Here’s my idea for a type of road which grows and purposefully breaks over time to transform itself from smooth roads into classier Parisian-style cobblestones as the surrounding neighbourhood changes over time.
Basically, when a road is newly paved or redone, saplings are planted on top of a root guide at specific nodal flex points alongside a street. Then the pavement poured around these nodes and into the street is perforated in such a way that, over time, as the tree grows it’s roots will be guided to push out and up and break the road surface along those perforations in a controlled way.
Breaking up the perforations will create a cobblestone effect that will act as a traffic calming measure to encourage pedestrian use around the same time desired walkable access to nearby activities and amenities are developed. Additionally, local grasses planted in the perforations along with the highly permeable nature of the system, act to effectively absorb excess storm-water to prevent runoff and overloading sewage systems
Earlier in the summer I submitted this idea to an architectural ideas competition too, posting it here I’ve tried to simplify it somewhat. I’m no CAD or 3D jockey, so I played to my own style when creating the illustrations for the presentation:
Here’s a fun illustration I updated a long while back which apes the colours and style of the Coach fashion brand for Cara. I learned lots about colour matching (and handbags…), but the best part was printing it out 20″ across and semi-framing it onto my wall.
I went to the same shop that where I get my photos developed (ElPro). The down side is that you have to wait a day or two for it, the upsides, compared to normal document/academic print shops is that because they usually print photos (as opposed to documents or cheap posters), you get your large format work printed on thick and lustrous photo-quality paper, get to use RGB (wider gamut and easier to profile?), at a good price.
Yeah, so I’m happy with it.
It’s very often nowadays that I notice how outside of the very few planned spaces like Dundas Square, everyone is always moving and never stopping. In Toronto, streets are just a place to travel through, and less a social space that people are allowed to just enjoy hanging out in. This inspired me to do this:
I’m a huge fan of biophilia and I think one solution to both improve public space and our experience of it is to better combine nature and relaxing.
p.s. I kinda like how the kebab shop in an alley near the Toronto Reference Library has a cozy little bench in front of it.
I got contracted to do a logo simply design for the website shoppingdaily.com which isn’t up yet. I made a few color variations in this style but none made the cut, in the end they decided to go with a conventional letter S inside a circle thing that I also did.
I like this one most though so that’s what I’m putting up on my blog :)
I liked the simple logo, but I was never happy with the web designs that I built around it, or the concept.
Poster and desktop wallpaper made for Cara’s Birthday. You can download this here [1680x1050].
A quickie illustration for Cara and to learn CS4
This one was a long time coming. On a cold rainy night downtown, we ducked inside a chain bookstore to kill time and warm up. Flipping through a design magazine to kill time, I saw something that looked very similar to this. Years later, unable maybe to get the image out of my head I made my own version.
An abstract I did to relieve some stresses at a lonely night Starbucks. Partly influenced by the work of Martha Swartz (landscape architect).
A case where the colors came before the image. I saw these gold tones on dark blue with bright red in a magazine and had the idea of making a portrait with them. I’m not good at drawing people though, and I think it really shows in this. Still, I guess it’s good to try new stuff once in a while.
Illustrator brushes rarely, if ever, work well for me and to be honest I gave up on the lady rather than declaring her complete or anything.
While taking a course on Landscape Architecture in school, I came up with the idea for an urban park based and built on a series of 5 repeating hills. I realize that most of the ideas in my head don’t actually make any sense or contain any perspective when I get them out of my head, but I did enjoy making it. And I am still interested in that almost utopian vision of post-modern urban parks making life better (or at least more visually stimulating) for everyone.
I came to really love colors and the nonsensical after doing this one. Originally it was supposed to be about the view off a wooden rooftop into a town below, but part way through it I realized it sucked. So I scraped it and never looked at it again until months later where I got this image of an octopus stuck in my head and needed a fun context for drawing one.
I really enjoyed the graphic novel ‘Nil’ about a layer of hell where nothing matters to anyone - I’d recommend it. It’s still the only graphic novel I’ve ever read (I still plan to get around to Watchmen and others though).
Anyways, I really liked the style of illustration that the author used where he’d repeatedly use very simple geometric monochrome shapes to create a much more intricate whole. So this was my humble homage.
While in my 2nd last year of university, I made this for a friend’s birthday. Based on an image I found online, I meticulously added layered the details on trying to get as close to the photo. I probably spent more time on this than I have on anything else since, but looking at this now I can see the many flaws and how I could’ve done a better job in much less time.
C’est la vie.
Sometime in 07, I saw a promotion for an project called Pe Bukk (or something like that). It was supposed to be a collection of illustrations using only black and white (no greys allowed), so for fun I whipped this up and sent this to the author. Shortly after that I couldn’t find the site and never heard from the author again. Who knows what happened? *mysterious music*
Later on, I remixed this up and used it for the cover of my portfolio to apply to the UofT Architecture grad program. I didn’t get in though :(
2006. With the help of an illustrator tutorial I found online I created this colorful bamboo, and really started this whole thing.
if you are in my project entries page all of my work, including illustration, graphic and web design. As well as drafts and urban design ideas and illustrated concepts will all be in here.
For now you can find my ILLUSTRATIONS here
And some WEB DESIGNS I’ve done here.
In the coming weeks I’ll get around to reposting a lot of the important stuff here to make the site feel more ‘like home’ or something.