Archives: Chercheurs (chercheur)

Carmela Cucuzzella is the Dean of the Faculté de l’aménagement of Université de Montréal. She completed her doctorate at the Université de Montréal in April 2011. Her research interests lie within the domain of design for sustainability, eco-design, evaluation and judgement of design projects in a context of sustainability, theory of artistic judgement, theory of risk assessment, the precautionary principle, life cycle analysis (for social and environmental), and LEED.  Her directors of research for her doctorate work were Pr. Pierre De Coninck, an expert in design theory and complex systems and Pr. Daniel Pearl, an expert in environmental design and construction in architecture.

She obtained her first degree, a bachelor in Computer Science, focusing on Computer Architecture, in 1989.  She was immediately employed by Bell Northern Research (which later became a division of Nortel Networks), and worked there for 11 years designing and developing software for the telecommunications industry.  She has had various positions there, starting from software programming and development, to software analysis and design, to the architectural development of software platforms. Her last position held at Nortel was a technical team lead on an application for a 411 service using voice recognition technology for the wire-line network.

After her employment at Nortel Networks, she completed a second undergraduate degree at Concordia University, in the Faculty of Fine Arts (Design Art), where she graduated as outstanding student in 2005.  Her interest in understanding sustainability and design’s complex implications on the environment, society and culture developed during her education there. This degree, coupled with her previous background has given Carmela a broad cross-disciplinary perspective of the design discipline – from the design of virtual tools for communication systems (at Nortel) to the design of functional and exploratory artefacts on various dimensions – 2D, 3D and multi-media projects (at Concordia). 

In 2005, Carmela entered the Faculté de l’aménagement at the Université de Montréal, where she would complete (in 2007 with a mention of excellence), a Master of Applied Science degree, in the School of Industrial Design, in the program called Design et Complexité. Her masters thesis focused on the issues related to sustainability assessment for product design, specifically on the limits of current assessment tools for understanding the complex repercussions of social, cultural and environmental impacts and the need to introduce the precautionary principle into the design process as a way to address the uncertainty and ambiguity of these consequences.  Her masters research was conducted within the framework of Centre de Recherche en Éthique de l’Université de Montréal  (CREUM), a multi-disciplinary research centre focusing on fundamental and applied ethics research,  and the Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur l’Analyse, l’Interprétation et la Gestion du cycle de vie des produits, procédés et services (CIRAIG), a research group focusing on life cycle thinking and assessment methods. Entering the Ph.D. program at the Université de Montréal in the Faculté de l’aménagment program in September 2007, she will complete the doctoral thesis by December 2010. The research focuses on repercussions to design projects when the rating system LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is adopted, and in turn, how these same projects are ultimately judged within the context of an architectural competition. The theoretical foundation of the precautionary principle continues to be the basis of reflections regarding the tensions between the strict adherence to environmental rating systems or assessment diagnostic tools and the creative exploration during conceptualization. This research was done within the framework of a large architectural research lab, Laboratoire d’études de l’architecture potentielle (L.E.A.P); a lab of 9 professors and 12 assistants that focuses on the theory and practices of contemporary architecture within an interdisciplinary perspective.  At L.E.A.P she was actively involved in a collective research project since 2008, called Greening the Architecture Curriculum in Canada, a project co-founded by her research director, Pr. Daniel Pearl. This is a project that involves 11 architecture schools across Canada and is essentially a forum for sharing ideas, resources and expertise for integrating sustainability into the curriculum. Since, 2009, she has collaborated with Pr. Jean-Pierre Chupin, Pr. Georges Adamczyk and Pr. Pierre Boudon, all L.E.A.P researchers, in their project that focuses on the conflicts of analogical interpretation and architectural judgments in competitions, where her focus has been on the conflicts of interpretation and judgment for the issues related to sustainability.

This interdisciplinary background has allowed her to be invited to many lectures in various pedagogical contexts. She has taught in a studio course at the Université de Montréal, has tutored several students in their final year projects in the Industrial Design Department of the Université de Montréal, has presented many seminars to undergraduate and graduate students at a number of universities: Concordia University, Université de Québec à Montréal, Université Laval, McGill, École Polytechnique, and Université de Montréal. She has and continues to work in collaboration with Université de Québec à Montréal, in the department of École des sciences de la gestion, planning a seminar course at the graduate level focusing in environmental management with specific focus on Lide Cycle Methods.

Carmela Cucuzzella now is a confirmed scholar who has obtained the maximum funding possible for a doctorate student from a federal, provincial, university and faculty level. She received bursaries from both the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and from the Fonds de recherche sur la société et de la culture (FQRSC) for her doctorate research. Since 2007, Carmela has presented over 20 communications across the world (in 3 continents). Counting all accepted communications, that would total over 30 communications across 5 continents, but budget constraints have limited her attendance. She has published in books and in international journals on various topics related to her research, particularly on environmental, social and cultural issues related to assessment and judgment for design projects in a context of sustainability. A contributing author to the UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative (LCI) project, she was one of 21 international experts in life cycle approaches. In 2009 the Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products was published, a first addressing the integration of social aspects into the life cycle assessment framework.

Anne Cormier is an architect and full professor at the School of Architecture of the Université de Montréal.

She directed the School of Architecture of the Université de Montréal from 2007 to 2015.  She is also a founding member of Atelier Big City. Since its inception, this workshop has worked to develop innovative intervention strategies and to speculate on the potential of the public domain. Atelier Big City’s work on architecture and the city has been carried out through competitions, calls for ideas, exploratory studies and direct commissions. With Atelier Big City, Anne Cormier has won several distinctions, including the Prix de Rome from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Grand Prix d’excellence from the Ordre des Architectes du Québec. She has presented and exhibited her work in Quebec and abroad. Anne Cormier is an architect and graduate of McGill University. She also studied urban architecture under the direction of Jean-Louis Cohen at the Unité Pédagogique d’Architecture Paris-Villemin (France). With Atelier Big City, she has been invited to teach architecture at various institutions including Cornell University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Toronto and University of Calgary. She was a member of the Bureau of the Ordre des Architectes du Quebec (1993-1995), the editorial committee of the magazine “ARQ” (1993-…) and the editorial committee of the magazine “Trames” (1990-95). She is currently a member of the OAQ Competitions Committee (since 2009) and a member of the Advisory Committee on Planning, Design and Realty of the National Capital Commission (Ottawa) (since 2008).

Director of the Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competitions and Mediations of Excellence
Administrative coordinator of Laboratoire d’Étude de l’Architecture Potentielle

Université de Montréal, Faculté de l’aménagement, École d’architecture,

CP 6128, succursale Centre-ville,

Montréal, (Québec) H3C 3J7, Canada.

jean-pierre.chupin@umontreal.ca

Jean-Pierre Chupin is professor at the University of Montreal School of Architecture, where is holds the Chaire de recherche sur les concours et les pratiques contemporaines en architecture (www.crc.umontreal.ca ) and co-directs of the Laboratoire d’étude de l’architecture potentielle (www.leap-architecture.org).

Trained as an architect in Europe (France and Great Brittain), he has been registered in Québec (Canada) since 1993 and was selected to represent young architecture in Canada, along with 9 other teams, at the Venice Biennal of 1995 (held in 1996). Jean-Pierre is an architecture graduate from both Nantes School of Architecture (France) and Portsmouth Polytechic School of Architecture (UK). He holds a Masters in History and Theory of Architecture from McGill University (1990) and a PhD in Environmental Design from University of Montreal (1998). He has taught at Université du Québec in Montreal (Uqam), at École Nationale Supérieure d’architecture in Toulouse and at École Nationale Supérieure d’architecture in Lyon before joining the University of Montreal School of Architecture in 2001.

At Université de Montréal, he is responsible for theory courses, graduate seminars and studios, and doctoral studies.  The work of his MArch students (Explorations in architectural design) has been regularly exhibited and is presented on the site OUPROPO (OUvroir de PROjets POtentiels) (www.oupropo.umontreal.ca).

Chupin started is academic career as scientific translator of Alberto Perez-Gomez’s seminal Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science (The MIT Press, 1983) published in French in 1988. Architectural theoretician, he has been working for more than two decades on the role of analogical thinking in architecture from various vantage points (historical, theoretical, pedagogical and cognitive). He has conducted close examination on the role of analogy in writings by Philibert de l’Orme, Le Corbusier and Aldo Rossi. In 2003-2004 he was researcher in residence at the Canadian Center for Architecture Study Center and worked on the Città Analoga by architect Aldo Rossi. The first volume of his research on the Analogie et théorie en architecture (De la vie, de la ville et de la conception, même) was first published by Swiss Infolio, in the series « Projet et Théorie », in 2010 and was republished in 2013 in a revised and augmented edition.

Jean-Pierre Chupin conducts collaborative research on architectural theory, design thinking, analogical imagination, and has become a renowned expert on architectural and urban design competitions. Both at L.E.A.P since 2002, and at the Research Chair on Competitions and Contemporary Practices in Architecture since 2012, he has developed a particular approach to scientific leadership through an understanding of the specificities of research and theoretical discourse in architecture. The L.E.A.P lab gathers 9 scholars from 3 universities (Université de Montréal, Concordia University and Université du Québec à Montréal) and the research axis revolves around issues as diverse as: architectural theory, the history of Canadian architecture, innovation in heritage contexts, social housing, design for sustainability and its challenges, but also semiotics and generally speaking research on competitions. At L.E.A.P lab, and since 2003, he has been coordinating the design and update of the projects databse of competitions organised in Canada since 1942 (www.ccc.umontreal.ca). He directed the production of another database for the EUROPAN organization, the biggest organiser of competitions in Europe (www.arclab.umontreal.ca/EUROPAN-EN). Now considered a major scientific and cultural resource, the CCC received specific funding in 2012 from Innovation Canada as a major Canadian resource in the fields of architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture. The Assemblée universitaire de l’Université de Montréal appointed him for two mandates between 2006 and 2012 as a member of the Comité de la Recherche de l’Université de Montréal.

Jean-Pierre Chupin has published 7 books, conceived two majors databases of projects, published more than 100 papers, presented 5 governmental reports and has already given more than 100 lectures, mostly as guest or keynote speaker in various international contexts in Europe, North-American but also South-American and Asian universities.

Jean-Pierre Chupin has organized major international conferences. He was the initiator of the first symposium of the Grands Ateliers de l’Isle d’Abeau (France, 2001) on constructive thinking and tectonics, based on the work of Professor Kenneth Frampton (Columbia University). Since then, he has organized interdisciplinary conferences on cultural mediations and knowledge transfers in the field of project theories and practices, on the relationships between architecture, imagination and philosophy, on architectural judgement and on the role of international competitions on architectural quality in the planetary age. As director of the new Research Chair on competitions, he organised, in 2012, the first conference on the role of competitions in the production of culture, quality and Knowledge (International Competitions and Architectural Quality in the Planetary Age» – Université de Montréal). In 2013, he launched the first edition of IDEA@UofM (International Doctoral Encounters in Architecture at Université de Montréal), selecting PhD Students from the best doctoral programs in both Americas and in Europe to reflect on the complex theme of ornament, algorithms and analogies (between cognitive and technological operations in architecture).

Jean-Pierre Chupin received one of 3 Awards for Excellence in Teaching granted by Université de Montréal in 2008 (category: Associate professors).

Jean-Pierre Chupin is the scientific director and principal editor of the Canadian Competitions Catalogue a documentarydatabase and  research engine, intended for archival, analysis and the history of contemporary architecture in Canada.  Bilingual, this research tool and its diffusion constitutes for historians and researchers, for students, for elected and administrative public, the experts and professional consultants, whether they are architects, engineers, members of the jury, promoters, or the general public, an important source of documentation. Since its publication on line in spring of 2006, the C.C.C. has recieved over 3000 visits per month.

Denis Bilodeau is full Professor in the School of Architecture at l’Université de Montréal where he teaches the conceptualization and the theory of architecture.

He is an Associate Researcher with the Design Knowledge System Research Center at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and is a member of l’Institut de Recherche en Histoire de l’Architecture. Upon the completion of his Diploma in Architecture at the University of Laval, Denis Bilodeau obtained a Masters at Columbia University and a PhD at the Delft University of Technology. His principal area of interest is project epistemology. He has written Precedents and Design Thinking in an Age of Relativization (School of Architecture, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, 1997) and Le classicisme en architecture. In collaboration with Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre he also wrote La poétique de l’ordre (Paris, Dunod, 1985, 1990). As a researcher with L.e.a.p., he is in the process of preparing an exhibit entitled New Cultural Territories: Landscape, memory and public spaces in Quebec architectural competitions from 1991 to 2004.

Georges Adamczyk is professor at the School of architecture, Université de Montréal.
He was the director of the School from June 1999 to June 2007. He is codirector of the Laboratoire d’étude de l’architecture potentielle (LEAP). Previously, he was professor at the Department of Design of the Quebec University in Montreal since 1977. With a design background, he holds diploma of design from UQAM and a master in environmental design (Architecture History and Theories) from University of Montreal. At UQAM, he was director of the Environmental Design program (1977-1982), temporary director of the Art History program (1982-1983) and director of the Design department (1984-1989) now School of design at UQAM. From 1992 to June 1999, he was the director of the Design Center at UQAM, a gallery dedicated to exhibitions and discussions on the city, architecture, landscape, design and graphic media. He is co-founder of SILO, an architectural review dedicated to modern architecture and published by Studio Cube in the nineties. He has been also a regular member of the editorial board of ARQ Architecture Quebec for ten years. He is a member of the pedagogical orientation committee for the performing arts of Montreal. He participates occasionally in architectural competitions, regularly in advisory committees, jury on architecture and design competitions. He is the author of numerous articles, communications, publications and exhibitions.

He was a member of the organization of the symposium Architecture and cultural identity  in Montreal in 1983 under the direction of Kenneth Frampton and the co-director of the Rencontre Le Corbusier at UQAM in 1987. He has contributed to the book Architectural installations published by the Canadian Center for Architecture in 1999. He has organized the exhibition (2000) and written and edited the catalogue (2004) of Maisons-Lieux/Houses-Places for the Biennale de Montreal. He was the guest curator of the exhibition Objets trouvés installed by Saucier + Perrotte at the Canadian Pavillon of the Venice Biennale 2004. He was also invited to contribute to two recent books: Substance over Spectacle by Andrew Gruft (2005) and Guide de l’architecture contemporaine de Montréal by Nancy Dunton and Helen Malkin (2008). As a member of Leap, he contributes to the first major research on Canadian Architecture Competitions since 1940.