Concordia University – förlag

Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991-2018 brings together texts by Canadian artist Ken Lum. They include a letter to an editor, diary entries, articles, catalogue essays, curatorial statements, and more. Along the way, the reader learns about late modern, postmodern, and contemporary art practices, as well as debates around issues like race, class, and monumentality. Penetrating, insightful, and often moving, Lum's writings are essential for understanding his varied practice, which has often been prescient of developments within contemporary art.

Whether he was designing buildings and spaces for universities, museums, performing arts, or libraries, Arthur Erickson was preoccupied with intersections – of people, of cultures, and of ideas. Arthur Erickson on Learning Systems collects writings by an architect advocating for interdisciplinary approaches to education and the methods for sharing knowledge.

In pieces on one of his mid-1960s masterpieces, the Simon Fraser University campus, Erickson explains how he intended to avoid compartmentalization between academic disciplines by thinking of a campus as akin to a "biological system" capable of adaptation. He outlines how his design placed a "spine" through the campus to circulate people – and communication between them – while making space for additional buildings as they became needed. These writings also show Erickson reflecting on whether his original vision was maintained by future development on the site and considering how university education changed in the decades that followed.

An introduction by Melanie O'Brian nuances Erickson's big-picture thinking, draws parallels between curatorial practices and his approach to learning spaces, and discusses the experiences of campus users following university expansion and increased specialization among academic disciplines.

This title is a collaboration between Concordia University Press and the Canadian Centre for Architecture and is part of the "Building Arguments" series.

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander on Pedagogical Playgrounds is a curated selection of writings by a landscape architect dedicated to children's right to play in urban environments. This volume assembles key texts from the 1960s and 1970s where Oberlander urges city planners and developers to recognize playgrounds as important sites for childhood development and to include them in new construction. She emphasizes the social benefits that free play and independent discovery create, and she provides practical proposals for the formulation of new playgrounds.

In pieces including a short history of children's play, reflections on her own work, and a report urging levels of government to protect children's right to play, Oberlander responds to austerity by encouraging the use of inexpensive and recycled materials such as sand, water, logs, boards, and tires for use in playgrounds and suggests vacant lots as play sites. She argues that developers and planners must always consult with their users and that children's input and needs must be considered in playground design.

An introduction by Jane Mah Hutton, landscape architect and associate professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture, explores the intersections of active play, ecological thinking, urban development, and the enthusiastic and often-playful advocacy of Oberlander's writing and practice.

This title is a collaboration between Concordia University Press and the Canadian Centre for Architecture and is part of the Building Arguments series.