Course Prospectus

FAIR CONSTRUCTION : Making Expo‘67

Expo’67, the 1967 World’s Fair in Montréal, was held on two man-made islands in the middle of the St. Lawrence River in the rapids in front of Montréal. These islands and the 83 innovative pavilions that were built on them were built in 4 years’ time specifically for the event. In recent research I’ve discovered the 35,000 blue-line drawings and specification sheets drawn to make the grounds of Expo’67 and each of the individual pavilions cataloged and documented on microfilm.

Educational Goals:

"Architects don’t make buildings. They make models and drawings of buildings."

Vito Acconci

You will be instructed on how to carry out an analysis of the construction drawing techniques used to make pavilions and projects at Expo’67 via your own drawing, research, observation, and critical skill building work. Students taking the course will learn more about making and recording direct field observations, learn to read a set of construction drawings, and learn rudimentary construction drawing techniques (line manipulation, drawing sets, and notational systems) while developing critical skills for reading and understanding an amalgam of fragmentary drawings as a sort of conducting score for the construction of a building and it’s surroundings.

References or Text:
The individual drawings are by Civil Engineers, City Planners, Architects, Contractors, Building Engineers, Interior Designers, Exhibition Designers, and Landscape Architects. These are available at the Archives de la Ville de Montréal in the basement of the City Hall (Hotel de Ville). I have 2,000 of 35,000 scanned and on an web page for your use. From these you’ll chose a pavilion or project to draw on.

Educational Requirements:
This course will be a graphical study of a building and the grounds that surround it.
It will entail the construction of a set of drawings. I’ll deliver a set of “on-site” presentations on the reasons for a fair, the construction of this fair, and the way that individual projects and pavilions You’ll draw from protracted and direct site observations (most of the pavilions are no longer standing) and from this archive of the original construction drawings of the building and the grounds.