Title: Changing Attitudes towards the Environment with Everyday Urban Language
Advisory committee: Carmela Cucuzzella, Kregg Hetherington, Nathan Brown
PhD candidate
Mark Filipowich holds a B.A. in English and psychology and an M.A. in media studies, both from Western University. Currently, Filipowich is a PhD candidate in the Humanities program at Concordia University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC).
His work focuses explores the cultural and ideological relationships between people and their environment. Based on the works of Roland Barthes, David Harvey, Ruha Benjamin, and Anna Tsing, Filipowich explores how ideas of nature, culture, and technology become embedded in the built environment. By “reading” the city as a text, his research asks what assumptions people live with and repeat in their daily lives; moreover, what can be done to facilitate a better relationship between human and non-human creatures living in the built environment.
Filipowich’s research focuses on the Biosphere in Montreal Quebec, the P.E.I. Ark in Spry Point Prince Edward Island, and the McMichael art gallery in Kleinburg, Ontario. These buildings were designed to promote public engagement with environmental issues and so provide solid case studies for how public architecture can be used to imagine urban possibilities that are better prepared for climate catastrophe.
Potential ideas:
How cinema has affected cities
Forgotten neighborhoods in Montreal
Effect of Humans in the relationship of façade and city
What Urban Activities are used to confront climate dispair