designswarm thoughts

Design hides in academia as well in Montreal and it seems it’s also doomed to be under-represented there as well.

It was my great pleasure to have a chat TODAY with Katia-Luce Mayer, responsible for the management of theMatériauthèque of the Faculty of Environmental design of the University of Montreal since 1998. An initial idea of Michel Gariépy and Colin Davidon, 2 former teachers at the Faculty, Katia was brought in to shape what has become a one of it’s kind collection of material samples and catalogues for every discipline of design in academia.

The Matériauthèque was meant to become a centre of reference that would enable students from all design departments (there are 5 in the building alone, or more than 1000 students) to have access and consult up-to-date materials information that would make their research and projects more accurate and close to what is available on the market.

In the past 8 years she has managed to grow the collection from 50 mostly out-of-date samples (one of them fated back to 1982) to an impressive yearly-updated collection of 3 to 4 000 material samples (something that could rival the elite and expensive Material Connexion from all over canada and the US as well as 500 catalogues for the companies that cannot deliver samples. European samples are rare as companies very rarely make samples available but it sometimes happens. Katia once received, to her great delight, some samples from Austria.

Well lit and airy, with a view on Cote-Ste-Catherine, this lovely space also serves as a display for some of the industrial design student projects and you can easily spend and afternoon flipping through samples in drawers and have a look at some of the chairs designed by 1st year students. Students and professionals from all over the world have visited the library throughout the years and talked to Katia about extending this model abroad. The library was also mentioned in an italian design magazine. No other university in Montreal offers a materials library of this size.

Due to budget ronstraints however, Katia’s position has been removed and the library’s “raison d’etre” is being discussed internally. The sample loans, I’m told, will be self-regulated by the students but will no longer be updated. A shame.

So if I were you, I’d hurry up and go and see this before all the samples get forgotten on student desks…

• A Reporter at Large: The Interpreter: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  A fantastic article on the fights in academia around the origins of languages and the test to Chomsky’s theory of “universal grammar”
  (tags: language society)

• Why naked isn’t nude | Reviews | Visual Arts | Arts | Telegraph
  Great photography exhibition in Edinburgh
  (tags: exhibition photography)

A molecular biologist, at the RCA Design Interactions show:

“What’s all this “science” crap?”

• Adobe - Design Center : On the ground running: Lessons from experience design
  Adam Greenfield does service design.
  (tags: design service)

• Scenes from a roboted Life
  forgets to mention that the decrease in social workers is tied with Japan’s refusal to open immigration policies for the thousands of healthcare workers in south east asia. They’d rather develop robots.
  (tags: product design society)
• bright LED competition: designboom + gwangju biennale foundation, korea
  Might submit the good night lamp to this.
  (tags: product design competition LEDs)

I’m a terrible geek. I don’t buy my own stuff. My ibook came with my grad program. My camera is a loan from Matt who also gave me my iShuffle as a gift (which I have forgotten in the washer twice so far). My phone is a gift from my best friend who bought it in the UK back in 2001.

So when the iPhone will come out and millions will start carrying them around and showing off, chances are, i’m not going to get one. However, i’m ready for this conversation already:

Someone, somewhere in 2010 - Wow, you don’t have an iPhone!
Me - Nah, it’s too heavy.

Found on a creative job posting site in the UK:

“One of the world’s fastest growing global brands, based in Helsinki, Finland”

I wonder who it could possibly be. :P

Garrick Jones brought to my attention that the Bluebook project by Manolis Kelaidis, (a project I had spotted at last year’s RCA show) got the only known standing ovation at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change. Well done! It’s about time these folks started to expand their thinking beyond the screen.

There’s the usual “However, it looks like that mass-production could take some time so the next stage is likely to be a short-run, specific-application implementation of the technology” but maybe that’s a good project for Tinker.it.

I met Boris Anthony very briefly at Xtech in Paris last month and was thrilled to learn that he lived and worked in Montreal. Aged 32, he’s a self-defined “Web technology and design specialist, hyper-connector”.

On top of that, he was also in part responsible for organising Montreal’s very own Pecha Kucha. I thought he would be the perfect candidate for the “Looking for design” project and asked him a few questions about his views of the world of design in Montreal.

How long have you been working professionally in the world of design in Montreal?
11 years (all on my own, except for a 3 year corporate position in Laval. You need to experience hell in order to avoid it ;)

If you’ve worked a lot abroad, what triggered that decision (versus staying in Montreal)?
Variety, different perspectives from different cultures, travel, more activity

Is design well understood in Montreal?
The overwhelming sense I get here is that design is pigeonholed as Graphic/Multimedia/Web Design, Interior Design/Urbanism/Architecture and Product Design. These are all applications of design, and are all certainly worthy of recognition, but the underlying raison d’être, the soul of design appears to me sort of lost. Isn’t design solving a problem or finding a solution? Why do we concentrate purely on design for immediate, established commercial exploitation? Where is the forward thinking development of ways to live in and with the future? Which is here now, as you know.

What keywords come to mind when you think about design in Montreal?
“Can you do my website/party flyer/kitchen?!?!”

What is missing from the Montreal design scene?
Perspective and vision. We all need to stop, take a step back, look around, listen and learn.
Part of that is also, I think there is a lack of broader awareness. I am constantly shocked to find people are totally ignorant of what others around them are doing, especially across fields.

What would you say is the hardest thing about working in design in Montreal?
Getting out of Montreal. This place is just so comfortable and laid back, it can all too easily soften one’s ambitions and drive.

What would you say is the best thing about working in design in Montreal?
See above. ;)

Where do the opportunities lie for the future of design in Montreal?
“Asia. It changes everything.”

If you had the choice to work somewhere else where would it be?
Tokyo, Shanghai, Bangkok.

• Motorola closes design center (including a design centre in Montreal)
  Not surprising. I worked on a project with Motorola who promised us a trip to their research centre in Boston in exchange for the free ideas. This fell through the day of the trip. With people skills like that,who needs enemies?
  (tags: research mobile technology Montreal)

If you’re a geek, every morning starts off with checking your emails which often include invitations. “So&So” has added you toTwitter, Facebook, Dopplr, Flickr yadi yadi ya…

What happens then? Let’s say it’s someone you’ve never met. What do you do?

So you Google them of course. You find out they are an interesting person you might actually connect with on a professional level if you’re lucky enough. But wait, why didn’t they introduce themselves first? What’s their interest in you? Why do they want to know about your trips/rants/photos? How did they hear about you in the first place? Could I write to them back asking them for a bit of background info? Are they just bored or do they like my work/ or me? Have we met and i can’t remember? More importantly, if this is someone who might be interesting professionally, do I really want to share my rants/photos/trips with them? Isn’t that like.. for friends? What comes before the “accept” button?

Argh… stuck…

So you either just accept and hope they will like you for who you are/where you travel to/ what pictures you take/how badly you want that cupcake… or you ignore the invitation and just hope you can bump into them in the future, and have a proper conversation about your respective professional backgrounds…

Argh again.

Ok so we all agree that the planet is in trouble right? Regardless of whether that’s our fault or the neighbors right? Right.

So why on earth have we decided to allow for one of the most polluting industry to take off and become commercially available? Are we that suicidal?

So let’s have a look at the possible sources of pollution of a space shuttle, just for shits and giggles…

1. Energy consumed in the launch (from Madsci Network):

“Space shuttle fuel consumed in a launch: 3.5 million pounds
Gasoline consumed in one day in the US - 2,500 million pounds
In other words, one space shuttle launch is equivalent to about two minutes
of gasoline consumption in the United States.”

2. Hydrochloric acid production (from BBC):

“All shuttle launches can nonetheless have damaging impacts on the local environment. […] “The classic example of environmental impact is in Kazakhstan at the Baikonur launch site, where there are reports of quite serious environmental damage.”

For most shuttles, the damage comes from the solid rocket boosters[…]
As a shuttle launches, a “cloud” becomes visible which contains SRB exhaust products, either dissolved or as particles in the water vapour released by the main engines.

Hydrochloric acid formed in this launch cloud leads to acidic deposits in the surrounding area, a phenomenon which may also be observed some distance away if exhausts are carried on prevailing winds.

The scenes of dead fish in Spain could be repeated next to launch sites
John Pike, president of Global Security.org, and an expert on the US space programme says: “The hydrochloric acid can pit the paint on your car if it is too close to the launch site.”

3. Everything else (from a 1997 report on General space tourism):

“A myriad of legal and regulatory aspects of public space travel and tourism must be resolved before viable large scale businesses can emerge. This is especially true of those public agencies with the responsibility to regulate in the interest of public safety. This includes identification of public policies and/or laws that exist or must be enacted to enable business formation, licensing, certification and approval processes for both passengers and vehicles, clearance and over-flight considerations, and environmental and safety issues including atmospheric pollution, solar radiation (flares) and orbital debris.”

I certainly hope that these issues have been dealt with because the “design coating” that’s happening around this industry these days is making me sick.

When everyone does happy-go-lucky-let’s-just-pretend-everything-is-fine Alejandro Zamudio Sanchez tells it like it is.

via Flickr