3D Design

Predicting the Present

Duane Elverum is Assistant Professor in design at Emily Carr Institute, where his research asks, how is it that the net sum of human imagination manifests itself as an unquestioned reliance on industrial models that knowingly contribute to the ongoing decline of living systems?

Elverum proposes that addressing this attachment is a shared cultural challenge and institutional obligation that resists conventional problem solving methods. His curriculum and research in sustainability assessment, life cycle analysis and sustainable systems proposes that design education and design practice contribute in 2 ways:

1) adopt a trans-disciplinary and project-based learning model that is collaborative, stakeholder and community-service oriented.

2) adopt a sustainable systems approach to design and creative practice that allows practitioners to imagine the potential of design work to regenerate rather than reiterate.

Elverum received a degree with honours in architecture from the University of British Columbia for his thesis on Alternative Urban Housing, and since 1990 has operated Delve Consultants for Built Environments in Vancouver.

He taught at the UBC School of Architecture from 1995-2000 where he supervised the Program for Studies in Design Build, which received two North American teaching awards for design studio curriculum. During that time, he supervised design studies abroad to Berlin and Prague and was a visiting architectural critic at the TU for in Dresden.