Media and government in design (Day 1 of looking)

As I walked back from breakfast at Café Eldorado, (I could have sworn there was another nice breakfast place on Mont-Royal), I walked past Le Point-Vert on St-Laurent and figured I would start my search for everything design in Montreal by buying Design Lines a so called “Ultimate guide to design in the city”.

It was fascinated to see that by design, of course what they meant was (and this is on the front cover so i’m not exaggerating here) shops, bars, restaurants, galleries and architecture. Notice anything? They are talking about places, showrooms, not actual projects or content. I was curious as to why that was. Isn’t there anything interesting going on here?

Most of what I found were either buildings (more architecture, and let’s be clear I love that field, but is that all we have?) or, lots of furniture manufacturers / stores, shops that sell other people’s stuff (mostly italian design of course). Once in a while you’d notice “more recently, he’s opened his first office in London”, or “he now lives between New York and London”. Then all throughout the different articles, there would be a constant mention of international designers whose work would be on display: “from the five continents”.

The only highlight of this booklet was a slim 5 page article on “My space”, local designers describing their favorite spots in town. At last, local stuff! Who were they?

1. Stéphanie Cardinal of Huma design+architecture
2. Anouk Pennel & Raphael Daudelin for Studio Feed
3. Gilles Saucier for Saucier & Perrotte, architects
4. Erratum designers Frédéric Galliot & Vincent Hauspy (2 former classmates hurrah!)
5. Axel Morgenthaler , lighting designer ( a former guest for one of my undergrad thesis presentations)

So some of them were architects, some unfindable on Google and some I personally already met. Slim pickings considering how many people graduate from a “design course” each year. Makes you wonder, where do they all end up?

As I wandered back slowly downtown, pondering all of this, I thought I’d drop by the latest Montreal pride: it’s national library. Like Mitterand’s it has it’s problems. This one loses it’s windows apparently…so much for architecture.

Other than that it’s a lovely airy building with a hell of a lot of people wandering in it’s aisles. You’d swear people never heard of the internet ;)
I walked up 2 floors to their arts section to flip through some design books. Imagine my surprise when I realised that there wasn’t a design section! Architecture, Painting, Urban design, etc… no design, theory of design, industrial design, nothing!

I thought that was really a testament to how much has to be done still to educate the public to the value of design as a field, not some sticker you can put on anything and everything that looks pretty or is “hesselig” as the dutch would say.

Indeed a strange task i have chosen for the month.

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By designswarm

Blogging since 2005.