The interior of the York University computer science building in Toronto uses technology inspired by barns. The building is an example of Canadian architecture on display at this year's Venice Biennale. (Busby, Perkins + Will)

Taking their cues from teepees, igloos, sod houses, ice houses and barns, the Canadian architects on display at this year’s Venice Biennale, the top architectural exhibition in the world, have turned to the past for ways to sustain our future.

In the exhibit 41° to 66° (a reference to the Canadian latitudes), architects John McMinn and Marco Polo have laid out blueprints, photos and image projections of some of the most innovative – and beautiful — structures built in Canada in the last decade. From the Maritimes to the West Coast, all have been inspired by what Polo calls sustainable “passive technology” of the past.

“Some of the forms of settler and First Nations architecture developed out of pure pragmatism. They are very responsive to climatic and site conditions and availability of materials,” Polo says. “In these modern versions, there are true architectural solutions: they’re in the building, not add-ons.”

One example on display is the York University computer science building by architect firm Busby, Perkins + Will, which won the International Green Building Award. Its heating and air circulation system uses technology inspired by old-fashioned Ontario and Quebec barns. Just like animals in a barn, the occupants and computer equipment are heat generators and the building’s ventilation system works through the stratification of heat and cold.

“It’s not trying to look like a barn or be a barn,” explains Polo, who teaches architecture at Ryerson University. “But it’s applying some of the same principles to a completely temporary building. It’s learning from very traditional building types with basic, simple principles of physics.” Air is drawn into the building from the cooler, north side of the building and fed into hallways, which, because they’re usually crowded with moving people, need less heat than lecture halls where people are sitting still. To cool the building in the summer, a central atrium with slope windows opens to draw up heat and stale air. Again, the form of the building, rather than mechanical devices, moves the air.

Another example is Yellowknife architect Gino Pin’s igloo-inspired high school-community centre on the shore of Nunavut. After local teenagers burned down the old school, Pin designed an oval replacement. Inside, thermal pipes that extract heat from the ground, glazed windows and air currents keep the building warm in winter and cool in summer. The curved shape prevents snowdrifts from blocking entrances.

“It has a kind of tortoise roof that allows the wind to scour the roof and keep it clear of snow,” Pin says. Inside, the space is open and fluid, allowing it to adapt to the community’s needs.

Part of the interior of Gino Pin's igloo-inspired high school on the shore of Nunavut. (Pin/Taylor Architects)

If not unique, the buildings on show this year are exemplary. Polo and McMinn began scanning Canada for these kinds of designs in 2003. At the time, there were just a handful; now, there are plenty.

“This is the new wave of Canadian architecture and in the world,” says McMinn, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo. “The birth of modernism in the early 20th century was a major development and now sustainability is the paradigm shift.

"It’s not just a technical issue, but a cultural one, too. It goes across the board to a whole variety of issues.”

While the Canadian projects exhibited by McMinn and Polo are relevant and noteworthy, the show itself bears far too much resemblance to a glossy library information booth. That’s a shame, because it fails to transmit just how interesting the approach and ideas are.

To a large extent, it’s due to a money shortage. Unlike Venice's art biennale, which has been exhibiting in alternating years since 1895, the architecture showcase is comparatively new. It didn't begin until 1976, and was only held sporadically until 2000, when it finally became a biennial affair. It's still something of a poor cousin to the art exhibition, lacking the surges of cash and hype that the other enjoys.

For this year's Canadian entry, the Canada Council threw in about $100,000 – a small fraction of what it actually costs to put on a show in Venice – and the Foreign Affairs Department topped that up with another $50,000 from its total worldwide budget of $4.7 million. (The present Conservative government wants to scrap this pot of money, known as PromArt, which goes to promoting Canadian artists abroad. It’s the fund that first helped launch Cirque du Soleil beyond our shores.)

The underfunding has several unfortunate effects on the final outcome. One, it discourages anyone with a particularly ambitious (read: expensive) project from even contemplating vying for the spot as Canada’s official pick in Venice. As Danielle Wiley of the Canada Council told me, “We wish our support could be more, but the reality is it can be intimidating for a team to take on for the financial duress.”

This year, the quality of entries was so poor that the committee turned them all down and went hunting around for an already existing exhibit that was up to snuff; that’s why McMinn and Polo were invited. A second result of the lack of funding is that those gutsy or foolhardy enough to come to Venice can expect to go into major debt.

For the past few biennales, Aeroplan has thrown in air travel points, which go toward ferrying the curators to Venice and back to prepare and put on the show. The ad agency TAXI Canada donated design services, while Kitchener, Ont.-based Christie Digital contributed financial support and technical expertise, as well as the use of their digital projection equipment for the duration of the exhibition. Even with all the help, the somewhat humble result of diagrams and projected images is tens of thousands in the hole.

But the money problems that plague the Canadian pavilion can’t be blamed entirely for its humdrum presentation. Down the laneway, the Americans have put on a visually dynamic and socially relevant group show.

I happened upon a couple of the U.S. architects at their opening party and asked a few nosy questions about their finances. Fully expecting to hear the chi-ching of cash as they revealed their budget, to my surprise, I learned that their exhibit budget was comparable to the Canadian one and just as debt-ridden. The Americans weren’t even able to raise enough money for proper accommodation. All seven architects – six men and a woman – had to share a small one-room apartment for the two weeks or so that it took to set up and present their exhibit.

Husband-and-wife team Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture designed this edifice in Busan, South Korea. Once completed, it will be one of the tallest towers in Asia. (Asymptote Architecture)

Our conversation turned positively surreal when one of them asked me if I’d be interested in buying part of the exhibit once the biennale wrapped up in November, because they couldn’t afford to send it all back to the U.S. (Anyone hankering for a solar-panelled, collapsible refugee tent with a rain-water shower, contact Gans Studio.)

Just so I don’t leave the impression that every architect is struggling under the financial weight of showing in Venice, I did come across one hugely successful duo in the independently curated section of the biennale. And guess what? They’re Canadian! Well, sort of. Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture, from Toronto and Montreal respectively, are a husband-and-wife team who met at Carleton University. They went their separate ways for graduate school and then paired up for work and love in Toronto in the late 1980s.

They couldn’t make a go of it in Canada, so they headed to New York. They’re now at the helm of Asymptote Architecture, employ 70 people and design everything from flagship stores like the Alessi boutique in New York, to designer hotels, to their latest undertaking: one of the tallest towers in Asia, soon to be built in Busan, South Korea.

The couple's work crosses over into the sphere of art – and art that sells for a lot of money. They’re regulars at Venice and this year presented big, blobby, futuristic fibreglass shapes. Couture and Rashid placed them on platforms with lighting that slowly shifted from over-exposed to a deep blue, making the shapes appear to float and flux before your eyes. They were beautiful to behold, serenely hypnotic.

Rashid says the sculptures will end up as furniture in some high-end hotel lobby. Lucky rich travellers.

Out There: Architecture Beyond Building, the Venice Architecture Biennale, runs in Venice to Nov. 23.

Megan Williams is a Canadian writer based in Rome.