Peter Sealy

3 weeks ago | canadianarchitect.com | Peter Sealy |Elsa Lam

PROJECT Montreal City Hall modernization, Montreal, Quebec ARCHITECTS Beaupré Michaud et Associés, Architectes in collaboration with MU Architecture TEXT Peter Sealy PHOTOS Raphaël Thibodeau The successful restoration of Montreal’s City Hall by Beaupré Michaud et Associés, Architectes in collaboration with MU Architecture and a team of ten other specialist firms presents not only an ecologically and aesthetically superb work of civic architecture, but also a welcome opportunity for reflection...

2 months ago | canadianarchitect.com | Peter Sealy |Elsa Lam

Upon arriving in Tokyo in 1961, Arthur Erickson purchased a Mamiya Flex C2 twin lens reflex camera and a Sekonic light meter, instruments which became central to his study of Japanese buildings and landscapes. For Erickson, photography offered a crucial tool for developing and later communicating many of his key ideas about architecture’s interplay with landscape.

Aug 1, 2024 | canadianarchitect.com | Peter Sealy |Elsa Lam

Artist Kapwani Kiwanga’s installation in the Canada Pavilion at this year’s Venice Art Biennale is a stunning delight. Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada and curated by Gaëtane Verna, Kiwanga’s Trinket features millions of suspended Venetian conterie, or seed beads, whose presence transforms the pavilion’s surfaces with their delicate, shimmering appearance.

May 24, 2024 | archpaper.com | Peter Sealy

As an architectural historian returned from a whirlwind week in Venice, my reaction to the current Art Biennale can be summarized as equal parts exhaustion and elation. The Biennale seems to get bigger and bigger each year, straining the capacity of obsessive completists such as myself to see everything. The experience is fundamentally mediatized: crowds rush from venue to venue, barely pausing but to take a few smartphone photographs.

May 3, 2024 | bordercrossingsmag.com | Peter Sealy

From the Second World War onwards, the United States government embarked on an ambitious embassy-building program. From Iraq to Cuba and South Vietnam to Canada, modern architecture was deployed as a vehicle to project American state power and cultural heft in a world then, as now, riven by great power rivalry and rising antihegemonic forces. Designed by paragons of modernism, these new embassies were meant to present a humanist and open-minded image of US power.