Environmental planning and design, including site-based art, are about people and where we live – and, in particular, making better decisions about space, resources, technologies, practices, ethics and forms of communication. And a major part of this work involves finding the most effective ways to transmit possible solutions to environmental problems and conflicts (including through contemporary culture). Typically, environmental planning practitioners and scholars, such as myself, combine university teaching and research with collaborative private practices and public service (extending to activism).
Paradoxically, environmental planning and design, as a holistic endeavour and a set of rigorous methods that are debated, remains neglected. Too often practitioners from more narrow fields have attempted to address broader, more systemic problems in how human communities interact with themselves and their biophysical environments without the methods and critical theory that allows for longer-term sustainability let alone social justice. And environmental planning as a broader social dialogue about place, home and public space, such as envisioned by Situationist Guy Debord, has often been relegated to utopian theory as a range of social groups remain marginalized and vulnerable. So this core website of gordonbrentingram.ca is also about promoting recognition of the need for innovative methods of environmental planning and design and the underlying culture, theory, critical thinking and debate necessary to construct new decision-making frameworks for people, places, resources and communities.
Other pages in this domain extend to
1. conventional scholarship
http://www.gordonbrentingram.ca/scholarship ;
2. photographic documentation and related contemporary site-based and public art:
http://www.gordonbrentingram.ca/photobased ;
3. professional and activist projects extending to consulting and advising:
http://www.gordonbrentingram.ca/studiesdesigns ; and
4. an informal studio blog:
http://www.gordonbrentingram.ca/theterminalcity .
Gordon Brent INGRAM
321 Railway Street #108
Vancouver V6A 1A4 CANADA
email: studio[at symbol]gordonbrentingram.ca
&
gordon_brent_ingram1966[at symbol]yahoo.ca
The image above is a photograph of Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, the Gulf and San Juan Islands, and Vancouver Island and was taken from the International Space in 1999. This is the part of the world where I was born and raised and where I continue to be based. This is the region on Earth that continues to inspire (and baffle) me the most.