While we both have individual practices, we collaborate from time to time on projects that support our shared interests, including the projective qualities of image in space, the forms of language, and the remnants of historical events. Examples of past projects would be a public artwork for Vancouver, “Writing to you”, and “Abitation”, an exploration of three-dimensional form in two images of the fort Champlain built at Quebec in 1608.

In the Vancouver project – which was commissioned to articulate the centrality a regimental armoury enjoyed within its historical community – our interest lay in the arc of connection established between home and front through an exchange of letters and the iconic forms of a kitchen table and a military field trunk placed at opposite ends of a small parkette. In the Abitation project, we were struck by the different approaches to three-dimensional imaging between Champlain’s original cartographical-like drawing of his fort, and the drawing by C.W. Jeffries extrapolated from it for use in Ontario’s grade school history books of the 1940’s. For this project, we built real three-dimensional models to further extrapolate the spatial qualities of image.

We expect to continue collaborating on similar projects in the future, of which the Shaw Street School is an instance.

> Ian Carr-Harris
> Yvonne Lammerich