Design as critical inquiry: Claude Cormier

Past lectures

October 10, 2013 at 5:45 p.m., EV 6.720
ALBENA YANEVA
Mapping Controversies: How can we conceptualize architectural objects and practices without falling into the divides  architecture/society, nature/culture, materiality/meaning? How can we prevent these abstractions from continuing to blind architectural theory? Mapping Controversies is a research method and teaching philosophy that allows divides to be crossed. It offers a new methodology for following debates surrounding contested urban knowledge.
[co-sponsored by L.E.A.P (Laboratoire d'étude de l'architecture potentielle), Université de Montréal]

October 30, 2013 at 5:45 p.m., EV 6.720
GRACE MCQUILTEN
Mis-Design: Questioning the aesthetic collusion of 'art' and 'design' is a means by which to investigate the possibilities of critical artistic practices in a planned and commercially conceptualised cultural landscape... Particular artistic interactions with design reactivate the critical practice of art in a more direct engagement with capital through what I will term 'mis-design.'
[in collaboration with the Department of Art History, Concordia University]

November 14, 2014 at 4 p.m., EV 6.720
FIONA RABY
Speculative Everything: Design is a means of speculating about how things could be - to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose "what if" questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want).
[co-sponsored by Hexagram Distinguished Speaker Series]

January 23, 2014 at 4 p.m., Paul Demarais Theatre, Canadian Centre for Architecture (1920 Baile Street)
AVRAM FINKELSTEIN
As the sole member of both collectives, he will drill deeper into the AIDS activist art cannon from an insider's perspective and compare and contrast some of the strategies and practices of the Silence=Death collective and Gran Fury, and also touch on other queer collectives working at that time as an entry point into a consideration of various strategies for a queer collectivity. He will focus on AIDS, but would like to contextualize it in terms of cultural production in political crises in general.

RAINER ERICH SCHEICHELBAUER
We are at the dawn of a new golden era in typeface design. Since the invention of typography more than four hundred years ago, typographic knowledge and technology have never been as accessible as in the last decade. Type design is more flourishing than ever, technically sound, highly legible, its forms freed of technological constraints and obsolete dogma. Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer will demonstrate what nowadays typefaces can do and why designers should finally let go of Helvetica.

March 26, 2014 at 5:45 p.m., EV 6-720
FABIENNE MÜNCH
Innovation comes from a variety of sources, including both insiders and outsiders of an organization. Tapping into these requires a relentless design-driven process, a large network of unconventional external actors and the willingness to encourage, from the inside, a constant inquiry over the "usual way of doing things". Too often, the importance to flow and grow provocative thinking within an organizational culture is underestimated and underplayed. Hear how a design-driven company like Herman Miller has been able over the past sixty years to successfully foster a culture of critical inquiry leading to innovative thinking, bringing together the right people, the right process and come up with unrivaled foresights.