In 1979, the same year Phyllis Lambert founded the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, the Buggies signed a deal in London to release and promote their debut single, "Video Killed the Radio Star." Rejecting live performance in favor of a video aired on the BBC, the band captured the Zeitgeist of the late 1970s with the song, embracing new technology while at the same time questioning its negative effects on traditional media and modes of production. This familiar anxiety, much like that felt widely with the emergence of print, radio, and television-the worry that "this will kill that"-has been rekindled with the rise of digital media in the past two decades as many historical materials have been digitized and the archive has increasingly been experienced as a database. From its foundation, the CCA recognized the importance of media. As an institution born without a building, it established its presence in the 1980s through a steady stream of publications, touring exhibitions, and collaborations with other institutions-an approach consistent with the media culture that had already permeated architecture throughout the 1970s. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Open University (itself a topic of a recent CCA exhibition) broadcast a series of architectural history courses on BBC2, while in the United States self-proclaimed "TV native" architects Chad Floyd and Charles Moore were producing "Design-A-Thons" on live television to solicit public participation in the design process.1 Even after the opening of its building in 1989, the CCA continued to rely on various media to extend its reach beyond the gray limestone walls and maple floors of 1920 Rue Baile. The CCA's website (which serves as its "second building"), its YouTube channel, and its social media accounts are today critical components of that media infrastructure.
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