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The Critical Care Unit at Toronto’s SickKids Hospital delivers round-the-clock care for children in urgent medical situations. The waiting room, located outside the unit, is a space designated for the families and friends who are visiting patients. Visitors use this room in a variety of ways: some are only dropping by en route to being admitted to the CCU while others will set up camp there for an extended period of time. The space must cater to a diverse population with multiple needs and preferences. Currently the space is in dire need of a renovation.
The Vision
A talented team of interior designers and new media artists, affiliated with Toronto’s Pixel Gallery and beyond, have come together to reimagine an environment based on the ideas of repose, reflection, and hope. The new design plans aim to address the physical and emotional needs of the parents, family, and friends who rotate through, and ultimately inhabit the space. Interactive artwork will be integrated throughout the space with the intention of creating a tranquil environment. Our hope is that it may also facilitate a degree of emotional healing to the users of the space.
Team Bios
David Girolami
Account Director, Mighty Digital
Co-Founder | Curator | Managing Director, Pixel Gallery
David Girolami has been working and playing in the New Media and Design Technology cultural industries for over 12 years and continues to play a role in helping to establish New Media as a recognized and respected form of creative expression. Acting in such roles as Founder, Director, Producer, Instructor, and Curator for FITC Design and Technology Events, TDAA/Pixel Gallery, and the Art Institute of Toronto, David has delivered lectures about New Media Art at York University and UofT, helped bring the works of John Maeda to Canada for the first time through exhibition and hosting a lecture, worked with The Royal Ontario Museum¹s Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) and The New York Digital Salon (NYDS) to present an Evening of Digital Art, a panel discussion on the emerging issues in creating, curating, and consuming digital art, and has served as an advisor on boards for the Design Exchange and OnTarget.
Steve DiLorenzo
Creative Director | Interactive, DRAFTFCB Toronto
Co-Founder | Curator | Creative Director, Pixel Gallery
Steve has been active in multi-disciplinary creative going on 10 years, laying roots in all things digital, analog and touch. In his current role as Creative Director at DRAFTFCB Interactive, Steve oversees digital branding and design for global clients like Motorola and HP and in the past has created award winning work for brands like Nike, Coke, Molson, Trojan and Nissan/Infiniti.
Steve has won numerous international awards and has been published in a variety of industry and consumer culture magazines.
Steve is also the co-founder, curator and co-creative director of Pixel Gallery, Canada’s first immersive art gallery. The gallery’s mantra is “touch” with the focus on social interaction and how it will lead to cultural changes in art, design and technology, and ultimately advertising.
The belief that the pursuit of disruption ultimately leads to creative happiness fuels his activism.
Allen Chan, B.L.A., M.Arch
Co-Founder | Principal, Precipice Studios Inc, Psincdesign.com
Co-Founder | Curator | Creative Director, Pixel Gallery
Allen is a graduate of the internationally renowned Graduate School of Architecture Preservation and Planning at Columbia University in New York City (2001), and also holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture from the University of Toronto (1997). He has received several awards including the American Institute of Architecture: Medal for Architectural Excellence, and the American Society of Landscape Architects Honour Award. He has held teaching positions at Columbia University, and currently holds an Adjunct Professor title at the University of Toronto School of Architecture, Landscape + Design, as well as ongoing independent research in the fields of technology, design, and fabrication. He excels at visualization and was chosen to represent Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture for the prestigious S.O.M. national portfolio competition.
Allen is a strong creative force at Precipice Studios, and currently is the Studio Director as well as Principal of this international design firm. Before becoming a founding Precipice Studios in 1998, Allen worked at several architecture firms including the NYC offices of Hanrahan Meyers , KD Lab, and Leslie Gill Architects, which have all given Allen a broad range of project administration and design experience. His interest in emerging technology and it’s seamless integration with the built environment is Allen’s main focus at Precipice Studios.
More recently, Allen is a co-host of one of HGTV’s most popular design shows, Designer Guys, which has just finished filming season three in Toronto. Past relevant projects from the show include a complete rehaul and redesign of the Princess Margaret Hospitals Wig Salon (2007), the design and development of the Teen’s Lounge at the Bloorview Kid’s Rehab Center (2007). Currently, Allen’s firm Precipice Studios has been invited to develop the DesignLive exhibit at this years Interior Design Show 2008 at the Direct Energy Center.
Tom Kuo
Founder | Director, Foundation Creative studios
A recognized and sought-after producer, sound engineer, technical director and installation artist, Tom Kuo is a versatile professional with extensive experience in creating multimedia installations in custom-designed spaces. His company, Foundation Creative Studio specializes in conceptualizing and producing projects (be they events, promotions or brand-building initiatives) for clients who seek meaningful and engaging experiences for their audiences. Tom is well recognized for his capacity to deliver imaginative and exciting projects that effectively communicate the core message of the event. His impressive client list includes the Toronto International Film Festival (Elsewhere 2006), The Design Exchange (digifest 2005, 2002), the Canadian Film Centre’s New Media Lab (2006), the Waterloo Children’s Museum (2006), the Academy Award-winning company Side Effects (multiple events since 1999), and the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Peter Mettler (multiple events since 2005). As technical director of the Element156 Digital Media Centre, Tom played an important role in designing and developing the building into an exciting new hub of digital arts activities. Tom remains an active advisor and designer for Pixel Gallery, Toronto Digital Art Association and the FITC Design & Technology Festivals, as well as maintains a lively artistic practice through PUSHER and the wabi Collective.
Zachary Lieberman
http://www.thesystemis.com/
Zachary Lieberman’s work uses technology in a playful way to explore the nature of communication and the delicate boundary between the visible and the invisible. He creates performances, installations and on-line works that investigate gestural input, augmentation of the body and kinetic response.
Working with collaborator Golan Levin, he created a series of installations — Remark and Hidden Worlds — which presented different interpretations of what the voice might look like if we could see our own speech. These were followed with Messa Di Voce, a concert performance in which the speech, shouts and songs of two abstract vocalists were radically augmented in real time by interactive visualization software. Lieberman’s installation/performance, Drawn, in which live painted forms appear to come to life, rising off the page and reacting to the world around them, recently won awards at the Ars Electronica and CYNETart competitions.
Most recently, he helped create visuals for the facade of the new Ars Electronica Museum, wrote software for an augmented reality card trick, performed by Marco Tempest, and helped develop an open source eye tracker to help a paralyzed graffiti artist draw again.
In addition to making artistic projects, Lieberman is co-creator of openFrameworks, an open source C++ toolkit for creative coding. He teaches at Parsons School of Design.