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CSC Design Challenge to #reimagine🚂 1655 Dupont
Drop in and visit the CSC Student Design Challenge exhibit in the Winner’s Lounge at Expo 2019, live off the floor at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on February 27th. Sample the iGuide virtual tour of 1655 Dupont Street in Toronto, site of the 2019 Design Challenge.
🔗 meet Michael Vervena at iGuide
🔗meet Cathie Schneider, Co-Chair of the Design Competition Committee
🔗 visit cscdesignchallenge.ca 🔗 like us on facebook
🔗Building Design & Construction at George Brown College
IoT Jiggidy Jig
home again home again
for the IoT Mind to Market Seminar
at Catalyst137
Presentations from Steven Fyke, Creative Director at SnapPea Design, Mike Brown, Senior Director, Sales and Business Development at Swift Labs, Joel Dart, Manager of Sales and Business Development for Bell – IoT Solutions, Robert Rodriques for Sigma Point Technologies, Greg Dashwood, Product Lead, Internet of Things & Advanced Analytics at Microsoft and Alexander Fesiak, IoT Business Development Manager at Arrow Global. Opening remarks by Jean-Pierre Bhavnani of Miovision
Links:
snappeadesign.com/
swiftlabs.com/about-2/
iot.bell.ca/en/
sigmapoint.com/about-us/
azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/iot/
arrow.com/en/iot
Sue & Ryan & Sam – for the love of
Making Music
The Weber Brothers
For Sue Windover
An unexpected stroll into the heart of an artist to celebrate the release of
Park Your Boots
Discover What I Don’t Know
and
Sample the latest CD from Sue Windover
Special thanks to friend & folk artist Sandy MacDonald – for making the evening complete. Happy to hear we will be seeing more of you in DTK!!
Don’t miss the Weber Brothers live
on Friday June 8th
at the 
StarlightÂ
with special guest
And before you arrive
watch
Before We ArriveÂ
A feature length documentary of the Weber Duo’s musical journey
24 for 48 Ontario
Congratulations Winners!
Awards Night on May 16th held in the Atrium at Catalyst 137 – The site of last year’s design competition. Gorgeous space – thank-you Frank, PM Riley & the Building Team – a pleasure!
Shout out to our esteemed judges who made it possible to narrow down from 24 inspiring and noteworthy entries. Well done students!
Teams from Ryerson University, OCAD, UWaterloo, Conestoga College participated and five challengers rose to the top:
Fifth Place:Â “Statera” – Conestoga College Team:Â Mashael Alharbi, Chelsea Hummel & Amber MacPherson
Fourth Place: “Blues & Brews” – UWaterloo Team: Marius Hexan, Alexandra Siu, Hayley Sykes & Emmeily Zhang:
Third Place: “The Dark Room Hotel” – OCAD Team:Â Tori Wang, Lily Ni & Feeleng Leng:
Second Place: “The Four-Eight” – UWaterloo Team: Teresa Tran, Azadeh Shayanfar, Anisha Sankar & Parisa Hassanzadegan:
First Place: “House of Tech & Blues” – UWaterloo Team: Lauren Kyle, Jeremy Jeong, Justyna Maleszyk, Michelle Piotrowski & Keegan Steeper:
Just AWEsome…for more about the Student Design Competition, visit the official website at cscdesignchallenge.ca
Glenn Smith Digs the Blues
Glenn Smith shares his memories of ‘the Legion’ at 48 Ontario Street during a live interview with Martin de Groot shot at the Commons Studio.  Back in 1986 he began a new venture as a concert promoter, introducing an impressive rotation of blues talent to a receptive local audience.  Revisit our walk-about in February HERE
Legendary performances and Sold-Out shows at the Legion Dance Hall animate the story of Kitchener’s love affair with the Blues
48 Ontario Street, an unassuming treasure nestled in Kitchener’s downtown technology cluster is the site of the 5th annual CSC Student Design Competition
Press Release Here
The winners of this year’s Design Challenge will be announced during the annual Grand Valley Chapter Connections Café on Wednesday, May 16th in the Atrium at Catalyst137Â
Glenn – so appreciate the interview and your endorsement of the competition, but thank you most of all for the many years of gutsy investment in live music.  You’re the real deal.
Hope to see those posters someday!
Waterloo Region In The Making
Professor Rick Haldenby delivers an insightful and entertaining address to an audience of real estate enthusiasts at a breakfast event hosted by the KW Association of Realtors on Thursday, April 5th, 2018 at Bingemans Marshall Hall.
It is always a pleasure to hear Professor Haldenby speak. His passion for the industrial architecture of Waterloo Region is infectious, inspired by the wisdom of post war city builders whose economic development strategy enabled significant investment in training and education; building, as if with secret foreknowledge, the urban stage we see today. Act One of the Illustrious Industrious City was only a first draft, with the Second Act well into production with (seemingly) weekly funding announcements and new Scenes crafted in the presence of tech giants, plant expansions, and flourishing start-ups.
The Proverb ” A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children…” comes to mind as I reflect on Rick’s message summoned by the conviction that the “Waterloo Phenomena” has been made possible by inheritance. What really surprises me is that it remains unabashed throughout the panel discussion. We heard from four of the Region’s largest and most progressive developers: Craig Beattie (Perimeter Development Corporation), Scott Higgins (Hip Developments), Mike Maxwell (Momentum Developments), and Anne Marchildon (Andrin Ltd). Each one shared their perspective, back stories and vision with the civic pride and sincerity that comes with a personal commitment to the Region and a lot of skin in the game.
Yep, I’m going to listen to the tape again, to be sure it wasn’t just the chocolate chip pastries, but somehow I know they get inheritance…hmmm…stay tuned.
Brent Davis covers the event at The Record
More from Rick Haldenby…a series of thirteen video shorts recorded in 2016 at CSC & The Case of the Illustrious Industrious City: Act 1 Scene 1
Scott Higgins, President of Hip Developments Inc. expands on the ROI of “getting a little bit crazy” at Waterloo Region In The Making. Scott leads his team to be bold, think big and take action focused on building creativity and culture, a guiding principle of their construction projects.
Memories of prepping for the Riverbank Lofts launch party in Hespeler Village…
Links:
Hip Developments
Launch Waterloo
Waterloo Chronicle
Day In The District
Cambridge Times
Designing the Future
Shout out to Chris Adamkowski who knows a thing or two about future proofing in the age of Artificial Intelligence. He was the keynote speaker at this year’s CSC Building Expo, on Wednesday, February 28th at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
Chris is the Head of Industry at Google and manages a high performance team dedicated to Government, Travel, and Tourism clients in Canada. He dropped by our display of the 2017 Design Competition winning entries from Conestoga College and was introduced to the unique Maker Space Hub at http://catalyst-137.com/.
We hope to see more of him in Waterloo Region!
cscdesignchallenge.ca
to Trudy with Love
Remembering Trudy Beaulne
Trudy Beaulne passed away suddenly on Friday, January 5, 2018 at the age of 63. She was an activist who genuinely loved her community, her neighbourhood and her mission. She worked tirelessly to advocate for those suffering, especially from the effects of poverty, physical disabilities and mental illness. She was the Executive Director of the Social Development Centre Waterloo Region, formerly known as K-W Social Planning Council. I met her sometime in the mid nineties and she was a big fan of my vision to use primary schools as the central community hub of neighbourhoods. This was a radical idea at the time and met with strong resistance. Her loving heart and strong, tenacious personality set the example that I needed to draw from to navigate through the many obstacles to come. Innovative partnerships were formed with Toastmasters, Katimavik, the Food Bank, Region of Waterloo Public Health & the WCDSB to provide lunch hour and after-school programming at Smithson Public School in Kitchener as part of a pilot project to explore the school/community hub model. The project had a huge positive impact on the children who benefited the most, but was ultimately shot down. The seed was planted, but the ground proved infertile. Trudy’s guidance gave me the courage to plant anyways, no matter what the outcome.
This video is a collection of photos taken during the Festival of Neighbourhoods Celebration & Awards Ceremony at City Hall. Trudy “hired” me as the event photographer from 1997 to 1999. These photos were doubles of my prints uncovered on Valentine’s Day in a shoe box and scanned yesterday afternoon to create this slideshow.
The soundtrack “How I Got to Memphis” is one of my favourite songs by Soulstack, recorded live off the floor at the Boathouse in Kitchener on December 9th, 2017
Like Soulstack on facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/Soulstack/
Trudy’s signature…
Anti-Poverty Activist – Stood Up For Others
A Glimpse of Patagonia
The Fluffy Beaver returns to K-town!
Discover Patagonia and the delightful aroma of Fresh Ground Â
February 17th from 11AM to 1PM
Jessica Rose is a French self taught photographer and illustrator and has been for the past 15 years. Depending where she finds herself (her husband moves around a lot and she likes to follow), or where her life’s at, inspiration comes along to animate her camera or pencils. She’s currently working on a comic book and has a few projects up her sleeve.
Check out her work here :
Pictures :Â https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/jessica-rose.html
Blog and Tarot Game (stories on the illustrations and rules) :Â http://www.thefluffybeaver.com/
Tarot Game shop :Â http://www.thefluffybeaver.etsy.com/
Instagram : jessikrose
Commissions and information : jessicarose@thefluffybeaver.com
Coming soon! a virtual shop on society6.comÂ
The fluffy beaver returns to K-town in August. Watch for a sighting near you!
Ground Hog Day in DTK
Students & faculty from the Ryerson School of Interior Design enjoyed a tour of 48 Ontario Street in Kitchener on Friday, February 2nd. This is the school’s fourth visit to Waterloo Region to experience the local culture and study the architectural, economic and demographic forces on significant properties of historical/cultural influence. Their research will inform this year’s case study of the former Bell Telephone Co. building turned Royal Canadian Legion Branch 50, otherwise known as “the Legion”.
Statement of Cultural Heritage Value for 48 Ontario Street North
Glenn Smith joined the tour to get reacquainted with the building where back in 1986 he launched an outrageous experiment as a concert promoter and introduced such talented blues artists as Buddy Guy and Mel Brown from (mostly) New Orleans, Detroit and the Chicago area to a new audience in Kitchener-Waterloo.  Legendary performances and Sold-Out shows at the Legion Dance Hall begins the story of Kitchener’s love affair with the Blues. Who remembers that Colin James played there when he was just 18?! If the walls could talk…
Watch for more about Glenn and Kitchener’s blues roots starting with the soon-to-be-released live interview with Martin de Groot at the Commons Studio
Sunshine & Frigid temperatures set the stage for a twist on the urban legend of Groundhog Day at Kitchener City Centre. Far from the predictable news from Willie, here is proof that Waterloo Region is not stuck in Groundhog day with this candid snapshot of genuine multi-sectorial collaboration. Shout out to our esteemed community leaders Martin de Groot, Raj Saini MP,  Taymoore Balbaa, Cathie Schneider, Tammy Lawrence, Councillor Sarah Marsh, James Howe, and Glenn Smith.
That’s me between Martin and Cathie…two of the few who would never try to shoot down a good idea before it gets a chance to fly:)
For more about the CSC Student Design Challenge, visit the official website here and facebook page here
In the News…
Construction Canada Magazine Jan 9/18
Construction Links Announcement Feb 13th/18
music & musings 