Annual conference of the Universities Arts Association of Canada (October 2014, Toronto)

Dates: 23-26 October 2014
Location: OCAD University, Toronto
Website: http://www.uaac-aauc.com/en/conference
Deadline for submissions: 18 June 2014

THE TENSIONS AND SYNERGIES OF AESTHETICS OF ‘DESIGN FOR SUSTAINABILITY’

Paradoxically, while sustainability has become a keyword of contemporary reorientations of design practices and theories, most research endeavors have been devoted to improving efficiency or performance and few to understanding the influences of these injunctions on culture on the one hand, and design thinking on the other. How designers address the ever increasing environmental expectations or even, how they maintain a creative balance between ethics and aesthetics, remains largely unaddressed in recent design theory.  This session is focused on the questions regarding the tensions between cultural and technical responses of design for sustainability that cross the main disciplines concerned with design thinking, be it at the scales of product, architecture, landscape, and urban design. Do designers go beyond current injunctions of environmental norms, certifications, and policies in order to maintain a creative balance between ethics and aesthetics in their projects? Is the aesthetic tension between form and content emerging as a new framework for designing more sustainable environments?

Session Chair: Carmela Cucuzzella, PhD
Affiliation: Graduate Program Director, Certificate in Digital Technologies in Design Art Practice
Assistant Professor, Design and Computation Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University
Email address : carmela.cucuzzella@concordia.ca