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Montréal (DesignCities)

May 8–13 2011, Montréal, CANADA

DesignCity (Montréal) is an expedition exploring a landscape that flags itself as developed and designed.

In 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada was designated by UNESCO as the first and only North American City Of Design. From the cultural legacy of Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympics, to numerous examples of contemporary creative work including art, fashion, performing arts and architecture, Montréal is clearly a creative hotspot. Its languages, its prejudices, its line-ups, la mode: all of these elements inform Montréal’s global disposition and local temperament. So, are design qualities somehow inherent in Montréal’s topographies, its citizens, its outputs? What makes a “City of Design” more relevant or significant than any other similarly vaunted location? Are these qualities designed by designers or do they evolve out of the way people use the city? Can we identify the characteristics of the dialog between the city and its users? (Can we emphasize the dialog by adding something or taking something away?)

The notion that design practice, and the presence of designers, can alter the trajectory of a city for the better is an assumption that beseeches exploration and testing. Meeting Montréal’s flora and fauna—getting used to its habits and communicating with its inhabitants will be the core of DesignInquiry-slash-Montréal. We are there as designers, exploring this design town.

DesignInquiry: DesignCity (Montréal) participants will explore the Ville de Montréal for five nights and six days, sleep in dorms that are still partly occupied by a nunnery, and live, work and cook together all across the city. DesignCity (Montréal) findings will be published in the DesignInquiry journal and exhibited at Design Montréal’s Portes Ouvertes—a high profile series of events opening June 3.

Montreal Catalogue
By: DesignInquiry
Overview: The Structural Model of the Graphic City: Recursive Exegesis: “The Graphic-Code[1] and the Metro-Polis” from Wikipedia’s entry of Freud’s “The Ego and the Id [2]
By: Joshua Singer
Not-The-Schedule
By: DesignInquiry
Residual Works
By: DesignInquiry
http://timvyner.blogspot.com/2011/05/designinquiry-montreal.html http://www.design21sdn.com/organizations/196/posts/17446
Souvenirs of Montréal
By: DesignInquiry
Faster/Higher/Stronger(Citius/Altius/Fortius)
By: Tim Vyner
Design and Multi-modal Urban Transportation
By: Jennifer Nichols
Root Maps: Spatial Stories in the City of Design
By: Alice Jarry, He Li, Jennifer Nichols, Joshua Singer
Instructions for the Design of a City
By: J. Cavelli
Olyp/osition 2025
By: Stuart Henley
Seven Photographs of Expo
By: Anne Galperin
Ad hoc Co-design: The Micro-Foodscape
By: Josh Davidson
One week in May 2011
By: Karina Cutler-Lake
Shadow Spaces in a Design City
By: Bobby Campbell
DesignCities: Montréal
By: DesignInquiry
DesignInquiry / DesignCity: Montréal May 8-13 2011, Montréal, Canada DesignCity (Montréal) is an expedition exploring a landscape that flags itself as developed and designed. In 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada was designated by UNESCO as the first and only North American City Of Design. From the cultural legacy of Expo 67 and the 1976 Olympics, to […]
More than Human
By: Cecelia Chen
je me souviens
By: DesignInquiry
DESIGN CITY 2011
By: DesignInquiry
Cities of Myth, Nostalgia and the End: Visions of Urbanity
By: Bobby Campbell
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