ADAPTIVE BOUNDARIES

Punctuated by travel, discovery, encounters and sharing, our Prix de Rome experience was extremely humbling. We learned a lot from the collaborators and their guests through the workshops, as well as through their books, articles and art installations. This experience has led to deep reflections, not only on the subject of biocentric architecture but also on the choices we make in our daily lives. In a way, it has changed us as human beings.

The research program led KANVA to ask many questions about our practice: What does it mean to be sustainable? More importantly, how do we achieve a holistic balance? However, these are complex questions, and we do not have a clear formula for a solution. We are only at the humble stage of highlighting the importance of these questions to the field of architecture and to the general public.

Not only have we learned a great deal from the data collected during these years of research and workshops, but we have since integrated this research process into our practice. We regularly conduct participatory workshops with our clients and experts, often inspired by the methodology developed and applied in the Prix de Rome. This process greatly helps us in the conceptualization of projects.

The experience of the Prix de Rome has allowed us to create a valuable network. The workshops were not only professional but also facilitated deep and authentic sharing with collaborators and guests. On each trip, we were fortunate to be warmly welcomed by our collaborators, with whom we spent several days. It was a pleasure to get to know them on a personal level, and to learn about their interests, lifestyles, and sense of the local urban fabric.

On a more personal level, Adaptive Boundaries has made each of us at KANVA more humble in our approach to the subject of biocentric architecture. It has made us better parents and overall better humans in our sharing of the planet with others. It has given us an understanding of nuance while giving us a degree of ecological anxiety.

Nevertheless, the end of this Prix de Rome experience is only the beginning of its impact on our practice. In the long run, the thinking and design tools generated by the workshops will continually provoke reflections on our architectural practice. We hope that the association of this prestigious award with the name of our firm, KANVA, will further establish it as a responsive architectural practice and provide us with greater credibility with our clients in order to convince them to opt for more biocentric options in their projects.

We have given a lot of thought to how we can spread a message that will have a similar impact on the public as we have felt throughout this experience while maintaining a sense of importance and urgency. We hope that the product of our research will be, in some way, a type of environmental manifesto.

Beyond the completion of the grant program, KANVA seeks to work in the public realm to put forward the lessons and research findings and transform them into ephemeral art. The data compiled from the workshops, made possible by the Canada Council for the Arts, is organized into twenty-six questions centered on the idea of making the boundaries between humans and other living beings more fluid and permeable, in the hopes of bringing about significant changes to the prescriptive architectural approach we know today. These questions are thought-provoking, emotional, and deal with the impact of humans in the world, and the place we hold for the living species we cohabit with.