How can the design disciplines and their allied practices become more attuned to land? Propositions: Designing through Land brings together nine researchers who are embarking on an eighteen-month collective research project, In the Hurricane, On the Land, with funding from the Mellon Foundation and convened by the CCA, to chart land dependent-design as a mode of collective action that can address the current material manifestations of the climate crisis; Indigenous land revitalization; and adjacent concerns related to crafting methods to document and engage with land-driven sites, histories, and communities. Through these lines of research and questioning, the nine researchers will probe and redraw the social and professional boundaries of architecture and landscape architecture to advance a shared method for navigating the aftermaths of un/natural disasters.

This event will bring together the nine researchers who will each offer a short proposition that addresses questions of moving through, living with, and experiencing land to deepen design practices. The series of propositions will build a portrait of the scope, concerns, lands, and peoples the project will engage with over the coming months. Brennan McCracken (Concordia, Graduate Program in English), Priscilla Jolly (Concordia, Graduate Program in English), and Sarah Yems (Concordia, Graduate Program in Social and Cultural Analysis) will share brief, questioning responses to the propositions.

This event is free and open to the public.

Milieux Institute, Speculative Life Research Room
Concordia University
1515 Sainte-Catherine West
EV-10.625

Sam Carter-Shamai is chair of the Neighborhood Land Trust and the 2024–2025 Early Career Canadian Urban Leader at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities.

Jingru (Cyan) Cheng (Harvard GSD Wheelwright Prize Fellow) and Chen Zhan (ARB architect, anthropologist, independent filmmaker) are a duo based in the United Kingdom and China, working at the intersection of architecture, anthropology, and filmmaking.

Tania Gutiérrez-Monroy is an Assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

Martyna Miller is an interdisciplinary artist, anthropologist and co-founder of the DOMIE project in Poznań, Poland.

Neady Oduor is a Kenyan architect, designer, feminist, researcher, and an organizer with the Women’s Collective Kenya.

Erin Putalik is an Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture and Architecture at University of Virginia, School of Architecture.

Tiffany Shaw is a Métis architect (Reimagine Architects), artist, curator and Principal of Reimagine Gathering in Edmonton.

Masamichi Tamura is a doctoral student in Architecture at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.