First, the Forests,curated by Dan Handel (MArch II ’10) at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, is an exhibition that looks at the unexplored relationships between forestry, planning and design. By considering forestry as a practice engaged with the precise organization of massive artificial environments, the exhibition highlights its relationship with design on all scales and presents contemporary projects that demonstrate the reciprocities between the two disciplines.
The exhibition is the result of the Young Curator program, launched by the CCA in 2011. Handel won the inaugural Young Curator fellowship with a proposal that followed research at the GSD supported by the Penny White Project Fund. While the research focused on the American context, the exhibition takes a wider perspective and studies various geographies and cultural contexts in which forest management and architectural experiments took form. The exhibition opens October 4th.