Participatory design requires user content for completion. Rather than deliver clean, finished products to a passive audience, participatory designers are creating open-ended, generative systems. -Helen Armstrong, from the Introduction   Authors: Helen Armstrong and Zvedzana Stojmirovic, Princeton Architectural Press, 2011. New this year in Princeton Architectural Press”s “Design Briefs” Series, Participate: Designing with User-Generated Content looks at the emerging mode of generating design through the collaborative input of multiple individuals. In four sections — community, modularity, flexibility and technology — authors Helen Armstrong and Zvezdana Stojmirovic have assembled a cohesive and interesting collection of interviews with designers, theorists and educators, images, case studies and “practice”. A foreward by Ellen Lupton speaks to the paradigm shift in the practice of design today, while Helen Armstrong’s introduction contextualizes participatory design in a broader history.

Author: Kim Elam (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011) “The purpose of Geometry of Design is not to quantify aesthetics through geometry, but rather to reveal visual relationships that have foundations in the essential qualities of life such as proportion and growth patterns as well as mathematics.” -Kim Elam

This week, 221A Artist Run Centre is pleased to open the doors of a 7000 square foot facility located at 222 E. Georgia St. that includes presentation space for Access Artist-Run Centre, a bookstore for OCW Arts and Publishing Foundation, and 20 workspaces for Vancouver-based artists, designers, architects, writers, and curators. All proceeds go towards the creation of safe, affordable studio space at 222 E. Georgia St. Open House – 3pm – 7pm Free – Street Entrance Studio Tours + Rental Information Ping Pong Party Fundraiser! – 8pm til Late $10 Cover – Alley ...

This fall, Spacing contributor Laura Kozak will be teaching Urban Cartography at Emily Carr University of Art + Design . Learn to critically read and record the underlying geometry, overlapping histories and multiple agendas of the city through practices of mapping,measuring and sketching. Using architectural and cartographic tools and techniques, students in this course will work at multiple and nested scales to understand the metrics behind what makes neighbourhoods different, how we move through the city, and how the built environment has taken shape. The final outcome of the course will ...

Author: Megan Werner (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011) "A physical model is the material embodiment of an idea, and therein lies its magic. By becoming real, it gives life and actuality to an idea in a way that two-dimensional expressions rarely can. While a drawing might prefer, for example, a specific angle of view, the model often has no such luxury. With its three-dimensionality, its reaction to light and materiality a model is perceived in innumerable and unpredictable ways." - Emily Abruzzo, From the Foreward

A fine-grain tour of Vancouver’s central areas, divided into twelve neighborhood walks, John Atkin and Andy Coupland’s new book The Changing City takes stock of the ever-evolving architectural assemblage that makes up Vancouver in 2010. Author: John Atkin and Andy Coupland (Steller Press, 2010) Review by Laura Kozak, re:place magazine

"To Jane Jacob’s three traditional urban values of civic space, human scale and diversity, the current environmental imperative adds two more: conservation and regionalism."   -Peter Calthorpe Peter Calthorpe (Island Press, 2011) Reviewed by Laura Kozak