About
Pat
I am a LatinX paraguayan-canadian architect, designer, researcher and educator with 15 + years of professional practice in South America and Canada.
My work has a special focus in land-based design, social innovation and sustainability and It includes architectural projects and a specialization in exhibit design, placemaking, signage and wayfinding programs.
My current research and pedagogy focus in the incorporation of alternative epistemologies into land-based design as a way of building sustainable futures with practices that already manifested in an equitable, respectful and balanced relationship with the earth.
I believe that recognizing our own positionality in the world makes us recognize the others in their own, opening the space for a Pluriverse world, where different ways of being and knowing can build community and transform realities of exclusion, racism, social and ecological distress into possibilities of change.
I am a proud member of the Vancouver DESIS Lab and a DESIS Scholar 2021. I am also the 2021 ECU Fellow in Decolonization for my research in Decoloniality and Pluriversal Studies and a member of the Design Justice Network.
I am a Sessional (Adjunct) Professor at Emily Carr University since 2014 and I have a Master in Interdisciplinary Design from ECU. I am currently a 2022 PHD student in the College of Human Ecology, Faculty of Design and Environmental Analysis (Human Centered Design) at Cornell University in NY, US.
Ata
My name is Ata. It comes from "Tata" which means fire in Pat's Guarani language. My family brought me home in the middle of the 20-21 Pandemic to give them love and hope and that's what my current research and practice is about, most of the time.
I work closely with Pat. Specially during the pandemic, I've been attending classes, seminars, lectures and multiple workshops.
During my free time, I enjoy exploring the universe. I love sniffing my fellow dog friends and sharing runs, balls and my frisbee with them at the park.
I am a black Lab, but I never felt racialized by my friends. Race and color don't matter among dogs.
What matters is to have joyful, respectful and loving interactions even when we disagree about who gets the ball first.
We are certainly more evolved than humans, but it's all right, we still love them very much and I have hopes for the betterment of humankind.