A collaborative project with Tori Foster. More details coming soon. . .




Labels: Exhibitions, Photography
From May 1-25, 2008, I exhibited a selection from body of work entitled Cao Chang Di. The three exhibition prints, each 16" x 24", are shown below.



Jesse Colin Jackson isolates a location, frames a composition and compiles a linear sequence of moments through time-lapse photography. He then creates a single composite image that incorporates dynamic information from multiple frames. He thus presents, simultaneously, parallel experiential narratives. In doing so, he calls attention to the vitality of the spatial location and creates surreal representations that suggest essential aspects of the place itself. His composites of key locations in Cao Chang Di, a village in the peri-urban periphery of Beijing, reveal the state of conflict and compromise that characterize China's rapidly changing landscape.Cao Chang Di was part of Timespace, which also featured Tori Foster and Jon Reed. We each explore alternative, singular ways of representing our experience of time in space, employing three distinct techniques to combine visual information from multiple frames into a single, synthetic image. Tori Foster creates low-fidelity portraits of movement through a two-dimensional plane over the span of several seconds, while Jon Reed captures the essential character, experience and memory of a particular city street by layering successive images taken at regular intervals. Timespace was part of Exposed: Depictions, Discoveries, Discussion & Debate, which itself is part of CONTACT, Toronto's annual month-long festival of photography.



Labels: Exhibitions, Photography, Publications
From May 10-31, 2007, I exhibited a solo collection entitled Landmarks and Monuments: Residential Complexes in Toronto's Periphery. The exhibition, at the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery in Toronto, was part of CONTACT, Toronto's annual month-long festival of photography. Academic support for this project was provided by Adrian Blackwell, a professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. The text that accompanied the show explains my intentions:
The residential complexes in the periphery of Toronto are definitive landmarks: markers of boundary and locality, points of orientation, representations of an instance and turning point in time, and structures of compelling historical and aesthetic interest. Their monumental significance is belied by a lack of conscious popular awareness of their presence and status. By presenting these buildings as consequential architecture, I aim to stimulate discourse about their role in our city.





In April 2008, an image from this body of work was featured on the home page of Toronto Jane's Walk, advertising their upcoming tours of Toronto's inner suburbs.
In May 2009, I helped Graeme Stewart of ERA Architects lead a Jane's Walk of one of the locations featured in this body of work. An image i took of this event is shown below; several more can be found at the link above. An excerpt from the description of the work I gave during the event can be heard in Spacing Radio 006 (beginning at 2:55), a podcast that documented Jane's Walks throughout the city.
In October 2009, images from this body of work were featured extensively in the publication Tower Renewal Guidelines: For the Comprehensive Retrofit of Multi-Unit Buildings in Cold Climates, a University of Toronto led initiative to describe the technical issues surrounding tower improvements.
Labels: Exhibitions, Photography, Publications
From May 11-30, 2009, I exhibited solo collection entitled Usonia Road: Frank Lloyd Wright in the Post-Fordist City.
The exhibition, at the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery in Toronto, was part of CONTACT, Toronto's annual month-long festival of photography. Academic support for this project was provided by Adrian Blackwell, a professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. The text that accompanies the show explains my intentions:
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) and Henry Ford (1863-1947) were two towering historical figures in America and beyond. Ford is credited with Fordism, that is, mass production of a good coupled with high wages for the workers who produced the good, so as to permit them to purchase it themselves. This resulted in widespread prosperity, centred on consumerism. Wright's Usonian project was a sequence of architectural propositions designed in response to the needs of this emerging middle-class. Both men had totalizing visions for society, visions that persist today in bastardized form. Fordism broke down in the early 1970's as the economies of Western nations shifted away from manufacturing and industry and towards the knowledge economy. Elements of Usonia, such as single-family homes on generous lots, curvilinear streets and the carport, characterize the suburbs of the contemporary american city. Today, the majority of Wright's built Usonian work survives in cities that have made the difficult transition from a Fordist to a post-Fordist economy, and yet the buildings themselves remain frozen in time as a result of their landmark status. By presenting a selection of Wright's work paired with its contemporary context - be it decayed or renewed - I reveal the tension between visionary architecture and the evolving urban landscape.








Labels: Architecture, Exhibitions, Photography
From May 8-31, 2009, I exhibited a print in a group exhibition at the Gladstone Hotel entitled Exposed: Innovation, Transformation, Revolution.
The exhibition was part of CONTACT, Toronto's annual month-long festival of photography. The text that accompanies the show explains my intentions:
In this piece, entitled Luke Stern in the Jester/Pfeiffer Residence, I have combined the techniques developed for one body of work, and applied them to the theme of another. Cao Chang Di, exhibited at the Gladstone as part of Contact 2008, was a series of composite images that incorporate the dynamic information from multiple time-lapse frames. Usonia Road: Frank Lloyd Wright in the Post-Fordist City, currently exhibiting at the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery as part of Contact 2009, is a selection of images of Frank Lloyd Wright residences and their contemporary context. This piece shows Luke Stern multiply occupying one of these residences, the Jester/Pfeiffer residence in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Labels: Architecture, Exhibitions, Photography
On April 23, 2009, Luke Stern and I successfully defended our Master of Architecture thesis project at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, entitled Automatic Revisited: Fabricating Sustainable Concrete Elements.
Our thesis abstract summarizes our intentions:
The constructional elements of a building are normally considered components in service of the greater architectural endeavor. Yet elements are also design problems: direct consideration elevates them from the conceptual role of passive expression to that of active contribution, and calls into question their accepted form, function and materiality. The desired qualities of a complete building - firmitas, utilitatis, and venustatis - are the same as those desired in a constructional element, suggesting that elements warrant evaluation beyond their ability merely to be organized creatively: the architecture of the element is itself architecture.
We have developed a family of modular armature elements that permit a large degree of formal variability using a small number of discrete parts. These elements emerged as a contemporary response to Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonian Automatic project, an early exploration into the constructional element as a parallel design exercise. The Automatic system provided a point of departure, and prompted a new set of concrete forms that respond to contemporary sustainable criteria, including maximal architectural freedom, optimal environmental performance, and minimal life-cycle costs. Through an open-ended collaborative problem-solving process, we developed several prototypes; through full-scale fabrication, we tested the validity of the prototypes in confrontation with reality.











Labels: Architecture, Education, Engineering, Exhibitions, Fabrication, Graphics
Details coming soon . . . click here for more information.




Labels: Architecture, Exhibitions, Photography
Details coming soon. . . click here for more information.






Labels: Architecture, Education, Engineering, Exhibitions, Fabrication, Graphics, Photography
Between September and December 2008, I taught one section of the course Research Studio: Social Space at the Ontario College of Art and Design.
The course blog facilitates the online component of the course.
Two images of the response a collaborative project I assigned, where students drew a one-kilometre section through downtown Toronto, are shown below. More details coming soon. . .

Labels: Employment, Teaching, Writing
Details coming soon. . . click here for more information.




Labels: Architecture, Education, Graphics, Photography
As the 2007-2008 Howarth-Wright Fellows at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Luke Stern and I will be spending the summer of 2008 investigating Frank Lloyd Wright's pioneering building technologies and methodologies and demonstrating their relevance to contemporary practice. An excerpt from our Fellowship proposal is shown below.We propose to investigate the nature of progressive architectural practice through the analytical deconstruction and subsequent physical reconstruction of a selection of Frank Lloyd Wright's building details. The experimental assemblies found in many of his innovative buildings are evidence of Wright's desire to challenge the boundaries of conventional construction and were integral to the success of his architecture. As such, they warrant exploratory research that will contribute to the critical dialogue surrounding one of the most exceptional and prolific builders of the Modern era. Whether valorized as representative of his commitment to a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), or perceived to have failed the test of time, these architectonic vehicles should be considered as micro-architectures in their own right. The analysis of these assemblies (eg. the dendriform columns and the Pyrex glass-tube façade of the Johnson Wax Headquarters) will reveal valuable conceptual and pragmatic lessons on the pioneering of innovative building technologies and methodologies. These lessons will resonate with contemporary architectural practice, given its preoccupations with advanced fabrication technology and passive environmental control: Wright's interests and innovations anticipated both. It is essential that these lessons be demonstrated in built form, as it is in execution that these contemporary practices face their greatest challenge. This investigation will take place between May and September 2008, and will consist of three phases: archival and in-situ research and analysis, physical reconstruction, and finally installation and publication.
This project will serve as preliminary research for our subsequent collaborative Master of Architecture thesis project, where we will explore the tension between the sustainable and conceptual desires of architecture through the fabrication of full-scale building assemblies.
Labels: Architecture, Competitions, Education, Employment, Exhibitions, Fabrication, Publications
From September 2006 to March 2007, I was hired to provide photographs for the new website of the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. Some highlights are shown below.

From February to April 2006, Cafe 066 exhibited a selection of my photography from this body of work under the title Final Crit.


In February 2007, 18 images from this body of work were published in the AL&D Architecture Landscape and Design Annual 2006-2007, forming the binding graphic element of the publication.
Labels: Employment, Exhibitions, Photography, Publications
In January 2008, I began preliminary design work on a residence at 422 Panorama Crescent, a extremely steep property in Okanagan Falls, British Columbia.


Labels: Architecture, Employment
From October 2007 to January 2008, I was employed as an Architectural Designer at Architects + Research + Knowledge Incorporated, a Toronto architecture firm focussed on the needs of the public sector. There, I contributed to the preliminary design of the Reena Community Residence, a multi-use supported living facility for people with developmental disabilities to be located in Vaughan, Ontario. Shown below are an interior rendering of the proposed vertically-planted light well, and a page from a fundraising package prepared for the client.

I also helped conceptualize an expansion of The Mabin School, located in Toronto, Ontario. Shown below is a photograph of the existing building, and a study showing the shadow impact of the existing building and the proposed addition.

Other work I performed includes conceptual diagramming for the Mt. Sinai Hospital and the Geneva Centre for Autism, a draft fundraising brochure for the UJA Tomorrow Campaign, and architectural photography of the Kimel Family Education Centre, an example of which is shown below.
Labels: Architecture, Employment, Graphics, Photography
Between September 2006 and December 2007, I taught three sections of the course Form and Structure at the Ontario College of Art and Design. The first page of my most recent course outline is shown below.
The third and fourth projects in the course require students to contemplate both the conceptual implications and the functional requirements of the design of a chair. The first pages of my handouts for these projects are shown below.
The course incorporates a field trip, which combines a student-directed tour of Toronto's architecture with stops at design facilities and firms. In 2007, students visited the Prototyping Laboratory at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design,
and ERA Architects. The students then compiled the OCAD Form and Structure Guide to Toronto Architecture, the first page of which is shown below.
Labels: Employment, Furniture, Teaching, Writing
In December 2007, I began preliminary design work on a residence at 10774 Madrona Drive, a steep and narrow oceanfront property in North Saanich, British Columbia.

Labels: Architecture, Employment
From an as yet unexhibited series of eight occupied greenhouses found in the periphery of Hangzhou, China on a trip arranged by Adrian Blackwell, a professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. 

Labels: Architecture, Photography
From May to July 2007, I took part in the Beijing Architectural Studio Enterprise, where I studied the ongoing transformation of Beijing's peri-urban periphery with Adrian Blackwell, a professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. In collaboration with Evan Moses, I produced a presentation and manuscript entitled Other Villages, excerpts from which are shown below, which concentrated on the particular confluence of forces in the village of Cui Ge Zhuang.


Labels: Architecture, Education, Exhibitions, Graphics, Publications
From January to April 2007, I completed the final core studio in the Master of Architecture program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design . The studio was entitled Comprehensive Building Project. My Instructors were Barry Sampson, David Carter, David Lieberman and Betsy Williamson. In collaboration with Luke Stern, I designed a school and community centre located in the West Donlands development in Toronto. At the conclusion of the studio, we submitted a competition entry to Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World, consisting of an essay and the panels shown below.

An excerpt from the competition essay best describes our architectural intentions:
Sustainable design continues to achieve milestones in building performance, but its architectonic possibilities remain under-realized. The West Donlands School and Community Centre proposes the use of re-deployable high-precision formwork assemblies, and their incorporation into the final design solution. From this point of departure, the design proceeds to integrate a full suite of passive environmental technologies, simultaneously paying close attention to the creation of a dynamic educational space by taking full advantage of the plastic potential of cast-in-place concrete. Its architectonic language derived directly from sustainable innovation, The West Donlands School and Community Centre generates a conceptual dialogue between formal expressivity and the sustainable agenda.









Labels: Architecture, Competitions, Education, Fabrication, Writing
Between January 2006 to April 2007, I taught 3 sections of the course Principles of Interaction Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design. The first page of my most recent course outline is shown below. 
The course blog facilitates the online component of the course, and allows students to remain in contact with each other during the
final project, Activate the Park, in which students collectively design and implement an engaging interactive experience that enriches the park space on campus. The first page of my most recent handout for this project is shown below. 
This project has garnered substantial and sustained media attention. My students were interviewed in the National Post, for example. A article in Canadian Architect about the project is shown below.
Labels: Employment, Publications, Teaching, Writing
From January 2006 to April 2007, I was the Teaching Assistant for the sequence of graduate-level courses in structures at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design . I frequently presented supplementary lectures to reinforce and expand on the material delivered by the professor. I also marked all assignments. Below is an excerpt from an answer key I prepared for students.
Labels: Employment, Engineering, Teaching
In September 2006, I was hired to provide photographs of Adrian Blackwell's interactive installation Model for a Public Space (Speaker), installed as part of Nuit Blanche, an all-night art event in Toronto. Two images from the night's activities are shown below.

I was subsequently contracted, in February 2007, to provide photographs of the installation of Ai Wei Wei's Beijing 10/2003, part of Detours: Tactical Approaches to Urbanization in China, curated by Adrian and Pei Zhao. Two examples are shown below. 

Labels: Employment, Photography
In February 2007, I provided a poster for a Motherbrand installation at Come Up To My Room, an annual design exhibition at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. 
Labels: Employment, Exhibitions, Graphics, Photography
In the fall of 2006, I pursued an interest in the suitability of straw-bale building envelopes for the Canadian climate. In collaboration with Luke Stern, and under the direction of Dr. Ted Kesik of the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design , I wrote two papers on the subject: Moisture Control in Stuccoed Straw-bale Building Envelopes for the Canadian Climate, and Evaluation of the Straw-bale Component of a Multi-system Building Envelope. A diagram excerpted from the latter paper is provided below. 
Labels: Architecture, Education, Engineering, Writing
From September to December of 2006, I refined my skills in Photoshop, Illustrator, AutoCAD, Rhino, 3D Studio Max and Premiere in a course taught by Lukasz Kos at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design . My work from this course was exhibited in the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery in the spring of 2007. The final 50cm x 75cm panels and the final video are shown below.


Labels: Architecture, Education, Exhibitions, Graphics
From September to December of 2006, I completed the second core studio in the Master of Architecture Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. The studio was entitled Culture and the Metropolis. My instructors were John Shnier, Dieter Janssen, Larry Wayne Richards and Elise Shelley. In collaboration with Piers Cunnington, Scott Keyes, Gene Mastrangli, Graham McNally and Jon Reed, I produced an exploration of the future urban development west of Square One Mall in Mississauga, Ontario. The results of this exploration, which included a 3m x 2m x 1m concept model, a 3m x 12m composite drawing, and a four minute video, are shown below. 


Labels: Architecture, Education
From April to September 2006, I was employed as the Communication Designer at the Blackwell Bowick Partnership, a structural engineering firm in Toronto. My primary responsibility was the architectural photography of completed projects and the compilation of project information for promotional use. Examples of this work are shown below.

I was also responsible for all other photographic and promotional needs. For example, the advertisement shown below was featured in the February 2007 issue of Award magazine.

I also performed in a structural engineering capacity, representing the firm on-site at several projects, including a Wal-Mart expansion project in Brampton, and two Shim-Sutcliffe Architects residential projects in Toronto. I continue to work with Blackwell Bowick on a freelance basis.
Labels: Employment, Engineering, Graphics, Photography
From September to December of 2006, I completed the first core studio in the Master of Architecture Program at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design . The studio was entitled Site, Building, Tectonics. My instructors were Tom Bessai, An Te Liu, Bridgette Shim and Mason White. The brief called for a beach-side recreation facility in Santa Monica, California. My design responds to the striking confluence of ocean, hills and urbanity that exists at this location. Excerpts from my final review panels are shown below.




My work from this studio is featured on the AL&D website.
Labels: Architecture, Education
Between September 2005 and January 2006 I pursued my interest in the works of Konrad Wachsmann, a visionary German-American architect. As Research Assistant to An Te Liu, an artist and associate professor in the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design , I helped develop the ideas that led to a successful grant from the Canada Council for a forthcoming project entitled This Was the Future: The Vision of Konrad Wachsmann. Under the direction of David Lieberman and Michael Propokow, both faculty members at AL&D, I created two documents about Wachsmann's work. An excerpt from the short manuscript Konrad Wachsmann's USAF Space Frame Proposal and the proposal for the longer paper Universal Dreams: Konrad Wachsmann's USAF Space Frame are shown below.

Labels: Architecture, Employment, Engineering, Writing
From December 2002 to February 2006, I produced a number of photographs and graphic designs for Vancouver-based musician Erica Mah, including the two portraits and the album insert shown below.


Labels: Employment, Graphics, Photography
YYMMDD catalogues my creative output through the end of 2004. In the spring and summer of 2005, I was offered admission to the Master of Architecture programs at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the Institut D'Architectura Avancada de Catalunya on the strength this document.

I chose to accept the offer from the University of Toronto.
Labels: Architecture, Education, Graphics, Photography, Publications, Writing
From September to November 2004, I volunteered at Asociacion Maya Pedal, a Guatemalan non-governmental organization that designs and constructs pedal-powered appropriate technology. My drawing of the molino/desgranadora is shown below. I also served on the Board of Directors of Pedal Energy Development Alternatives, a related group based in Vancouver, from June 2004 to September 2005.
Labels: Employment, Engineering, Fabrication
From March to September 2005, I was employed as an Assistant Project Engineer with the Parks Engineering Services department of the Greater Vancouver Regional District. My department managed the maintenance and replacement of all Parks infrastructure. My specific responsibilities included strategic planning regarding the development and development of universal design guidelines, the inspection and repair of all park bridges, and the design and construction of park improvements, as shown below.
Labels: Employment, Engineering, Writing
In March 2005, I shot a series of portraits for Victoria-based musician and producer Hayden Cyr. The imagery on his current website is almost exclusively derived from the photography I provided.


Labels: Employment, Photography, Publications
In the July and August 2004, I participated in Making and Meaning, a summer program at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. There, I fabricated a sequence of artifacts exploring the formal and material potential of three intersecting planes: a modular array of 5cm square volumes of rigid foam; a 40cm high sculpture of thin plywood; and a 1.5m high tower of cast plaster, steel rod and perforated aluminum plate. 


Labels: Architecture, Education, Fabrication
From July of 1998 to July of 2004, I served in several capacities as a cycling advocate at the University of British Columbia, including as President of the AMS Bike Co-op, Manager of The Bike Kitchen, and most recently as the Bicycle Infrastructure Co-ordinator at the UBC Trek Program Centre. In 2003, I led a lobbying effort to establish The Bike Hub, a $500,000 community cycling centre, as described in the July 30 issue of The Ubyssey, shown below.
Once funding was secured, I worked closely with designer Michael Kingsmill throughout all phases of the design and construction of the 350 square metre facility. I also and independently designed and fabricated the 2m x 1m main entrance sign shown below.
Labels: Architecture, Employment, Engineering, Fabrication, Graphics
From January 2003 to December 2004, I took courses in the Bachelor of Fine Art degree program at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. My primary output during this period was a pair of adaptable furniture designs constructed from birch plywood. The components of Eight Shades of Maple, shown below, are connected with elastic cords concealed in manufactured grooves, facilitating its manipulation from bed to table to bench. It was exhibited from September 4-14, 2003 as part of an ECIAD show entitled Valid Furniture.

The components of Eight Panel Table feature a rigid foam core for lightness, and are vacuum-bag constructed from seventeen individual wood parts. The hinges between each pair of panels permit a full 180 degree rotation, allowing the piece to be expanded from 1m x 1m x 0.2m to a table for eight people. 

Both prototypes have proven their utility and durability during three years of user testing.
Labels: Education, Exhibitions, Fabrication, Furniture
In May of 2003, the Civil Engineering Graduating Class of 2003 purchased three photographs for a permanent installation in the the lobby of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of British Columbia. The images were selected for their evocation of a sub-discipline of civil engineering: Stratigraphy, for geo-technical engineering; Tensile Members, for structural engineering, and Supercritical Flow, for hydro-technical engineering. The installation prints are 50cm x 50cm. Tensile Members and the finished installation are shown below.

Labels: Exhibitions, Photography
From March 2-8, 2003, I exhibited the two images shown below in a group show at the AMS Gallery. 

Labels: Exhibitions, Photography
In December 2003, I was offered admission to the Bachelor of Fine Art program at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. My submission to ECIAD's required entrance project, entitled as Map Your Week, is shown below: eight 10cm high acrylic cubes, laminated with photographs to form a larger, re-configurable artifact.

Labels: Education, Fabrication, Photography
The image below, of the 2002 Tour de Gastown cycling competition, was published in the October/November 2002 issue of Momentum magazine.
Labels: Photography, Publications
From September 30 to October 4, 2002, I exhibited four images in a group show at the AMS Art Gallery. Two of the images are shown below.

Labels: Exhibitions, Photography