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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

Yesterday’s ideas, today’s problems

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Savvy Montrealers know that the best place to be on Thursday evenings, post-cinq-à-sept, is the Canadian Centre for Architecture, when admission to the museum is free. Seeing its exhibitions without paying anything is great enough as it is, but the next two months will give you even more reason to make your way down to the CCA: this week sees the launch of “Yesterday Today,” a series of three lectures and a film screening that looks at the architectural ideas of the 1970s in the context of today’s problems.

The first lecture, “Designing the Post-Oil World,” will take place this Thursday, February 7th at 7pm. Bryant Urstadt, author of the August 2006 Harper’s cover story “Imagine There’s No Oil — Scenes from a Liberal Apocalypse,” will talk about life and architecture after oil ceases to be a feasible source of energy. Other lectures will deal with the green movement in Quebec and Green Worker Cooperatives, a project that aims to create “green-collar” jobs in the South Bronx.

“Yesterday Today” will end on March 27th with a screening of Montreal filmmaker Yung Chang’s highly acclaimed documentary, Up the Yangtze, which traces the radical changes underway in China through a voyage up the Yangtze River, towards the massive Three Gorges Dam, which provides the energy for China’s booming cities but has also displaced millions of people.

More information on the lectures and film screening can be found at the CCA’s website.

Photo taken from Yung Chang’s Up the Yangtze; click here for more still images

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One comment

  1. how do all these screenings manage to happen the nights I have to work?

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