James Graham - Planetary Dam

For centuries, natural materials have been reconfigured and shaped by designers to be used in architectural construction. As such, the production of the built environment is reliant on resource extraction and the malleability of matter. To consider this is also to recognise the broader consequences of human-led manipulation of ecological systems. For the inaugural Virtual Fellows Program in 2021, under the theme, Building Matter, three scholars were asked to consider how architects and other designers have relied on practices of the manipulation, extraction, projection, and inhabitation of planetary matter. Working in collaboration with our reference staff, they refined and curated a selection of Collection materials related to their research.
In the following videos, the fellows gathered and overlaid recordings of Collection documents to animate their findings. Beginning with an image of a the Stanrock Tailing Wall in Ontario, James Graham explored the planetary network of infrastructures of containment, Maren Koehler examined the tension between the production and consumption of tree matter in Canada, and with a critical gaze on the collections of the CCA and Museu Paranaense MUPA, Marina Oba surveyed the histories of raw material architecture in the Global South. • Virtual Research Fello...