Burl collects and applies primary source information for design: information from the user/clients and first-person space analysis.
He prefers systems to slog work: better to spend time figuring out a better way to do it than just grind it out. But sometimes grinding it out is all you can do.
Background
Burl grew up in Mississauga and attended boarding school in Canada and England. He completed his undergraduate in Peterborough, at liberal-arts Trent University. He studied contemporary (post-1960) philosophy (Cultural Studies) under Zsuzsa Baross and Jonathan Bordo.
Burl was sole employee at a fly-in fishing camp in the NWT, shipped wholesale art supplies in Toronto, joined an internet start-up (Maxlink) that died when financing collapsed, and spent a year as a carpenter working on custom homes.
Burl attended University of Toronto architecture department 2005-2008; Masters of Architecture. He began working for UofT doing surveys and design work in his 3rd year and became the first UofT Classroom Designer & Standards Officer in 2009. He was released by UofT in 2013 as design components were downsized out of his division and the position of Classroom Designer abandoned. C'est dommage. SO he started working for himself, consulting on design, designing, and sometimes building things to relax.
Fun
Burl canoe trips, reviews films, goes to the art gallery and crews on a sail boat for casual racing. He bicycles everywhere. He has three hammers, three power drills and enough straight edges to sink a small watercraft.
Style
Burl is old-school modern. His favorite books on architecture are written in 50BC and 1570AD (hint: they recently made a Lego mini-fig of the author of the former). His apartment is modern; a 1970's modernist box, all white. The clean aesthetics of modernism dovetail very well with the austere and rigorous principles of the classical world. His shoots with a Pentax (DSLR), a Sony (mirrorless) and a Polaroid (film). Burl will likely eat the greatest quantity of snacks of any person in your office.
He liked to make the crooked straight
and flatten down uneven places
He prefers systems to slog work: better to spend time figuring out a better way to do it than just grind it out. But sometimes grinding it out is all you can do.
Background
Burl grew up in Mississauga and attended boarding school in Canada and England. He completed his undergraduate in Peterborough, at liberal-arts Trent University. He studied contemporary (post-1960) philosophy (Cultural Studies) under Zsuzsa Baross and Jonathan Bordo.
Burl was sole employee at a fly-in fishing camp in the NWT, shipped wholesale art supplies in Toronto, joined an internet start-up (Maxlink) that died when financing collapsed, and spent a year as a carpenter working on custom homes.
Burl attended University of Toronto architecture department 2005-2008; Masters of Architecture. He began working for UofT doing surveys and design work in his 3rd year and became the first UofT Classroom Designer & Standards Officer in 2009. He was released by UofT in 2013 as design components were downsized out of his division and the position of Classroom Designer abandoned. C'est dommage. SO he started working for himself, consulting on design, designing, and sometimes building things to relax.
Fun
Burl canoe trips, reviews films, goes to the art gallery and crews on a sail boat for casual racing. He bicycles everywhere. He has three hammers, three power drills and enough straight edges to sink a small watercraft.
Style
Burl is old-school modern. His favorite books on architecture are written in 50BC and 1570AD (hint: they recently made a Lego mini-fig of the author of the former). His apartment is modern; a 1970's modernist box, all white. The clean aesthetics of modernism dovetail very well with the austere and rigorous principles of the classical world. His shoots with a Pentax (DSLR), a Sony (mirrorless) and a Polaroid (film). Burl will likely eat the greatest quantity of snacks of any person in your office.
He liked to make the crooked straight
and flatten down uneven places
