Visual Arts News - Spring 2020 - Architecture

Magazine Description

In this issue

Most people, whether they realize it or not, have a relationship to architecture. We inhabit space and move through buildings, houses, apartments, and cities. Most people have a connection to art. The relationship between architecture and art is intrinsic, and the environment plays a significant role. Where we live affects how we live, and, in turn, shapes our creative sensibility and our artistic output. Monica Adair, co-founder of Acre Architects in New Brunswick, believes architecture is central to our everyday lives, and is in constant relation to community and the art world. She offers deeper insight into this connectivity and how it affects art on the East Coast in "Atlantic Art-chitecture." Artists, writers, and architects often move to low-income parts of the city to sustain their lives and practice. Inevitably, building companies buy the affordable housing and gentrify the neighbourhood, forcing artists our of their studios and homes. "Relocation by 'Renoviction'," explores the decline of artist studios in Halifax's North End. In 1976, PEI saw The Ark, a world-renowned project illustrating the need to create more sustainable housing in the wake of the energy crisis, stressing our ecological impact on the environment. The exhibition "Living Lightly on the Earth: Building an Ark for Prince Edward Island, 1974-76," at Beaverbrook Art Gallery, is now more pertinent than ever before. How we live is just as important as where we live. Our lives are not renewable resources. Architecture and art teach us we are finite, and so is the land we live on and the air we breathe.