Shifting Boundaries Explores the Alternative

Can you take the arch out of architecture without having everything fall apart? In the exhibition titled Shifting Boundaries: an exploration of alternative building methods, curator Kim Thompson and her colleagues will use elementary building materials and techniques to create five structures that you can enter. The display can be seen at the Mary E. Black Gallery in the Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design, 1683 Barrington St. in Halifax.

The structures, small scale variations of homes built and inhabited by our ancestors and contemporaries, are a means of investigating "meanings of structure in society, and the potential to use low-tech materials and techniques in the creation of community as well as buildings," said Ms. Thompson.

Stone, clay, straw, reeds, fabric, and wood will be put to use by Jeff Achenbach, Jude Major, Rod Malay and Alan Syliboy and Ms. Thompson in making an inukshuk, cob, wattle and daub, and straw bale structures with thatch roofs, a yurt, and a wikuom. In a departure from most Mary E. Black exhibitions, the gallery blinds will not be closed during installation to allow passers-by a view of the work in progress. The high-tech component of the show will be Christopher Majka's Computer Lab, which provides a virtual building site, an online version of the gallery exhibit and links to alternative architecture websites.

The exhibition opens May 13 at 7:30 p.m. and continues until July 3. The centre is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Nova Scotia Centre for Craft and Design is a program/resource centre of the Nova Scotia Department of Education and Culture and is operated by the Department's Cultural Affairs Division. The centre is a catalyst in the development of designers and craft persons as well as functioning as a visitor destination site.