Catherine Venart Assistant Professor BA (Toronto), MArch (SCI-Arc) Cert. of Engineering (Mount Allison) Registered Architekt (Germany) Architecture and architects create spaces for human habitation. Thus architecture and its compilation as urban form is a manifestation of cultural and social values. My research and practice address both processes of production or 'making' as well as issues of perception. Through these interests, my research documents and analyzes our cultural production and the relationship between its underlying spatial, constructed, and material underpinnings. I am actively engaged through my research and practice in processes of 'making'. Representations are the vehicle through which the design idea is tested and developed. I believe each representation, whether a model, drawing, photograph, video, installation, or a built work of architecture, explores this 'idea' in different ways and at various scales. Architecture, as in all forms of representation, is not in itself the end product but a by-product of asking a larger question. I am particularly interested in the dynamic process by which, an 'idea' is translated, into physical form. It is through various representations and media that experiential and intuitive meanings, are honed. In my work, representations operate on two distinct yet complementary levels. Firstly, they must address the viewer or inhabitant and the multiple scales of its contexts; and secondly, it carries another layer of meaning as a by-product of the distinct processes of making. In this way, any representation transcends the work, engaging and transforming inhabitants and context. Perception underlies all of my research and practice projects. These projects are explored using the various representational vehicles of the design processes. Perception is dependent on the relationship of the 'work' to the viewer or inhabitant, and therefore there is a co-dependency between issues of habitation and context within and upon which an interpretation and design is formed. My experiential approach of documentation and analysis forms the basis for my understanding of a particular problem or context, and is implicit to my design methodology. For example, embedded within the act of observing, documenting and 'making' a representation, is both the subjective act of interpretation and translation of the existing situation and the more universal cultural framework within which 'the work' is produced. Therefore, the social, economic and environmental responsibility of what and how something is made is omnipresent, transmitting beyond itself, beyond its own physicality, so that its effect resonates with the viewer or inhabitant and its surroundings long after the cessation of its conceived usefulness. As creators of inhabited spaces this cause and effect happens at various scales from our urban environment to the detail of a handrail. This relationship is also embedded in the intent of a drawing, or model and in the physical presence of our built, lived-in architectures, our city streets or public plazas. View full Research Statement View CV |