Call for Proposals: Ecology and Design

The University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Architecture in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada hosts an annual symposium – ATMOSPHERE (ATMOS). Each year the ATMOSPHERE symposium explore issues that are intangible and overlooked in design, planning and architecture, those difficult to pin down, document, or record with conventional instruments and methodologies.

In 2013, ATMOS 5 will focus on Ecology and Design.

How do we teach and practice ecology in design disciplines today? How can we or how do we make ecology relevant in our design practice and scholarship? How and when do issues of ecology challenge our existing modes of scholarship and practice, in design disciplines? What are the emerging opportunities and dilemmas in design practice and pedagogy when dealing with ecology?

As long as design, through perception and production, engages the environment, the issue of ecology is extremely critical to all design disciplines today, in pedagogy and in practice.

An attempt to construct a singular belief and or to establish a coherent design method in relation to ecology would only be a futile effort. Such an attempt may even undermine the organic, dynamic and evolving nature that is imperative in our understandings of ecological phenomena.

It is also true however, due to the fact that everything is related in ecology, that a large number of our design practice and education have lost their rigour and focus when faced with contextualizing the ‘Ecology’ in ‘Design’: ’the challenge of putting the understandings into the context of design teaching and practice. What are the ways that design can play an active and critical role in ecological context?

Many papers have been written and many provocative theories have been (re)constructed around the issues of ecology, stimulating and challenging designers and educators. How are we then putting them into practice, in pedagogy and production? What are the threads of Ecology that are relevant to Design thinking and practice? How can we construct such relevancy through design?

The symposium invites critical thoughts and works from scholars, educators, practitioners and students that reflect the nature of Ecology and Design – their relationship. The forum will chart diverse paths at work to inform and inspire new directions in practice and education of Ecology and Design.

We invite abstracts and proposals related to (not limited to) followings:

• ecology in design pedagogy
• ecology in design practice
• history/theory of design and ecology
• (new) technology/material in design and ecology
• speculative design projects theorizing ecology
• project reflections in ecological context

Please submit proposals of no more than 300 words (excluding references) by November 5th, 2012 (UPDATED). Proposal will be double-blind reviewed.

Proposals and inquiries should be directed to Jae-Sung Chon at [email protected] .

For additional information go to www.atmos.ca

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UPDATE: Deadline for submission is October 15th, 2012 NOT 2013.

UPDATE: The submission deadline has been extended to November 5th, 2012.

RELATED EVENT: ATMOS 5: Ecology and Design