The goal of the third iteration of the call for proposals was to create an annual program of activities to promote and foster appropriation among target audiences of the contents of the Design Montréal Quality Toolkit. This participatory approach aimed to raise awareness of the key notions of the Toolkit and demonstrate the applicability of the tools it contains.
Three of the 15 proposals submitted were selected, resulting in a total of $153,636 in contracts for professional services.
Ohisse – Social design workshop
Name of project: Matière, manière, parole
Description: Matière, manière, parole is a mediation space that invites users to explore the living, relational and intentional dimensions of quality in design. Deployed at four different times during the year, it sets up a dialogue between the Quality Toolkit and a series of contemporary perspectives:
- Living transitions
- Caring for forms
- Shaping connections
- Narrating spaces
Each mediation moment occurs in two stages. The first is the spatial presentation of inspiring projects, practical tools and sensitive or critical thinking that give concrete expression to quality in design as an open field. The second is a conversational experience, bringing together different professional, academic and citizen communities so as to have multiple voices explore the themes in a nuanced manner.
Matière, manière, parole intends to prompt creative ideation around application of the Quality Toolkit while opening up a space for collaboration in which the very notion of quality can be unpacked, explored and recomposed.
Rümker
Name of project: Ça circule! An exhibition on circular design and architecture
Description: This interactive and accessible touring exhibition explores circularity in design and architecture, not as an abstract concept but as a concrete, living and inspiring practice. Designed to travel, adapt and be transformed, the exhibition invites professionals, students and curious visitors to take part in circularity, where every design action becomes a lever for transition.
Through analogue devices, clear content and hands-on tools, Ça circule! aims to give design stakeholders tools to concretely activate circularity in their projects as well as raise professionals’ awareness of the importance of integrating it from the initial conceptual stages. It also seeks to promote a collective vision of circular design, rooted in the realities of Montréal, and document progress within the community through an engaging, participatory process of data collection.
Created from the start using eco-design principles, the exhibition is dismantlable, modular and upgradable. It requires no power source to be installed, travels without leaving a trace and is adaptable to all contexts.
Ça circule! engages with several dimensions of the Quality Vision set out in the Toolkit: resilience, by providing an exhibition system designed to last, evolve and be passed on; environment, by showcasing reuse and reduction of raw materials; economy, by identifying circularity as a lever of sector-based transformation; and culture, by helping to strengthen Montréal’s identity as a sustainable design city.
This approach also embodies the Quality Operation principles:
It mobilizes by creating a space for dialogue and thinking.
It communicates simply, without screens, to better reach visitors.
And it sustains, leaving behind it activatable and reproducible tools.
Architecture Sans Frontières Québec
Name of project: Démocratiser les usages de l’eau à Montréal par le design (Leveraging design thinking to democratize water uses in Montréal)
Description: This project proposes design, prototyping, awareness and dissemination of innovative ideas involving water as a common good, in response to key challenges facing Montréal: homelessness, climate resilience, social inclusion, coexistence, and equitable access to essential resources in public space.
Démocratiser les usages de l’eau. . . is rooted in an inclusive, participatory and intersectoral approach, drawing on four of the Quality Operation strategies in aiming to:
→ Communicate: Promote dialogue by setting up improbable meetings among the community, academic and citizen milieus.
→ Entrust: Co-create sustainable, integrated solutions in an existing context, with participation from emerging planning professionals and local designers.
→ Mobilize: Strengthen social cohesion and the sense of belonging through unifying, interdisciplinary and collective projects.
→ Envision: Stimulate ideations, innovation and quality in design around the multiple spatial planning disciplines (design, architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning) and best practices associated with each.
In all, 15 proposals with a total of $879,454 in requests for financial support were studied.
Proposals by two companies and one organization were selected.
Professional services contracts in the amount of $153,636 were awarded.