Architectural Events
Exhibitions, Conferences, Forums, Workshops, and Artistic Insights
Explore the Latest Architectural Events and Exhibitions
ArchUp curates the most relevant architectural events, industry conferences, and design exhibitions from around the world. Whether you’re interested in urban innovation, building technologies, or artistic workshops, our platform highlights the top happenings in global architecture. Discover ongoing dialogues in the Architectural Discussion section or explore future opportunities in competitions.
Interactive Entertainment Architecture: Culture Lab, Toronto 1991–1994
February 26 @ 8:00 am - August 30 @ 5:00 pm
$15
Overview
The exhibition titled “Interactive Entertainment Architecture: Culture Lab, Toronto 1991–1994” is being presented by the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, Quebec. This exhibition will run from February 26 to August 30, 2026, in the Octagonal Gallery. The Canadian Centre for Architecture exhibition is about architecture, media theory, and digital cultural history.
Focus
This exhibition looks back at Culture Lab, which was a series of twelve talks that architect Brian Boigon set up at the back of the Rivoli rock club on Queen Street West in Toronto from 1991 to 1994. Culture Lab brought together a lot of people like architects, philosophers, artists, science fiction writers, and theorists to talk about things like cyberspace, suburbia, image culture, and digital desire. This was a time when old media was being replaced by digital systems.
Brian Boigon did things a bit differently. He did not want it to feel like school. The people who were talking were sitting on stage with drinks. There were a lot of people in the crowd. They were asked to perform or just give a talk. The way it was set up was like a nightclub or a show. This was done on purpose so that people could think about architecture in a way.
The Canadian Centre for Architecture is looking at Culture Lab as a way to get people involved. It is like a show that people can participate in. This makes us think about how people talk about design when they’re not in a classroom or office. The Canadian Centre for Architecture exhibition is really about Interactive Entertainment Architecture and how it can be used to get people to think about architecture in a way.
A novel format elaborated to study the world of space, architecture, and form through the lens of other disciplines — using the codes of entertainment to break from the confined parochialism of academia.
CCA Exhibition Description, 2026
Program
Exhibition Display
The exhibition includes some video recordings of the Culture Lab symposia that people have not seen before. These videos are shown on thirty-six screens at once, which breaks up and puts back together the way the symposium looked originally. The people in these videos include Atom Egoyan, Elizabeth Grosz, Rosalind Krauss, Sanford Kwinter, Bruce Sterling, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, and Liz Diller.
The Culture Lab symposia feature four projects by Boigon: Cartoon Regulators, SpillVille, Splinters, and “Speed Reading Tokyo.” All of these projects demonstrate how Boigon worked to design interactive media as an artist, a data systems designer, and a design theorist.
Exhibition Opening
The exhibition opened on February 26 2026. Brian Boigon talked about the ideas behind the Culture Lab. Then the person who put the exhibition together, Farzin Lotfi-Jam, gave a talk about how he chose what to include. The exhibition opened at 5:00 p.m. The talk started at 6:00 p.m. In the Paul-Desmarais Theatre.
Credits
Curatorial Assistant: Charlie-Anne Côté
Graphic Design: House9, Montréal
Software Development: Salim Lounis
Design Development: Sébastien Larivière, Anh Truong
Supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Government of Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. The exhibition draws from Brian Boigon’s fonds held in the CCA’s permanent collection.
Audience
The exhibition is for people who study architecture, history, and media. It is also for people who work in these fields and are interested in culture and new ways of presenting information. The exhibition is at the CCA. It will be open until August 2026. This means that people who are just curious about architecture and media history can also go and see it. The exhibition is a place for anyone who wants to learn more about the connections between architecture and media history. The architecture researchers and historians, media theorists, and practitioners will like it because it is about culture and experimental discourse formats. The general public will like it because it is about the intersections of architecture and media history.
Event Details
| Exhibition Dates | February 26 – August 30, 2026 |
| Venue | Octagonal Gallery, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, QC |
| Event Type | Exhibition |
| Opening Hours | Thu: 11 am–9 pm / Fri–Sat: 11 am–6 pm / Sun: 11 am–5 pm |
| Admission | $15 adults / $10 seniors and students / Free under 18 / Free Thursdays after 5 pm |
| Curator | Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Ithaca |
✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight
The Culture Lab is important not because of what it says but because of how it says it. It shows that people can talk about architecture in a way like a live show without making it stupid. The CCA decided to show this with a video display with thirty-six channels. This is like the way it was presented, which is good for people who want to analyze it, but it might make the atmosphere more important than the actual points being made. The fact that these recordings were not seen for over thirty years makes you wonder how architecture stores its experimental ideas. When places like the CCA find this old material, are they trying to add to what we know about architecture or just confirm what we already know about the Culture Lab and its significance in the field of architecture?
Closing Note
The exhibition will be open all the way until the summer of 2026. This is a long time for a show like this. The exhibition is about a series of talks that happened in clubs in Toronto in the 1990s. These talks were really about how digital theory performancec, performance, and architecture are all connected. The exhibition might be interesting to people who’re not really into this kind of thing,g but it depends on how well the big video display can show what made the original talks so important. The digital turn is something that happened a long time ago, so the exhibition needs to make people understand why it was such a big deal back then. The exhibition is trying to show what the original talks were all about. That is the key to making the exhibition work.
Related Events
Stay Informed with Global Architectural Happenings
From groundbreaking project updates to transformative competition results, ArchUp connects you with every milestone in the world of architecture. Stay engaged with visual inspiration from real creatives, read our research articles, or get in touch via our Contact Page to share your event. For editorial collaborations, visit our editors’ section.