MSDUE Class of 2014–

Founder of Les Interstices, Montréal, Canada.

Since graduating from the MSDUE program in 2014, Jonathan has worked as consultant for the City of Montréal, la Société du Parc Jean-Drapeau, Building Product Ecosystems, and other organizations in and around Montréal. Recently, Jonathan founded Les Interstices, a strategic design studio intersecting several disciplines and fields of expertise to address complex and systematic urban issues. Under this umbrella, he has been involved in different types of projects, including Metalab at Society for Arts and Technology (SAT), an endeavor developing immersive visualization tools to facilitate transdisciplinary collaborations around large scale urban projects; and, in the H-MTL Platform with Heritage Montréal, a platform to identify endangered cultural sites. His latest project Entremise, a non-profit initiative facilitating temporary and transitory uses of vacant buildings, won the Morph.o.polis ideas competition in 2016 organized by the Office of Public Consultation of Montréal.

Jonathan writes: “You have many programs out there that are very heavy on critical thinking, which leaves students with very interesting perspectives, without knowing what to do with them. On the other side of the spectrum, you have very uncritical design programs that are focused on constantly producing physical products, buildings or spaces, while replicating the same thinking that led to many of the crisis we know exist today. One interesting anecdote that exemplifies this is an idea competition we recently won called Morph.o.polis, who’s theme was Reconvert Montréal. We were the only team out of 50 that didn’t propose an architectural rendering of some sort. Instead, we designed and visualized strategies and processes targeting the architecture of the problem, connecting the needs of vacant property owners with people in need of affordable temporary or transitory spaces. The MSDUE program taught me how to do that.”