Joshua Singer
Assistant Professor + Coordinator, Visual Communication
Design Department of Design & Industry
San Francisco State University
jsinger@sfsu.edu
http://design.sfsu.edu

Where you come from

San Francisco State University and Oakland California (originally NY & NJ).

, what kind of work you do

Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Visual Communication Design Program in the Department of Design & Industry at San Francisco state University. Visual Communication Design with interests in mapping, urban environment(s), typography and a notion of civic design (and cycling). , why you are coming To meet and engage with other practitioners and scholars in issues regarding design and the representation of urban space (see below).

, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City: //////

I am interested in the different ways a city, the landscape, can be measured. What kind of landscape is out there and how can we represent it? How might we visualize the forces that act upon geographic vectors of the city? Specifically, for Design City, to address whether the design-ness of a city be measured and to take the opportunity to explore the questions you have raised, “…the notion that design practice, and the presence of designers, can alter the trajectory of a city for the better.”

If able to attend Design Inquiry I would like to create an ad-hoc atlas of “Ville de Montreal as a Design City”. During explorations within the city, I would measure and document characteristics of Montreal and create geographic vectors (human, structural, physical, economic, etc.) relevant to the city’s design-ness. The results would be compiled into the ad-hoc atlas, mapping the city within some portion of the stated assumption “that design can alter the trajectory of a city for the better”, creating graphic representations of a “Design-City” landscape and hopefully offer a new vista for analysis and speculation. The making of the atlas would be open to the discussion, participation and collaboration of the Design Inquiry participants – it’s form and objectives open to the design of all.

I would share examples including work done at SF State (in collaborations between Design, Art and Geography) as case studies of experimental forms, methods and interdisciplinary practices.

I am an enthusiastic cook (food, the ultimate design?).

Anne Galperin
Associate Professor + Program Coordinator, Graphic Design
State University of New York at New Paltz
galperia@newpaltz.edu

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

I was born and live in the US. Immigrant parents (from India and Lithuania) contributed a sense of being part of and yet apart from local cultures, good for observation of the familiar and unfamiliar! My teaching is less about form and more about design as a part of life, politics and culture. I also art direct and design books. Areas of interest include design pedagogy, material culture, media ecology (currently writing a book on this topic for design students). I used to write on science and health issues. My overall direction seems to be more on the human context of design and less on the specific artifact.

I am coming to see something new with open eyes (and in concert with many pairs of them), to meet, to talk with, to hear, to synthesize, to make, to document, to connect. Most of my experiences have been as part of conventional institutions and hierarchies; I get along fine in them but would to experience something else and apply the new knowledge to what’s going on around me. (I was last in Montreal in 1967 for the Expo, when I was 6. It left quite an impression on me: I was just learning how to read. All the Helvetica-set pamphlets! The geodesic dome! The space capsule! A nice lady in a pretty sari in the Indian pavilion! And my parents seemed finally at home amid the international crowds.)

How dialog between entities is constructed really interests me, something that emerged from the media ecology/communication theory research I’ve been doing. I read no explicit reference to non designers in the criteria and characteristics UNESCO puts forward for qualifying Cities of Design. This is fascinating…the absence of non designers, the inhabitants of these Cities. So I am curious about the ways in which people communicate with and affect their environment, even ones that have been designed “for” them. The official rhetoric seems so top-down, old-style…yes, I believe that environment can really elevate the human condition but it seems patronizing to “apply” design in trickle-down fashion to invisible people.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?

I really love synthesis, connecting dots from different locations in unexpected ways. And sometimes I am absolutely ground-floor pragmatic. I pose a lot of questions. I am also a good cook.

The presentation abstract:

Investigating and documenting actualities and potentialities of non- designers in co-producing this City of Design : exercise + presentation / action / follow-up: exhibition at Portes Ouvertes + publication

1. exercise + presentation

I have a short exercise planned but don’t want to divulge the details so as not to water-down the experience.

After the exercise I would do a very brief presentation of theories/examples related to how people, places and things may meaningfully interact toward co-designed outcomes.

2. collaborative (yes?) action

It’s impossible to know how this would connect and overlap with other collaborators’ work, and the directions the group seeks to take but I’m interested in a range of actions that involve the people of Montreal in answering the question: “How do you co-produce this City of Design?”

Individuals could
- provide a guided tour / a day in their lives
- answer surveys/questionnaires
- answer questions in a more conversational way

Other approaches of observation are less intrusive and could involve
- discreet shadowing
- activity analysis: list all tasks, actions, objects, performers and interactions in key spots
- looking for wear patterns and evidence of human activity

I would want to ID a range of locales for these investigations; people with different circumstances will respond differently.

3. potential follow-up

I’d very much like to use our observations to visualize and compose a set of questions about Montréal’s co-design that could be asked of visitors (residents and tourists) at the Portes Ouvertes exhibition. Perhaps people we’ve talked with could be at the exhibition to share their experience with exhibition visitors.

If people cannot be surveyed on the spot, perhaps they could be prompted to respond to a questionnaire via something like Survey Monkey (within a particular time frame). Reading and analyzing their answers is more of a long-term project but I think the process and information will lead to some interesting and valuable new insights, and I would be happy to participate beyond May 13. If it’s not practical to use Portes Ouvertes as a way to solicit information, then observations and questions could be presented as thought-provocations.

Karina Cutler-Lake
Associate Professor of Art University of Wisconsin
Oshkosh teaching blog: http://delineationofdesign.wordpress.com
cutlerlk@uwosh.edu

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

Hello! My name is Karina Cutler-Lake, and I teach graphic design and typography at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. I am also very much a working artist. I just started my 14th semester as a professor yesterday, yikes! But here is the truth: I am really still a student in almost every way. I get the sense that design is really evolving. I want to watch it do its wonderful thing. I have long been interested in what it is that defines a PLACE. I want to go someplace extraordinary to observe, reflect, and respond.

A little bit about what I do: I’m a maker of maps. My own personal cartography is art produced using the language of graphic design. These personal experience maps fall squarely into the category of personal and creative diary-keeping. They are documentation of life lived, especially as it relates to movement and geography. During my sabbatical in the Fall of 2011 I will be investigating and pushing the potential of the personal experience map, and I hope to be able to incorporate my DesignInquiry Montreal experience into the project. These new maps will be very different in form: instead of being handmade or printed (as they have been in the past), they will be entirely digital, featuring animation, video, sound, and/or interactivity. I hope to replicate (at least in sensibility) the handmade feeling of earlier work, as the notion of the tactile has always driven my interest in the graphic arts. Recent developments in technology and digital imaging have sparked my interest in the potential of digital media, causing me to reconsider the severity of the so-called “divide” between digital and handmade. I love print, and was trained to be a print designer. But the allure of the pixel is undeniable. I seek a bountiful truce!

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?

In general: an eagerness to explore new ground. Good manners and an agreeable personality. A proven ability to navigate public transportation, whatever the country or language. A desire to sample poutine. The need to find out what design can really do. The need to better find out what design really is.

A presentation abstract goes here:

Perhaps obviously, I’d like to do a mapping project with my fellow DI travelers. I usually just map my own experience. What would happen if these others (who I just met!) were added into the mix? What would overlap, and how could this be interpreted? How could others help me to understand my own experience in ways that I couldn’t do alone? Much would probably depend on the personalities, resources, and situations at hand.Whatever materializes would be recorded directly to the project’s journal/website.

David Szanto
Student/Teacher
Concordia University (student/teacher); Université du Québec à Montréal and University of Gastronomic Sciences (teacher)
iceboxstudio.com
dszanto@iceboxstudio.com

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

I come from Montreal, though I was born in Boston and then lived in Del Mar (CA), Laramie, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Portland (ME), and a few places in Italy. Now I come from Montreal again.

I am currently doing a PhD in Gastronomy at Concordia University, taking a transdisciplinary approach to food in order to construct a more generalist lens through which food (and food studies) may be viewed/performed. I also teach a number of courses in food, and do some food-related writing and the odd bit of consulting. (My website is a bit out of date–I’m not consulting much these days.)

Following a graduate certificate program in Design at Concordia (2009-10), I have become very interested in the parallels between design and gastronomy, including questions of environment (social and biogeophysical), ecologies and interaction, iteration processes, and holistic systems.

As a Montréalais raised and repatriated, I am fascinated by this city and its continual, continuous evolution. Its food, architecture, music, and public spaces change and change again. It is an island, geographically and culturally, in a remarkably complex province with remarkably complex neighbours. The continued investigation of this city, and of design practice, and of food, is what intrigues me most for this DI gathering, including the opportunity both to share it with the DI participants and to experience it myself.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
A presentation abstract goes here:

St-Laurent Boulevard food walk

The Blvd. St-Laurent food walk will serve as an initial grounding in Montreal–both both its socio-history, and also its food culture. Known as “the Main”, St-Laurent was/is the Main Street of Montreal and serves as a kind of jumping-off point for immigrants even today, as well as to divide the city east-west, and to a lesser extent franco-anglo. Plus it is home to some of the iconic foods of Montreal. We will do the walk on Monday, and participants will be encouraged to latch on to some aspect of the walk–architectural, ethnocultural, political, environmental, etc.–to use as an ongoing stimulus for how they participate in the food aspect of the gathering. At the Thursday evening meal, the foods of the Main and the rest of Montreal will be revisited, with St-Laurent–sourced ingredients serving to stimulate the body as much as the mind.

Joshua Davidson
MA Student
Concordia Univeristy (Media Studies)
forking_path@yahoo.ca

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

Hello, my name is Josh Davidson. I am currently an MA student in the Media Studies program at Concordia University in Montréal. My background and research is at the intersection of culinary studies and documentary media production. After working in both fields for over ten years, I have returned to the academic environment to engage in research on the “performance” of recipes – specifically, the interplay or co-production of meaning and texts as food is combined, consumed, and translated into other media (via recipes). My main purpose for participating in Design Inquiry this year is to partake in this culinary/media research in a an inspired environment, cross- pollinating ideas and methods with the various designers, scholars and artists who will be attending. I hope to be able not only to derive new ways of media (and recipe)-making from and within the collective group environment, but also to work with the participants to examine the culinary landscape of Montreal as a valid and vital domain of design inquiry – an oft-neglected one!

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
A presentation abstract goes here:

Participation Proposal: Video Exploration of Collectivity and Food (in collaboration with David Szanto)

This project will investigate the oscillation between concept and necessity/availability in the process of design – specifically recipe design – and contribute to the collaborative cooking tradition of past Design Inquiry gatherings. Through video documenation, I will engage the participants of the Design Inquiry gathering on the questions of food and place, as well as the performative aspect of food. The nature and level of their involvement will be according to their skill in cooking/tasting and/or their interest in participating in general. ] Alternately, they may simply be interviewed based on their observations of the process in relation to David’s stimulation session on Montréal food.

Prior to arriving, each participant will be asked to bring an ingredient from home. On the first day of activities, David will lead a food-focused walking tour of St-Laurent boulevard, which will also serve as an introduction to Montreal through its history and early development. Participants will then be invited to acquire an ingredient during the first two days of their stimulus activities – particularly during or after David’s tour.

The brought and bought ingredients will form a collective (and restrictive) “pool” for the final collective dinner. Drawing exclusively from this pool, a volunteer group (including myself) will create a meal, and ultimately articulate “recipes” based on our respective or collective dishes. I will blend my documentation of the provisioning, preparing, and tasting portions of this collective endeavour with the recipe designs procured from the willing participants to generate an installation that I intend to propose for presentation at the CAFS (Canadian Association of Food Studies) annual conference media gallery at Congress.

The conceptual underpinnings of this project include

• investigating the oscillation between concept and necessity/availability in the process of design – specifically recipe design
• examination of the notion of “heritage” as a (simultaneous) process of drawing from and adding to a pool of collective experience
  • In the case of this project, this might include several heritage “layers”: the heritage of the ingredients brought from their home locations, the heritage of the Montreal terrain upon which they must find their new ingredient, and the spontaneous heritage created as the group forms to cook and later articulate recipes
• experimentation with open-ended methodologies of documentary videomaking
• investigation into the modulations that occur upon re-presentation of sensory experience in shifting contexts (ie, the installation of the documentary, recipes, testimonies, and possible tastings at the media gallery at the CAFS conference at Congress 2011).

I am excited to have the opportunity to participate in Design Inquiry, and expect to be challenged in my preconceptions surrounding design and evolve my methodology and conceptual framework as the week unfolds. I also feel the collaboration with David is ideal in at least two ways: firstly, due to the historical stimulus he will provide of the terrain upon which we will cook and source food, and secondly his current research on (Québec culinary) heritage drawing on Bourdieu and Deleuze among others marries extremely well with my own research pursuits for my MA.

Bobby Campbell
Assistant Professor of Graphic Design
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
http://www.bobbycampbellartdesign.com
bobbycampbell4@gmail.com

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DesignCity:

Cities have loomed large in my imagination from a very early age. Although the location of my childhood home was in a secluded, wooded valley, the location of my childhood imagination was the metropolis of fiction. These imaginary cities ranged from the moody Art Deco gradients of Batman’s Gotham City to the teeming decay of Akira’s Neo-Tokyo to the motley energy of Mos Eisley. Since that time, I have experienced a wide range of other cities that blur the lines between fiction and non-fiction. Woody Allen and J.D. Salinger have conjured a sepia-tinged New York of marble-fronted Woolworth’s and sweaty diners. Natsuo Kirino and Haruki Murakami weave a complex Tokyo of sighing factories and ghostly hallways. As a graphic designer and artist, I have also lived and worked in a variety of urban areas, including Louisville, Kentucky; Detroit, Michigan; Dublin, Ireland and now Charlotte, North Carolina. Cities have always been a powerful site for my creative imagination.

My work is based in drawing that creates either graphic design or visual art. I did client-based graphic design for many years, with clients such as Ford Motor Company, Daimler-Chrysler and K-Mart, before attending graduate school at the University of Michigan. In graduate school, I began to blend graphic design and visual art practices, which eventually lead to vector-based abstract drawings, room-scale installations and typographic experiments. After completing my MFA, I worked in Dublin, Ireland for a year as part of a Fulbright Fellowship. Upon returning from Ireland, I taught as an Assistant Professor at Morehead State University, followed by my current position at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. I still maintain a client-based practice now focused on smaller nonprofit groups such as Equality Now or The Asian American Writer’s Workshop, both of New York. My type explorations and interest in narratives have lead me to investigate the intersection of cultures that take place within graphic design. My interest in the topic DesignCity stems from both my passion for cities and my research on design from other cultures.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?

A presentation abstract goes here: The specific theme of my investigation during DesignInquiry: DesignCity concerns how the bilingual nature of Montreal contributes to the city’s status as a world-class design environment. I will examine how the different languages and resultant different typographical phenomenon contribute to the overall aesthetic and organization of the city’s visual space. Further, I will investigate how the variety of foreign-language typography and design contributes to a greater sense of civic connection and integration in city life. I plan to do some visual survey and ethnographic study of Charlotte’s multicultural economic zones, including Central Avenue in my neighborhood, as a base from which to examine Montréal.

In the spirit of the collaborative and participatory nature of DesignInquiry events, I would also like to work with interested fellow participants in designing our own micro-city. Each of us likely has an archetypal city of our imagination – it would be fascinating to tease the contours of such a space out and combine it with the proto-spaces of others. We could develop maps, multi-lingual signage and architecture for our city in a joint creative process. The creative result of such a collaboration would be a terrific base for exhibition on its own or a strong springboard for design/installation work in the future.

amery Calvelli / John Calvelli
partners
push plus minus www.pushplusminus.com
amery@pushplusminus.com // john@pushplusminus.com

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

We are two people with a lifelong interest in design. We live in Calgary, in the province of Alberta, Canada. We’ve lived together in Portland, San Francisco, and New York. We formed a ‘shell company’ for the purpose of exploring the potential of collaborating with each other on projects. We hope to further our collaboration by participating in Design Inquiry in Montreal. We find the topic of DESIGN City to be directly aligned to our interests in how design makes a difference in place.

John is a design theorist and photographer with a former career as a design practitioner. As faculty at Alberta College of Art and Design, he is a ‘designer of designers’, teaching design-related liberal studies courses. He was in Montreal last summer working with other designers, artists and cartographers on a project related to a database of environmental influences on health in the city of Montreal.

amery works to build dialogue around the field of design. Her blog Mind the Gap <www.pushplusminus.com/mindthegap> is an observation of things related to the urban environment, noting gaps that may develop between systems and frameworks created to house place. Another blog, This is Here <http://amerycal.tumblr.com> is a collection of walking observations of urban places and an exploration of what makes a particular urban environment special. She works as a communicator for architects and designers, helping to bring stories to good projects and good ideas.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?

We will share our findings from our explorations in Montreal last summer with the group, for starters. John can share images and a paper of his project – a philosophy of just about everything with an attempt to relate it to environmental and ontological injustice in the city of Montreal. amery will build on her research into architecture and the city gained through visits to notable sites in the city.

But it is the staircases in Montreal which really interests us at this time. They often spiral and look especially difficult to navigate in a city that is notable for cold and snowy winters. These staircases aren’t designed for users, they exist for inhabitants of a place with a specific cultural identity and legacy. We intend to explore Montreal through the lens of its staircases. Surveying locals who are not designers and collecting their perceptions and experiences, we will cross this data with input from local experts and architects on the design of the stairs in Montreal. We would like to lead an experiential walking tour of staircases which hopes to pose new questions to the experiences of staircases.

Alice Jarry
Cinqunquatre [ co-founder ]
www.cinqunquatre.com
alice@cinqunquatre.com

Who I am / What I do

I am a visual artist, a printmaker, a graphic designer, a daydreamer and a graduate student in Digital technologies and design art practices at Concordia University in Montreal. In 2003, I co-founded Cinqunquatre, an art and design studio that focuses on silkscreen, letterpress, lithography and all kinds of other obsolete machines that once brought back to life produce unexpected results.

I question the interchangeable aspect of image, the relationship between multiple objects and their physical, immediate disappearances, and reorganization thus allows me to interpret my relationship to space, to sample it and to re-arrange it. I take images out of their original context, breathing new narratives into it – for me, their history and settings don’t belong to the past so much as they are forged and emerge through layering. My interest is the city as a whole, a build up, an accumulation, a raw material from which I want to capture its structural and experiential dimensions. The urban realm is the basis and the foundation of my work. I interpret this environment in a metaphorical way. I am fascinated by the blurred and often imaginary frontier between place and non-place.

Why am I coming / What are my interests in the topic Montreal/Design Ciy

My recent work focuses on Griffintown, a Montreal industrial neighboorhood that is too often perceived as an abandonned and vaguely defined interzone. Even if in great need for revitaliztion and despite itʼs apparent decay, this area is not a non-space. It is complex and alive; its unfinished, imperfect aspect and ambivalence are themes for the imaginary.

Right now, this area raises strong interest amongst real estate promoters. As a visual artist and citizen, My interrogation focuses on the way we foresee Montreal’s revitalization, what is our ability to live in the here and now without bulldozing the past or short- circuiting the future ? How do affects operate in a brand new place? How does a sense of belonging emerge? How can we start from the existing topology of a space and generate new connections, new dynamics, new ways of experiencing and imagining the neighborhood ?

Griffintownʼs richness also comes from its accidents and interstitial spaces: The Lachine canal, tunnels, empty lots, railways and urban héritage buildings are perceived as ghosts of the past, obstacles to bypass, or at best to historicize. However, these structures and heterogeneous assemblages are precisely the skeleton on which we have to build upon, the components that broaden the term of experience in the neighborhood.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?

During DesingInquiry I propose to present and exhibit Life in a box : Building tomorrow today , a silkscreen installation Iʼm currently working on that explores Griffintown as a neighborhood in flux. Building upon one of the neighborhoodʼs actual real estate projects proposals ( District Griffin by Devimco) the installation aims to unfold the blurry boundaries between real and fiction, between regrets and possibility, between the past and the becoming of Griffintownʼs grey zones, vital forces, multiple and unexpected emerging possibilities and multi-directional overlapping narratives. Life in a box is a fetishizing agent between urban reality and a contemporary urban mythology; objects, urban furniture, land, streets, warehouses, peopleand history are given a voice. These ephemeral spaces are alive and must speak; they witnessed the past and will bear the future on their backs. Life in a box questions the interchangeable dance of image and density, utopia, scale, disappearance and memory. The presentation could be followed by a promenade in the neighborhood to further encourage discussion about the issues at stake in this area and see more of the local artistic initiatives that take place.

Deborah Saucier
Professor of Neuroscience
University of Lethbridge
deborah.saucier@uleth.ca

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DesignCity:

I am a professor of neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge. I study how the brain understands space, whether these spaces are in print media, abstract shapes or features of the environment in a city. My research has found that men and women differ in the features that they attend to and use in a city, especially when they are trying to navigate around a city. For instance, it appears that men relate more to abstract features of the environment, such as cardinal directions like north; whereas women relate more to concrete features of the environment such as landmarks. Other research that I (in collaboration with others) have performed have also found that people there are consistent differences in how individuals estimate the size of objects that relate to where they are in space. For instance, the left side of objects are consistently misjudged for size or luminosity, resulting in some interesting visual illusions.

I would like to attend DesignInquiry to begin a dialogue with designers about these aspects of human psychology for two reasons. The first reason is to have a knowledgeable discussion about design practice with people who care passionately about design. This discussion would inform my research in the upcoming years. The second reason is to engage in the topic DesignCity, which seems to directly relate to my research practice. To my mind, aspects of the question inherent in DesignCity relates to how people understand spaces, what they find interesting, what they attend to. I would like the opportunity to discover whether a city that has been recognized for design allows people to interact with their spaces in a more fluid fashion than other urban environments and whether these interactions allow for a more rich understanding of the urban environment.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?

I would contribute my understanding of how individuals use the features of an environment to inform their ‘maps’ of that space. Further, I would be pleased to investigate with others at DesignInquiry what features of Montreal are consistently identified as being critical to the identity of a ‘city of design’, whether these are psychological constructs or actual physical realities of the city. I would be pleased to aid with any aspect of the program, although my talents lie with writing, analyses and editing.

A presentation abstract goes here:

One project that I would be interested in investigating would involve the development of maps. When people make maps of space they use both imaginary and real aspects of the environment. The relation between these two types of features is very telling about what they find important in the experienced (or imagined) space. I propose to examine examine maps that people draw when they follow a predetermined routes through the city. The features that are present (and absent) on the route and their relation will provide an experiential record of the characteristics of the city that the individual finds to be salient. I would then integrate this information in terms of psychological theory and with other research regarding the features of space and their salience.

Denise Gonzales Crisp
gonzotwotown@gmail.com

I sometimes assume the character of different people to comment on graphic design activity. Deborah Griffin, for example, is a New York critic who we only hear from in fragments. Cheri Newcastle, a pulp sci-fi novelist, writes about media through a cyber-detective, Priss, and her techie pals who build paraphernalia to transmogrify her into the media she investigates. Candy Apple is a self-made “Legacy Negotiator,” a Leg Neg, serving artists of every ilk. My most active persona, though, is academic Denise Gonzales Crisp.

She wrote “Discourse This! Designers and Alternative Critical Writing.” The essay presents several under-valued “designwrights” who have contributed texts using alternative means. Through fiction, personae, manifestoes, satire and neologisms, designers and writers from William Morris to Bruce Sterling have added abiding critical voices. They have also expanded the possibilities for the form and delivery of criticism.

GAIL SWANLUND
faculty and design practitioner
CalArts and Gail Studio
gailstudio.com
gail@gailstudio.com

Hello.

1) I’m on faculty at CalArts where I work with BFA and MFA students.
2) My studio is based in Los Angeles and my creative practice is highly collaborative and conceptual, but rooted in practicality too. I make works intended primarily for cultural institutions
3) Taking a creative leave currently, working on self-initiated projects.

DesignInquiry’s DESIGN CITY interests me on a lot of levels: 1) I’m exploring alternative practices and would appreciate the opportunity to meet and work with individuals who are on an intellectual quest of their own; and 2) I trekked to the Expo 67 campgrounds a few years back because I was and am interested in Expo 67’s optimism, wonder and its lingering, remaining sites. The campground when I visited was fabulous. It’s fascinating to imagine the activity during the Expo and its seeming and real transience. I’m interested in the temporality of the Expo too, on a poetic and wistful level. And 3) DesignInquiry seems like the perfect kind of rigorous/flexible critical mass of thoughtfulness and provocation that I am hoping for at this point in my career.

“Designwright” Workshop with Gail and Denise

Denise Gonzales Crisp     gonzotwotown@gmail.co     superstove.blogs.com/twentyeleven
Gail Swanlund                   gail@gailstudio.com       gailstudio.com/

Several under-valued “designwrights” have contributed texts to design discourse using alternative means. Through fiction, personae, manifestoes, satire and neologisms, designers and writers from William Morris to Bruce Sterling have added abiding critical voices. They have also expanded the possibilities for the form and delivery of criticism.

Gail and Denise propose to use Montreal’s designed environment and design promises as the subject for a designwright workshop: the derelict grounds of Expo ’67; manifestations of the city’s “UNESCO City of Design” status; other places engaged by DI Montreal proposals. Participating design inquirers will practice fiction-based approaches to writing about design. Afternoon writing exercises and morning readings/discussions will culminate in works that Gail and Denise will curate/edit for DI Journal submission consideration.

Not the Structure and Content

Afternoon exercises: 1 hour (preferably the cocktail one)
Mon: Past/Future Design Archeologist (Who)
Tue: Place (Where)
Wed: Evidence (What)
Breakfast readings and discussion: 45-60 minutes
Wed: The Design Archeologist
Thu: The Place
Fri: Evidence Interpreted (Final Readings)

Not the References / Recommended Reading

“Discourse This! Designers and Alternative Critical Writing”
Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling
Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, Peter Turchi
“Metaphor: Or, The Map”
“The Wide Landscape of Snows”
“Imaginary Scrolls”
How Proust Can Change Your Life, Alain De Botton
“How to Read for Yourself” “How to Take Your Time”
And, from the “Peace Through Understanding World’s Fair Community”: The Expo 67 Grounds, Questions And Some Answers

Florian Sametinger
Interaction Designer/ PhD Candidate
University of the Arts Berlin
www.drlab.org, www.udk-berlin.de
sametinger@udk-berlin.de

Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

I am originally from ulm, a city in the south of germany, which i left in order to study industrial and interaction design in London, Milan and Magdeburg. After 3 years as a freelance interaction designer, i started working in the design research lab berlin, where i am currently doing my phd thesis. My particular topic is interaction design for social sustainability and comprises field work in urban environments, building design interventions for testing in berlin, observing interactions within the city and conducting (interdisciplinary) participatory design workshops with citizens. Moreover we are working on the themes of gender and diversity, universal design, democratic design and participation in city processes, etc.

As a member of the design research lab I am really interested in the dynamics of the interdisciplinary workshop as well as working directly in the city of montréal. I believe in interdisciplinary, participatory design and collaborative environments and am curious as to how you structure the process and what kind of dynamics enfold during the week.

Since Berlin is (by designinquirys definition) also a design city, designed and developed, I am very interested to discover and discuss parallels and differences of the two cities, and the potential that design has to offer in order to shape them.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?

I would like to present and discuss methods and tools we developed here during several city workshops (Street Lab, Networked Neighborhoods), participatory design sessions and projects and how we approached the topic of designed city, design for the city, design as an agent of change within cities.

Also I am currently working on “Sustainable Awareness Tools” which focus on recording and analysing the city and the traces its inhabitants left within them (Patina, traces of use, re-use, appropriation, etc.). They are constructed as “Citizen Science”-Kits and I would present them and possibly use them with citizens of montréal and other participants in a workshop.

Ben Van Dyke
Board Member, DesignInquiry
www.benjaminvandyke.com

TBA

Margo Halverson
President, DesignInquiry

TBA

Melle Hammer
Framer, DesignInquiry
http://www.mellehammer.nl/

my contribution will include
a brief presentation of the characteristics of the town i live in (amsterdam)
(not the regular stuff you find in the lonely planet brochure )
- during the gathering – each day i will present my observations and findings on Montreal in the format of a poster, an installation, or a writing

and
as my wish come through: i’ll make you a fresh hand-tossed salad everyday

Christopher Moore
Framer, DesignInquiry Montréal
Assistant Professor Design & Computation Arts, Concordia University
christopher.moore@concordia.ca

I am a maker of things, a storyteller, an educator, and a student full of questions. These roles manifest in a practice that ranges from commercial publication to sculpture and media-based installation—a liminal research profile that challenges the traditional disciplinary classifications of academia. Throughout my 12 years of teaching, I have been fortunate to locate like-minded colleagues who share a passion for social engagement, and who eschew the narrow definitions and historical baggage of what constitutes “legitimate” research. I believe in the value of play, and that embodied experimentation and the everyday are highly relevant design methodologies.

My creative research currently focuses on satire as a progressive form of social critique, utilizing performance and absurdist humour to engage media-savvy public audiences. In addition to artist residencies and exhibitions, I have presented my scholarly research at international conferences, including the College Art Association (CAA), Design Research Society (DRS), Association Typographique International (ATypI), the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD), and the Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC). Since 2008, I have held the position of Assistant Professor in Design & Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montréal, where I am also a member of the Hexagram Research Institute.

www.disintermediator.com
www.learnmegood.ca

Emily Luce
Board Member, DesignInquiry
Assistant Professor New Media; University of Lethbridge, Alberta
info@emilyluce.net

I am an artist + designer born in Boston, grew up all across the U.S., and am now based in BC and Alberta in western Canada. As a whole my work emphasizes the importance of diversity in the face of corporate monocultures; individually I think my projects (recently: redesigning parking lots, the construction of a tiny house, and, this) are more closely defined as chances to work with fantastic people on ideas that push the boundaries of what I thought was possible. I am so looking forward to meeting and working with you all.

While we are “in town,” I want to look at pure pattern. I’d like to work with the group to collect examples of the visual baseline of this city. The long-term intention is to form some kind of pattern database or collection associated with design cities around the world. The short-term intention is to experience the flat joy of colour, texture, and repetition.

I also have a bit of research to do while in Montréal. I read in passing that the iconic Hudson Bay blankets were developed in competition with early blankets coming out of Montréal trading posts. I want to see these blankets and read about their history.

Stuart Henley
Principle Lecturer & Course Leader Graphic Communications BA (Hons)
Bath College of Art and Design, Bath Spa University, UK
henleystuart@gmail.com

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

Originally from England but have spent 17 years in the US (Yale MFA Design ’96), currently back in the UK. Have taught graphic design in various places around the world. Currently working in Bath, England’s only UNESCO world heritage city. I’m in the process of planning a parapedetic Graphic Design MA that will take up week long residencies in various cities round the world (including Bath) studying and developing the relationship between the city and graphic design. My personal work/research typically responds to environmental/social or urban issues.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here? A presentation abstract goes here:

(A) I would like to initiate a dérive in Montreal.

also

(B) I would like to initiate a discussion exploring ideas of typo-geography, specifically to look at further defining the ongoing merger of; image recognition tools, typographic systems and the physical environment. I define typo-geography as work that features:

Typography
• systematized mechanical (or digital) composition of the word or symbol
• system extends to word, line, column, page and of course off the page….
• system and mechanics facilitate exact reproduction Geography (human)
• human use and understanding of the world
• human interrelationships with the physical environment.
• studying human activities

market example and inspiration
http://80.82.113.77/iphone_app/mpeg3.mpg

naturally I can provide greater detail and structure on proposals A & B.

Jennifer Nichols
Sustainability Resource Coordinator & Communication Designer,
freelance
Smart Planning for Communities & Nichols Creative
nicholscreative.ca
jennichols@hotmail.com

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

I AM a graphic designer working with community planners on sustainability issues. I provide resources (online collaborative platforms, print pieces, storytelling…) about integrated community sustainability planning and carbon reduction strategies for urban and rural communities. For many years I designed magazines and newspapers for publishing houses in Canada and the UK. Now most of the printing I do is in my spare time, by hand using intaglio techniques and stencils.

Because I have degrees in communication design and strategic sustainability planning I am drawn to exploring the relationship between the two disciplines.

I am struck by whether a “City of Design” arises from a plan or use. Community planning is bureaucratic work that integrates zoning, bylaws, policies, engineering and human needs versus environmental realities into placemaking. Yet, once arriving in these highly planned environs citizens and visitors invent the space by using it. There is no question in my mind that the inhabitants of a place breathe it into existence.

Sustainability, compared to planning, is not so prescriptive and is a plastic term. In Montreal’s award-winning strategic sustainability plan there is no mention of sustaining culture – yet it is clearly in the bones of the place.

I WOULD LIKE TO EXPLORE how designers dialogue with the city through distributed collaboration. I can provide a sustainability lens. I will invite collaboration on participating in a city tracing. I would alter this plan to join another project if necessary – collaboration is key! Whatever happens: I will write about it for Design21 – a UNESCO partner site about better design for the greater good. http://www.design21sdn.com/

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?

A presentation abstract goes here: MY CURRENT RESEARCH is exploring sustainability planning for creatives – and the threshold of constraints that can foster or inhibit innovation. My initial research concluded that the brief stage is an obvious time to get clear on sustainability objectives.

As part of the research I went to Compostmodern (an interdisciplinary design conference about sustainable design choices) in San Francisco. I asked many designers, including, Bruce Mau a leading question; “At what point of the design process do we have the most opportunity to make meaningful change?”

Mau said “From a systems perspective after a certain moment you simply can’t change the system – you are simply participating. It’s got to be early on…on the other hand, everywhere all the time is possibility for change … This second way is more powerful you get distributed collaboration. Collaboration unleashes a unique intellectual and social energy.”

Based on this insight I would like to explore where sustainability fits in a design process.

I WOULD LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE a collaborative experiment centred on an urban adventure. The adventure will require participants to produce and leave behind tracings of the city based on clearly defined constraints with the goals of assembling some sort of a map of the journeys.

We can dialogue around our collective results – I will facilitate – touching on how our designs sustain the topographies of Montréal, how the city can sustain our design process and how we can use sustainability principles in multiples.

The discussion and research results will be the meat for a DesignInquiry journal entry. Our assemblage will become a visual representation for the journal – a bonus would be to influence the production choices around the journal.

Clément Vincent
Assistant Professor | Design
College of Architecture, Art and Design
American University of Sharjah
http://www.aus.edu
cvincent@aus.edu

Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

I am a French national and I have lived, taught and practiced graphic design and art direction in France, the U.S. and Canada before relocating to the UAE last fall. I have worked for publishers, museums and other cultural institutions where I designed exhibitions, posters, signage systems… Another facet of my practice is concerned with integrating texts and images in urban or rural public spaces.

The cities I have lived in long enough: Portland, OR, Vancouver BC, Paris, Ajman, UAE or Seattle have given me different views on what makes a city livable, enjoyable or frustrating and sad. From billionaire to homeless, recent immigrant, student, labor worker or transient, cities concentrate human hardship, joy, pleasure or excess.

Observing cities its architecture and people help me better understand how the world I live in evolves. Design City seems a great opportunity to discover Montréal while sharing ideas and views about cities in general. Design City might also be a starting point to think about what designers can offer to understand and think the city. I would like to participate in Design City because I need to feed my interest to reflect upon our living environment by exchanging ideas with individuals who share a similar interest.

I have lived in Canada for six years but only visited Montréal once. Speaking French and English also make me feel that my participation in Design City could benefit others participants.

What you will do at DesignInquiry

My intention during DesignInquiry is to investigate some underprivileged neighborhoods in Montréal. At this point I am considering a series of places like Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Saint Henri and les quartiers Nord.

I will focus on visible aspect of these quarters, (environmental, economical and social) the significant buildings and their history, the cultural life offered to residents.

To prepare this study I am currently locating a number of places to visit and document: buildings, public art, parks, libraries, churches etc. Going there and taking pictures, collecting ephemerals or posters in the street will be the first part of my investigation. Its purpose is to understand what an underprivileged district of Montréal looks like.

After completion of this part I am interested to present the group at DesignInquiry with a selection of images. This presentation might help some participants discover places they might no know while giving all a chance to exchange experiences and ideas about underprivileged neighborhood.

After Visiting and documenting, my plan is to go back with prints and meet with residents from different ages to enquire about their living experience in these areas. Does the urban, cultural, economical and social status of their neighborhood meet their needs and aspirations? Could their life satisfaction be higher if new equipment, services or initiative where there? What existing events equipments are satisfactory? Would they be will willing to participate in a community based design if this was an option?

In order to meet residents I am planning on locating local cafés/restaurants, non-profit organizations and community services/centers locally implemented. Using photographs of my initial visit I hope to create a favorable situation to learn from the residents about their experience.

Possible outputs for this inquiry could include a print or web based article combining visual, textual and auditory information a poster series intended to portray a neighborhood. Later on the posters could be posted in the streets of the neighborhoods they come from.

Tim Vyner
Senior Lecturer Illustration / BA(Hons) Graphic Communication
Bath School of Art and Design / Bath Spa University
University: http://www.artbathspa.com/
Personal: http://www.timvyner.com/
college: t.vyner@bathspa.ac.uk
personal: tim@timvyner.com

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

I am an Illustrator living and working In Bath, UK. I graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1988 with an MA(RCA) in illustration. I am predominantly interested in documentary and reportage illustration. I teach illustration within the context of a broad Graphic Communication course. I am currently developing an MA in Visual Culture that will be based in various locations and residencies around the world, including Bath. My own research involves documenting events that identify a particular place at a specific time, eg the Olympic Games in Beijing, the FIFA World Cup in Japan and Korea. I have a specific interest in print and visited Xi’an Academy of Fine Art in China, (one of China’s four traditional art academies) earlier this year to make work for a Printmaking Exchange Workshop which involved participants from twelve different universities from around the world.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here?
A presentation abstract goes here:

I would like to work with a group of people on an experiencial exchange in Montreal, specifically looking at themes of legacy, society, and participation. As London gears itself to host the Olympic Games in 2012 I would like to view the legacy of Montreal 1976 compared to Montreal 2011, City of Design. As a reportage illustrator I explore the interrelationship between people and their physical environment. I think there is a place in designinquiry for illustration and visual essay that considers how we interact in a design environment and how that interaction changes with time and activity.

I am also keen to make an objective comparison between experiencing a UNESCO Design City (Montreal) as a first time visitor, with living and working in a UNESCO World Heritage City (Bath).

Please look at www.timvyner.com for examples of my practice. I am happy to present more detailed proposals about any of these topics. ////////////////////////////// //////

He Li
Student
University of Lethbridge
kyomi2735@163.com / he.li3@uleth.ca

Please introduce yourself in a few lines. Where you come from, what kind of work you do, why you are coming, what are your interests in the topic DESIGN City:

I am from Beijing, China and living in Lethbridge, Canada now. Basically I am fascinated by and trying to work with any kinds of visual design works that speak to me. Graphic designs for printing and websites are the most common types I am doing.

The interest to me fundamentally is the city itself as it is a fresh and inspired ground for me to explore. Either familiar or strange facts, elements hidden within this design city interest me. After being in school for years, I expect to have a more free and practical work period, which this event gives me. Traveling around and seeking for things that are beautiful and meaningful to a place is what I aim for.

What would you contribute to DesignInquiry while you are here? A presentation abstract goes here:

I will contribute of course my original thoughts and special insight of this city in terms of its cultural, social attraction through visual communication, whichever the way it works (could be sketches, photos, typefaces, etc). Since I do have a different cultural background, I could find things that are often ordinary even ignored in western world but attract me, and transform them into part of my experiences that somehow makes difference to the design works.

The post Not-The-Schedule appeared first on DesignInquiry.

http://www.design21sdn.com/organizations/196/posts/17446

The post Residual Works appeared first on DesignInquiry.

DesignInquiry wishes to share a selection of souvenirs from Montréal collected by DesignCity participants.

Photobooth portraits of DesignCity participants

Image by Melle Hammer

Image by Melle Hammer

Image by Gail Swanlund

Image by Gail Swanlund

Image by Gail Swanlund

Image by Gail Swanlund

Image by Melle Hammer

Image by Christopher Moore

Image by Tim Vyner

Image by Tim Vyner

Image by Tim Vyner

Image by Tim Vyner

Image by He Li

Image by Amery Calvelli

Image by Amery Calvelli

Image by Amery Calvelli

Image by Amery Calvelli

Image by Christopher Moore

Image by Christopher Moore

Image by Christopher Moore

The post Souvenirs of Montréal appeared first on DesignInquiry.

The set below combines traditional printing techniques: stone lithography, chin-collé and photo-etching. All the imagery has been made or gathered on location. Each stadium is accompanied by a single Olympic ring, which in isolation appears like a target.

Images by Tim Vyner

Following the DesignCity event, participants were invited to post a Montréal postcard personalized with images reflecting their experience of the city. I have placed these cards in the centre of a sketchbook page that sits on a lithographic stone. Reportage drawings and ephemera collected on the streets frame the cards to create a narrative. These combined elements reflect the constantly changing and evolving aspects of a city of design and the stone lithography represents a sense of permanence. Below are two samples from a set of seven, followed by selection from my Montréal sketchbook.

Images by Tim Vyner

Images by Tim Vyner

The post Faster/Higher/Stronger(Citius/Altius/Fortius) appeared first on DesignInquiry.

“According to the systems view, the essential properties of an organism, or living system, are properties of the whole, which none of the parts have. They arise from the interactions and relationships among the parts.” (Capra, 1996)

////////////////////////////////////////////

Systems theory, as described by Fritjof Capra, posits that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Larger systems can be recognized by understanding the interconnected relationships that exist between discrete components in a network.

In “Designing the Immaterial,” Eric Benson of ReNourish suggests that graphic designers need to use their design skills in different ways—to redesign the systems by which we are bound. Benson writes, “The holistic nature of the design process is definitely needed to help design better systemic solutions for bigger issues like water rights, affordable and sustainable transportation systems, renewable energy production and dissemination etc.” (Benson, 2010) Benson is suggesting that, instead of a means to an end, designed objects need to be considered as parts in more comprehensive systems that affect broader social constituencies and stakeholders.

Systems thinking can be applied so long as the designer is able to recognize varying levels of complexity. When analyzing relationships between elements, it quickly becomes evident that seemingly independent systems exist within still larger systems, which intersect with other related systems of influence, and so on. For designers, there are a several ways to consciously design with systems in mind. With regards to environmental concerns, we can focus on detoxifying waste, air, water and energy use in the choices we make during the design and production processes. But we can also make a difference through the kind of design projects we choose to pursue.

Drawn to this idea, I travelled to Montréal in the spring of 2011 to participate in DesignInquiry: DesignCity. My chosen subject of inquiry focused on one of Benson’s suggestions—the graphic designer’s role in sustainable transportation systems, using Montréal as a case study location.

MULTI-MODAL SYSTEMS

Sustainable transportation solutions are often centred around reducing vehicle traffic on roadways. The transportation sector is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions that accelerate climate change and therefore, vehicle reduction directly results in positive environmental consequences. Additional systemic benefits of this approach include reduced city expenditures for major roadway upkeep and repairs, while boosting access to local businesses by creating pedestrian friendly, compact communities. Citizens that use active transportation have an opportunity to adopt healthier lifestyles, putting less strain on the healthcare system.

Montréal provides many alternative modes of transportation, including but not limited to, bus and Métro services (Society in Motion – STM), ride sharing (Allo-Stop), car sharing (Communauto), and the BIXI (“BIke taXI”—a rentable bike program). The City of Montréal supports multi-modal travel choices with a robust transportation demand management (TDM)* program that is planning future initiatives to increase use of public systems.

BIKE TAXI

For this inquiry, I have focused on one mode of transit—the highly visible fleet of grey BIXI bikes zipping around the city. Cyclists can rent a bike from one of the hundreds of docking stations located throughout the city centre, draw an energetic line with their tires around the city, and return it to another station at their chosen destination. Users are then free to extend their line of travel with another mode of transportation, should they desire.

BIXI Constellation, Jennifer Nichols

The BIXI bike system serves as an exemplary model of design passing through the threshold of producing goods (a great bike) to designing systems (a low carbon transportation option). It is also an example of reimagining what the future of transportation could look like.

BIXI is a system designed by Montréal-based industrial designer, Michel Dallaire. The bike’s conceptual thematic is based on a boomerang, says Dallaire, “because it is the only object that comes back.” (Dallaire, 2011) The components of the BIXI system consist of: a modular, seasonal bike docking and locking system (pay station, bikes, tracking system), the city’s transportation planning and travel pattern research, and corporate sponsorship. BIXIs are partially sponsored by corporations, yet rely on public infrastructure, such as bike lanes and sidewalk storage space. Designing this system required a complex network of stakeholders ranging from robotics experts, industrial designers, policy-makers and business leaders working together to coordinate the production and implementation.

Photograph by Christopher Moore

Since its introduction, the system has become an important component of the City of Montréal’s Transportation Plan and Sustainable Development Plan (2010-2015), which prioritizes the following actions: reduction of automobile dependency, calming of traffic in the city core, and assistance for Montréal businesses to adopt best practices for sustainable development.

This system gives Montréalers who like to cycle another option for getting around the city core from April to November. Yet, when asked about why his popular creation was successful, Dallaire simply says, “people are talking to each other more,” and, “it has augmented the friendliness of the city.” (Dallaire, ) Emerging from a system designed to resolve concrete environmental and infrastructure concerns, the BIXI has inspired unforeseen social interactions that contribute to an improved quality of life in the city.

SPATIAL STORIES

Dallaire’s response highlights the less tangible benefits of multi-modal travel. Whether planned or spontaneous, it is typically struck with unanticipated encounters that pull the private individual into public life. It is debatable whether all interactions are “friendly,” however, the psychological consequences of exploring the specificities of the city and unconsciously establishing personal migratory routes emerge through physical as well as human interaction. This describes an emerging culture initiated and nurtured by the BIXI bike.

Jennifer Nichols

Michel de Certeau suggested that ordinary practitioners of the city walk experience the city in a poetic way through pedestrian “speech acts.” (de Certeau, 1984). He suggests that individuals regulate changes in space through “Spatial Stories,” performing narratives through choices in paths, directions, and tactical practices. Pre-established geography becomes activated by spatial use and movement: “everyday stories tell us what one can do in it and out of it. They are treatments of space.”

To expand on de Certeau’s theories, multi-modal travel can facilitate a personalized narrative, traced by one’s navigation through the city—a trace that resolves shifting geography and pulls the pedestrian into cultural folds of the city, tucked between physical structures. This narrative begins to suggest a new understanding of how to treat the landscape by focusing on how people inhabit spaces, rather than imposing top-down systems for citizens to passively accept.

SPATIALISATION

In his essay, “Knowing Space/Spatilization,” Rob Shields describes different ways of knowing the city. He states that, “’knowing space’ is not enough—trigonometric formulae, engineering structures, shaping the land and dwelling on it. We need to know about ‘spacing’ and the spatializations that are accomplished through everyday activities, representations and rituals.” (Shields) Shields’ approach supports de Certeau’s distinction between top-down spatial imposition versus a personalized incorporation of the city through enacted behaviours. We “understand” our environments not through rational, scientific knowledge, but through our individual physical and experiential interactions over time.

During the Montréal inquiry, I scanned the BIXI system for graphic representations, identifying the company logo, the corporate branding, and city maps mounted in frames at every station—the “knowing” elements, according to Shields. However, the map frames were empty during the spring of 2011,opening up a space for tactical intervention. Taking advantage of this opportunity, I chose to mount my own hand-lettered signs that captured stories of first-time bike rides. These cycle stories were unremarkable and insignificant to most who might encounter them. They did not provide “useful” orientation within the city, information on how to rent a BIXI, nor did they advertise corporate sponsorship. However, the words were infinitely human, relatable, and reflective of a specific moment in time.

Photographs by Author

What resulted was a spatial practice and a story of space. Stories provide meaning to our everyday existence. The physical engagement of walking on sidewalks, pulling out a bike, peddling after friends, feeling the weather against your body and sharing intersection space, provide myriad narratives. In this author’s opinion, such chance encounters and embodied sensory experiences facilitate more potential for variety than a daily car commute.

My conclusion is that the communication designer’s role in a sustainable transportation system is to share the multi-modal story. Or, more precisely, to provide tools for the public to write their own narratives upon the city—in whatever forms these might take.

TACTICAL STRATEGIES

The strategic direction of a city develops as citizens discover and participate in the city plan with millions of spatial stories. A combination of walking, biking, and transit use activate the transportation plans envisioned by urban planning strategies and demonstrate the value of alternative modes of travel. It is hoped that civic planners will recognize this value, leading to further bike lanes and less emphasis on construction of parking facilities. Yet, these strategies are inconsequential if people don’t use them—placing the power in the hands (and feet) of the user. In this way,travelling around the city is designing the city.

Jennifer Nichols

Recognizing the geopolitical, health, and air quality implications of vehicle choices requires an acknowledgement of complex dynamics. A city is a large-scale system with unending variables (energy consumption, waste flows, housing, transportation, human behaviour, economic development, ecological constraints etc.). Simple choices about how we move our bodies through space represents a paradigm shift in the way we consume fossil fuels and generate wealth. The active pedestrian and rider is helping to combat unending growth and unsustainable development at the expense of ecosystem survival and personal health.

Understanding interrelated systems allows individual citizens to see how their actions affect realities such as climate change, clean water scarcity, and sustaining human life. To protect the climate and nourish all forms of life in the long run, we all need to become systems thinkers.

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*TDM is a set of policies and programs that reduce car use systematically. (Foord, 2009) As a result, the City of Montréal has a transportation plan that includes extending the subway system, creating dedicated bus lanes, implementing a “Pedestrian charter” and doubling bike lanes.

Cited References

Benson, E. “Designing the Immaterial.” DesignInquiry Journal. Retrieved from http://old.designinquiry.net/journal/uncategorized/1331/designing-the-immaterial/. 25 March 25, 2011.

Capra, Fritjof.

Dallaire, Michel.

de Certeau, M. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Foord, C. Transportation Demand Management. Vancouver: Fraser Basin Council, 2009

Haraldsson, H. V. Introduction to System Thinking and Causal Loop Diagrams. Lund: Lund University Press, 2004.

Kingwell, Mark. “The City as a Work of Art.” My City is Still Breathing Symposium. Retrieved from http://www.artsforall.ca/index.php/AFA/article/my_citys_still_breathing_a_symposium_exploring_the_arts_artists_and_the_cit/. 1 May, 2011.

Lefebvre, H. La Production de l’espace (2nd ed.). Paris: Anthropos, 1981.

Rob Shields. “Knowing space/Spatilization”

The post Design and Multi-modal Urban Transportation appeared first on DesignInquiry.

Speeding through Montréal on a BIXI bike, I grip the handlebars loosely in my hands and shift weight from pedal to pedal, tipping side to side. I leave my worries behind. Our single-file expedition sails breezily across Pont de la Concorde—we are modern day voyageurs looking to trade our insights. We pass Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67, riding beside the rolling St. Lawrence River until we hug the Lachine canal. Sweaty, spandexed commuters pass us, intently focused on the clearly marked bike trail.

We turn and enter into the heart of the city. Our procession weaves along Boulevard de Maisonneuve during rush hour traffic. As our bikes twin the line of slow moving cars, we pass several BIXI docking stations, each marked by a solar panel mounted on a slim pole. These panels power tracking devices in each bike so that users can check availabilities at each station using an online application. While drifting by station after station, I notice the city maps that are usually mounted in frames are missing. These blank signs beckon me to intervene like a blank page in a notebook.

I am instantly inspired to build on a series of stories of first-time bike rides filmed by Hyuma Frankowski [link: http://vimeo.com/12981026]. I share the idea with my cycling companion, He Li, and she recounts to me her experiences of riding on her dad’s bike in the streets of Beijing:

Beijing: Before I could ride a bike, I always sat on my dad’s—sometimes on the front, sometimes on the back. At that time, he only had one coat for protection from the rain. Sometimes my dad used the coat to hide me, in order for the police not to see us. (He Li)

Later, I collect more stories from Josh [Singer]1 and Alice [Jarry]2 about their earliest memories of riding a bike, and ask them to trace out the routes they took with meandering lines on scrap paper. Back in my room, I transcribe excerpts from the three stories on a large sheet of paper recovered from the trash.

By the time I hit rue Ste-Catherine, it’s 3:00 am. I walk along the street, still noisy with traffic, and stop at the BIXI docking station on the corner of rue Guy. Swiftly, I peel the backing off of double-sided tape affixed to the reverse side of the poster and with an expansive sweep of my hand, I flatten it to the empty sign frame watching over the docking station. I step back and admire Josh’s cycle story in handmade lettering:

Back on rue Ste-Catherine the next night, I post two more large posters with handwritten cycle stories. A guy on a BMX bike stops to inquire about what I am doing. He’s a graffiti artist and he tells me his tag. He continues to watch as I peel the backing off long strips of Nito tape from the large sheet of paper unfurled on the sidewalk. The graffiti artist advises me to look out for police before biking off.

The next day, I snap photos of the posters and present them to the DesignInquiry participants. The advertising campaign was small but heartfelt—it was my way of reconnecting adults to the childhood pleasures of riding a bike.

After the review, I corner people in the hallway and ask them to draw the route taken during their first bike ride. One-by-one, the designers close their eyes, take a moment of reflection, and carefully trace their memories. The paths layer atop one another in a maze of intersecting lines on a large, single sheet of paper. More than one person points out gaps in their otherwise fluid line stating, “That’s where I fell down.”

Random Sample from Tracings of First Time Bike Rides

Later in the week, I walk along St-Viateur and linger in a secondhand store. I try to speak to the clerk in French (badly) and suddenly realize that I have not included French translations on my signs. I feel a twang of shame; they wouldn’t conform to the provincial language laws.

Despite my oversight, I also feel relieved and rejuvenated. I have fulfilled my goal to discover some of what makes a sustainable design city and have learned why it isn’t necessary to own a car in Montréal. These epiphanies largely occurred during random encounters and transitory moments—conversations with individuals on the Métro, exchanges during BIXI bike rides, and observations while walking around the city. Leaving DesignInquiry, I’m now coasting on the possibilities of a Sustainable City of Design.

___

1 New Jersey: We used to play dodge ball on our bikes. I remember getting an old plank of wood we used to have in the yard. I took it and tied it to the top tube with rope and figured if I rode fast enough I would take off like an airplane. (Josh Singer)

Jennifer Nichols

2 Longueuil: I made this new friend—her name was Catherine—and she was my neighbour from two houses down in the suburbs of Montréal. My goal was to go to her place with my new bike that had training wheels on the side. I remember the bike was red. I rode my bike past the two houses and we met on the corner of the street…she’s still my friend. (Alice Jarry)

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Cityscape looking north from Pointe-à-Callière, Montreal. 2010.

A city begins in a place. We are thrown into the world, but we seek a place. A place is a part of the world that we prefer. In making place, we take the energy of the world and fix it in ways that assist us in living our life in ways we prefer. This allows us to thrive, which is the aim of life. We thrive when we lead our lives in ways that we prefer.

‘People Stand Up!’ urban intervention on Rue Ontario and Rue Sanguinet, Montreal. 2011.

A city is made up of the many. In the city, we seek to thrive amongst the many. The preferences of one individual may conflict with another, some others or the many. Since preferences allow us to thrive, this may cause some to thrive, others merely to survive and still others to die. This can happen for any reason, but when some thrive at the expense of others, this is unjust.

Buildings on alleyway off Boulevard Saint Joseph and Avenue du Parc, Montreal. 2011.

As one lives, one is engaged in furthering life. Life seeks to further more life, which happens according to the process of natural selection. Life reproduces itself, such that as much life as possible is produced in as many variations as possible for as long as possible. This is true for all life and at every level of life, and it happens at all scales of duration, over eons or seconds. Since life, including human life, includes all manner of expression and behaviour, the process of natural selection affects everything from the form of a jellyfish to the peal of a trumpet.

Injustice, like natural selection, is a concept born of observation and human cognition. A jellyfish might have little cognition, if any at all, but in humans cognition is a defining trait. We metabolize the world through our cognition. For a city, we take things like iron, sand and water out of the earth and metabolize them, through our labour, to create a physical infrastructure. We dream up things like jails and museums, money and markets and metabolize them as well to make a city. Our ideas and dreams, our communications and daily rituals—and the city itself—are all effects of our cognition.

Prose poem and automobile at Rue Ottawa near Rue Eleanor, Montreal. 2011.

Cognitive effects allow us to thrive in characteristically human ways—but not forever. Past and future are cognitive effects, as are smog and other forms of pollution. If we are to have a future in our cities and our world, we must design them—metabolizing the world through labour and our cognition—to strengthen the future. Not to design a city of the future, but instead a city for the future. More future is more life.

How do we design such a city? It’s a wicked problem, since the concept of future as well as the mess and the splendour we’ve made of the world are all effects of our characteristically human cognition. We must take a world of things into account. The problem of injustice, I suspect, is one of the more important ones. There are a multitude of others, a few of which you will find listed here.

The post Instructions for the Design of a City appeared first on DesignInquiry.

Visual form is being read by smart machine
scanner and app release eye and mind

we can leave the page
and step into space and time NOW!

our face is scanned and indexed
acknowledging us on the street it locates us NOW!

and we compose ourselves as portable living form NOW!

June, 2018

Montréal has hosted two major international sporting and cultural events in the last forty-five years: Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympics.

The Expo was hailed a success with the site remaining a popular destination beyond its planned closure. The Olympics, while a successful event, proved to be an expensive real-estate and development misadventure for the city. Both sites are currently under-utilized and in need of additional investment and development.

Photograph by Margo Halverson

More recently Expo 17 was an effort to initiate a second expo in the city, but failed to receive the necessary private and state sponsorship. Montréal now has a vision plan for 2025 focusing attention and development on the post industrial—and reemerging–waterfront. The plan calls for partnerships between state and private enterprise and once again, large-scale land and property redevelopment and redeployment.

Photograph by Florian Sametinger

Olyp/osition 2025 is a proposal for an alternative city event, combining the human physical aspects of the Olympics (movement, speed, endurance) with the technological and cultural interests of the exposition (scientific, digital, visual and literal culture). The proposal–a sketch of an idea–hopes to be a catalyst to conceptualizing a new kind of city/global event in a hyper-connected mobile digital culture.

- – - – -

Olyp/osition 2025: A proposal for a typo-geographic event covering the land, sky and water of Montréal

Benefits

• needs little capital expenditure
• involves no construction and no land or property redevelopment
• merges the human physics of the Olympics with the cultural and technological ambitions of an exposition
• will attract national and international attention
• crosses language and cultural barriers
• favours participation over spectatorship

Scanning

• uses facial recognition and smart phone (QR code) scanning software joined with the security camera infrastructure of the city
• to become participants, the public register and have their faces scanned
• individuals select a language and choose to become one of the characters/letterforms from that language
• once registered, participants go about their normal business in the city
• the recognition software identifies their location

Actions

• people may wish to form subgroups and initiate ritualistic actions or they may choose to wander and recompose the city
• scores for organized performances will be published each day in the press
• compositions involving participants may be randomly formed
• participant movements are mapped and published

Image by Christopher Moore

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Photography by Amery Calvelli

On the train from Rhinebeck, NY to DesignCity: Montréal, 7 May 2011

Judging entirely through observation of five family photographs, it appears that:

• Four of the five images were taken by Eema (Hebrew for “mother”) and one by Daddy. Eema shot with the subject large and firmly centered; Daddy shot with an eye toward landscape.
• We visited on two consecutive days, which confirms my memories. I wore the same pinafore (made by Eema), but a different white shirt each day: one long-sleeved crew neck tee shirt, one Peter Pan-collared white cotton blouse.
• One day was sunny, one was overcast.
• We went alone, though at the time, we had more than 60 relatives from Lithuania and Bombay living in Toronto. They had all already visited Montréal.
• Eema’s scrawled “September 1967” on the back of one image dates our visit. The date stamp on the front side of the prints indicates that the photos were developed and printed that November.
• Extrapolating from Daddy’s height in relation to mine in the photos, I estimate that I was about 3’8” tall (he was 5’6”).
• I seem okay. Not happy (and my parents were not smile-for-the-camera people), but okay.
• I was carrying a lot of stuff: my little white purse, an Expo 67 bag (branded with Optima type), red-and-white kova tembel (colloquial Hebrew: “fool’s hat,” a kind of dated national symbol) and sunglasses. I look like a small version of my mother. Note to self: Does my daughter Gia look like a small version of me? Do I hope not?

What I remember:

• I clearly remember Eema taking my picture with the lady in the pink sari in the Indian pavilion. I was shy and a bit awkward and tilted my head toward the right, coming in beneath the young woman’s left breast. She was really pretty. None of my Indian aunties wore saris.
• I was excited about the size and shape and construction of the geodesic dome and worried about getting contaminated by being so close to the lunar module.

What I know:

• I am older now than my parents were in these photographs.

Field trip to Expo 67 fair grounds, Montréal, 10 May 2011

I was looking forward to visiting the Expo site, but also ambivalent about planning ahead for what I would do once we arrived. An unexpected jolt of connection hit when the group took the escalator up at the Jean Drapeau metro station. The extremely horizontal and flat space that met us at the top held some memories of excitement and anticipation.

Instinctively, we walked toward Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome trying to orient ourselves. The grounds seemed more empty to me than neglected. Was I walking through a dream? I felt emotional but distanced—the same sort of spatial relationship to sensation one feels toward pain after taking a Valium.

Our group the dome, but couldn’t get very far without paying an admission fee. The interior space had been altered with a drop ceiling so we couldn’t see the roof from within the structure.

Chris [Moore] pulled out a book with original Expo images that sparked some memories: yes, the dome was originally open, with two escalators reaching up to a shelf-like half-floor housing the US space program exhibit. Visitors snaked up one escalator, walked through the exhibit, and then went down the other escalator. That resonated with me. I remembered my own trip up, through, across, and down the pavilion, and how I felt looking up, up, up into the cavernous dome.

After exiting the dome, Stuart [Henley] noticed my lack of energy. I felt overwhelmed and flat at the same time. He mobilized a small group: me, Margo [Halverson], Tim [Vyner] and Gail [Swanlund], to find the precise site Daddy had photographed Eema and I 44 years prior. We walked across the bridge and along the edge of the water. When consensus had been reached—this is the spot!—I crouched on the ground to pose for the photo.

Stuart’s impetus, plus Margo’s, Tim’s and Gail’s enthusiasm for that moment touched me. I felt vulnerable, cried a bit, and shared hugs all around. In the photo I look the way I felt in the moment: aging, head in the past, thinking about my childhood-self and my parents, grateful and a bit awkward with the attention.

This was not a “good” photo of me, but a really GOOD photo.

Photograph by Gail Swanlund

Photograph by Gail Swanlund

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Image by Josh Davidson—click to enlarge

Image by Josh Davidson—click to enlarge

DesignCity participants observed that Montréal has a rich culinary tradition, influenced both by its geography and by its ever-shifting cultural makeup. We explored this confluence of factors in the micro-foodscape, through collaboration on a local meal that integrated diverse global influences and products. Some of the participants were long-time Montréalers, still others in the process of settling within the city, while the majority were simply visiting.

Photograph by Emily Luce

Photograph by Emily Luce

The collaborative micro-foodscape emerges not from the exclusive palette of an executive chef, nor is it simply an instance of the global food system at play. Instead, it reveals a spontaneous and variegated weave of “localities.” The ingredients woven together and shared in one such meal illustrates the wide connotation of the term “local”.

Some cooks and guests brought ingredients grown locally, others brought ingredients found locally, while others still chose to bring ingredients indicative of their own locality: the place of their birth, their residence, their daily walk.

Images by Josh Davidson—click to enlarge

Montréal micro-foodscapes of collaborative cooking are tables in which Lac Bromeau foie gras sits alongside Sharwoods mango chutney from Little India, organic parsnips from the Marché Atwater, and a packaged sponge toffee dessert from the dépanneur.

Whether identifying as settlers or visitors, what follows are some morsels of what emerged during a micro-foodscape experiment, one night in Montreal.

Photograph by Florian Sametinger

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