Over the past twenty years, the phenomenon of “starchitects” has taken on disproportionate proportions with the creation of increasingly iconic and spectacular monuments. This is part of the legacy of the modern architectural tradition of “bigger is better”. Even in the field of landscape, humans have thought big, very big, wishing to mark the territory, to take possession of it. We can think of Mount Rushmore or — closer to us and on a more modest scale — the cross of Mount Royal, whose 100th anniversary we will “celebrate” on June 24, an imposing intervention wishing to proclaim loud and clear and forever “the religious origins of our country”! Often, we have inflicted architectural gestures on nature, disrupting it and challenging ecology. The artificial islands of Dubai or the linear city in Saudi Arabia, which will certainly be an environmental disaster, are examples…
But a new approach to architecture and even intervention in the landscape has also developed. The exhibition Across the islandpresented these days at the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA), is the first chapter of an event in three parts – each comprising a film – on what can be described as “alternative architecture”.
At a press conference, curator Francesco Garutti explained that this exhibition – as is often the case with exhibitions at the CCA – was born from questioning. This time, the commissioner questioned “the function and relevance of doing architecture” while there is “an ecological crisis”. Certainly a broad problem, but obviously unavoidable…
For this first part of this project entitled In the field, a trilogy of exhibitions which will continue until the summer of 2025, Garutti has chosen to deal with the architect Xu Tiantian and his intervention on the island of Meizhou, in the south-east of China, near Taiwan. This architect has made herself known through an approach to architecture in dialogue with the communities where she works. Founder of the firm DnA (Design and Architecture) in 2004, Tiantian describes her practice as “architectural acupuncture”. She has developed an approach that consists of a “minimum sustainable intervention”, which attempts to put in place the conditions for long-term social development.
Through this exhibition and especially the film presented there – a film directed by documentary filmmaker Joshua Frank – the visitor will understand the finesse of Tiantian’s interventions in the territory of Meizhou. Invited to create a museum on this island, Tiantian opted for a more complex project. It was therefore not a question of creating an iconic building à la Frank Gehry, but a series of smaller interventions, sometimes almost invisible at first glance, carried out in dialogue with the various local stakeholders. A form of “community collaboration,” says Tiantian.
Its aim was, among other things, to allow a real experience of this island rather than confining the visitor to a prestigious location. We had to try to truly revitalize this island of 40,000 inhabitants which receives three million tourists coming, among other things, to visit the famous ancestral temple of the Celestial Empress and the famous beaches. But these tourists often represent more of a nuisance than a contribution to local activities, including the oyster and algae cultures which are withering away. As we can read in one of the explanatory texts, “out of the 1000 families who practiced this profession at the height of this activity, only 50 still engage in it today”… By finding a way to make the various places accessible of oyster and seaweed cultivation to tourists, Tiantian will perhaps make it possible to revive these traditional industries and give the public access to an intangible heritage that goes far beyond spectacular architecture.