| If profound intractable problems exist in society, it follows that the professions needed to fix them have not yet been invented. Ian Wojtowicz (he/him) is a writer who builds stuff. His work applies techniques of connection, dissensus, modifiability, playfulness, editing, argument, dialogue, and repair. He has shown work in Hong Kong, Europe and throughout North America, and has published work in Wired Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, and on PBS and Discovery channels. Professionally, Wojtowicz has consulted for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the US National Coast Guard Museum, the Redwoods National and State Parks, and indigenous cultural projects at Nk'Mip and Wanuskewin. Wojtowicz holds a degree in Art, Culture and Technology from MIT’s School of Architecture and is the editor of a collected volume from MIT Press entitled Interrogative Design, on artist Krzysztof Wodiczko's influential design philosophy. He currently lives and works in Vancouver, Canada, on the territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh people. |
City Hall Sign
This photograph documents a modest intervention in public space. The gesture proposes a modification to the signage of Vancouver's City Hall to include the agenda of upcoming council meetings.
Government buildings often employ aesthetic strategies of classical grandeur, triumphalism, and brutalism to create a sense of authority, separating the public from the institution itself.
New design strategies could work to intersect this tendency and increase organizational transparency. Public participation in politics and governance could be accelerated by adopting new aesthetic systems such as this one to help open walled-off institutions.
Here the proposal is to simply to present details of the City's innermost chamber and place it at street level. The sign could be make out of moving concrete tiles, something akin to Daniel Rozin's Wooden Mirror.