2025 Summer courses

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 related 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, certain locations in North Point Douglas. Students will embark on a number of field trips and hear from a variety of 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).

Interior Design in Context offers an in-depth exploration of professional interior design, bridging academic learning with real-world application. Taught by a Professional Interior Designer, this course allows students to work on the early phases of a live project. Students will  gain hands-on experience with client meetings, programming, teamwork, budgeting, and professional documentation.

Course activities will include lectures, discussions, case studies, and practical exercises aimed at refining skills in:

• Client meetings, communication and contract documentation
• Space planning and design development
• Selection and specification of furnishings, materials, and finishes
• Functional, ergonomic, and sustainable design decision-making
• Understanding the designer’s role in promoting human well-being

By the end of the course, students will  build confidence in their professional design abilities while deepening the appreciation for public service and lifelong learning in the field.

The course situates the Architecture 2 Gallery as a laboratory to collect, assemble and broadcast ideas on design and planning. Beyond the traditional role of a ‘curator’, students will conceptualize and build an exhibit on furniture/object design coming from makers at the local artist-run studio ‘90 Annabella’, set to take place in A2G in fall 2025. Students take on the multipronged role of researcher, editor, designer, curator and preparator, using the gallery space as a site for critical thinking and hands-on production in spatial storytelling.

The mode of operation is a mix between inputs, field trips and workshop sessions. In the first four weeks, students will take over the gallery to compose their research, weaving in field trips and guided tours at 90 Annabella, Centre for Cultural and Artistic Practices, Armand Lemiez Sculpture Garden, Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Living Prairie Museum, in addition to in-class inputs on exhibition-making and decolonizing the gallery space. The course concludes with a week-long workshop to build unique display infrastructure supported by Shaylyn Plett, an artist / woodworker from 90 Annabella and technician at the FAUM workshop.

This intensive design-build furniture course offers students hands-on experience in designing, developing and building a functional upholstered accent chair, through a partnership with a local furniture manufacturer Palliser/EQ3.

This course focuses on the creation of two-dimensional architectural working drawings in a set of construction documents through the use of advanced features in CAD. Students will learn the concepts of formatting units, text, dimensions, multi-leaders, and layouts, using both non-annotative and annotative scaling techniques. How to use CAD software in a three-dimensional environment to create realistic shapes is also included. May not be held with EVIE 3670.

Focus on the concepts of building information modeling (BIM), parametric design, analysis, and construction documentation using current software. Demonstrates effect of this type of software on presentation and construction documentation through the use of intelligent building components and interdependent views of the building model, including acquisition of statistical and other quantitative information.

PR/CR: A minimum grade of C is required unless otherwise indicated.

Pre- or corequisite: EVIE 4008 or consent of instructor.