In 1979, the same year Phyllis Lambert founded the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, the Buggles 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...
University of California Press