03.18.10 kulturnatib

City of design

Soon after arriving in Canada I joined two design competitions for public functional art. My previous experience with such competitions were not all that encouraging. Not so much because I failed to garner the top prize, but more so because the winning works do not stay for long in the public's eye. Worse, they stay even a shorter time in the public's mind.

It is tempting to say that the Filipino public has no mind for such things. But it is really those charged with developing the public's mind who have narrowed this mandate to just one thing; politics. And the worse possible kind at that.

Here in Canada, culture gets equal billing. There is a wide ranging consensus that arts and culture are the breath of life of a place, especially a city. Not only the so-called 'high' arts – opera, symphony orchestra, etc.- but also the popular, or more popularly accessible arts.

Thus, the competitions I joined were for bike racks and sewer or manhole covers. Both were municipal initiatives under laws that provided for a certain percentage of public infrastructure spending to be allotted for art.

I was successful with the bike racks. Twice over, as the two designs I submitted made the top thirty. As an added honor the rack with one of my designs was chosen as the representative rack for the unveiling ceremony.

An example of how the public mind is brought to bear upon these projects not only it its appreciation but even in the creation is how an exhibition was organized to showcase the designs. The public was then invited to view and rate them, both numerical and qualitative, which, together with that given by the jury, then became the final grade.

It was an agreeable and enlightening experience over-all. Encouraging, too.

This comes in handy as recently an architect-friend forwarded me a call for submissions to a design competition. Moving up from two to four wheels for me, this competition is to design taxi stands for Montreal.

I just have the barest of information in the forwarded message which is mostly from the official online source.

Yet, even before going to that source, a few things are immediately expected. Most importantly, this will be a team effort. In fact, my friend in saying that she was passing on a project that I could be interested in was also recommending a team I could be interested in working with for this project; her team.

This will be a complex project whose design parameters are multiperspective yet must be cohered into a singular design outcome. This spells a polysyllabic word: alotaheadache, but also translates into a monosyllabic one: fun.

Which is what Montreal is. Yet more than just fun it is a vibrant multicultural city that has been designated by UNESCO as a city of design. The taxi stands and the competition for its design reflect and is reflective of this designation.