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The Canadian Council of University Schools of Architecture (CCUSA) has initiated its first pan-Canada lecture series in response to COVID-related restrictions on traveling and large gatherings, inviting students and practitioners across the country to join the conversation.

The 12 schools of architecture agreed upon "diversity" as the theme for this year. The schools are taking turns to present two lectures a month starting on the west coast and moving across Canada. The Dalhousie School of Architecture will host its lecture on March 24^th, 2021.

"With the forced move online, CCUSA saw an opportunity to connect across the country and beyond, and I want to thank everyone who collaborated to make this happen in a rather short period of time! I have high hopes that this first pan-Canada lecture series will set up a new trajectory for how the twelve Schools of Architecture across Canada can come together to engage in thought-provoking discussions," comments Anne Bordeleau, chair of CCUSA. "Offering a significant occasion to gather students, academic and professionals in one conversation, the series is a platform for a remarkable group of speakers and respondents, and a springboard into the rich territory that the reframing of architecture unshadows."

For professionals, lecture attendance counts towards continuing education credits.

At the next event, Vyjayanthi Rao and Tau Tavengwa will be presenting together a lecture titled “Other Architectures”.

Vyjayanthi Rao is an anthropologist, writer and curator.  An ethnographer of urban life in India and elsewhere, she also writes regularly about art and the role of creativity in urban life.  Her work explores speculation and architecture and her research combines ethnographic fieldwork with mapping, film-making and other forms of visual research. 

She is the author of numerous articles and is the co-editor of two books, Speculation Now: Essays and Artworks (Duke University Press, 2015) and Occupy All Streets: Olympic Urbanism and Contested Futures in Rio de Janeiro (UR Books, 2016).  

Vyjayanthi is a senior editor of the journal Public Culture, a teacher of Urban Studies at the Spitzer School of Architecture (CUNY), a Co-Director of the non-profit Terreform Center for Advanced Urban Research and a member of an artist collective called Samooha, exploring practices of self-reliance, self-making and self-building, vital to cultures fostered within informal settlements across the globe.  

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Tau Tavengwa is the co-founder, curator and editor of Cityscapes, an annual publication about cities and urban life across Africa; Latin America and South Asia. Each 190 page issue of Cityscapes presents stories and analysis on the current and future state of cities and urbanisation from a global South perspective. The project has grown to include live events, exhibitions and consulting. Tau is a 2018 Harvard University Loeb Fellow and is currently a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. In addition, he is a Research Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Religious and Diversity Studies. He is also a board member of Terreform Books (NY) and is a member of the Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Awards Nominations Committee of the International Federation of Landscape Architects (Brussels). 

To stream the lecture visit: study-architecture.ca/pancanada2021