Foundation studies courses (Year 1)

The Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba will be offering the following online distant education 1000 level Environmental Design courses during 2023 Summer Term.

If you have any questions about these courses or the Environmental Design Program please email env.design@umanitoba.ca

Interdisciplinary courses

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  • A Space for Gathering \ Design & Build

    Instructors: Shawn Bailey, Jillian Seniuk Cicek

    EVDS 3710 T17 & ENG 4100
    Class Time: Monday & Thursday
    9:00 am – 5:00 pm (May 8 to June 8)
    Build Week 1: CAST, University of Manitoba
    Monday, June 12 to Friday, June 16
    Build Week 2: Longbow Lake, Ontario
    Monday, June 19 to Friday, June 23
    3 credit hours

A Space for Gathering \ Design & Build

This course offers architecture and engineering students, Elders, and Knowledge Keepers a unique opportunity to collaborate in a design and build studio in a Poetic Act on the Land. This summer design and build studio will be held on the Fort Garry campus and in a woodland near Longbow Lake, Ontario. Through this cross-disciplinary initiative, participants will engage with Indigenous knowledges and perspectives, incorporating them into the design process to create a shelter for gathering, feasting, and ceremony.
This course aims to expand upon modern notions of sustainability by incorporating holistic approaches to design. Engaging in this practice will help students broaden their worldviews and develop a more profound comprehension of Indigenous design principles and values, enabling them to integrate these understandings and principles into their future engineering and architectural endeavours.

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  • Remapping & Rewriting Public Space: Decolonizing Winnipeg’s Landscape Through Storied Design

    Instructor: Honoure Black

    EVDS 3710 T69 & ARCG 7070 T34
    Thursday | 6:00 pm - 8:45 pm
    July 3 - August 11
    3 credit hours

Remapping & Rewriting Public Space: Decolonizing Winnipeg’s Landscape Through Storied Design

This course will investigate contemporary decolonial placemaking in Winnipeg, Treaty One. Decolonial public space is often defined as reimagined spaces and places that seek to diversify or counter the settler colonial gaze. In addition, I like to think of decolonial placemaking as an opportunity to rewrite or re-map the landscape through interdisciplinary design initiatives and storytelling. During the course I will ask: how can we, as an interdisciplinary group of students, work together to unsettle the future of our spaces and places? How does the interdisciplinary nature of public design work to benefit a place? What would you like to see incorporated into a public space in our city?
 
Topics and themes covered in this course relate to specific sites concerning reconciliation, Indigenous resurgence, Queerness, Black Lives Matter activism, BIPOC initiatives, and spaces created for the differently abled. As a class we will explore the following sites: The Forks, The Rapid Transit Line (blue line), This Place (Air Canada Park), Assiniboine Park, and certain locations in North Point Douglas. Students will embark on a number of field trips and hear from a variety of volunteer guest speakers who have worked to decolonize public space and placemaking in their field. These will include, but are not limited to planners, architects, landscape architects, designers, artists, profit and non-for-profit collaborators and funders (such as the Winnipeg Arts Council, The Winnipeg Foundation, and the Forks.) Each of these participants have worked to counter whiteness, heteropatriarchy, and settler colonialism (to name a few).
 
This course will provide students an opportunity to engage and analyze site-specific locations in our city, hear from active collaborators, and participate in weekly reading seminar discussions regarding the most up-to-date publications and design initiatives. In the second half of the course students will apply the knowledge gained from their readings, seminar discussions, guest lectures and field trips to create their own decolonial site design. Each student or group of students will be assigned a particular site and their work will be exhibited in a curated summer show for the Architecture 2 gallery.

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  • Mindful and Contemplative Approaches to Design Thinking

    Instructor: Kurt Esperson-Peters

    EVDS 3710 D01
    Distant and Online Education
    3 credit hours

Mindful and Contemplative Approaches to Design Thinking

This design seminar course is an exploration of applying critical mindful thinking and contemplative strategies to design thinking and practice. Through a series of reflective design assignments and lectures, students learn how to integrate mindful and contemplative learning strategies into design praxis. By focusing on critical first-person discourse, students are taught the positive aspects of individual self-care while employing mindful, contemplative, and critical approaches in the understanding and resolution of design challenges.

Body| Crafting Digital Literacy

This course explores the theory and practice of making via physical/digital modes of modelling, prototyping and crafting material assemblages.
Products, furniture, architectural elements, land formations and ecological systems rely upon effective modes of messaging to ensure their evolving bodies communicate in reciprocity with other material beings. Literacy plays a large role in the ability of one to communicate effectively. This course unveils a root language that assists in bridging the perceptional divide between physical and digital modes of formalizing material bodies.
 
By engaging with local systems of material fabrication, students will work towards developing a final prototype that communicates a physical understanding of material flows and a digital expression of fabrication techniques, based on human-body relations.
Action will be taken through; field studies, studio visits, workshops and seminars on prototyping, modeling and assembly sequencing, to guide the course structure.

This course is open to graduate students in Architecture, Interior Design, Landscape Architecture, City Planning, and ED 4 students as space allows, and with instructor approval; enrollment limited to 14 students; No Pre-Requisites required. It is also offered to students in the School of Fine Arts as well as the Faculty of Engineering, with Instructor approval.

Experimental Farming Design

The interdisciplinary course will focus on the challenges of food security in Indigenous communities across Northern Manitoba. The work will expand on the ongoing and exciting research of Qiang Zhang. While the 2022 course explored a potential high-tech solution to the challenges of growing and harvesting fruits and vegetables in Indigenous communities across Northern Manitoba, the 2023 course will explore a potential low-tech solution which is more connected to nature. Students will have the opportunity to visit off-campus field stations to learn about the relationship between farming practices & infrastructure and planning & design. Students will have the opportunity to research and design deep winter greenhouses for cultivating produce, gaining valuable knowledge and experience in a collaborative learning environment. Some of the topics will include cold climate farming, indoor climate control, building envelope, modular design, placemaking, and more. The short-term goal is to research the challenges of year-round food production and distribution in remote areas and offer potential sustainable solutions. Students will propose design concepts including site, interior, and exterior environments, and produce technical drawings, models, and small-scale prototypes to address the research initiatives.
The long-term goal is to submit the body of work for funding, and possibly realize the concept in the following year(s). The students and instructors in the Faculty of Architecture, the Faculty of Engineering, and the Faculty of Agricultural & Food Sciences will provide unique perspectives and specialized skills, which will enhance the learning objectives and outcomes of the interdisciplinary course, research, and project.

OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES:
• To learn the effects of climate and sustainability on supply and demand.
• To understand the logistics of fresh food production and distribution in Indigenous northern communities.
• To learn new interdisciplinary skills through collaboration.
• To study traditional and contemporary farming.
• To investigate the spatial, experiential, and technical requirements of a comprehensive project.

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  • The Use Of Native Plantings In Major Urban Developments

    Instructor: Chris Penner

    LARC 7020 Field Studies (prerequisite for ARCG 7102)
    M,TU,W,TH,F | 9am to 3pm
    May 1st –May 9th
    3 credit hours

     

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  • Regenerative Landscapes | 22nd Century Communities

    Instructor: Emeka Nnadi

    ARCG 7102 Summer Topic Studio

    M,TU,W,TH,F | 9am to 4pm
    May 10th – June 9th
    6 credit hours

    Prerequisite: LARC 7020