DSGN 401
TRANSSCALAR DESIGN STUDIO III
SCALE: SMALL
THEME: COSMOS

FALL 2026
BDCI/SAPL/UCALGARY
JOSHUA CLARKE

IN PROCESS is a transscalar design studio that investigates how design and architecture can construct new ways of attending to the larger relationships within which human and more-than-human life is situated. The studio begins from the premise that the cosmos is not simply something distant to be observed, but a field of scientific, ecological, cultural, symbolic, material, temporal, and metaphysical relationships already present within everyday experience.

Across cultures and throughout history, humans have developed instruments, observatories, calendars, maps, diagrams, rituals, myths, monuments, and architectures through which cosmological realities could be perceived, measured, interpreted, embodied, and shared. The studio examines these devices not simply as representations of knowledge, but as instruments of attention: designed constructions that make otherwise diffuse, invisible, slow, distant, or abstract relationships available to human perception. This studio asks: >>> What is at stake for our capacity to cultivate attention towards that which is larger than us? <<<

>>> ABOUT INSTRUCTOR

>>> STUDIO INSTAGRAM

>>> STUDIO LIBRARY

THIRD YEAR DESIGN STUDENTS

Nathanial Cadieux
Alyson Chintea
Hieu Di Dao
Farah Haji Mohammad Taghi
Daniel Hernandez Giacomin
Maria Juneau
Bailey Kamanzi
Sasha Mantei
Gabriel Murray
Buyantegsh Naranbaatar
Elizabeth Okrusko

Ashish Panda
Jordan Peterson
Claire Pogor
Maria Polania Rozo
Djehann Reyes
Gabby Ribeiro da Silveira
Harkaran Sandhu
Aurora Schultz
Anna Speller
Warner Wedenig
Qodesh Weekes

STUDIO WORK

PHASE ONE ATTUNEMENT

BRIEF 1 >>> ARTEFACTS OF WONDER

Before we measure, map, or explain the cosmos, we encounter it through the body. The body is our first cosmological instrument — sensing light, gravity, weather, movement, time, and the countless forces already unfolding around us. Phase One begins by slowing down and learning to notice them.

Through photography, stereoscopy, modelling, stereograms, and hybrid drawing, students moved from noticing to focusing, revealing, and speculating — following curiosities rather than predetermined outcomes.

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SEMINAR 1 >>> THIS SKINBAG IS A SPACESUIT

PHASE TWO COSMOLOGIES

BRIEF 2 >>> COSMOTECHNICS

We have never encountered the cosmos without mediation. We look through lenses, trace stars, mark shadows, draw maps, build chambers, tell stories, and perform rituals. These techniques do more than describe the world—they shape what can be sensed, imagined, understood, and believed.

Phase Two turned toward cosmotechnics: the devices, representations, spaces, and practices through which humans have made relationships with the cosmos sensible and thinkable. Students excavated historical cosmotechnics to uncover not simply what they were, but what they did — distilling the physical, attentional, and cosmological operations embedded within them.

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SEMINAR 2 >>> IT’S GOOEY PRICKLES AND PRICKLY GOO

PHASE THREE DEVICES

BRIEF 3 >>> DEVICES OF ATTENTION

What does it mean to feel ourselves inside a world that exceeds us? We live among forces, systems, and timescales that shape our lives but often escape our attention. Phase Three asks what is at stake in our capacity to attend to these larger realities - and what kind of cosmological device our moment might need.

Responding to an open call from the Ministry of Cosmic Affairs, students work in pairs to design Devices of Attention - speculative, body-scale instruments that bring people into meaningful encounters with something larger than themselves. Through research, experimentation, physical prototyping, bodily testing, and hybrid drawing, students investigate how real phenomena might be registered, translated, amplified, or revealed, and how these encounters might be situated within contemporary life.

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View The Ministry of Cosmic Affairs’ Design Brief >>> here <<<

PHASE FOUR SITES

BRIEF 4 >>> LOADING

Phase Four and Brief 4 will be issued on 11/03/2026.

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PHASE FIVE CONSTELLATIONS

STUDIO FINAL REVIEW & EXHIBITION >>> 12/07/2026