Informal Architectures is enveloping, physically and emotionally - perhaps more so than you'd expect from a show of art about the built environment. Scale models and blueprints are absent. Instead, it features big noises, music, large-scale installation, viewer interaction and surprise. It feels like you've entered a theme park rather than an art gallery.

Curated by Anthony Kiendl, the show features 15 international artists. Some works were commissioned from artists at the Banff Centre, where one of two symposia sharing this show's title took place in 2004. Starting from the idea that much mainstream architecture is stuck on 20th century modern ideals, says Kiendl, the symposium provided an opportunity to step back and look at the way things function and what buildings mean as visual culture. How do we live in cities? How do political, economic, and social structures shape how we move in and perceive what is built?

Many of the works are reinterpretations of materials, designs, and everyday experiences of Western culture. One example is Gordon Matta-Clark's 1972 short film Fresh Kill. We see the artist drive his truck into the front end of a bulldozer at the now-closed Staten Island Fresh Kills landfill. Then the truck is torn apart like a gazelle devoured by lions. It's hard to watch. This image of a violent truck-killing field inevitably brings to mind thoughts about waste, consumerism and the environment.

Ryan Nordlund's work is similarly dark and subtly full of wit. In Skull Houses, death is Citadel, a suburban neighbourhood in Northwest Calgary. Four photographs of ordinary mass-development houses are arranged side-by-side, revealing that the design pattern of two windows above a large door looks a lot like a human skull. The bleakness is overwhelming.

The playful work of Rita McKeough, Long Haul, is viewer-activated. Go near the installation and you'll set off an elaborate electrical orchestration of speakers, pulleys and gliders connected to windows, blinds, doors, and more. But, as in life, nature intrudes. Twigs are lodged in and around the moving parts, and the complex relationship between nature and the man-made is made plain.

The exhibition continues at Plug In's satellite gallery, which is also worth a visit. David Hoffos' Catastrophe is one of the most impressive and disturbing works on show. With a diorama, mirrors, TV monitors and cut-outs, Hoffos creates another world, a disaster zone - and you find that you're a part of it, on camera and exported into the action. As observer and participant, you're compelled to uncover what's gone wrong here.

These depictions of the built world consider many aspects of the flaws, ironies, and meanings of spaces and societal structures. And while it's all done with serious intent, there's a great deal of wry, anarchistic humour here, too. Informal Architectures will take you by surprise.

Essays about these works and more from the Informal Architectures symposium is collected in Informal Architectures: Space and Contemporary Culture, edited by Anthony Kiendl, soon to be available at plugin.org.