Erwin Regler: An inspirational world

Beyond industrial and civic purposes, metallurgy can pop up in the most surprising places… such as the sculpture studio in Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts, the only one in Montreal to offer complete programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

For German-born Erwin Regler, this made Montreal more attractive than New York as a place to teach. “Montreal is one of North America’s most exciting cities,” he says, “a place where it is not only pleasant to live, but a very influential knowledge centre with four prestigious universities. And Concordia’s reputation around the world is excellent. I could not pass up this opportunity.”

For Regler, Concordia offers precious assets: excellent quality of teaching, competitive research with the means to innovate, an open and dynamic environment which fosters diversity and multidisciplinarity. He teaches both sculpture and design. Beyond the sheer beauty of his complex metal sculptures, he has developed new ways of working with metal through digital software and rapid prototyping that have potential industrial applications. “I’m quite certain that the applications my students and I have developed could be of interest to the film, nanotechnology and aerospace industries,” he says, as he continues to link metallurgy and art every day.