The first film in the Canadian Centre for Architecture's three-part Groundwork series, which explores alternative modes of architectural practice that respond to the urgency of the climate crisis, is available to watch online: Into the Island follows architect Xu Tiantian of Beijing's DnA_Design and Architecture to Meizhou Island, where she has been designing a museum and other small interventions.
Groundwork, curated by the CCA's Francesco Garutti, launched in May 2024, with the opening of Into the Island in the main galleries of the Montreal institution. As the photograph above indicates, the exhibition displayed numerous artifacts related to the project carried out by Tiantian and DnA, but anchoring it was the 41-minute documentary directed by Joshua Frank. Screenings of the film during the duration of the exhibition were limited to the galleries, but soon after the exhibition closed in November the CCA made the video freely available online. Watch it below or on YouTube.
进岛方向/Into the Island (2024 | 41 min | CCA), in Chinese (Mandarin) and English, with French and English subtitles
The second chapter in the Groundwork series, To Build Law — focusing on HouseEurope!, a European Citizens’ Initiative aimed at incentivizing renovation over demolition and new construction — opened at the CCA in December and is on display until May 25, 2025. (Read our review of the 48-minute film.) Following it will be a film about Brazilian architect Carla Juaçaba's work in Minas Gerais, where she is developing pavilions in a coffee field. The series will then conclude in September 2025.
