Assistance for the Promotion of Architecture.

The eleven successful applicants to the first competition for Assistance for the Promotion of Architecture grants given by the Canada Council have been announced. Totalling $350,000, the grants have been awarded as part of the Canada Council’s effort to strengthen its architecture programs and increase their budgets, with a view to making knowledge of architecture more accessible, and to enhancing public resources for the enjoyment of architecture. Douglas and McIntyre publishers will publish a 225-page monograph, with 350 illustrations, on the architecture of Richard Henriquez, with essays by Aaron Betsky, Howard Schubert, and Henriquez. In addition, the publisher has received support to publish “Vancouver: Ecology of a City” by Lance Berelowitz. The book will discuss Vancouver’s urban form, its geography and history. The Vancouver Museum has received a grant to develop a booklet guide, a walking/biking tour, and several interpretation panels for the public to better understand the modernist buildings of Vanier Park; it will include collaborators Timothy Savage, David Plouffe, and Don Luxton. The Charles H. Scott Gallery will exhibit the work of Fred Thornton Hollingsworth with curator Greg Bellerby and collaborator and modern art historian Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe. MADE in Edmonton will be supported in its lecture series, to include in 2004-2005 Claude Cormier, Ian MacDonald, and other Canadian and international practitioners. MADE in Edmonton has a mandate to heighten public awareness and ability to appreciate good design, art and architecture, and in turn increase the public’s capacity to demand good art, architecture and design in its communities. The Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon will present an exhibition of the work of Clifford Wiens, a modernist architect whose buildings provide superb examples of the architectural character of the prairie provinces. To be curated by Trevor Boddy, it will use a series of construction details as entry points to Wiens’ architecture such as St Joseph Catholic Church, IPSCO Steel Corporation and the Silton Chapel. Cambridge Galleries, in Cambridge Ontario, will produce an exhibition considering sustainable architecture from a regionalist point of view, to be curated by John McMinn and Marco Polo and to address landscapes, indigenous and traditional architectures and contemporary buildings. The exhibition will travel across the country. Ballenford books on architecture will be supported in its 2004-2005 programming for its architecture exhibition series and will feature firms such as Brian MacKay-Lyons Architecture and Urban Design, and Diamond + Schmitt Architects. Doors Open Toronto, to present the fifth edition of its annual event, will focus on contemporary architecture in 2004 and is to be advised by Joe Lobko, the chair of the Toronto Society of Architects. In Ottawa, the new David Azrieli architecture gallery will present an exhibition about James Strutt in the context of his buildings, which date from 1951 and stand witness to his research on structure and materials, and on space-frame and weight efficiency ratio explorations. The exhibit will be curated by Manuel A. Baez in collaboration with Ms. T. Truesdale and James Strutt. Les Amis des Jardins de Mtis will launch the fifth edition of the International Garden Festival with support, and has launched satellite events in Amqui, New Richmond, Montreal, Lyon, France and Padua, Italy. The Jardins de Mtis Festival continues to be an important launching pad for young firms.