According to a 2020 report by the UN Environment Programme, the construction industry accounts for at least 38 per cent of carbon emissions globally, operating with narrow methods geared toward profit. Buildings are held as assets, torn down, and redeveloped, with limited consideration of community and environmental impacts. Meanwhile, housing crises escalate. Evidently, a systemic shift in the way we build and value our built environment is urgently needed.
The documentary and exhibition To Build Law follows the Berlin-based collaborative architecture practice bplus.xyz (b+) and the Zurich-located chair for architecture and storytelling s+ (station.plus, D-ARCH, ETH Zurich) as they establish a policy lab, HouseEurope!, to propose industry reforms and shift cultural norms. The project closely observes b+’s radical experiments beyond the fringes of conventional architectural practice, during various phases of conceptualization and development of a European Citizens’ Initiative meant to incentivize renovation over demolition and new construction.
Guided by an urgency to understand the fundamental ways that architects are enacting change in the built environment, curator Francesco Garutti, alongside film director Joshua Frank, present a layered reportage of urban fragments and legal pathways in which architecture reveals itself as an open process of establishing partners, drafting positions, convening meetings, strategizing campaigns, and collecting votes to build a movement that aims to change the conditions of the architectural discipline in Europe.
To Build Law is the second chapter of Groundwork, a new exhibition and film series, that launched in May 2024 with Into the Island. The first chapter follows Xu Tiantian (DnA_Design and Architecture) to Meizhou Island off the coast of China where she is creating a set of subtle interventions to mediate between pressures of heritage, tourism, and marine ecology. The In June 2025, the series concludes by following Carla Juaçaba to the heart of Minas Gerais, Brazil where she is developing pavilions in a coffee field—minimal support structures in a territory where collectives are resisting extractive industrial agriculture (19 June 2025 to 14 September 2025). About the CCA
The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) is an international research institution and museum premised on the belief that architecture is a public concern. We produce exhibitions and publications, develop and share our collection as a resource, advance research, offer public programs, and host a range of other activities driven by a curiosity about how architecture shapes—and might reshape—contemporary life. We invite collaborators and the wider public to engage with our activities, giving new relevance to architectural thinking in light of current disciplinary and cultural issues.
Founded as a new type of cultural institution by Phyllis Lambert in 1979, the CCA is currently directed by Giovanna Borasi and steered by the CCA Board of Trustees.
