Architecture and Cucumbers

John:

Today we visited the CCA. In the seven years I've lived in Montreal, I've walked or run past the CCA several times a week. The building is on Baile, between St-Marc and du Fort. It looks out on to Rene Lesvesque so every time the Concordia team runs over to Westmount Track, we run by.

The first piece that you see when you get to the top of the stairs is Douglas Coupland's "Brick Wall." I gotta say, I'm a sucker for Lego and such things. Brick Wall is just the sort of thing I could see myself building in my room when I was a kid. But that's not to start some "a six year-old could do that" rant. When I look at this installation, it takes me back to a time before I'd made all the decisions I've made. I used to build things all the time. At the cottage I would make elaborate sand-cities, with moats and bridges. In high school I dropped English Literature (a second English) to take Calculus, because I knew I would get a higher grade. In university, I almost switched my major from English to computer science. And then when I did the whole "go back to school" thing, I went to law school. Maybe I should have thought about architecture or engineering.

There were two main exhibits at the CCA today. One, 404 ERROR: The object is not online, focused on the use of computers in architecture. It was a pretty small exhibit, and to be honest, I don't really get the AUTOCAD thing, but the glass blocks trapped inside a cube, to be manipulated only by rubber gloves, nuclear-style, were cool, even if a girl was hogging them the whole time. Lego, glass blocks...it's pretty clear what I like!

The other exhibit, Journeys, consisted of 15 mini-exhibits that showed "how travelling fruit, ideas and buildings rearrange our environment." There were several interesting takes, from a table featuring European Economic Community regulations "laying down quality standards for cucumbers" to an examination of cocos nucifera, the gallant coconut. While the EEC standards appealed to my legal side ("maximum height of the arc: 10 mm per 10 cm of length of the cucumber"), my favourite was the movie describing how entire towns in Newfoundland were moved to follow fish populations. They just picked up their houses, floated them around to the next bay, and then hauled them back up on shore. Amazing!

Don't worry, I won't be embarking on a "third career" of architecture, but I did really enjoy the exhibits. They were slices of life, but not in that faux-ironic hipster way that is unfortunately popular (think mile-end rusty bicycle in a tree installation sort of thing); no, they were smart, interesting, and real.

Miriam:

Today, knowing nothing about architecture, we decided to make the Montreal Museum of Architecture our first destination using Montreal museum card. I had never been and I have always wanted to go. The building is an impeccable juxtaposition of old and new. It feels like the most utopic representation of Montreal, its architecture, and philosophy.

Two exhibits were up and the first one cheekily called error 404 made the link between the invention of the computers and its influence on architecture and the architect's work. Somehow I had never realized the really ugly brown boxes with no windows built in the 1960's were built that way because the very first computers were enormous monsters no more performing than our common calculator. They were super sensitive to light, dust, humidity and everything, so much so that the building housing them had to be, well, a really ugly brown box with no windows. I feel somewhat more at peace knowing that there was a reason behind these eye sores, however uncreative they are. The architect's work was turned on its head following the invention of the computer. The integration of software like autocad, I would imagine, must have been welcomed by them since it meant tons of time saved from not having to sketch everything by hand and redo everything at each change. The rendition of the final product on your screen saves the time and sanity of building the maquette out of foamboard.

The second exhibit called Journey: how fruit, ideas and travelling influences architecture (John has the right title but it was something like that). The exhibit was really more about the journey than the conveyor belt. Full of interesting information, it settled the "Bungalow: 1 floor or two floors" dilemma I have been having with myself since I started shopping for a house. Answer: one floor. It has a pretty interesting story: the word was first used to describe the one floor houses preferred by the British in the Indian colonies. The word actually comes from Bengal house, try saying it with a British accent and it makes more sense. Some of the information provided felt more like a joke. How does a Newfie move? He puts his house on a boat and he floats it away. But that's that actually what they did when the fish ran out. My favorite was the regulations on cucumbers in France and its amendment to allow cucumbers not "straight enough" to be sold in stores provided they bear the notice that they are meant for transformation only. What's up with that, and how does it connect with architecture? I have no idea but I am glad to have learned that! From now on I will try to buy the most crooked cucumbers I can find. Call it rebellion.