Our first WriteON residency in partnership with the Calgary Public Library explores the role of public infrastructure at a neighbourhood scale. What is the relationship between the public realm and the community?
Join our resident writers, Nowshin Matin and Linus Tan, in conversation to share their research process. From afar, they explored the Hounsfield Heights Briar Hill neighbourhood. What development transitions are anticipated? What's the role of public transit? What have we learned from a pandemic that underline connections through a virtual space? What's behind a conscious decision to go to a library? What untold history can possibly be revealed?
These are big questions, and there were many more that the writers explored when learning about the Louise Riley Community Library. Join us to hear from them what they became intrigued by...
Nowshin Matin: Growing up adjacent to a River, water life and man’s relationship with it always intrigued me. Embarking on tertiary education, Architecture has allowed me to explore the lives of various people and their relationships with the natural and built environment. Through my journeys I have come to understand – Architecture is not just about design, but people in design. Since then, my research and interests have pivoted around communities, namely their social construct and relationship with the natural environment, also, how our regional practice philosophies must evolve to be relevant in this spectrum.
Linus Tan is a researcher and team developer at Design Factory Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on architectural and design teams’ learning and reflecting behaviours to enable team members to use their tacit knowledge in their collective design processes. His broader interest is on understanding and influencing human behaviours in architectural environments. He can be contacted on his website, www.linustan.com.
Tawab Hlimi (moderator) is Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape at the University of Calgary. His design, research, and teaching overlap in the fields of ecology, infrastructure, and urbanism. Tawab has held academic positions at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as Visiting Designer in Residence and as Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pennsylvania State University where he taught design studios on ecological infrastructure, and laboratories on landscape visualization and design communication. Prior to academia, Tawab practiced professionally in the design offices of Janet Rosenberg & Studio in Toronto, Hapa Collaborative in Vancouver, and Hargreaves Associates in San Francisco.
A special thanks to Calgary Arts Development for making possible the WriteON 2021 program and our first critic-in-residence program. We'd also like to thank our partner the Calgary Public Library for, well...everything they put into making this residency a deep learning experience.