Émélie Desrochers-Turgeon
Contract Instructor
emeliedesrochersturg@cmail.carleton.ca
Émélie Desrochers-Turgeon is a designer and a PhD candidate at the ASAU whose work explores the intersections of architectural representation, spatial justice, and landscape through the mediums of drawing, publication, exhibition and education. Her research interests broadly include the relationship between built environments and ecologies, with a particular emphasis on settler colonial building practices. She holds a professional Master’s degree in Architecture from McGill University and a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Design from Université du Québec à Montréal. She practiced design in Montreal and Berlin, where she gained experience in low-income housing and exhibition design. Her doctoral research, funded by the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, considers the scale, the material assemblages, and the political aesthetic of the Central Experimental Farm and Museum of Nature in Ottawa as infrastructures of settler colonization.
Education
BA Environmental Design – Université du Québec à Montréal
MArch – McGill University
Courses
ARCH 4505 – History and Theory, winter 2020
ARCH 4002 – Canadian Architecture winter 2021
ARCS 4107 C – Studio 7, winter 2021
ARCS1005 B – Drawing, fall 2021
Research
Desrochers-Turgeon has conducted archival research at the Polarbiblioteket and Arktisk Institut in Copenhagen, the Historical Archives of Contemporary Arts in Venice, Library and Archives Canada and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (DRRP 2020) on trans-nationalistic representation, architectural exhibitions, and settler colonial building practices. Her field work research combines drawing and text-based practices and engages with issues of reading, representing, and surveying places.
She co-founded the Carleton Research Practice of Teaching Collaborative (C R I P T I C), whose research revolves around the practice of teaching in academic settings in architecture.
Colonial building practices and museology
Settler colonial theory
Exhibition design
Extractive practices, infrastructures, and ecologies
Posthumanism and Ecofeminism
Modernity and Modernism
Architectural representation and imagination
Ethics and spatial justice
Social Housing
Practice
Desrochers-Turgeon has practiced design in Montreal and Berlin, where she gained experience in low-income housing and exhibition design. She has collaborated on exhibitions at the Centre de Design in Montreal, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, and the Canadian Museum of History.