The Migrating Landscapes curatorial team (comprised of 5468796 Architecture and Jaesung Chon) created a competition that invited Canadian architects to design dwellings based on their personal cultural memories, exploring how the experiences of ‘settling-unsettling’ affects the landscape and built environment in Canada. As a strategic partner of Migrating Landscapes, we further investigated the theme of changing landscape by asking the question, how has migration and immigration in Canada affected the development of seven major cities and the country overall?


DoUC was asked to create specific content for each of the seven host cities to complement the competition roadshow as it travelled across Canada, as well as a concluding piece for the national exhibition in Winnipeg. Telling the story of changing landscapes lent itself to timelining, and we began with open-ended research surrounding immigration in the seven cities.

Specific themes emerged for each city during this initial fact-finding work, defining which storylines would be further developed. Categories were then identified and facts organized based on the prominent patterns in order to find and fill gaps in the information for each of the stories. These stories eventually transformed into a unique timeline for each location.

Each timeline was displayed at its corresponding competition site and prompted visitors to add their own memories and stories as an overlay to the presented information. DoUC also created a series of 10 world maps that were projected on the floor, where visitors could add blocks showing where their own ‘story’ began.

The success of the competition brought the opportunity to participate in the Venice Biennale of Architecture with Migrating Landscapes, showcasing the competition winners and highlights from the national roadshow. DoUC created a folding poster for distribution at the event, condensing the information from all eight original timelines into a single printed piece titled Making History.