Category: Blog

The 2018/19 academic year was busy for the DESIS Lab at Emily Carr. This year also saw the creation of the DESIS Radical Sustainability Award. This award honours a student project that best demonstrates how design can “activate, sustain, and orient processes of social change toward sustainability” (Jégou & Manzini 2008).

This year’s winner is Kelsey McDonald and her project Afford–ability. In her own words: “Afford-ability is a campaign that is designed to inspire, educate, inform, and activate Vancouverites and other North American’s to come together against the commodification of social movements for capital gain and the unfair judgment of those who have effectively been “priced-out” of sustainable and ethical living due to systemic barriers.”

Kelsey’s project is a great example of how designers are tackling engrained social behaviours and attitudes, while also looking at the structures within a society that supports their continuity.

“Many current social movements are compelling, but the imposition of ethical and moral standards can be classist and polarizing. Often, these movements can reinforce the idea that those who cannot access or afford to live according to socially-determined sustainable behaviors do not deserve to be considered “good” people—despite their ethical and moral values. But why?”

Afford-ability poses the question“how can we be environmentally sustainable and ethical without the economic means to do so?”

You can read more about the project and the Afford-ability manifesto here: https://www.afford-ability.com and on Kelsey’s website: https://www.kelsdanielle.com

The Unmaking workshop engages students in the unmaking of technology by taking it apart to its simplest form. Objects and tools are provided with one goal: To deconstruct, disassemble and or reduce the object as far as the tools will take you. This workshop takes a constructivist approach in which learners, when facilitated in a group setting connects and overlaps with several conceptual frameworks that relate to how we learn and absorb information.
The research goal of this workshop is exploratory and experiential, a component of learning in this context that Stephen Sterling argues for as essential for sustainable education (Sterling, 2001, p. 38). A diversity of experiences and, exterior and interior cognitive influences, help shape our understandings of the world and the skills we acquire.

This workshop provides an opportunity for students to actively engage in an activity that might universally relevant to their future learning (designed consumer based technologies and products) but also facilitates an exploration of the insides of these objects and provide and opportunity to question its purpose, construction and philosophical place in the world. The learning that happens within this workshop is emergent and it is this collaborative act of unmaking that can be understood as a “community of practice” that require an active and critical engagement with the process.

Furthermore through this workshop this contextual collaborative exercise, a value based practise might be initiated by having a active discussion with each other in relation to sustainability, materiality, purpose and disposal before even engaging in the act of design. This inquiry based hands-on material practice sparks curiosity  and curiosity as a vehicle for learning leads to discovery.

Students are engaged with ideas that support the realities of undoing what has been done and this work might enable them to better understand and situate themselves within the problem space relative to the ecological issues associated with these artifacts. This process might then reveal the role design might need to play in that process and how they might see themselves in that potential future and and, they may become empowered and they may now situate themselves, may know their capacity relative to the ecological issues associated with these artifacts.

Nestled between the ocean and the mountains on Canada’s west coast, beautiful Vancouver sits on the meeting point of two tectonic plates, which means we face a one in five chance of experiencing a serious crustal or megathrust earthquake in the next 50 years (Wagstaffe, 2016).

Our team of five set out to explore themes of resilience, natural disaster preparedness, and community building. We defined resilience as a population’s ability to develop regenerative solutions to challenges, being both structurally adaptable and socially responsive (Nirupama, Popper & Quirke, 2015). Through the DESIS community we hosted a Resilience walk. This earthquake (workshop) would take place outdoors, rain or shine. During the walk, we came together to share stories as we walked along the liquefaction zone of Surrounding neighbourhood of Emily Carr. We discussed the potential shocks that Vancouver could experience and had participants question what our real survival tools will be post natural disaster.

Each place that we visited along our walk held significance to us as members of the Emily Carr University Community. As we discussed the implications of each space, we framed the conversation it in two different scenarios: the present and the future.

We also set up a secret location check point at our neighbourhood Disaster Support Hub, one of 25 community centres designated by the City of Vancouver be the site of information and resource-sharing during an emergency. Here, participants engaged with maps of Disaster Support Hubs in their own neighbourhood and outlined the people they would want to contact if there was an emergency.

Participants composed messages to friends, family and neighbours that explained their newly developed plan and outlined where they could be found if an earthquake did shake the coast. They asked their friends and family to respond with their own plan and forward the conversation onto others. This simple message helped us to better understand people’s perceptions of emergencies and what preparation means to them. Through DESIS, we were able to start a dialogue about the diverse definition of resilience. These responses are meant to help facilitate the next steps in our project.

Follow up: This design process has led to the design of NeighbourHubs, a disaster backup system that provides essential resources like drinking water, light, power, and radio communications in green spaces across the city. This central organizing unit could inspire residents to collect rainwater and monitor water levels, peddle on the bikes for exercise while generating localized power, interact with neighbours, and form disaster plans with others. The NeighbourHub is a model for how to facilitate conversations around social connections, civic engagement, and preparedness for citizens to overcome diverse threats such as social isolation, climate change, drought, and earthquakes, that affect us today and tomorrow.

Emily Carr DESIS lab at the 2016 Triennale

The Emily Carr DESIS Lab is bringing action and connection to the 2016 Triennale in Milano. Through a series of facilitated activities and events, we will research the physicality of collaborative making as a method for creating new social relationships.

Featured as part of Emily Carr University’s Liminal Lab popup studio and exhibition, the Emily Carr DESIS lab will offer serial collective actions that investigate how making common things (books. hats. poems. bread. ropes. clothes pegs. pizza. . .) together fosters meaningful ties. Participants will actively make artifacts in collaboration in order to draw out embodied knowledge in our hands, feet, shoulders, and elbows. Does this foster new social relationships? Allow us to generate new value laden collectives?

All projects will be documented physically through the immediate means of polaroid photography and posted regularly at the Liminal Labs exhibit.

This widely attended meeting brought forward a discussion about a number of questions. Students wished to know how they could initiate DESIS projects. Students also brought up questions about experiments in new ways of living that they were conducting in their own lives; how could this be formalized as DESIS research? Faculty raised questions about societal change related to policy: how does DESIS embrace policy work? Eminent Professor Emeritus from the U of A, Jorge Frascara reminded those present to look for projects and initiatives that are small scale, local, and attainable; success builds positive momentum and energy for DESIS work.

Ezio Manzini spoke by Skype to a large audience of faculty and students at Emily Carr on February 03, 2016. His informative talk highlighted key qualities of DESIS projects. Special thanks to Thanks to Guille Noel and her “Design for Social Change Studio” course for initiating this talk.

This lecture by Louise St. Pierre, introduced Carleton University faculty and graduating students to the intentions and philosophy behind DESIS.

Louise St. Pierre gave an overview presentation of cloTHING(s) as Conversation, and Who is Social?.