Migrating Landscapes

competition entry with Jeanne Ng to Venice Biennale 2012

Migrating Landscapes was a proposal by Jae Sung Chon and 5468796 Architecture selected by a national juried competition as Canada’s official entry at the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture. As part of the project, Migrating Landscapes staged a competition within, offering an opportunity to showcase new Canadian architectural talent in Venice. Jeanne Ng and I, as entrants, we were asked to respond to the question of how cultural memory, within the context of migration, is affected on the landscape.

our statement

As new immigrants, our relationship to the built environment is subtle and shifting, absorbing and refracting new and old worlds simultaneously. Our project looks at the ideas of the reconstruction of space as a transparent mirror, which, depending on your angle, view or source of light, controls how much of what is revealed. Acting as new immigrants on a newly constructed abstract landscape, we see the act of settling as post-Babylonian: we are left with semi-transparent reflective fragments of building as opposed to a singular monument of identity.