Louise St. Pierre | Emily Carr University of Art and Design (original) (raw)
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Papers by Louise St. Pierre
Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Fashion, 2014
I write here as both an industrial designer and a farmer’s daughter. My connection to the land me... more I write here as both an industrial designer and a farmer’s daughter. My connection to the land means that I see nature’s systems as inviolable, a view that has resulted in great internal conflict throughout my 30 year industrial design career. I have seen creative energy poured into projects
that prioritized industry over the environment, and noted time and again how chains of seemingly small decisions created momentum to carry us further and further from sustaining our natural world. From this perspective, I wonder: can we appreciate how urgent it is that we become more ecologically knowledgeable? Could greater ecological literacy then help us to distinguish industry rhetoric from ideas that genuinely steward the Earth? Ultimately, can we, as designers, producers, and shapers of culture, shift the momentum of the fashion industry to support natural systems?
Design and Nature: A Partnership, 2019
This chapter provides a historical context to ideas and practices of design and nature, highlight... more This chapter provides a historical context to ideas and practices of design and nature, highlighting underlying tensions and problematic conceptions about nature in the Modern West. This history differs from broader theories of sustainable design in that I focus specifically on design’s relationship with nature. I review various attempts to design with nature in past and recent history, with attention to how design and research are still embedded in a Western conception of our relationship with nature inherited from the Scientific Revolution. Despite aspirations of designers to connect emotionally, philosophically and functionally with the natural world, nature remains subjugated: an ‘other’. I argue that with each ‘new’ approach to designing with nature from the Romantic Movement in the late 19th century, through to contemporary design and current design theory, designers inadvertently continue Modernist and colonialist power relationships that place humans at the top of a hierarchy, with nature at the bottom. These conditions are beginning to change as designers explore ecological theory beyond mainstream influences and as they engage with embodied research in direct relationship with nature.
Dissertation, Simon Fraser University, 2019
Abstract This dissertation explores how an animist spirituality redirects design. Design has long... more Abstract
This dissertation explores how an animist spirituality redirects design. Design has long been understood as the professional practice of creating artefacts, systems, and communications for modern Western “civilization.” Recently, many scholars have been calling for a redirection of design’s talents and agency towards holistic, ecological and ethical practices. To do this, I argue, designers need to build an understanding and a connection with nature, ecological literacy, a visceral understanding of the Earth, and a spiritual knowing that we are interconnected and inseparable from all beings. I learned much of this during my childhood experiences on a farm, and during my exploration of contemplative practices. Through my journaling and my studies, I found that the spiritual and personal were artificially separated from the professional disciplines. I reunited important parts of myself that had been fragmented or split off during my professional teaching and professional design career. Buddhist mindfulness and meditation practices offer psychophysical learning. Contrary to academic intellectual traditions, these offer a path to understanding animist spirituality within mind, body, and heart. I search for pathways to extend this deep learning through somatic and experiential pedagogies in design. I relate several stories of how my colleagues and I have integrated animist, intersubjective, and contemplative practices into design pedagogy. I look for practices to support the embodied, relational, and experiential forms of exploration that can open opportunities for animist ways of knowing. We become aware, with carnal vitality, of our physical and emotional selves in the process. We come to understand ourselves and our bodies as fully implicated in seeing, reflecting, understanding, and practicing design. Reflections, stories, essays, and journal extracts are sorted into a series of baskets rather than the traditional thesis form of chapters. Meditative practices interweave throughout. This collection of possibilities allows a métissage of ideas rather than a scripted or definitive study.
Keywords: animism; Buddhism; design pedagogy; spirituality; holistic; redirective
Nordic Design Research Conference, 2015
This paper integrates my journeys into the wilderness of northern British Columbia and the Albert... more This paper integrates my journeys into the wilderness of northern British Columbia and the Alberta Prairies with my reflections on the relationship of sustainable design theories with an ethical practice of sustainable design. Drawing on deep ecology, Buddhism, and animism, I contend that the drive within research to connect natural systems theories to design practice is inherently instrumental and eludes the truths of the natural world. Within the domain of sustainable design, this instrumentalism reinforces an anthropocentric worldview that, as humans, we are separate from and more important than the unboundaried ecology of animals, plants, minerals and elementals (earth, water, air, and fire). As designers, we have not yet reconciled our responsibility for a comprehensive philosophical approach to our work with a deep and abiding relationship with nature.
Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Fashion, 2014
I write here as both an industrial designer and a farmer’s daughter. My connection to the land me... more I write here as both an industrial designer and a farmer’s daughter. My connection to the land means that I see nature’s systems as inviolable, a view that has resulted in great internal conflict throughout my 30 year industrial design career. I have seen creative energy poured into projects
that prioritized industry over the environment, and noted time and again how chains of seemingly small decisions created momentum to carry us further and further from sustaining our natural world. From this perspective, I wonder: can we appreciate how urgent it is that we become more ecologically knowledgeable? Could greater ecological literacy then help us to distinguish industry rhetoric from ideas that genuinely steward the Earth? Ultimately, can we, as designers, producers, and shapers of culture, shift the momentum of the fashion industry to support natural systems?
Design and Nature: A Partnership, 2019
This chapter provides a historical context to ideas and practices of design and nature, highlight... more This chapter provides a historical context to ideas and practices of design and nature, highlighting underlying tensions and problematic conceptions about nature in the Modern West. This history differs from broader theories of sustainable design in that I focus specifically on design’s relationship with nature. I review various attempts to design with nature in past and recent history, with attention to how design and research are still embedded in a Western conception of our relationship with nature inherited from the Scientific Revolution. Despite aspirations of designers to connect emotionally, philosophically and functionally with the natural world, nature remains subjugated: an ‘other’. I argue that with each ‘new’ approach to designing with nature from the Romantic Movement in the late 19th century, through to contemporary design and current design theory, designers inadvertently continue Modernist and colonialist power relationships that place humans at the top of a hierarchy, with nature at the bottom. These conditions are beginning to change as designers explore ecological theory beyond mainstream influences and as they engage with embodied research in direct relationship with nature.
Dissertation, Simon Fraser University, 2019
Abstract This dissertation explores how an animist spirituality redirects design. Design has long... more Abstract
This dissertation explores how an animist spirituality redirects design. Design has long been understood as the professional practice of creating artefacts, systems, and communications for modern Western “civilization.” Recently, many scholars have been calling for a redirection of design’s talents and agency towards holistic, ecological and ethical practices. To do this, I argue, designers need to build an understanding and a connection with nature, ecological literacy, a visceral understanding of the Earth, and a spiritual knowing that we are interconnected and inseparable from all beings. I learned much of this during my childhood experiences on a farm, and during my exploration of contemplative practices. Through my journaling and my studies, I found that the spiritual and personal were artificially separated from the professional disciplines. I reunited important parts of myself that had been fragmented or split off during my professional teaching and professional design career. Buddhist mindfulness and meditation practices offer psychophysical learning. Contrary to academic intellectual traditions, these offer a path to understanding animist spirituality within mind, body, and heart. I search for pathways to extend this deep learning through somatic and experiential pedagogies in design. I relate several stories of how my colleagues and I have integrated animist, intersubjective, and contemplative practices into design pedagogy. I look for practices to support the embodied, relational, and experiential forms of exploration that can open opportunities for animist ways of knowing. We become aware, with carnal vitality, of our physical and emotional selves in the process. We come to understand ourselves and our bodies as fully implicated in seeing, reflecting, understanding, and practicing design. Reflections, stories, essays, and journal extracts are sorted into a series of baskets rather than the traditional thesis form of chapters. Meditative practices interweave throughout. This collection of possibilities allows a métissage of ideas rather than a scripted or definitive study.
Keywords: animism; Buddhism; design pedagogy; spirituality; holistic; redirective
Nordic Design Research Conference, 2015
This paper integrates my journeys into the wilderness of northern British Columbia and the Albert... more This paper integrates my journeys into the wilderness of northern British Columbia and the Alberta Prairies with my reflections on the relationship of sustainable design theories with an ethical practice of sustainable design. Drawing on deep ecology, Buddhism, and animism, I contend that the drive within research to connect natural systems theories to design practice is inherently instrumental and eludes the truths of the natural world. Within the domain of sustainable design, this instrumentalism reinforces an anthropocentric worldview that, as humans, we are separate from and more important than the unboundaried ecology of animals, plants, minerals and elementals (earth, water, air, and fire). As designers, we have not yet reconciled our responsibility for a comprehensive philosophical approach to our work with a deep and abiding relationship with nature.