Eighteen Montréal-based designers responded to the call for applications, submitting their respective visions of design as a superpower for addressing the challenges of the climate crisis. Based on the evaluation criteria and with an eye to reflecting the contribution of all design disciplines, the selection committee chose the four applicants who will take part in a public event organized by the Biosphère as part of the Futures Under Construction cycle of public talks. At the event, the four selected designers’ presentations will be introduced by Professor Simon-Matthew Séguin of the UQAM School of Design.
The complete program of the Futures Under Construction series of talks along with links explaining how to participate in person or virtually are available on the Space for Life I Biosphère website.
Vision for understanding: Making the impact of AI tangible
Allan MacDonald, a Montréal-based product and UX/UI designer and facilitator, is interested in the moments when technology no longer merely serves people, but starts to shape them. At the intersection of design and engineering, his journey as a senior UX/UI developer and designer has led him to create speculative tools that explore transparency, autonomy and the unforeseeable consequences of digital systems. He has worked in agency settings, with startups and for public administrations, and was a tutor for a course on user experience at Concordia University. In his work, he seeks to make visible the values that play into design decisions and to question their impact.
Territorial research: Making the living world visible through design, from practice to pedagogy
catherine d’amours is a transdisciplinary designer and a professor at the School of Design at UQAM, within the Social Design and Responsible Practices in Graphic Design and Visual Experiences axis. She is also in charge of the new specialized graduate program in interactive experience design. As a doctoral student, she explores relational design in the face of environmental and social challenges, and the reconciliation of technology and the living. Her practice crosses typography, installation, illustration, and writing, and examines co-presence with the non-human other. Through non-extractive clay gathering, walking, and in-situ sound recording, she makes perceptible sensitive manifestations of the Living. Her work has been presented and recognized both locally and internationally.
Designing for the unknown: Architecture as a process of collective transformation
Melania Grozdanoska and Sébastien Beauregard are the co-founders of the social economy enterprise SURCY, the first consulting firm in Québec to promote and facilitate the reuse of construction materials. SURCY places its team members’ architecture training and skills at the service of the socio-ecological transition. The firm views design as a way of tackling the unknown, developing innovative strategies, experimenting with solutions, learning collectively and transforming practices. That approach manifests itself not only in reuse projects, but also in the co-creation of processes with stakeholders and the development of new services adapted to the diverse challenges faced by its clients in both the public and private sectors.
Inhabiting the living world: Regenerative architecture
Architect and urban designer Manuel R. Cisneros is Director of Environmental and Regenerative Strategies at Sid Lee Architecture. His practice is founded on a regenerative approach that views architecture as a lever for realigning our living environments according to the cycles of climate, water, soil and the living world. Proceeding from the belief that our current crises have as much to do with a paradigm shift as with technical performance, he seeks to contribute to projects that are anchored in their ecological and social context. His work draws on collective intelligence, interdisciplinary collaboration and long-term thinking to envision low-impact, resilient environments that deliver lasting value.
