The Canadian Centre for Architecture announces the 2006 Mellon Lectures series. On Thursday, 30 March, Kurt W. Forster, CCA Mellon Senior Fellow and Vincent Scully Professor at Yale School of Architecture, presents Day at the Office, Night at the Opera with Karl Friedrich Schinkel. On Thursday, 6 April, André Guillerme, CCA Mellon Senior Fellow and Professor of the History of Technology at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers in Paris discusses Autophiles et autophobes : la congestion urbaine dans les grandes villes au début du XXe siècle. The lectures take place at 6 pm in the Paul Desmarais Theatre; admission is free but seating is limited.

In Day at the Office, Night at the Opera with Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Kurt W. Forster examines the work of Schinkel, a guiding force in early nineteenth century Berlin architecture. An enormously busy man, teacher, administrator, painter, and author in close touch with European developments, Schinkel sought an outlet for his poetic imagination in his designs for optical displays and stage sets at the Royal Theatre in Berlin. He created sets for some of the most enduring plays and operas, such as the Magic Flute and Joan of Arc, within this spectacular building, a virtual viewing machine, where the public could immerse themselves in the poetry and music of his contemporaries Goethe, Schiller, and E.T.H. Hoffmann. Ever intent on “things that stir the imagination,” Schinkel found the stage to offer just the sort of magic he wished to create with his buildings. These media experiments in the theatre spilled over into the pictorial representation of Schinkel’s projects in what became the first true oeuvre complète created by a modern architect.

Kurt W. Forster has taught at Stanford, M.I.T., the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, and the Bauhaus University in Weimar. He is now Scully Professor of the History of Architecture at Yale University. He has organized a major exhibition on Carlo Scarpa, directed the 9th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2004), repeatedly convened research conferences at the Palladio Centre in Vicenza, and publishes widely on Renaissance and contemporary architecture. A frequent member of international juries and a consultant to the Senate of Berlin, he has also collaborated with architects and written monographic studies on Giulio Romano, Palladio, Schinkel, Eisenman, Mateo, Gehry, Hodgetts + Fung, among others.

André Guillerme presents Autophiles et autophobes : la congestion urbaine dans les grandes villes au début du XXe siècle. From its inception, the automobile has thrown urban traffic into confusion. The car has its supporters and its detractors. In order to go always faster, it demands a route free of obstacles, pedestrians, horses, bicycles, dust – thus giving rise to the highway, first envisaged in 1904. Noisy, smoky, and fast, the car terrifies the citizen and the villager alike; it is dangerous and frequently kills. Since the 1910s, municipal authorities have sought to avoid congestion of the commercial downtown, and control traffic through rules (traffic lights) and regulations (highway codes) or by separating modes of transportation (cycle paths, pedestrian crossings). Towards 1930, it became necessary to seek permission to drive fast, and also to teach children to be wary of the car.

André Guillerme is Professor of the History of Technology at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM) in Paris. Engineer and historian, he has written extensively on the history of the urban environment, including such volumes as Les temps de l'eau : la cité, l'eau et les techniques (1983), encompassing the 3rd to the 19th century, Bâtir la ville : révolutions industrielles dans les matériaux de construction, France-Grande-Bretagne (1760-1840) (1995), and the collaboratively-authored Dangereux, insalubres et incommodes : paysages industriels en banlieue parisienne, 19e-20e siècles (2005), all published in Paris by Champ Vallon.

The CCA Mellon Foundation Senior Fellowship Program was established in 2001 to encourage advanced research in architectural history and thought. The program is intended for scholars and architects conducting research at a post-doctoral or more advanced level. It aims to support critical work that can bridge the reflective and productive activities in architecture, understood in its broadest sense, and is based on the conviction that scholarly work bears social responsibility