ATMOSPHERE 9
BEAUTY MEMORY ENTROPY
- KEYNOTE -
RAMI BEBAWI
MEMORIES: RESHAPING THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
ABSTRACT
The lecture seeks to explore how built form, design strategies and building technologies can enhance local narratives, senses and user behavior. Through a series of architectural case studies, the notion of collective and individual memory as a design catalyst will be examined and their ability to accentuate unconscious perception. The notions of protecting, revealing, sustaining and reviving our collective and individual memories allow for architecture to anchor itself within its communities. As architects design with these sensitive intentions, there is a greater awareness of social and moral responsibilities.
BIO
Rami Bebawi (OAQ MRAIC RBQ) is the cofounding partner of KANVA, a renowned architecture practice established in collaboration with Tudor Radulescu (OAQ LEED PA MRAIC) in Montreal, Quebec.
Leading KANVA into its 14th year, Rami has established himself as a dynamic leader who is continually pushing the creative potential of every project. He believes in the promotion of cross-cultural and cross-discipline sharing of experiences and knowledge, to create rich narratives and sensitive approaches for every project.
KANVA’s work elicits an experience, a memory, a reaction. The firm is made up of passionate architects, artists, and scenographers whose work is at the forefront of thinking, imagining, drawing and constructing. KANVA demonstrates architecture’s transformative power through a range of disciplines and scales, from the ephemeral to the institutional, including student housing, large-scale public art installations, mixed-use buildings, corporate headquarters, public spaces, and museums.
KANVA treats each project as an opportunity to reshape the built environment through storytelling. Each project is engaging, memorable and responsive to human experience while attempting to address the contemporary complexities of culture, economy, sustainability and innovation. KANVA regularly collaborates with artists, specialized trades or other relevant creators to conduct interdisciplinary research to maximize the innovation potential of a project.
The collective’s vanguard work has won many prestigious awards, including the 2015 RAIC Emerging Architectural Practice Award, several RAIC Awards of Excellence, Canadian Architect Awards of Excellence, Ordre des Architectes du Quebec Awards of Excellence and Grands Prix du Design Awards.
KANVA has been shortlisted two years in a row at the World Architecture Festival, and recently won the international Space for Life architecture competition to re-imagine the Montreal Biodome Museum and the national competition Sainte-Cath Works that proposes a series of biomorphic inflatable structures to shelter, protect, and animate the four-year construction site of Montreal’s major commercial artery.
Rami is an active participant in the promotion of architecture, leading many panel discussions, speaking at conferences, participating in juries, mentoring master students, and engaging in design festivals and outreach programs. Rami has also traveled across Canada lecturing for the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada and internationally in Singapore and Berlin for the World Architecture Festival sharing the work of the multidisciplinary collective, KANVA.