Department of Unusual Certainties: The Latest Architecture and News

Department of Unusual Certainties [DoUC] recently completed a submission to the Network Reset, Rethinking the Chicago Emerald Necklace, competition hosted by Mas Studio and the Chicago Architectural Club. Participants were asked to look at the urban scale and propose a framework for the entire boulevard system as well as provide answers and visualize the interventions at a smaller scale that can directly impact its potential users. Through images, diagrams and drawings the work should express what are the soft or hard, big or small, temporary or permanent interventions that can reactivate and reset the Boulevard System of Chicago. DoUC’s proposal focused on filling Chicago’s Emerald Necklace with a framework of posts, beams, ropes and counterweights - to produce a pick-and-choose- method of program management. Images of their entry and a description can be seen after the jump.

Department of Unusual Certainties was recently awarded honorable mention for their submission to Conditions Magazine’s Tell Them What They Need Competition, a competition which asked people to come up with alternatives for architectural competition practice. Their submission “Warehouse for Architectural Recycling (W.A.R.)” proposes a global institution which archives competition submissions and auctions them off to potential buyers elsewhere. A re-purposing of loser ideas. Follow after the jump for a comprehensive description of W.A.R. from DoUC.

Department of Unusual Certainties is a Toronto-based research and design collective working at the interstices of urban design, planning, public art, spatial research and mapping have shared with us their contribution to the John Street Ideas Competition, held by the Toronto Entertainment District BIA, entitled StairSpace. The competition called for a new public space concept as the center point of what has been dubbed a major cultural axis in the Toronto – John Street. More details of DoUC’s submission after the break.