Browsing by Author "Boutin, Marc Joseph"

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    DENSIFICATION Responsive to PLACE and DEMOGRAPHIC Change
    (2023-07) Johns, Barry William; Brown, John Leslie Stinson; Boutin, Marc Joseph; Macedo, Joseli; Burda, Cherise; Webster-Tweel, Brenda
    This Doctor of Design thesis introduces BAAKFIL, a new paradigm to address the housing crisis in Canada with a focus in Edmonton, Alberta. My research objective is to explore a practice-based solution through a new business model and an architectural design tool-kit to illustrate how this model can be applied. BAAKFIL demonstrates how it is possible to address land cost to increase affordability. It promotes gentle densification of mature neighborhoods, in response to socio-cultural needs, demographics and sustainable community revitalization. A new business model about equity leveraging unlocks underutilized land; where an owner partners with a developer by putting up backyard space for development while retaining tenure in the original house and property. The developer builds new housing without purchasing or financing land. Land cost is removed from the project proforma, substantially reducing development costs and instantly increasing affordability for the consumer. This is a scalable solution across Canada. The BAAKFIL Design Tool-kit gives agency to the landowner (who continues to live in place) in promoting the design of sustainable and respectful architecture, responsive to neighborhood context. Broader conclusions are included about density, the micro-community and sustainable, resilient cities. BAAKFIL improves the ecology of urban neighborhoods by advocating the revitalization of city alleys. BAAKFIL is an acronym for Back Alley Advantage, Kinship, Family & Integrated Living. It is a densification model that supports the preservation of existing housing and population growth at the same time. BAAKFIL integrates innovation within the housing industry at a societal scale. It positions the architect inside the housing question. With gentle densification of mature neighborhoods over time, BAAKFIL increases affordability with redeeming socio-cultural value.
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    False Colouring
    (2016) Procter, Anne; Huot, Claire; Eiserman, Jennifer Roma Flint; Finn, Patrick James; Boutin, Marc Joseph
    False Colouring is an exhibition that consists of three looping video installations, and over a thousand hand-sized, hand-printed paper dresses that were hung with clothespins to a labyrinthine configuration of white string. This installation was created as a means to externalize, reveal, and release personal narratives, as well as the physical relics – or souvenirs – that they were tied to. Through this exhibition I have given new life to the ephemeral memories of my past, and I have been given an opportunity to live more presently in my own life. The present paper was written as an accompaniment to the False Colouring exhibition, an explanation for all the choices that I have made, and the inspiration that I have felt. I have studied the life and works of Matisse, and I have read many books, including The Comfort of Things and Stuff by Daniel Miller and On Longing by Susan Stewart. Keywords: Souvenir, Materiality, Story, Memory, Precious, Paper, and Catharsis.
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    Schools of Tomorrow: Evaluating Alberta’s Standardized Public Schools
    (2017) Reichelt Guimaraes, Carly; Monteyne, David P.; Boutin, Marc Joseph; Brown, Barbara Anna
    This thesis explores how a “prototypical” process of planning and designing school buildings in the Province of Alberta, Canada, has evolved since the implementation of new procedures in the early years 2000, and assesses how aspects related to the built environment have been addressed. This has been done by examining architectural drawings as well as data-based documents, by conducting interviews with specific architects and members of school administration, by distributing questionnaires to teachers, and by visiting three schools designed through this new approach. The literature review, looked into the most relevant architectural design principles used around the world to develop successful educational buildings, and the impact of design on the school environment and its users. This allowed, by comparison with the design principles for successful educational buildings, for the success of Alberta’s standardized design for new public schools to be evaluated, and to recommend necessary architectural adaptations that will benefit users and school planning processes in Alberta, and throughout the globe.
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    The Dark Arts. A Future For Practitioners of Architecture.
    (2023-07) Donaldson, Michael; Wylant, Barry Dean; Boutin, Marc Joseph; Taron, Joshua Michael; Stamm, Marcelo; Stewart, Sally Jane
    Many practitioners experience dissonance between the potential of their field and the realities of practice as defined by status-quo conventions. The forces that shape practice create inefficiencies, barriers to opportunity, and amplify contingency across the built environment. This work aims to establish a new mode of practice that can flow around the status-quo, with the extended goal of accessing a means to impact problems on a systemic plane. This dissertation follows a practice-based design science research methodology. Beginning with a critical dissection of the architectural profession, it progresses via a series of representational and reflective tools that illustrate an emergent framework for the ‘creative project’: the conception, design, and implementation of a novel strategic design practice, called ‘Future Workshop’ (FW). This is developed in parallel with (and in contrast to) an existing architectural practice (DWA). The strategic design approach synthesizes new professional methods from architecture and other disciplines, allowing client organizations to target higher-order problems upstream of typical design engagements, focusing the impact of future design efforts on the most important goals and priorities. The research traverses the tensions between the pragmatic and intellectual hemispheres of practice and establishes metrics for considering these abstract problems through a particular series of diagrams and representational tokens, or ‘glyphs’. The contribution of this work is multivalent, including a novel way of operating a design practice (FW), and new means of inquiry, proposing situated methodologies for research within professional practice.