WINDOW RESEARCH INSTITUTE

On Tuesday, 6 August 2024, the Window Research Institute, in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), held the symposium “Energy Always” at the CCA, which was also streamed online. Jointly convened by the CCA and the Window Research Institute, the symposium was organized as part of the final year of the CCA-WRI Research Fellowship Program 2022–2024, developed under the theme “Above/Below/Between: Light on a Damaged Planet,” and introduced the research undertaken by the three 2024 fellows.

This year’s program focused on the condition of the “between,” attending to phenomena that become apparent between the atmosphere and land. Through this lens, the symposium considered the relationship between light, energy, and the forms of production and everyday life shaped by this solar-dependent environment. In the first half of the symposium, the three 2024 fellows—Emily Doucet, Gökçe Günel, and Yosuke Nakamoto—presented their respective research projects.

Drawing on archival research on Eastman Kodak, Doucet examined the architectures and infrastructures that supported photographic production across Kodak’s global empire. By tracing the material, social, and institutional foundations that made the photographic industry possible, she approached its history through the spaces and systems of production, reconsidering the geopolitics of the photographic industry.

Taking her publication project All of the Above: A Global Future of Energy as a point of departure, Günel questioned understandings of energy infrastructure based on narratives of progress or transition along a linear timeline. Focusing on temporary power infrastructures such as powerships, she examined how “all of the above” solutions maintain the necessity of fossil fuel infrastructure alongside other forms of energy infrastructure, and how such provisional systems can function as technologies of deferral that delay the shift toward clean technologies.

Nakamoto addressed the modernisation of the salt industry in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea region, reconsidering the relationship between environment and energy through the concept of the “metabolic rift.” By tracing the shift from traditional salt-making techniques to mechanised production, he examined changes in coastal land use and communities, while seeking to challenge agriculture-centred narratives in Japanese environmental and economic history and to reevaluate the country’s coastal history.

In the second half of the symposium, advisory board members Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Daniel A. Barber, and Masatake Shinohara were joined by representatives from the CCA and the Window Research Institute for a discussion based on the presentations.

The symposium demonstrated the expanding scope of research in the program’s final year and offered an opportunity to reconsider how light operates across human activity, the environment, and architecture through the condition of the “between.”

Event information

Date: Tuesday, 6 August 2024
Time: 17:00–20:00 (EDT) / 6:00–9:00 (JST, following day)
Venue: Paul Desmarais Theatre, Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal, Canada)
Viewing: Online streaming via Zoom, free of charge
Language: English

Speakers and presentation topics

Emily Doucet (McGill University)
“Mediating Light: The Architectures of Photographic Production”
Gökçe Günel (Rice University)
“All of the Above: A Global Future of Energy”
Yosuke Nakamoto (ETH Zürich)
“Salt and Land: Shifting Territories of the Salt Production Sites in the Seto Inland Sea”

Guests / Advisory Board Members
Masatake Shinohara, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies in Human Survivability (Shishukan), Kyoto University
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Atelier Bow-Wow / Professor, Graduate School, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Daniel A. Barber, Head of School, School of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney

Organizers
Canadian Centre for Architecture
Window Research Institute