CCA-WRI Research Fellowship, CCA Virtual Fellowship, and CCA Research Fellowship
The CCA operates in the spaces between architectural culture at large and academic discourse through exhibitions, publications, public events, and research programs. We are now opening calls for applications for three research programs in 2023: the CCA-WRI Research Fellowship, the CCA Virtual Fellowship and the CCA Research Fellowship.
As an international research institution, we conceive of our curatorial programs as tools to address a range of topics relevant to architectural discourse and contemporary society. Recurring topics include the digital turn in processes of design and communication in architecture; the changing context of the profession and its relationship to diverse and evolving communities—also with regard to processes of colonization and decolonization; the role of photography within visual and design culture, especially in the digital era; and architecture’s relationship with the environment. We welcome applications that explore these topics across historical and contemporary registers.
Our research fellowship programs are open to researchers, architects, and curators who intend to pursue interdisciplinary research on architecture, urbanism, landscape, and/or design at the CCA. We value interdisciplinary approaches to the built environment that work from anthropology to Indigenous studies and beyond. Although proposed research projects may rely extensively on the CCA Collection as a primary source, we are interested above all in original and significant projects that develop both critical readings and creative research, media, and/or designs.
CCA-WRI Research Fellowship
Above/Below/Between: Light on a Damaged Planet
Application deadline: September 25, 2022
The recognition of the manifold meanings and architectural mediations of light, which are becoming only more salient in our era of ecological crises, is common to both the CCA and the Window Research Institute. This emergent ecological reality is creating new practices, designs, and other social and material manifestations of architectural design that are above, below, and between; atmospheric, underground, and attentive to increasingly damaged landscapes all around us. This affinity has led to our working with the WRI to jointly provide conditions for deep inquiries into the phenomenon of light. This collaboration represents a new model of fellowship for the CCA; whereas our institution observes an ever-expanding array of architectural subjects, the WRI holds a specific focus on light and windows, in their technological, cultural, and societal dimensions.
The second iteration of the CCA-WRI Research Fellowship continues to seek to understand architecture’s varied relationships to the changing material constitution of the light spectrum. In 2023 we will welcome three CCA-WRI Fellows for periods of research of up to three months, with Fellows turning their attention to the second element in the diffusion of light across our solar societies: below, and the underground with its relative absence of light. The design of underground spaces, whether for retail, data storage, safety from warfare and climate disaster, is an ongoing concern. The CCA holds a unique collection of materials related to the Underground Space Center (USC) at the University of Minnesota. The USC, founded in 1978, was dedicated to the study of ‘earth-shelters’ as a response to the 1970s oil crisis and the need for more efficient means to heat and cool domestic environments. This is one entry point into an array of CCA Collection materials that can articulate how contemporary experiences of solar damage extend into the history of design.
CCA-WRI Fellows will be offered a residency at the CCA between June and October 2023, for a period of one to three months. Each Fellow will have access to a private office and receive a monthly stipend of CAD 5000, as well as additional financial support for travel expenses.
The selection committee includes Giovanna Borasi (CCA Director), Rafico Ruiz (CCA Associate Director, Research), Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (Co-Founder, Atelier Bow-Wow/Professor, Tokyo Institute of Technology/WRI Board of Directors Member) and Jungyoon Kim (Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, Harvard GSD).
Find out more about the program and application requirements here.
CCA Virtual Fellowship Program
Embodied Visions: Photography Beyond the Technical Image
Application deadline: September 25, 2022
We now welcome applications for two virtual fellowships, each held for a six-week period. Fellowships can take place either between March and May 2023 or September and December 2023. The format of the fellowship supports our long-term investment in thinking through how digitized CCA Collection material can generate new historical configurations and timely interpretations, and how it can have a broader reach within architecture research.
The 2023 edition of this program, Embodied Visions: Photography Beyond the Technical Image, invites new directions, readings, and interactions with photographic works held in the CCA Collection with a view to charting how broader understandings of ‘vision’ may exceed what Vilém Flusser names the ‘technical image.’ The program seeks to position vision and its diverse practices, media, and archives as an open terrain for investigation that can exceed human proprioception and move towards expanded modes of embodiment (algorithmic, land-based, and more). Vision and image-making are intertwined ways of perceiving, experiencing, and capturing the world.
The two selected 2023 Virtual Fellows will undertake research that puts the CCA Collection into conversation with material held elsewhere in order to explore how the contemporary built environment engenders practices of documentation that emerge from human and non-human agents.
Find out more about the program and application requirements here.
Research Fellowship Program
Application deadline: September 25, 2022
Research Fellows will be offered a residency at the CCA between June and August 2023, for a period of one to two months, with the goal of fostering a community of researchers on-site, particularly in relation to our Doctoral Research Residency Program. Each Fellow will have access to a private office and receive a monthly stipend of CAD 5000, as well as additional financial support for travel expenses. Based on the scope of the proposed research project, our Curatorial Committee will determine the duration of the residency in discussion with each candidate to best support their project.
Find out more about the program and application requirements here.
For updates on the CCA’s Fellowship programs and to stay in touch, subscribe to our newsletter.
