Menno Hubregtse
Menno Hubregtse is a Sessional Instructor at the University of Victoria. His research examines modern and contemporary art, architecture, and design. His published work discusses airport terminal design, public art, early 20th century modernism, and how mathematical concepts influence design theory. His book and journal articles also consider art and design in terms of cultural identity, consumption, heritage, regional political conditions, and theories of affect, function, and mobility.
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Aviation, Built Environment
Biography
Menno Hubregtse is a Sessional Instructor at the University of Victoria. His research examines modern and contemporary art, architecture, and design. His published work discusses airport terminal design, public art, early 20th century modernism, and how mathematical concepts influence design theory. His book and journal articles also consider art and design in terms of cultural identity, consumption, heritage, regional political conditions, and theories of affect, function, and mobility.He is the author of Wayfinding, Consumption, and Air Terminal Design (Routledge, 2020). He has published articles in Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture, Journal of Mathematics and the Arts, Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, and RACAR: Revue d’Art Canadienne / Canadian Art Review.
Hubregtse's research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada.
Education
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PhD in Art History, University of British Columbia, 2015
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Airport design, public art, interiors, modernism, mathematics and art, history and theory of architecture
Websites
Books
Articles
Concrete curves: architectural curvilinearity, Descartes’ Géométrie, Leibniz's calculus and Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal
Published: Aug 31, 2017 by Journal of Mathematics and the Arts
Authors: Menno Hubregtse
Subjects:
Aviation, Built Environment, Art & Visual Culture
This article considers Eero Saarinen’s Baroque-inspired TWA terminal in terms of Leibniz’s and Descartes’s respective notions of curves and matter. It responds Gilles Deleuze’s assessments of Baroque architecture in The Fold, where he associates architectural curvilinearity with Leibniz’s calculus and his notion of matter as forces. This paper argues that curved form also correlates with Descartes’s geometric conception of curvature and his notion of matter as extension in space.
Art Before and Beyond the International Air Terminal’s Border Zone: the Placement of First Nations Artworks in the Disparate Political Spaces at Vancouver’s YVR.
Published: Aug 01, 2017 by Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada
Authors: Menno Hubregtse
Subjects:
Aviation, Built Environment, Art & Visual Culture
This article investigates a series of Northwest Coast First Nations artworks installed in the International Terminal at Vancouver’s airport. Hubregtse examines how the architects shaped the building’s interior based on where these pieces would be placed. In addition, he discusses how these Indigenous artworks’ symbolic content parallels the type of political space in which they are located as well as issues regarding First Nations’ land rights, national identity, and consumption.
Passenger movement and air terminal design: artworks, wayfinding, commerce, and kinaesthesia
Published: Aug 25, 2016 by Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture
Authors: Menno Hubregtse
Subjects:
Aviation, Built Environment, Art & Visual Culture
This article examines how architects design air terminal interiors to regulate passenger movement and to stimulate consumption. Hubregtse illustrates how architects incorporate material cues into their designs which support passenger wayfinding. In addition, he investigates why planners install artworks as landmarks for navigation. He also discusses why planners place artworks next to commercial operations to affect passengers and encourage spending.
Robert J. Coady's "The Soil" and Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain": Taste, Nationalism, Capitalism, and New York Dada
Published: Sep 01, 2009 by RACAR: revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review
Authors: Menno Hubregtse
Subjects:
Art & Visual Culture
This article addresses how Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 1917, attacked conceptions of taste, value, and aesthetics. It argues that this readymade is a satirical response to Robert J. Coady’s manifesto for American art. In his publication, The Soil, Coady championed a homegrown form of modern art that included America’s industrial machinery. Hubregtse also disputes the scholarship that places Coady within the Dada movement.