Snowcone

with Diana Koncan & many others

2015
Kew Beach, Toronto


Built with friends and volunteers from TMU’s Deptartment of Architectural Science & Design Fabrication Zone. Special thanks to Caleigh Kinch, Kate Myers, Lisa Boulatova, Nate Mendiola, Frank Bowen, Naveed Khan, and many other friends, family, and DAS colleagues for your help with building and installing this in -26 weather, and all your support



Toronto constantly struggles with the challenge of designing for polar extremes. The inaugural 2015 Winterstations competition picked 5 designs to reanimate the lifeless lifeguard stations and underutilized beaches in the winter.
Snowcone’s design is one that is temporary (easily deployed on a snow-covered sandy beach in -15 C weather), that looks enticing enough to bring visitors out to said -15 C snowscape, and that is warm enough to keep them there...with no heat or power! It strategically captures the warmth of the sun like a stained glass greenhouse, utilizes the insulative properties of snow to contain visitors’ body heat, blocks off the lake’s harsh winds, and turns an eye-catching face toward the boardwalk.
Repetitive, modular units were fastened with simple nuts + bolts and zip-ties for speedy assembly and disassembly.
Rhino 3D modelling
CNC programming + milling
Cut + hydraulic press + drill holes + deburr
Heat bending
Assembly
Transport
Coordination
Installation in -15 weather
It takes a village!
Shielding wind from the lake (South face)
Opening up to the boardwalk (North face)

Awarded the Toronto Urban Design Award of Excellence. I was invited back to join the Winterstations team as a juror in 2016 and 2025



Photos & Videos:

Remi Carreiro
Ashley Seale
Amina Lalor
Lisa Boulatova
Farah Elmajdoub
Lily Jeon


Links:

  • Ripple


  • designed with Diana Koncan, Tim Fu, Haya Alnibari, Amina Lalor, Kate Myers, Lisa Boulatova, Nate Mendiola, Tiffany Zhang


  • 2016 / 2015
    Gladstone Hotel / Queens Quay Terminal, Toronto


Built with the help of many friends, and volunteers from TMU’s Department of Architectural Science & Design Fabrication Zone. Special thanks to Stanley Sun for being our electronics expert!  A special sponsored independent project at the 10th annual Nuit Blanche Toronto (thank you Subaru), then exhibited again at Come Up To My Room

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Ripple is a playful embodiment of the notion that we can achieve more together; that every action causes a ripple effect. It was an interactive experience that invited visitors to move through a thicket of suspended droplets, making music by tugging on them; synchronizing movements and harmonizing sounds with those of other visitors.
It seeks to empower visitors to engage with and affect their environment in a playful way, and offers a different experience with every visit - at the beginning of the night when crowds line up for Nuit Blanche, your note mixes with many others, while late at night you may have the whole keyboard to yourself.
Rhino 3D + Grasshopper parametric modelling
3D printing + vacuum forming
Soldering & wiring
Spray frosting
Assembly
Install
Team work!!!!!
Transport

Rock the Boat


with Amina Lalor and Stanley Sun



2016
Vagsbunnen public square, Bergen, Norway



Part of the International Bergen Wood Festival, honorable mention award



Rock the Boat was an interactive installation in Vagsbunnen public square in Bergen, Norway. The project was awarded Honourable Mention in the 2014 Bergen International Wood Festival Competition.
More than just a seating element, Rock the Boat acts as a catalyst for members of the community to interact. Users are encouraged to loosen up at coordinate their movements to cradle the structure back and forth. The rocking motion is reminiscent of boats floating on the pier just steps away from the square.
Woven completely out of 2x2 lumber, the stepped detailing of wood members allows users of all ages to climb aboard, catering to the wide demographic of the festival.
Cutting 2x2’s out in the square with portable power tools
Building outdoors with the elements
The competition challenged industry professionals and students to design and build a public installation outdoors from scratch using only 2x2 lumber within the span of 5 days. It was displayed as part of Norway’s Constitution 200th year anniversary celebrations.


Photos & Videos



Stanley Sun
Amina Lalor
Lily Jeon


Links



Bergen wood

  • Antiprism

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  • Curated by Prachi Khandekar


  • 2019
    Waterfront, Toronto


  • art of the exhibit Flight Mode, curated and commissioned by Prachi Khandekar, shown alongside Hagop Ohannessien. Built with support from many dear friends, with special thanks to Mike Yam, Louis Lim, and Naveed Khan, with funding from the OAC, through SAVAC



An “antiprism” is a triangular prism that is twisted upon itself. Its dynamic form and ability to manipulate light embodies the idea that things are relative, unstable... whereas a prism disperses light, an antiprism disperses, then re-focuses it.
The project was part of the “Flight Mode” exhibition on Toronto’s waterfront, curated by Prachi Khandekar, and taking place alongside the inaugural Toronto Bienniale of Art. Workshops and talks were hosted in the Sidewalk Labs office next door...
Two immersive installations housed in shipping containers (the other container containing artwork by Hagop Ohannessian) invited visitors to reflect on what we readily give up in pursuit of constant connectivity (via technological devices).
The containers were placed on a parking lot under the gardiner, amidst industrial vehicles and old silos - a rough area.
Antiprism consisted of 2 mirror image spaces. Visitors begin by entering through one end into a brightly lit, stark white entryway, that shocks their retina and contrasts starkly with the surrounding site. This prepares them for an unexpected experience, and represents a mind that is overwhelmed with inputs, goes blank, numb. 
Upon removing their shoes and stepping into the cushioned floor, visitors are funnelled into a low curtained doorway, to emerge out the other side... a larger mirror image space that is warm with pastel colours, filled with calming ambient music, and hanging textiles gently swaying in the wind.
The space is a sensory environment that is activated through their movement - the lights in the prisms and on the walls change colour, in subtle ways, based on pressure sensors on the floor. 
The colours of the space represent the many multitudes of inputs, thoughts, reflections, in one’s mind. In our busy world, the never ending fluctuations of new thoughts and feelings can feel overwhelming. But the exhibition offers an invitation to softly accept, embrace, and learn to coexist with these complexities. Prompts written throughout the space encourage visitors to let loose and try out movement meditation, ground themselves in their bodies, as a way of practicing playfulness, going with the flow, and dancing with the complexities.
With so little time in our hustle culture to tend to our needs, to listen to our bodies, the installation sought to be a reminder of the palpable impacts that our environments have on us, that we can have on our environments. That we can step into an unassuming shipping container in a derelect parking lot into a space like this reminds visitors about the importance of context, of perspective, and of the importance of giving yourself the space you need.
Cutting corruplast prisms
 Velostat sensors to drivers for LED strips, Arduino tells it to pulse
Sewing velostat pads
Soldering
Vinyl lettering prompts
Support rail for curtains
Assembly
Install
Transport
My supportive community!
Graphic design by Heather Lynn and Billyclub

  • Make Room


  • with Naveed Khan



  • 2019

  • Gladstone Hotel, Toronto


built with support from friends and volunteers from TMU’s Design Fabrication Zone




"Make Room" was an interventional space part of CUTMR, an annual interactive art exhibition. It was an interactive, light-hearted satirical space, addressing issues around the act of designing and making. The name is a play on the fact that it is a chaotic room for mass making, and a commentary on what we should set aside and what we should make room for.
At first glance, it is the ultimate arts and crafts room gone wild. Crafting materials are provided within a blank cardboard canvas room lined with empty shelves and hanging hooks, so visitors could become artists of the exhibition themselves, creating and displaying their work.
The installation was created with The Design Fabrication Zone (DFZ) at Ryerson, an incubator that cultivates and supports experimental design/fabrication project work, and design-based entrepreneurial ventures.
Rapid advancements in new technology are changing the way we design. With new materials, digital fabrication machines, and an infinite online knowledge base becoming more and more accessible every day, designers are using our plentiful resources to create consumable objects in vast quantities. With so many people aggressively adopting the occupation of "maker" and entering into the realm of design under the “DIY” label, the disparity between the quality and quantity of made objects is becoming increasingly worrisome. Consideration towards the intention for designing is being displaced with a tacitly undesirable need of the masses to make, consume, discard, and repeat.
Displayed amidst the backdrop of chaotic crafts, a curation of projects produced by members of the DFZ were displayed around the room, with descriptions of “Who”, “What”, “Where”, “When”, and “How” they were created.
These serve as exemplifiers of purposeful design, and serve as motivators to guide users to question and answer the most important factor: “Why”.
After making their works of "art", we invited the users to start asking the basic questions about making, hopefully leading to more responsible and honest intentions for the future of design, maker culture, and consumption.


Photos & Videos



Gladstone Hotel
Dominik Haake
Andrew Davy
Lily Jeon

  • Toolbox Initiative


  • 2018 - 2023
    Scarborough, Toronto



    Toolbox was a program designed to encourage and build healthy relationships between girls, gender nonconforming youth, and boys, and to challenge gender stereotypes. Our aim is to support the development of self sufficiency and confidence: experiences that we, as womxn-identifying staff of Toolbox, had when we first learned to work with our hands. After learning various skills such as woodworking and electronics, participants design and build their own project with our assistance. As a curriculum coordinator and instructor, I developed and taught the woodworking classes, as well as supporting the electronics & craft classes. I was one of 3 core team members/ staff, working as the Curriculum Coordinator and as a Woodworking Instructor. Supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Special thanks to Leevalley and TMU’s Design + Technolology Lab for your support!

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Photos



Toolbox Staff


Links



Toolbox website
TMU

  • Living in House Plant Time


  • 2022
    Toronto


    for Choa Magazine Volume 3: Aging in Place

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Choa Magazine asked the question - what does it mean to “Age in Place”? In an article called "Tree Time'', the writer, Sumana Roy, revels at the natural pace at which trees grow—unmoving and unbothered by frivolities of societal pressures that we as humans face; rooted, secure, and thriving in their place. While working from home, switching around the house plants and artwork became a routine hobby for me. I became attentive to how much moving a plant from one spot in my small home to another affected its growth. Unlike a tree in the ground, these houseplants, since being plucked out from some tropical soil, have been constantly displaced and forced to adjust to varying pressures inflicted by the sporadic circumstances of me, their owner. They’ve been stunted in growth, growing leggy and uneven from fluctuating growth tactics corresponding to their changing environment.
Having moved thirteen times within thirty years on Earth, I’ve learned to keep my belongings minimal and well contained, to not get too comfortable too fast. The plants I have with me today have survived through turbulence, being stuffed into moving vehicles, withstanding periods of low sunlight in less-than-optimal transitional homes, and periods of drought while in storage—never in one place long enough to comfortably set down their roots. 
After experiencing several seasonal cycles in this current abode, the plants and I are finally starting to feel at home and settle into a comfortable equilibrium. Roots are climbing out of their pots, new growths are emerging, and plants that I didn’t know could flower are flaunting their blooms in the summer! My partner and I also began to really feel rooted and secure in our home, spending lots of energy personalizing it, fixing it, or learning to love all its quirks. But as we did so, we realized it was time again to move on to our next home. It’s a bittersweet feeling to be moving out of this home we grew into so comfortably. And of course, one of the most challenging things to move again will be our many, now overgrown houseplants! This is a miniature scale model of a corner of our beloved home.

Photos



Lily Jeon


Links



Choa Magazine

  • Parcade


  • a project by Daphne Chan, Lisa Cumming, Fiona Kenney, Lucy Wowk, Emily Skublics


  • 2018

  • St James Park, Toronto
Part of Shapelab TO’s competition; Everyone is King”. For the King Street Pilot Project. Provided close mentorship, supervision, and support while working at TMU’s Design Fabrication Zone

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I had the great pleasure of supporting the “Parcade” design team - Daphne Chan, Lisa Cumming, Fiona Kenney, Lucy Wowk, and Emily Skublics - through design, fabrication, and installation phases. I was invited to be a mentor for the Ryerson ShapeLab design challenge, a weekend hackathon event from which 4 winning teams of students were selected to design public installations to be set along King street for the summer as part of King Street Transit Pilot Project. I was paired with the “Parcade” team as a technician of the Design Fabrication Zone, and wee hard worked together over a few months to bring their whimsical design to fruition.
Each "Parcade" cabinet has an interactive analog game that connects visitors to St James Park which the cabinets are located next to, teaching them about the native tree species in the area, encouraging them to count the number of bikers and animals in the area, and navigating a squirrel through a siteplan of the park. The arcade cabinets double as planters, appearing to have been overtaken by plants growing out from within them. Step stools pull out from below to accommodate users of all heights.
CNC cut arcade cabinets designed to be easy to put together and take apart for temporary installation
CNC cut details
Laser cut logo
I was also able to offer some assistance for another team's project, Caravanserrais. This design speaks for itself! It is a seating element that seats 20 in the same footprint that a single car would take up on the street.


Photos



Tanya Mok
Alyssa Katherine Faoro
Fiona Kenney
Lily Jeon


Links



  • World’s Longest DNA Model


  • a project by IdeaMosaic


2016
Dundas Square, Toronto



Part of Science Rendezvous event. Provided close mentorship, supervision, and support while working at TMU’s Design Fabrication Zone



I had the great pleasure of supporting the creation of the “World’s Longest DNA Model” by team IdeaMosaic. It was IdeaMosaic’s first ever project, and as a technician of the Design Fabrication Zone I assisted them in ideating, prototyping, and deploying the most efficient way of creating something temporary yet beautiful and holding its structure such a large scale. It was displayed at Dundas Square as part of Science Rendezvous, where they broke the Guiness World Record for the longest DNA model at the time at 43.5m in length.
The community was invited to participate in the making of the installation. Visitors had their polaroid photos taken which were assigned a letter A, T, C, or G. The assigned photos were attached to the backbone structure of the model to signify DNA base pairs.
It was a fun challenge, and the design consisted of repetitive modules of laser cut structural “rungs” with flexible veneer backbones, with dowels locking them together through friction to be easily assembled on the spot. The team coordinated an event called the Science Rendezvous, for which other elements were fabricated for maximum visitor interaction. 
The larger goal of IdeaMosaic is to increase awareness and excitement for science at large, by creating high impact installations and experiences that engage the public in science. The start-up combines the principles of crowd-creation, creativity, and attractive design with science, to interact with people of all ages and interests.


Photos & Videos



IdeaMosaic
Lily Jeon


Links



Video
Linkedin

Gathertown

2020-2021


In 2020-2021, not many COVID lockdown-appropriate options were available to fill that void of spontaneous ad-hoc conversations with acquaintances at a party, in the hallways of a communal building, on the streets, etc. Then a friend introduced me to the platform gather.town, which allows you to control an avatar, walk it around a space, and have a video call pop up when you get close to a person or enter a designated private conversation space. I knew right away this would be the perfect medium to use for many applications. I illustrated and designed a variety of spaces to host a variety of programming in, from intimate birthday parties, to structured speed-friending and games nights, to virtual exhibitions, to classes, to office hours, to a convocation celebration for 150+ students.


The base graphics and layouts offered by gather.town were rather limited at its inception, so I took to illustrating my own, mostly using my iPad. Very little coding was involved, but the spaces required basic “programming” using gathertown’s interface to make interactive objects that link to embedded whiteboards, videos, games, shared google documents, etc.
I was part of Sketch Working Arts’ pilot program called Next Up! Leaders Lab ( professional development training focused on mentorship and education and networking) as a participant. This was the kind of program that would typically rely heavily on co-learning and organic human interactions that occur between the amazing people in the room, so in an attempt to recreate that kind of environment, I facilitated a “beach party”.
Instructions in static PDF form for using Gather.town to help those who are less technologically experienced and wouldn’t be able to understand the built-in interactive instructions within the site. 
I designed, illustrated, laid out, and “programmed” a speed-friending exercise among other activities. It was the first time many of us were able to have one-on-one or smaller group intimate conversations, and was incredibly valuable.
In a “room” full of many people, you can emulate “breakout” conversations in a more comfortable fashion than Zoom breakout rooms, because you’re able to see “where” the other participants, who aren’t in your conversation, are up to. This reduces the fear of missing out or anxiety or discomfort caused by being in isolated breakout rooms. having something to do asides from just starting at the camera, namely “moving” your avatar around and exploring the space (including interactive objects and whimsical illustrations) also helps put folks at ease and in a playful social mindset.
At my workplace, students would be graduating and not have any ability to socialize with each other - the convocation ceremony offered by the school was to be a video presentation, because allowing hundreds of students to mingle in a socially distanced way is unmanageable. I had built a virtual recreation of our Faculty’s buildings for students to take classes in and hang out in (in an attempt to help recreate some of the spontaneity and charm of studio culture that is so central to architecture school). So for convocation, I added some additional convocation-themed flourishes and an after-party was held there.
Music DJ’ed by students played in every room, photo booths, yearbooks, and more, adorned the “hallways” of the virtual building. Hundreds of attendees, mostly graduates but also younger students, joined in the successful celebration.
I also used gather.town heavily for personal gatherings like birthday parties or large group games nights.
It was also used as a platform for showcases and exhibitions of work - visitors would be able to walk through a space, see pieces laid out and curated spatially, then click into various interactive objects to look through.