iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 20/09/2026

The square’s redesign was by Provencher_Roy and CIMA+. With photography by Adrien Williams. provencherroy.ca/projets/rue-...

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 18/09/2026

I’m thinking of this 2015 cover for @bloomberg.com Businessweek’s The Code Issue, a special edition focused on a single 38,000 word essay by @ftrain.com. Highly recommended: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/201...

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 14/09/2026

Look at this small yet dramatic drop cap!

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 07/09/2026

The Generic City, a 1995 Rem Koolhaas classic typeset by Bruce Mau Design in Toronto. monoskop.org/images/7/78/...

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 06/09/2026

Behind every choice of brick lies an RFP process: "What makes the Balearic social housing model remarkable is how innovative architecture can be found not just in design and material choice but also in procurement, policy and process," said jury chair and @mvrdv.bsky.social’s Nathalie de Vries.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 12/08/2026

Álvaro Siza “celebrates the city as an ‘imperfect body,’ one that demands transformation … A city’s margins, forgotten elements, transitional zones, and social fabrics offer opportunities to rethink how cities develop.” – @fagallanti.bsky.social – @archpaper.com www.archpaper.com/2026/08/alva...

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 11/08/2026

Lovely portrait series of Victoria Mboko by photographers Alex Blouin and Jodi Heartz.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 03/08/2026

For its 100th anniversary in 1937, Holt Renfew built a 6-story flagship and head office in Montreal, at 1300 Sherbrooke Street West, designed by Ross & Macdonald. The art deco building still stands, but what a pity Holt is no longer there.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 01/08/2026

Speaking of Irma Boom in Amsterdam and design cultures that are genuinely “smart”—and cc @jessemkeenan.com who appreciates Boom—, I saw her exhibition at Muji Atelier in Ginza, in Tokyo, a few weeks ago.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 01/08/2026

That’s the thing about Sidewalk Toronto, the Billy Bishop expansion, and other dumb ideas: they do not get cancelled with no harm done. They come at a cost: They steal time and energy from everyday people who know better. DM me for a PDF of the Volume piece, designed by Irma Boom in Amsterdam.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 01/08/2026

Bookmarked: the Montreal Street Photography Festival, from September 4–13, 2026. – Lydia Roberts, Vakho Khetaguri at Galerie Foil – More at WIP Works and Café Léo www.mspfestival.com

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 31/07/2026

These photographs by Jussi Puikkonen and Judit Rajkincz are fun! Villa VPRO, its headquarters in Hilversum, was designed by @mvrdv.bsky.social in 1997. I loved going there for meetings.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 29/07/2026

The Glasgow School of Art seen from Scott Street (left) and the library interior (right).

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 29/07/2026

The Australian article also features a video from Canada's ABTec Solutions based in Edmonton, Alberta, which demonstrates the process of cutting books' spines prior to scanning.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 29/07/2026

Obtained by the @washingtonpost.com from court filings, this photograph shows an industrial book warehouse that was alleged to figure in @anthropic.com’s Project Panama, which scans then destroys millions of books. It was published in January 2026: www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 26/07/2026

This is a quintessential Dutch move: a courtyard with a garden and quirky typography—letters and numericals—, something that was also present in the 1950s building I lived in on the other side of town.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 25/07/2026

What I appreciate the most about Leslie Lookout is that it embraces its sui generis, or “unique" sense of place across time. Its industrial aesthetic is mixed with replanting à la Port Lands which is wonderfully loose and scraggly. To do so, CCxA worked with gh3*, Arup, and Dougan Ecology.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 24/07/2026

And the renderings are from the creation of a “design criteria booklet” by Collectif Escargo, Rousseau Lefebvre, PXP Design, and Light Factor. The exercise gathers and sorts public feedback before the design mandate begins—goes out to tender, is drafted, presented, refined, etc.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 13/07/2026

The best typesetters and lawyers I know understand this: typographyforlawyers.com/straight-and...

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 10/07/2026

Melly Shum Hates Her Job, by Canadian Ken Lum, 1989–1990. It was originally a poster for Lum’s solo exhibition at Witte de With in Rotterdam. The people of the city loved Melly so much, they eventually renamed the art house in her honour: Kunsinstituut Melly.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 06/07/2026

This print looks fascinating. And I love the idea that a river sets “the rythm of the landscape and life around it”, in this case the Maas River in Rotterdam. iabr.nl/en/biennales...?

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 04/07/2026

Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte, Georges Seurat, 1886

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 30/06/2026

The winter 2025 issue of Aperture magazine published an issue on how “AI” is changing images and our understanding of reality, privacy, and democracy. With contributions from – @paglen.studio – @katecrawford.bsky.social – @robhorning.bsky.social store.aperture.org/products/ape...

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 13/06/2026

In Montreal, I met with artist Clara Lacasse to visit her Vermilion Sun exhibition, an outdoor series wrapped around Saucier+Perrotte’s @macmontreal.bsky.social transformation. It’s a detailed look at the construction site. Here we are at the corner of Sainte-Catherine and Jeanne-Mance.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 11/06/2026

Positivity is not the problem, it’s the “mandatory” part. Those who are mandatorily positive about American circular “AI” investment are Trump’s American tech advisors, and those who are mandatorily positive about Carney’s “AI for All” plan are Carney’s Canadian tech advisors.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 10/06/2026

This photograph of the launch still haunts me.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 07/06/2026

I missed this in 2025: Appleby Blue Almshouse in London won the RIBA Stirling. It’s senior social housing next to heritage that doesn’t fall back on nostalgia. It offers co-living, a courtyard, and indoor social spaces. Designed by Witherford Watson Mann Architects. Photography by Philip Vile.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 03/06/2026

In France, La Lune was a great 19th century satirical journal, drawn by the preeminent caricaturist André Gill.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 01/06/2026

Les Lettres françaises is still publishing in 2026, albeit with a more traditional literary journal maquette—without the urgent headlines, playful drop caps, narrow typesetting, broadsheet format, or newsprint stock. The new design is rather flat.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 01/06/2026

Last night I watched The Woman Who Left Picasso, a documentary about artist Françoise Gilot with whom Picasso had two children. And I came across the letter he penned in Les Lettres françaises, trying to silence her and her book after she left. The literary magazine had a lovely newspaper maquette.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 31/05/2026

Some critics may be tempted to look down on these aesthetically, accuse them of looking washed up or like garbage. But jewellery—esp. fine jewellery—has been strong in the “ugly” department for a decade plus. This is from Completedworks in London, featured in Wallpaper and FT’s HTSI, among others.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 31/05/2026

Meetings began at Biblioteca Casanatense, the private library of a religious order at the Dominican convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. “Within the complex in 1633, church inquisitors forced ... Galileo Galilei to renounce his belief that the sun was at the centre of the universe.”

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 31/05/2026

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 21/05/2026

This proposal is by Lafleur Paradis Architectes:

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 20/05/2026

Caffè Italia is a sweet spot in Montreal’s Little Italy, and I always noticed the photography on the walls.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 20/05/2026

And so is this: IABR will also be at the The Piekfabriek at the Hunter Douglas terrain in Rotterdam. The site is “located on the Maas River and covers approx. six hectares. In the coming years, it will transform from a former industrial area into a new urban neighborhood.” iabr.nl/en/biennales...

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 20/05/2026

This is adaptive reuse. The site where International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam will take place: a former plague house. And “the bizarre thing is that the plague house was ultimately never actually used for the plague because a cure was discovered.” iabr.nl/en/biennales...

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 18/05/2026

When talking about the affordable “missing middle”, talk about the middle scale, like this: the co-operative Nieuwe Meent in Amsterdam has 6 stories, 40 private units, shared spaces, timber construction, and geothermal and solar installs. Rents: $720–1,200 CAD/month. – by @markminkjan.bsky.social

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 14/05/2026

“Many Canadians have been forced into the ‘nohousing-choice’ position in which a third to one-half of their regular income goes for housing. In this process they do not necessarily gain better quality, but may be forced into accommodation that is considered to be substandard.” – Chapter 3, page 40

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 08/05/2026

Tools: a great bilingual magazine that I noticed at Semaine Design de Montréal, which just ended. Its dining hall was fantastic, with massive blush tables adorned with tulips from Prune’s gardens on the south shore. – tools-inc.com/en/magazine – www.semainedesigndemontreal.com – prunelesfleurs.com

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 29/04/2026

A private monopoly that can be dysfunctional and excels at regulatory capture. The CN Railway case goes deep—institutionally (public, private) and culturally (how land is conceived, stretched, used, abused). Railcuts #8 (Red hill, C.N. train) C.N. Track, Thompson River, B.C. Edward Burtynsky, 1985

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 27/04/2026

Why the Canada-US crisis is not a mere Trump thing: “This is the logic of globalization unveiled, turning itself back on the States. It’s the Nixon moment revisited ... in which America loses control—as the sorcerer’s apprentice does—of its own artefact: the globalized, financialized economy.”

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 27/04/2026

A few years later: “Forcing through NAFTA ... took all of the Clinton administration’s energy in its early years. Much of the energy that might have gone into healthcare went into NAFTA ... This is a point that will have significant consequences for the very end of my story in a few minutes time.”

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 27/04/2026

If graphic art culture was better known, this would be better known: Here is what the poster looked like.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 25/04/2026

I remember when Canadian magazines talked about housing—and its cost—seriously and independently. Today, we have the odd “residential” issue coming from these things called magazines but that are industry press releases glued together with no original photography available.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 23/04/2026

“They may come to miss the old days of relative obscurity,” writes Dyer. No! Too little media, diplomacy, and trade are the problem. Meanwhile, I’ll continue advocating for a Canadian general interest magazine, one that could travel. I envy the old Saturday Night and Le Monde's new M International.

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Michèle Champagne @michelechampagne.com · 19/04/2026

I’m really into Giaime Meloni’s photography and book projects: giaimemeloni.com

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