Watch: Manitoba architects vie for a spot on the "Olympics of Architecture" team heading for Venice Biennale

It doesn't matter whether you're of Aboriginal origin or whether your family has been here for centuries, certainly you have a cultural memory bag which you can draw on when you work.

—Johanna Hurme, Architect

Venice beckons!  A Canadian team is heading to the Venice Biennale, the "Olympics of Architecture."   And young architects from across Canada are competing to be part of the team that takes the project to Italy.

Migrating Landscapes  is about how migration affects design. Entrants are designing models of dwellings that are inspired by their own personal migration or immigration experiences.  They were asked to think about how they became Canadians, their family history, what affected them culturally, and then translate those ideas into an architectural piece. The Manitoba entries are on display now at The Forks. 

The team of architects leading this Venice Biennale project includes Johanna Hurme and Sasa Radulovic of 5468796 Architecture and Jae-Sung Chon. Hurme has been inspired by the personal stories she is hearing. Every tale is unique. She feels the work is "very Canadian" as it celebrates and embraces our differences.

"Our team is largely composed of first-generation Canadians. We thought there must be some relationship between migration, between cultural understanding and the design that one produces.  And we wanted to investigate that further and really examine what that could be."
 
And immigration is something the three architects behind the project well know. Hurme is originally from Finland, Radulovic is from the former Yugoslavia and Chon is from South Korea.

Hurme remembers coming to the Canadian prairies from Helsinki and the profound effect it had on her.

"I think that the first shock was really the landscape and how different it was. The prairie really is quite a unique place in the world where you can see kilometers and kilometers on end of clear sky and stars at night that are comparable to none other. And I think that it does have a profound effect on you. But as a young person, I did not realize  how closely I was connected to my surroundings."

Local architects are currently competing to be part of the show. The public is welcome to cast a vote. There is also a book available where people can leave their own personal stories of migration.

The announcement of the winners will be made on February 2nd at a special event at The Forks at 7:00 p.m. The  regional winners from Manitoba and Canada go on to the national competition which will take place at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in the spring.