Type_Design for Chair Your Idea
Date_2015
Status_Completed
Role_Designer
Team_T. Jeffrey Garcia (Design) and Apollo Au (Development and Digital Modelling)
Acknowledgements_Jason Hare (University of Manitoba FABlab) and Jeff Kachkan (5468796 Architecture)
The project was part of the Chair Your Idea Competition Launch, an initiative generated by 5468796 Architecture. It is a chair designed for Jenny Gerbasi, City Councillor (Fort Rouge East Fort Garry).
Conceived as the next iteration of renowned Italian designer Enzo Mari’s project in 1974 for “self designed” furniture (“Autoprogettazione”); ENZERO1 is as much a proposal as it is an object. The design is a hack of the IKEA “Marius” stool and is comprised of several interchangeable components made using Digital Fabrication methods. Adopting an open source model in order to make the design accessible to more people, the digital files for the chair seats, arm rests, and back rests can be downloaded without cost from a link on the “Chair Your Idea” website. ENZERO1 simply provides a foundation for people to improve, interpret, manipulate, and evolve the rudimentary design.
ENZERO1.JG (Jenny Gerbasi) is a proposition for an “Open Source Urbansim”. Three stools have been repurposed to support multiple configurations for social engagement. People can decide to interact with each other or enjoy some time alone with a cup of coffee made from their local barista. A solar charger for mobile devices is provided as an amenity. In an era strongly defined by the proliferation of social media, ENZERO1.JG encourages people to have a seat, plug-in, Tweet, upload to Instagram, and post on Facebook their views on the importance of innovative urban design practices as a means to realize a more robust, enriched, and inclusive Winnipeg experience.
Type_Competition
Date_2015
Status_Completed
Role_Designer
Team_Brandon Bergem and T. Jeffrey Garcia
The Table for 1201 (Tf1201) event held a Curatorial Competition for a table centrepiece measuring 7’-0” x 6” within a 8’-0” x 2’-6” table. The design had to accommodate spaces designated for plates, glassware, serving-ware, cutlery, wine and water bottles, 4 side dishes, 2 main dishes, and event programs.
The Tf1201 design was for 5468796 Architecture’s table, and it reconsidered and subverted the requirements of the competition brief. Rather than designing an autonomous object of decoration, the entire table surface was considered. The office is well known for their innovative and unconventional design approach and those values needed to be reflected in the project’s intention and execution.
The firm’s logo – ostensibly a barcode - is an integral part of their identity and became the focus of the design. Over 2,000 plastic drinking straws were inserted into holes laser cut into acrylic panels that covered the entire table. The logo was enlarged and the white and black bands became templates that generated clusters of form and void. The graphic was apparent in a top/plan view where the proliferation of straws at the centre dissolved into a gradient, creating a topographical “table-scape”. The graphic was also discernable from the front/back view, where the staccato of straws maintained a visual datum despite being cut at various lengths. As the afternoon transitioned into evening, an internal illumination of LED diodes transformed the centerpiece into a reimagined candelabra.
Type_International Competition (Honourable Mention)
Date_2015
Status_Closed
Role_Designer
Team_Brandon Bergem, T. Jeffrey Garcia, Colin Grover, and Kim Wiese
The Medial Mossery explores the possibilities of reevaluating spaces that are often discarded, overlooked, or neglected. Celebrating the intersection of Main and Broadway and sited at the terminus of the axis of trees down Broadway, the design speculates how the ubiquitous median can manifest a sense of place-making and support robust social connectivity and interaction. It is a collection of curated contrasting experiences that are facilitated by several spatial and perceptual thresholds; including the transitions from public and private, mass and void, light and dark, dormant and dynamic, and landscape and structure.
Medial Mossery challenges our conceptions of the median strip and garden typologies. Rather than simply dividing lanes of traffic, the space is conceived as an urban peninsula that will host a contemporary interpretation of a 19th century mossery where samples of mosses can be collected and grown. The design will be a phenomenologically charged space that will be sensorially diverse with numerous framed views, gathering spaces, textures, and light effects.
Type_Temporary Structure
Date_2014
Status_Constructed
Role_Designer
Team_Colin Grover (organizer and designer), Brandon Bergem (designer), T. Jeffrey Garcia (designer), and Jason Hare (fabricator)
Photos by MacKenzie Jean
Cyclocross is currently the fastest growing form of bike racing in North America. The sport is a hybrid of road and mountain biking and the cyclists race on a closed circuit fraught with obstacles and changes in elevation, surfaces, and ground conditions. In October 2014, Winnipeg hosted the Shimano Canadian Cyclocross Championship at The Forks and they required a podium for the awards ceremonies.
The art of spectating is an inherent component to the Cyclocross culture, and it was this relationship that became the departure point for imagining a distinct approach to the design. The podium was considered an extension of the course and the intention was to require the winning cyclists to ride up the ramp to the top of the podium. The bicycles for cyclocross are specifically designed for the rigours of the sport and it was proposed that the victors would be able to pose with their respective bicycles.
The various components of the podium were fabricated using the FABLab facilities at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Architecture.
Type_International Competition (Third Place Winner)
Date_2014
Status_Closed
Role_Designer
Team_Brandon Bergem, T. Jeffrey Garcia, and Kent Mundle
RAW:almond has imprinted itself into Winnipeg’s cultural consciousness. One of the most notable achievements is the fervent collaboration of two distinct creative endeavours: the culinary arts and design. Although such efforts are not unusual, the investment in providing an opportunity to provide exposure for young, local talent created a pronounced resonance. The catalyst for Raw:almond plus (R:a+) is the necessity to nurture this vigour while simultaneously positing opportunities for its perpetual evolution.
The R:a+ proposal is intended to be a repository for cultural collaboration, innovation, and making; provoking the engagement of ventures beyond the culinary and design fields to include film, music, and the fine arts. The design strives to be a hybrid of disparate programmes whose cohesion is dependent on its differences. It will be a reflection of Winnipeg’s vagaries, orchestrating the richness of our polarities.
The proposed design speculates the next permutation of how design, event, and site can interface to evoke a distinct dining experience. Expression through form-making was balanced with the imperative for programmatic complexity.
Type_International Competition
Date_2014
Status_Closed
Role_Designer
Team_Brandon Bergem, T. Jeffery Garcia, and Nicole Hunt
The People’s Republic of China revels in its abundance of contradictions. The world’s dependence on its innovations in technology and unparalleled manufacturing capabilities has made it an international economic Superpower. Despite being increasingly dexterous as other developed nations accessing the benefits of robust financial markets and technological prescience; it is still inculcated by traditions spanning numerous dynasties.
Beijing occupies the intersection of China’s temporal and cultural multiplicities. The transmutation of Beijing as an international industrial, technological, and architectural megalopolis into its current incarnation as the venerated funerary metropolis known as the WHITE CITY was catalyzed during the mid Twenty-First Century. It was a consequence of its unbounded aspiration to most successfully exemplify the paradigms of the Third Industrial Revolution. This era was marked by unprecedented developments in the interface of biology and technology. Research agendas focused on the feasibility of integrating bio-organic matter suitable for Corporal Digital Fabrication. The speculated applications included building systems, product development, medical prosthetics, and molecular gastronomical food production.
The peerless innovation rampant in all sectors made Beijing an international epicentre attracting investment from multi-national corporations that nurtured a booming expatriate population. The United Nations eventually bestowed the designation of “Supercity”. The collective euphoria of prosperity however obfuscated the severity of its environmental impact. Even the most pessimistic ecologists at the time incorrectly predicted that environmental technologies would evolve concurrently with the same revolutionary strides as other industries.
The city was eventually consumed by unrelenting smog. The reduced natural light diminished the ability for plants to photosynthesize, making it impossible for vegetation to naturally process carbon dioxide. Agriculture and food security were heavily compromised. Despite foreign aid, the United Nations had to declare a state of emergency in the late Twenty-First Century. This resulted in a massive diaspora of its citizens to cities around the world.
Beijing became dormant for a decade afterwards, but the resiliency of a culture centuries old inevitably eclipsed the pathos of a city betrayed by its previous successes. Beijing embraced its cultural traditions and its momentum for modernity. As the new WHITE CITY it successfully transformed into a leader in funerary technology and bio- medical genetic ecology. All of China’s funerary requirements are localized at the various facilities called Reliquary Towers. Research continues within these structures testing hybridized plants using human DNA and digital fabrication. The aspiration is to produce a regenerated ecology. The collective reverie of the WHITE CITY is a dynasty defined by the confluence of prudent optimism and latent speculations.
Type_Competition
Date_2014
Status_Completed
Role_Designer
Team_T. Jeffrey Garcia, Ben Greenwood, and Elyssa Stelman
The event included a Curatorial Competition for a table centrepiece measuring 7’-0” x 6”. The design had to accommodate spaces designated for plates, glassware, serving-ware, cutlery, wine and water bottles, 1 appetizer platter, 4 side dishes, 2 main dishes, and event programs.
The Table for 1200 (Tf1200) design reconsidered and subverted the requirements of the project brief. Rather than designing an autonomous centrepiece, the entire table surface (8’-0” x 2’-6”) was considered. The project intent was inspired by social media applications like Instagram which has popularized the ubiquitous “selfie” and the “foodstagram.” The design facilitated the documentation of the event by the use of mobile devices held in a custom holder and armature.
The “table-scape” was comprised of a heavy paper stock top layer with several laser cut elements, and a bottom layer of laser cut cardboard. The paper layer provided guests with everything needed for dining at the event: a wine charm, toothpicks, cutlery rests, a napkin holder, an envelope for gratuity, and a mobile phone holder/chord wrap. An armature popped up from the cardboard layer and held the mobile phone holder/chord wrap in place to ensure an optimum position to take a photo of their dinner.
Type_International Competition
Date_2014
Status_Closed
Role_Designer
Team_Brandon Bergem, T. Jeffery Garcia, and Aaron Pollock
The unprecedented success of reclaimed and repurposed urban infrastructure has reaffirmed the prosperity inherent in offering alternative typologies for public amenities. The most contemporary examples have met renown for proposing the reconceptualization of the park typology. The QCA+E attempts to extend the edges of speculation in the development of a “Non-Park” Park. The design intentions can be categorized into: elements, technology, flex, ecology, and circulation.
Organization_MAKE Coffee + Stuff
Date_September 12, 2013 - October 30, 2013
Status_Completed
Role_SHADE Competition Co-Organizer, Co-Curator, and Co-Exhibit Designer
Team_Jae-Sung Chon and Brandon Bergem
Often absent in lighting considerations is a critical evaluation of the taxonomy of form and the act of conveying and animating illumination. SHADE seeks a purposeful integration of lighting and space. Both as object and effect, the fixture performs as a catalyst for re-imagining the potentials of the spaces we inhabit. To this end, a range of explorations that extend the breadths of the light-form-space interaction from the spectacle to the nuanced, the dramatic to the banal and superfluous, are encouraged.
SHADE was the first international design competition that was facilitated by STUFF (Studio for Transformative Urban Forms and Fields), a Winnipeg, Canada based multi disciplinary think-thank. The competition was open to all backgrounds with entries submitted by both students and professionals. The work represented an international interest, with submissions that were made from contestants based in countries such as Canada, the United States, Hungary, Japan, Germany, Russian, China, and New Zealand.
Each jury member, reflecting the breadth of design endeavours including industrial designers (Omer Arbel from Vancouver and Philipp Schöpfer and Daniel Klapsing of 45 Kilo in Berlin), curators/retailers (John Baker and Juli Daoust of Mjölk in Toronto), creative directors (Thom Fougere from Winnipeg), editors (Nelda Rogers from Toronto), and architects (Jun Shibata from Kengo Kuma and Associates in Tokyo), selected and recognized their favourite SHADE.
The finalists were given the opportunity to participate in a public exhibition hosted by MAKE Coffee + Stuff, a café and retail venue in Winnipeg, Canada whose mandate is to provide a space that can provoke an engagement between the public and profession of design.
Organization_MAKE Coffee + Stuff
Date_May 31, 2013 - July 05, 2013
Status_Completed
Role_Co-Curator and Co-Exhibit Designer
Team_Jae-Sung Chon and Brandon Bergem
008_METAL is a selection of design objects by Blu Dot, Tom Dixon, and 2213. The display showcases how metal enters into different scenes of everyday through design. Through cutting and folding of sheet metal, the designs lead the material to dematerialize its own presence and enter the realms of function and beauty of everyday objects, as a lighting shade, a chair, a mailbox and house numbers.
2213
Founded by Valentin Mittelstet in Winnipeg, Canada, 2213 Inc is a new furniture design company that focuses on modern, functional items for the home. Blending clean, minimal design with function and durability, 2213 features stylish designer home furnishings and accessories. 2213 starts with house numbers but will soon invite you to come inside as we expand into every room, wall, nook and cranny of the home.
hut K
hut K is a Winnipeg design retail venture curated and operated by Dane Kofoed - who has been developing exclusive retail relationships with some of the world’s top furniture design companies. Located in the historic Exchange District, hut K is a unique design showcase in the growing Winnipeg centre. Displayed here are the Blu Dot “Real Good Chair” - a flat-packed, user assembled chair, alongside the Tom Dixon “Etch Shade” an acid-etched geometric pendant light.
Organization_MAKE Coffee + Stuff
Date_March 15, 2013 - April 29, 2013
Status_Completed
Role_Co-Curator, and Co-Exhibit Designer
Team_Jae-Sung Chon and Brandon Bergem
Sketches are quick transitions of lucid ideas into a physical page, the prelude to refined ideas. 004_SKETCH showcases designer sketches, utensils used, and the designers. The intention is to reveal the idea-pen/pencil-paper relationship: how design ideas travel and transform through sketching. This is an exhibit of drawings produced by local Winnipeg designers - be it fashion, furniture, landscape, or architecture - each sketch is an exploration of a design idea/production exposing the public to various tactics in sketching will bring a heightened awareness of the methodology and development behind ideation.
Contributors:
5468796 (5468796 Architecture Inc)
Glen Manning (Hilderman Thomas Frank Cram Landscape Architects)
Herb Enns (Professor, Faculty of Architecture)
Juliana Kusyk (Student, Masters of Architecture)
Lennard Taylor (Lennard Taylor Design Studio Inc)
Peter Sampson (PSA Studio Inc)
Saira Abdulrehman (Student, Environmental Design Program)
Shawn Stankewich (Student, Masters of Landscape Architecture)
Stas Klaz (Student, Environmental Design Program)
Thom Jeffrey Garcia (Sessional Instructor, Faculty of Architecture)
Thomas Nuytten (h5 Architecture)
Thom Fougere (Thom Fougere Studio / EQ3)
Organization_MAKE Coffee + Stuff
Date_August 17, 2012 - August 22, 2012
Status_Completed
Role_Co-Organizer, Co-Curator, and Co-Exhibit Designer
Team_S.T.U.F.F. - Studio for Transformative Urban Form and Fields (Brandon Bergem, Hailey Darling, Nicole Hunt, and Aaron Pollock)
We believe architectural models, especially ones produced as part of design processes, are saturated with energy and ideas. Through MODEL, our intention is to offer the public a view into design offices and their design process. This may foster greater appreciation and awareness in design experiments and processes, while exposing vibrant and critical practices to a greater public audience.
Type_International Competition
Year_2012
Status_Closed
Role_Designer
Team_STUFF (Jae-Sun Chon, Brandon Bergem, T. Jeffrey Garcia, Nicole Hunt, Aaron Pollock, and Hailey Darling)
Libraries have a lineage of being the repositories of knowledge. A robust collection of books requires ample square footage for its primary purpose: storage with vast lengths of circulation space. Lastly, the stacks is a linear a series of categorical designations (Dewey Decimal System) that are often in place and rarely moved making changes in content difficult to accommodate. Instead, the integration of the Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) is a requisite component in the reassessment of the library typology. The technology facilitates the accessing of material on a network of tracks guided by a computerized system. Their unfixed locations are tracked at all times through a digital database that can be accessed through terminals or from a free downloadable mobile device app.
The floor space required to store approximately 90, 000 books is roughly 1/5 the floor area of most libraries. Although unintended discoveries while wandering through book stacks is one of the poignant indulgences that the existing model provides, the proposed design for the Daegu Gosan Public Library (Daegu, South Korea) will provide suggested books of interest based on search habits developed by the userbase over time.
Since the book stacks run the full height of the building, facilitating ample storage with a reduced square footage, the remainder of the site is dedicated to the amenity of a public park. Indoor and outdoor spaces are integrated into the overall design strategy. Instead of unintentionally stumbling upon a cache of books that pique interest en route to locating the intended item, people are encouraged to meander through the integrated park.
Type_Interior Design (Winner: Commerce Design Winnipeg Grand Jury Prize 2014)
Date_2012
Status_Constructed
Role_Designer
Team_STUFF (Jae-Sung Chon, Brandon Bergem, T. Jeffrey Garcia, Nicole Hunt, and Aaron Pollock)
Kimchi Sushi is a restaurant located in North End Winnipeg serving Korean and Japanese dishes for a young chef, son of a retired restaurateur, with access to a unfinished corner unit of a strip mall with little street presence
Faced with a tight budge, and desire for maximum seating and small scale kitchen, the service program is wrapped within a tight black volume with a drop ceiling. This volume is cut away reveal the sushi bar, waitressing stations, and various circulation elements.
The lengthy dining hall is left relatively unfinished with polished concrete, and exposed ceiling joists. With limited access to daylight being within the corner unit of the strip mall the walls are finished in uplit Shou-sugi-ban siding for ambient lighting along with an array of simple pendant lights to create a spatial texture to the dark void left by the high ceilings.
Written by T. Jeffrey Garcia and Kim Wiese
First published in the Warehouse Journal Volume 21 (2012)
Photographs by Brandon Bergem
Type_In-House Project
Date_2003
Concept_Plastic Buddha Design Inc. (Craig Alun Smith, Michael Erdmann, and T. Jeffrey Garcia) and Spacecadet Graphic Design (Chris Clark and Carla Burr)
Design_Plastic Buddha Design Inc. (Michael Erdmann and T. Jeffrey Garcia)
Art Direction_Plastic Buddha Design Inc. (Michael Erdmann, and T. Jeffrey Garcia) and Spacecadet Graphic Design (Chris Clark and Carla Burr)
Undertaken as a collaborative effort between Plastic Buddha Design Inc. and Spacecadet Design, the project was intended to explore the possibilities of a substantive, coherent, and relevant integration of industrial design and graphic design.
Type_Commission
Date_2003
Client: The Winnipeg Art Gallery
Project_Podium
Status_Built
Role_Designer
Concept_Plastic Buddha Design Inc. (Craig Alun Smith and T. Jeffrey Garcia)
Design_Plastic Buddha Design Inc. (Craig Alun Smith, Michael Erdmann, and T. Jeffrey Garcia)
The brief for the WAG podium commission required it to be lightweight, portable, and visually unobtrusive. There were additional requests that were quite unique; the design needed to dissuade presenters from leaning on it and minimum surface area was to be provided to prevent the possibility of clutter. The resulting form was a simple gesture of folded planes; it was conceived as a single uninterrupted line. It was sheathed in red leather and a connection detail at the base was devised that allowed the podium to tip forward if someone leaned on it, but it would slowly spring back to its default vertical position when the weight was no longer exerted.
Type_Commission
Date_2003
Client: Ritzenhoff
Project_Graphic Design for Milk Glass
Status: Produced (Retired Design)
Concept_Plastic Buddha Design (T. Jeffrey Garcia)
Illustration_Plastic Buddha Design (T. Jeffrey Garcia)
A significant approach that pervaded the body of work developed at Plastic Buddha Design was a critical reevaluation of use, content, and meaning. When approached with the opportunity to propose a graphic for the famous collector milk glasses by Ritzenhoff, it was an imperative that it could not simply be an application. Its use as a vessel for drinking needed to be implicated.
The concept was based on lactose intolerance; could Ritzenhoff have a glass that was inclusive of people who do not or cannot drink dairy milk? Inspired by the variety of non-lactose alternatives as well as Canada’s multiculturalism, people of different ethnic backgrounds with different types of milks were used as the primary graphic. The design would adjust depending on what was poured into the glass: some of the clothes, shoes, and skin colour would change depending on whether someone was drinking dairy (white), soy/rice(off-white), or chocolate (brown).
At the time. the glass design included a couple “firsts” in the Ritzenhoff collection: it was the first time a submission was made as a firm as opposed to an individual and it was the first to be produced by Canadian designers.
