh attends
Wednesday 25 May, 2022
We propose a rich and colorful inaugural evening, in a mythical place: Dawson Hall, behind St James United Church (1887-1889, Alexander Francis Dunlop, arch.), known as the "Montreal Methodist Cathedral" - with 2000 seats, it was the largest Methodist church in Canada when it was built. Designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1996, it escaped demolition in 1980 when it was classified as a historic monument, and then escaped extinction thanks to an ambitious restoration project, in...
Thursday 26 May, 2022
The cultural landscapes of migration are an inextricable part of Canada’s urban, social and national identity. However, recent debates about immigration, diversity, multiculturalism and the visibility of cultural symbolisms raise controversial, often polarized public opinions. Policies of migration have accentuated divisive interpretations and legitimized isolation among multiple cultural communities, instead of promoting dialogue. This session...
Home is a deceptively simple term connecting a vast network of people, places, objects, and emotions. As people move from place to place, home manifests through inhabitations of built form. These spatial identities are records of movement which reinforce the importance of home as an architectural research site to learn about diverse diasporas in a rapidly globalizing world.This research explores a process for understanding diasporic spatial identity through how people remember, inha...
The cultural landscapes of migration are an inextricable part of Canada’s urban, social and national identity. However, recent debates about immigration, diversity, multiculturalism and the visibility of cultural symbolisms raise controversial, often polarized public opinions. Policies of migration have accentuated divisive interpretations and legitimized isolation among multiple cultural communities, instead of promoting dialogue. This session...
Author and educator Lesley Lokko, founder of the African Futures Institute (AFI) in Accra, Ghana, has stated recently in a lecture, that ‘what you know is largely dependent on where you are’ adding that thus ‘one’s world view is shaped as is ‘one’s place within it’, and advocating that one may ‘live through imagination.’ During the pandemic many conferences and meetings have showcased the participation of African urbanists and architects, in part as a result of a new impetus, combined with...
Displacement, describing a sense of uprootedness, is seemingly irreconcilable with the grounding quality of domestic space. However, the practice of housework and homemaking allows forcibly displaced people to reconstruct home elsewhere. While historical feminist movements in the West have advocated for a radical socialization of housework in an effort to value its labour and extend its visibility to the public realm, these views fail to address the importance of homemaking as private plac...
I discuss a narrative “zine”, Home Smart Home, which I created in 2021 as a commission for UKAI Projects and the Goethe-Institut Toronto as part of the Goethe-Institut’s Algorithmic Culture project. The zine consists of a series of observations sited within my family’s suburban home in Scarborough, Ontario, in a neighbourhood made up primarily of first- and second-generation South Asian and Southeast Asian immigrants. The goal of the commissioning institution was to seek what Neta B...
This abstract is in anticipation of a long research journey I will soon embark upon: a sub-Arctic circumpolar oral history project to speak with various Indigenous elders around the world. For this presentation, I want to focus on methods of finding architectural space in the stories of the Haida, the Gwich’in, and the Inuit in the sub-Arctic coastal regions of Canada. Here, time, frost, and colonial oppression have inevitably vetted out stellar models of living sustai...
Roger D'Astous is one of the most important Canadian architects of the 20th century. A student of Frank Lloyd Wright, he worked all his life to establish a northern architecture. This rebellious and flamboyant artist was a superstar of the sixties, then fell into disgrace before being reborn in the twilight of the century. Author of two Montreal icons, the Château Champlain Hotel and the Olympic Village for the 1976 Games, his residences are sensual works of art and his churches are strang...
Friday 27 May, 2022
This paper discusses the pedagogical strategies and outcomes of a recent seminar, conducted at the McGill school of architecture in 2022, which aimed to recover underrepresented actors, sites, and design theories during the pivotal period from roughly 1945 to 1980. Students were asked to prepare a visual storyboard based on an extant public building in the city of Montreal, dating from the postwar period, and using the conventions of the graphic novel. Drawing on archival imagery and texts...
Architectural history and heritage have historically been defined by superlatives. Vernacular traditions and local histories, on the other hand, have often been pushed to the margins or overlooked. These everyday spaces and places are often relegated to the quotidian, and perceived as unworthy of recognition. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has changed our daily lives, and in many cases, our values. Now, we have been forced to see the everyday in a new light. What might this n...
Major parks have been part of the urban identity of Canadian cities for more than 150 years. From Pleasure Grounds to reformist and recreational parks as well as exhibition parks, parks have assumed different built forms over time and have had a wide range of vocations and uses. In recent years, a number of international publications have reflected on parks from the point of view of history, cultural diversity, good practices in terms of design...
Saturday 28 May, 2022
“Felt experiences” have become key components of our understanding of the world in the digital age, which could explain the increase in research on the diversity of the ambiences experienced in built environments. These approaches, which sometimes give privileged access to worldviews or lead to design modes that are more attentive to the experience of users, shed new light on previ...
While the relationship between architecture and community are intrinsically intertwined, the built form of “community spaces” is not easily defined by any specific style, design, or building typology. Though there are many purpose-built community buildings across Canada, including community and recreation centres, performance venues, and town halls, many community spaces often evolve organically and informally from the community itself in a div...