Since the year 2000, more than fifteen architectural competitions aimed at rethinking libraries have been organized in Quebec. The recent Gabrielle-Roy library competition is a perfect example of this desire to change institutions dedicated to knowledge. Architecturally, it questions the contemporary trend towards dematerialization, which has been particularly explicit here due to the formal and massive architectural expression of the old library designed by Gauthier Guité Roy decades earlier. It also questions the paradoxical desire to create spaces that are well adapted to specific uses while being very flexible and versatile. [...] more

The 2010 universal Shanghai exposition reminds us that such major events always make us dream, in the present as in the past, but a return on the 1970 Osaka Expo, a great Canadian competition, leaves us contemplating on some aberrations of the use of architects' talents in the arts of.... circus. [...] more

Competitions are often accused of generating controversies, yet what if the projects themselves, at the urban scale, unveil vulnerability and controversies. The Lower Don Lands competition, launched in February of 2007 by the Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corporation (TWRC), in cooperation with the Toronto and Region Conservation (TRCA) and the City of Toronto, was an international competition looking for ideas to bring the river back to the city, after many years of seeking to reframe the industrially focused site. This competition of a public space project, with the unique opportunity of harmonizing the riverbanks to the urban space, was exemplary not only for designers, but for the citizens too, as this was the realization of a longstanding community ambition. [...] more