WINDOW RESEARCH INSTITUTE

The Window Research Institute, in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), offers the CCA-WRI Research Fellowship—a program that supports researchers selected through an open call to pursue original projects using the CCA’s collection and in alignment with an annual theme.

The first cycle of the fellowship, CCA-WRI Research Fellowship 2022–2024, ran over three years under the shared theme “Above/Below/Between: Light on a Damaged Planet.” A total of nine fellows—three each year—were selected. The second group of fellows in this cycle took part in the program at the CCA in 2023.

2023 CCA-WRI Fellows 

  

2023 CCA-WRI Jury Members 
Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (Co-Founder of Atelier Bow-Wow and Professor, Tokyo Institute of Technology), Jungyoon Kim (Co-Founding Principal of PARKKIM and Assistant Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture, Harvard, GSD), Giovanna Borasi (Director, Canadian Centre for Architecture), Rafico Ruiz (Associate Director, Research, Canadian Centre for Architecture)

2024 Program Overview
Above/Below/Between: Light on a Damaged Planet
The recognition of the manifold meanings and architectural mediations of light, which are becoming only more salient in our era of ecological crises, is common to both the CCA and the Window Research Institute. This emergent ecological reality is creating new practices, designs, and other social and material manifestations of architectural design that are above, below, and between; atmospheric, underground, and attentive to increasingly damaged landscapes all around us. Whether through increased average temperatures, more prevalent drought patterns, or sea level rise, light on this damaged planet is materially responsive to our human-impacted ecosystem. Apertures condense and make palpable this source of light and the need to question its root causes.

 

This affinity has led to our working with the WRI to jointly provide conditions for deep inquiries into the phenomenon of light. This collaboration represents a new model of fellowship for the CCA; whereas our institution observes an ever-expanding array of architectural subjects, the WRI holds a specific focus on light and windows, in their technological, cultural, and societal dimensions.

 

The second iteration of the CCA-WRI Research Fellowship:

Program Above/Below/Between: Light on a Damaged Planet continues to seek to understand architecture’s varied relationships to the changing material constitution of the light spectrum. In 2023 we will welcome three CCA-WRI Fellows for periods of research of up to three months, with Fellows’ turning their attention to the second element in the diffusion of light across our solar societies: below, and the underground with its relative absence of light. The design of underground spaces, whether for retail, data storage, safety from warfare and climate disaster, is an ongoing concern. The CCA holds a unique collection of materials related to the Underground Space Center (USC) at the University of Minnesota. The USC, founded in 1978, was dedicated to the study of ʻearth-shelters’ as a response to the 1970s oil crisis and the need for more efficient means to heat and cool domestic environments. This is one entry point into an array of CCA Collection materials that can articulate how contemporary experiences of solar damage extend into the history of design.

 

While 2023 Fellows may focus on the underground as a space of experimentation, future domesticity, and/or extraction, we welcome applications that address a range of topics, particularly those that take the theme of damaged light and solarity as a social condition more broadly in new directions:

-The underground and expanded definitions of ʻshelter’

-Underground urbanisms (in relation to density, climate, real estate speculation, etc)

-The underground and anti-verticality

-Underground spaces and nostalgia/disuse/retreat/illicitness

-Solar design, particularly as a material

-Light as a form of social capital

-Solar landscapes, whether dry, arid, or desert

-Luminescence as a historical, geographical, and social process

*Applications for the 2023 cycle are now closed. Thank you to all who applied.

About the Partnership

The CCA operates in the spaces between architectural culture at large and academic discourse through exhibitions, publications, public events, and research programs. As an international research institution, it is concerned not only with building new knowledge but also with making that knowledge productive. To do this, it applies architectural perspectives to topics beyond their usual disciplinary scope and methods from other fields to traditionally architectural subjects. It aims to adopt new ways of investigating that combine cultures and perspectives emerging from architectural practice, curatorial and publishing practice, and academic study.

 

For over a decade, the WRI has implemented research programs focused on windows and openings. Windows—which play multifaceted roles in lighting, ventilation, viewing, security, and energy conservation—serve as intersections for various technologies and constitute one of the most fundamental elements that characterize architecture. As the contact point between the outside and inside, windows relate closely to not only architecture but to surrounding climates and people’s lifestyles. With our view of windows through a multifaceted lens—as a reflection of our society, culture, and technology—we seek to understand architecture in a fresh light to explore its role in society.
In this partnership, we aim to establish a cross-institutional fellowship program that tackles urgent public issues by combining the CCA’s comprehensive insight, collection, and research system with the WRI’s unique expertise.