In the Winter 2026 semester, students in Ipek Türeli’s Knowledge Institutions Seminar (ARCH 654) worked in groups of three to four to counter-narrate the McGill campus, revealing histories and power relations usually absent from official architectural guides. In the same semester, students in Alanna Thain’s course took on a similar assignment.
Drawing on A Manual for Urban Projection, students treated darkness as an active medium. At night, light becomes a critical instrument: a tool for situated storytelling, for making hidden histories legible, and for engaging the built environment as both canvas and collaborator. Their projections illuminate what often goes unseen, turning familiar surfaces into temporary sites of inquiry, critique, and collective reflection. To bring their ideas to life, students worked with Philippe Léonard of the projection collective Le Sémaphore. With his support, the students mapped their designed images onto projection softwares, culminating in a public projection for the urban night.
Over two nights, students first gathered at different locations across Montreal: Place-des-Arts, Laurier Metro station, Van Horne Viaduc, and the Ping Pong Club. On the second night, students met on McGill’s campus for a festive evening of collective projections, featuring four projects addressing on-campus military research, lack of universal accessibility, heightened campus surveillance and control, and the pressure of architecture "juries."