Johan Voordouw

January 2020 - New Image of Home Exhibition, Shenkman Arts Centre, Ottawa

I am delighted to be exhibiting my New Image of Home project at the Shenkman Art Centre from January 9th - February 16th 2020. The exhibition includes 24 new drawings using a range of media including backlit renders on glass, embroidery, and digital prints of complex dot drawings that attempt to break the hegemony of contemporary digital architectural representations.

December 2019 - New Image of Home exhibition prep

Below is the exhibition development for the New Image of Home. NIH is the creative extension of a two year research project on Canadian domestic space.

March 2019 - Digital Line: Architecture’s Expanding Thread, The Plan Journal

I am in the finishing edits of submitting my final manuscript entitled Digital Line. It has been a many-year research project. I am greatly looking forward to seeing it in print.

ABSTRACT 

“Digital Line studies the changing role of line in architecture. The paper argues that digital production has led to a subsequent shift of lines as trace, towards lines as spatialized thread. This thread is moving away from orthographic and perspective modes of representation through three embedded modes of conception: the digital model, diagram and notation. These new lines have a long and alternative lineage in architectural ideation. The paper explains each mode in turn, indicating the importance of the model as a line in space embedded since the very inception of western architectural discourse; the edifying role of the diagram as a line of operation clarifying architectural ideas; and the new material ground that links notation to fabrication, and continued actualization in the pursuit of new architectural ideas. By expanding the line in architecture, the digital line better connects emerging representational modes to established architectural thinking and opens new ground to further representational discourse in architecture.”

February - March 2019 - Cloud Formations project (Phase 1) at the Art Omi Architecture Residency, Ghent New York

I am delighted to share the first model from the Cloud Formations project from Art Omi. It was an amazingly intensive two weeks working alongside nine inspiring colleagues. Cloud Formations was an extension of the paper presented at the ACSA Fall Conference. This first phase was to get the theoretically work out of the text and into space. Moving forward I hope to further iterate the project and develop a more nuanced reading of clouds as an analogue for architectural space.

January - February 2019 - Fluid Boundaries Update

We had a wonderful interview at the Canada Council for the Arts. Many thanks to the jury for selecting our submission. It was an incredible experience but unfortunately we were not selected. Many congratulations to TBA and David Theodore, we greatly look forward to seeing Imposter Cities in 2020.

December 2018 - Our project Fluid Boundaries has been shortlisted to for the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2020!!

Many thanks to the incredible work of my wonderful team of colleagues: Émélie Desrochers-Turgeon, Ozayr Saloojee, Zoe Todd, David Hugill and Karen Lutsky for all their incredible work. Now to put together the final presentation.

November 2018 - Art Omi Architecture Residency, Ghent, New York

I am excited to announce that I have been invited to the Art Omi Architecture Residency in Ghent, New York. This is a wonderful opportunity to meet fellow architectural scholars, and work on a new exciting project. I look forward to sharing the results in March 2019 at the completion of the residency.

November 2018 - Trinity Gallery, Shenkman Arts Center, Ottawa

I am grateful for the opportunity to show my work - my date is a ways off, but I will be working hard to put together an amazing show.

October 2018 - ACSA Fall Conference, Milwaukee, Wisconson

I am presenting my paper Cloud Formations in an great group of scholars chaired by David Benjamin from Columbia and including Roger Hubeli from Syracuse and Leslie Lok from Cornell University.

ABSTRACT

“This paper explores how physical and digital cloud formations implicate architectural ideas on structure, operation and materiality. The architectural cloud is constructed through aggregation, and defined through the representational lens of softness, and thing-ness. The work argues that clouds are not simply ambiguous form, but constructed indeterminate structure, pliable operations and ambiguous materialization, that offers a compelling extension of architecture’s recent theoretical discourse and practice. Using a history of both the physical and digital manifestation of clouds from media studies, it explores how cloud formations differ from the networks and pliant surfaces of architecture’s recent past? It concludes that as a filled volume, clouds require a new reading of transparency, space, and material and environmental boundary.”

July 2018 - Start of Sabbatical

Looking forward to producing some amazing work this upcoming year for my sabbatical. Thank you to all my colleagues at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, the Faculty of Engineering and Design and Carleton University of this opportunity to focus on developing my research.

May 2018 - Callan Green, Mitacs Globalink, and CU SSHRC Explore Grant for the New Image of Home project

I welcome Callan Green to Canada as we start on the exciting New Image of Home project. Funded through Mitacs Globalink and a CU SSHRC Explore Grant, Callan and I are researching Canadian housing published in architectural journals from 1950 to the present. We hope in the coming months to analyze the evolution of the house plan, and the material content of the interior to comment on the evolution of the Canadian home and speculate on its possible futures.

April 2018 - Final Reviews and Thesis Defence

Congratulations to all at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism on the completion of another incredible year!!

March 2018 - Weerkas Exhibition, Magazin Gallery Vienna

I am grateful for the amazing opportunity to showcase my work at the Magazin Gallery in Vienna. Thank you so much for the incredible work and organizational skills of Eva Sommeregger, Florian Schafschetzy, Jerome Becker, Clemens Nocker and Matthias Moroder. The Weerkas drawings were originally produced for the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam in 2014. Here the curatorial team has painstakingly redrawn all twelve images as anamorphic projections over the gallery walls and ceiling. Thanks to all that came out at the opening it was an amazing evening.

June 2016 - Water Garden and Nuk Parklets, Ottawa

Congratulations to Mitchell Gray, Victoria Hamatani, Simon Petepiece and Trevor Whitten on the successful completion of the Water Garden, and Ben Cottrill, Alex Marttinen, and Jason Surkan on the completion of the Nuk parket on Second Avenue. Many thanks to Mark McGuigan and Rob Wood for all their assistance in the Build and the Vanier BIA, Glebe Community Association, and Carleton University for their incredible support.

April 2016 - BAS Architecture Exhibition, Carleton University Art Gallery

Congratulations to all the students for another successful year.