Montréal, Canada, 2021-06-30 -  Invited by the UQÀM School of Design to present an intensive 10-day workshop, architect Jean Verville, professor at the School of Architecture at Université Laval, offers a collaborative work gamification laboratory. Exploring the notion of an event as a means of activating a reappropriation of the deserted city, but also of demonstrating the interdependence of individuals and their participatory responsibility, Verville introduces students to a method tracing his professional process, from ideation to realization and to diffusion.

As the professor and his special guests submit themselves to various challenges to activate the production of heuristic tools, the students develop a repertoire of more than 5,000 shapes, collages, models, materials, details, and lexicons, without justification of origin, meaning, or possible interpretations. Brought together in a protean collective repertoire in the service of individual appropriation, this assemblage enables everyone to verify observations, claim intuitions, and provoke fantasies. Collectively, the group determines a simple performative device, quick and economical to manufacture, which will serve as a support for the realization of distinct proposals. Far from assimilating individuality, this collective device invites everyone to develop a choreographic performance contributing to a reflection on the city, its architecture, promenades, and public spaces. Each performance, offered up to the interpretation of the group of students, becomes additional material for exploration and experimentation. From the multitude of images, each student makes their own narrative transposition participating in a constellation of visions testifying to the profusion of perceptions.

DES 7029 — International design: events
This class of the Diploma of Advanced Studies Specialized in Event Design from the University of Quebec at Montreal addresses the project approach through an introduction to the methods of internationally renowned practitioners.

DES 7029 Q UQAM — Students:

Charles-Antoine Beaulieu, Alizée Fontanez, Jade Gueudar-Delahaye, Laurence Lafleur, Théo Lamblin, Manon Le Guernic, Viviane Morin, Megan Morrissette, Marie Porracchia, Antoine Quimper-Giroux, Lucie Raffegeau, Gabrielle Verrette-Paquette, Marie-Astrid Vieux, Aurélia Windrif

Teacher:    

Jean Verville, Ph.D. art, Architect, and Professor School of Architecture of Laval University

Special guests:     

Tania Paula Garza Rico architect
Maxime Brouillet, photographer
Alex Lamontagne, designer
Camille Asselin, M.A. architecture

Samuel Landry, M.A. architecture
France Goneau, artistic advisor

Maylis Persoon, auxiliary

Partner: v2com

About Jean Verville, Ph.D., Architect, and Professor
In parallel with his professorial activities and his professional practice, Jean Verville pursues research and creation process that is part of the questioning of otherness and intersubjectivity that shape the understanding of our environments. His proposals illustrate issues and positions specific to current visual culture with its values and concerns. With an apparent casualness, Verville presents a reflection on spatiality and on the capacity of architecture to distract from a regulated routine through a metamorphosis of everyday life. Observing the impacts of popular culture, Verville offers playful interactions inviting individual appropriations to highlight formal attributes, collective and collaborative dimensions of architectural space, and to celebrate the multiplicity of perceptions.