Prairie Design Lab

Peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties often face chal­lenges in access­ing resources and fund­ing to pay for their hous­ing and care. We explore what it takes to cre­ate hous­ing to sup­port them in their needs with Amie Gross (NYC), and Emi­ly Bar­ber (U of M Inte­ri­or Design Mas­ters stu­dent) spe­cial­iz­ing in Sup­port­ive Housing.

World-renowned French land­scape archi­tect Michel Desvi­gne tells us why trans­for­ma­tion, trans­po­si­tion, and time are at the core of his success.

What makes an old build­ing worth con­serv­ing? Three Win­nipeg archi­tects who have focused on her­itage preser­va­tion work explain the chal­lenges and val­ues that infuse their work.

You start out at a good archi­tec­ture school in your home­town, but — you get rest­less. You want to exper­i­ment with learn­ing & work­ing in a dif­fer­ent set­ting at a new school & work­place — far from home. Today on Prairie Design Lab, we talk with three peo­ple who left for Hong Kong, Oslo & Frank­furt to do just that.

Cold enough for you? The clas­sic Cana­di­an win­ter ques­tion. We explore the cre­ative impe­tus that cold weath­er pro­vides to two Cana­di­an inter­na­tion­al design fes­ti­vals. We cel­e­brate the suc­cess of Win­nipeg’s Warm­ing Huts and Toron­to’s Win­ter Stations.

With two world-class inte­ri­or design­ers, we explore the frac­tious debate between inte­ri­or design & inte­ri­or dec­o­rat­ing. We find out about the dif­fer­ence between LEED rat­ings for sus­tain­abil­i­ty, build­ing mate­ri­als, ener­gy effi­cien­cy, and the envi­ron­ment. We also dis­cuss the new stan­dard called WELL, which focus­es on human sus­tain­abil­i­ty. These top­ics and much more on Episode 11, ​“Inte­ri­ors.”

Episode 10 of Prairie Design Lab is titled ​“Lead­er­ship”. In it, three prac­tice founders explore not the aes­thet­ics of archi­tec­ture but the effec­tive­ness of imag­i­na­tive leadership.

The sto­ry of an unex­pect­ed mod­ernist who trans­formed Saskatchewan archi­tec­ture. A Men­non­ite farm boy becomes, in his own words, not an archi­tect but an ​“improver.”

Excerpt from Ply­wood World 1970
[Source: Face­book — Our Lady of the Lake Chapel at Sil­ton, Saskatchewan]

Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­i­to­ba Archi­tec­ture grads work all over the world in com­mu­ni­ties large and small. In episode 8, titled ​“Remote,” we intro­duce you to 3 grad­u­ates who have cre­at­ed robust oppor­tu­ni­ties far afield in small remote firms.

This week on Prairie Design Lab: a mod­est pre­co­cious ris­ing star in archi­tec­ture & design. How did Tom Fougere trans­form EQ3 into an inter­na­tion­al force? Find out what’s next for this gift­ed Winnipegger.