FNDT-161

Born in Dundee, Scotland, Michael Culverwell has won many awards and exhibited and worked, both nationally and internationally, in numerous design fields. He has taught Design up to the graduate levels at several universities and colleges in the UK and Canada. Michael is currently involved in designing a range of solid wood furniture products, with an emphasis on utilizing reclaimed and secondary lumber from sustainable species.

Alex Hass is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer and instructor. Her creative practice is based on exploring the tensions and overlaps that exist between nature and technology - visually amplifying the moments when this hybrid practice creates fresh insights and experiences for the viewer.  Her design practice encompasses art direction, brand + book design as well as image creation. Alex studied illustration and art direction at the Alberta College of Art and Design, received her design degree in Visual Communication from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University and her Masters in Applied Art, Media stream from Emily Carr University. She has taught various aspects of design at ECU, SFU and BCIT for the last eighteen years.

Charlotte Falk is an interdisciplinary designer, educator and researcher. Her practice is anchored in Industrial Design, and spans Communication Design Architecture and Art. Located in Vancouver, she is currently a lecturer in Industrial, Communication and Foundation Design at ECUAD, and teaches studio courses in Design and Public Art at Langara College.

Charlotte holds a Master of Architecture from the University of British Columbia and Bachelor of Design from the University of Alberta. A profound love for materiality, process and technique informs her research and teaching practice. Past research collaborations include the Design for Biodiversity project (with Dr. Louise St. Pierre and Zach Camozzi) and Designing for Public Space (with Laura Kozak and Jean Chisholm). In 2018, she facilitated a series of workshops titled Making Space, in partnership with Arts Assembly. These participatory events looked at alternative methods for site specificity, intuitive responses to space, and the democratization of design.

Since 2010, Charlotte has been collaborating with renowned visual artists in the development and delivery of large-scale public art commissions. As a designer, project manager, technical consultant and collaborator, she draws on both her experience in the building industry and understanding of contemporary art to bring complex public art projects to fruition. Design for public space and site specificity are often at the core of her work; with lenses towards sustainable acts of care for community and biodiversity, and making-based iterative design processes.

Alex Hass is a multi-disciplinary artist, designer and instructor. Her creative practice is based on exploring the tensions and overlaps that exist between nature and technology - visually amplifying the moments when this hybrid practice creates fresh insights and experiences for the viewer.  Her design practice encompasses art direction, brand + book design as well as image creation. Alex studied illustration and art direction at the Alberta College of Art and Design, received her design degree in Visual Communication from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University and her Masters in Applied Art, Media stream from Emily Carr University. She has taught various aspects of design at ECU, SFU and BCIT for the last eighteen years.

Gilly Mah is a design educator and practitioner. In this fast moving, ever-changing digital environment, her pedagogic philosophy is “curved line thinking” (Usher, 2015), while in tandem with continual learning alongside colleagues and students.

Prior to design education, Gilly completed a Masters of Applied Science (in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU), and a Bachelor of (Industrial) Design at ECUAD, including one year at Parsons School of Design in NY.

Between degrees, she founded a design consultancy firm in 2000 and have built a broad portfolio of projects in visual communication: interactive, spatial design, product + graphic design <www.gillymah.com>.

Gilly is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Culture and Community at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Reyhan Yazdani (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and designer currently based in Vancouver, the unceded traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) people. Her research-driven work migrates between a range of media including works on paper, objects, social invitations, and poetry to engage with ontological, material and spatial inquiries around and about themes of exile, language, and diaspora.

Reyhan received a Master of Architecture from the University of Tehran in 2017 and an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2019. Over the last two years, her research has been supported and presented by multiple grants, galleries, and publications including Canada Council for the Arts (2023- 2024), artist-in-residence programs with the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Alberta), Shadbolt Centre for the Arts (Burnaby), and Access Gallery (Vancouver), exhibitions at Kelowna Art Gallery (2023), Seymour Art Gallery (2022), Centre A (2019), and publications such as C Magazine. She currently teaches at Emily Carr University of Art and Design as an associate professor in the Culture & Community Faculty.

I'm an interdisciplinary art director, communications designer and design educator. With a B.F.A. in graphic design and a Master of Design in visual communications, my formal preferences are deeply rooted in emotional and narrative-based design and my professional expertise is built on visual storytelling and the enhancement of human experiences. I am passionate about exploring the power of design activism within the fields of research-driven, academic, and nonprofit sectors. With a focus on social design–both educational and interactive–the work I make ranges along a diverse spectrum of clients, projects, and countries.