CCA – The Concordian

Happening in and around the White Cube this week: Our Happy Life

In May, after school had ended, I spent my time drawing and listening to podcasts, waiting to leave for my long awaited trip to visit a friend in Vienna. One of the very few times I got out of the house was to see Our Happy Life: Architecture and Well-Being in the Age of Emotional Capitalism at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA). The exhibition has stuck in my mind ever since, and after recently revisiting, I’ve decided this is one of the best shows I’ve seen to date.

Categorized into small segments, the exhibition is concerned with the growing international happiness index and the specific factors that influence it. Ranging from ‘Safety,’ ‘Air Quality,’ and ‘Community Belonging’ to ‘Walking Alone At Night,’ ‘Views’ and ‘WELL™’ the categories, backed up with visual findings, express the ways in which they have had an effect on various lives.

Most notably, the impact of accessible housing and location on the happiness index were exemplified by those living in temporary homes on the site of a volcano in Hawaii. In order to live the lifestyle they desire that fits within their budget, they are fully aware the volcanic grounds they live on could be subject to another disaster at any moment.

The ‘Social Life’ category describes how an apartment complex in Brooklyn Cultural District used the promise of a specific social lifestyle to sell homes by partnering with founder of Rookie Magazine, Tavi Gevinson. Although Gevinson announced her disbandment in June 2018, her contribution to the #ApartmentStories hashtag was significant, and gave those seeking such a lifestyle something to idealize.

But how is this Arts Chloë? The White Cube does not need to contain what we traditionally recognize as arts (painting, drawing, sculpture…) – it can be anything. The answer is in the curation. Our Happy Life presents a research project in the most formidable way. Curated by Francesco Garutti, Irene Chin, and Jacqueline Meyer, and designed by OK-RM (London), the exhibition takes visitors through rooms ranging from white and clinically archival, to yellow and fluffy, and finally through a long, comforting blue corridor. Large images hang on the walls accompanied by texts stating things like “OUR SENTIMENTS HAVE BECOME STATISTICS AND DATA,” and “HAPPINESS RULES ARE DEFINING SPATIAL VALUES.” The exhibition itself is designed and curated in such a way that makes viewers feel happy, despite the topics they confront within.

I left (both times) feeling quite pleased and thinking, “they’re not wrong.”

The exhibition ends by exploring various cities, where Vienna is ranked first in the 2018 Quality of Living Survey, according to Mercer and The Economist.

Our Happy Life remains in the main exhibition hall at the CCA until Oct. 13.

Graphic by Ana Bilokin (Archive)

**Gabor Szilasi, Illuminated Sign Series, La Fierté a une ville, Montréal. 1983.**
CCA Collection. © Gabor Szilazi

Earlier this year, in an initiative taken to build an open-source exhibit that would, in a very à propos fashion, be titled ABC: MTL, the Centre for Canadian Architecture launched a public call for proposals to garnish its future compendium of a city. The goal was to illustrate what makes a city iconic in a subtle fashion and what pieces of urban development and parcels of architecture make it singularly recognizable in its present form, in its perspectives, and for the future.

The exhibit is the third part in a series of shows that the CCA has put on in the past 20 years. The first part, Montréal Métropole: 1880-1930, was launched in 1998 and the second, Montreal Thinks Big, was showcased in 2004. According to the description of the exhibit, Montréal Métropole 1880-1930 considered the upbringing of a city and what makes it, over the span of time, “the behemoth of trade and industry at the turn of the century.” On the other hand, Montreal Thinks Big considered Montreal’s response to its growth and increasing population with respect to the infrastructures of the city. Although it is equally concerned with our city, ABC: MTL is unique in the sense that it is the first of the three exhibits to focus on our city in the here and now.

The open source project launched on Nov. 15 after months of proposal gathering and selection processes. The result is an amalgam of photography, architecture recommendations and typographic illustrations, all of which coin Montreal oh so well. Divided into diverse parts of the city, the exhibit focuses on areas and topics that characterize it as a whole. For example, one corner of the show explores and considers the indoor and underground world of Montreal. Artists individually consider the forgotten or exploited areas of our city, from the organization of our alleys to how we utilize the underground to showcase artistic installations.

**Olivo Barbieri, Aerial view of La Ronde amusement park and the Jacques Cartier Bridge, Montréal, 2004.**
CCA Collection. Gift of The Sandra and Leo Kolber Foundation

Sprawled throughout the exhibit, visitors will find statistic indicators, printed boldly in black and white, which contrast the overall qualitative feel of the exhibit. The numbers paint a portrait of a city that is constantly busy, constantly in movement. Abandoned buildings, alleyways, hotels, and bridges — everything is taken into account.

As a viewer of this exhibit, what’s fascinating to watch is how artists’ visions and approaches to the city can be totally different. On one hand, you’ll have an artist who, via panoramic photography, will depict how citizens are utterly engulfed by the traffic and movement that surround the intersections of our city. Fewer than two steps away, all in the same exhibit, another photographer attempts to showcase the human side of one of our city’s misrepresented institutions, focusing exclusively on portraits of police officers in the face of demonstrations on police brutality. The idea is that the visions of a collective will make their city iconic. Regardless of traffic, institutions and architecture, a city, no matter how busy, will always be what its citizens make of it.

ABC: MTL runs until March 31, 2013 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1920 Baile St. For more information visit cca.qc.ca.