Goodweather


︎ info[at]goodweather.ca

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Since 2010 Goodweather has produced a diverse body of work that includes architecture, installations, exhibitions, publications, furniture, websites, film, and photography.

Today we specialize as design consultants to cultural organizations, artists, and curators working on projects related to contemporary art, museology, and public access to cultural material / material culture.

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Projects have been featured at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Migros Museum (Zurich),  The Banff Centre for the Arts & Creativity, The Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal), The Museum of Vancouver, Artspeak (Vancouver), 221A Artist Run Centre (Vancouver), The Mackenzie Art Gallery (Regina), Emily Carr University of Art and Design and in publications including Cabinet Magazine (New York), *Wallpaper, Canadian Architect (Toronto), Pidgin Magazine (Princeton Architectural Press, and Front Magazine (Western Front Gallery, Vancouver).




House on Arbutus Avenue


Residential

2023 - under construction


The massing of the house is conceived as a block of wood seated on stererotomic concrete based with volumes carved out for circulation and shelter.  The house was designed following passive design strategies including siting for solar orientation, shading, mitigation of indoor temperature swings using thermal mass, high-insulation envelope assemblies, and rigorous attention to detail with regards to air-tightness. The envelope uses state-of-art vapour open membranes and tapes and achieved an ACH50 score of under 1.0. This is a net-zero ready house that can easily be upgraded to net-zero status in the future.  




Provisional Structure 2:
Carmen Papalia 

Vancouver Art Gallery

Artist Collaboration
Installation Design

2022

Vancouver Art Gallery Curatorial Description:

Provisional Structure 2 is an architectural installation and gathering space created by non-visual, social practice artist Carmen Papalia and architect Michael Lis. In its concept and form, the work represents a dynamic model for accessibility that can emerge in response to the needs in a community at any given time.

Notions of "provisionality" are evident in the design and material sensibility of Provisional Structure 2. The installation is comprised of two central components - a modular tent-like form, and towering wooden support structures that surround this enclosure. Suspension cables run from the wood scaffolds to an oculus in the room of the tented room, to suggest that the structure has nimbly dropped into place, and can consequently be pulled up and disassembled.

The tent form is constructed from custom-made acoustic panels covered in black fabric, to create a dark space where sound is the primary mode of perception, referencing Papalia's privileging of the non-visual senses within his own life. The content that Papalia has chosen to present in this space is from an online protest called the Disability Filibuster. Organized in March 2021, the Disability Filibuster challenged the passing of Bill C-7, which expanded eligibility for medical assistance in dying (MAiD), to included people living with disabilities who are not at an end-of-life stage. In a landscape where many disabled people encounter barriers to care, some community members are troubled by the amendment, and view the policy as a form of cultural eugenics. Papalia and others have noted that the Disability Filibuster was an important moment within the contemporary disability movement, when people from across the country gathered to communicate their concerns regarding the potential harms of Bill-C7, while holding space for the cultures and histories of disability in Canada.

The dialogue and exchange at the Disability Filibuster also highlighted other issues. The notion that the opioid crisis is a disability issue for example, is a growing conversation that in recent years has resulted in increased advocacy for safe drug supply and harm-reduction services. With this issue in mind, Papalia has placed six black balloons at the centre of the structure, which represent the number of people who die each day from overdose in British Columbia. These balloons are related to the installation of 846 balloons in the exterior windows of the Gallery. Visible on the building's Georgia Street facade when viewed from šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl'e7énḵ Square, this mass of balloons represents the total number of overdose deaths anticipated in British Columbia over the course of the exhibition.






Provisional Structure 1:
Carmen Papalia 

MacKenzie Art Gallery

Artist Collaboration
Installation Design

2021

Since 2015, Vancouver-based artist Carmen Papalia's practice has been grounded in the conceptual framework he terms Open Access. Through a set of five tenets Papalia draws on his experience as a non-visual learner, a term he chooses to identify with over the medicalizing terminology of “blind” or “visually impaired”.

Emphasizing what he understands as an institution's social accessibility, the framework of Open Access advocates for an understanding of "accessibility as social practice"—a temporary experience that requires a relational approach to mutual care.

This installation spatializes several of Papalia’s concepts around open access by employing a geometric organization of circles and ellipses resulting in a construction that problematizes and resolves ideas of concentricity, eccentricity,  inner circle, outer circle, and ‘other’ circle.

Visitors can only access the installation in one of two distinct ways via separate entrances: Entrance 1 leads the visitor up a 60m long curving ramp to a vantage point over an inner circle below. The ramp is made of construction scaffolding and is designed to be wheelchair accessible.

Entrance 2 provides access to the inner circle via a path beneath the curving ramp. Papalia has employed red string as a guideline in several of his earlier works, and here red string is used again to act as a guideline to the inner circle.

The inner circle consists of a concentric arrangement of circular spaces; an innermost circle of benches with a diameter of 4m is surround by a series of 12 mirrored surfaces spaced evenly around a circle at 6m in diameter. The mirrors are in turn encircled by the curved scaffolding structure at a diameter of 8m. An acoustical hemispheric dome with a diameter of 6m is suspended above the inner circle of benches, defining a more intimate space that is both visually and sonically differentiated from the surrounding gallery space. The inner circle is a space for gathering, sharing, and reflection and where, over the course of the exhibition, Papalia will host a series of lectures and workshops dealing with Open Access.





LA Lights The Way

City of Los Angeles Public Works

Competition
In collaboration with Oliver Tomas

2020


How do we rethink the common streetlight?

What better place to start than Los Angeles? A major international city with deep roots in urban development and motorways; a city featuring a rich cultural and social history; a city with liberal, progressive attitudes, strong national identity, and an enviably diverse population. Street lighting, like a lot of civic infrastructure today, is often overlooked, especially the unadorned, standard designs that serve purely utilitarian ends. These designs, despite (and perhaps because of) their simple appearance, have some more far-reaching and complex effects. They can dilute civic identity, divide cities by neighbourhood (frequently along socio-economic and/or cultural lines), and undermine a sense of civic pride.

The question then becomes: Can we design a standard streetlight that maintains the established benefits of utility, flexibility, economic viability and longevity while also unifying neighbourhoods, improving local identity and providing a source of civic pride?

The solution is a new 'standard,' modular and elegant.

With a modular system as our foundation, we can focus on reusing components instead of frequently building new ones. We can maintain a coherent set of parts that give the system tremendous versatility, including the unique opportunity for variety and customization. Further, modularity allows the system to easily scale as required. Utilizing an economy of materials and standardized dimensions will serve to keep costs (and material waste) down and permit easy maintenance based on familiar techniques. Adding elegance to the system is a crucial ingredient to foster identity, unity and pride. The system revolves around one basic geometrical form: the cylinder. The individual components are designed in accordance with harmonious proportions in order to create a consistent and attractive whole. This simple design is not restrictive but may be enhanced by variety within the system. Asymmetrical arrangements, variation in colour and material, and the inclusion of ornamental components all serve to enable a sense of local flavour within a broader civic identity.
The New LA Standard represents a new take on street lighting.

Today, successful infrastructure must rely on more than cost-effectiveness and utility alone. It is a tool capable of fulfilling much larger goals such as social cohesion, sustainability and cultural enhancement. The New LA Standard can unify LA's neighbourhoods and the city at large; it can allow local identity to flourish and promote civic pride; and it can further enhance the unique identity of Los Angeles.





Cabin Fever

Vancouver Art Gallery

Exhibition Design
Procurement
Installation Coordination

2018

The exhibition’s layout is structured as an historical narrative in three parts and told through architectural models, drawings and plans, photography, historical documents, literature, film and ephemera. Full-scale cabins, or full-scale structural fragments, are installed in several instances to provide palpable reference to materials, scale and building technique.  

Among other exhibition elements, Goodweather worked with 7 students from the UBC School of Architecture to procure  20 scale models illustrating the evolution of the cabin as an enduring architectural typology that has survived numerous iterations while resonating deeply within out cultural psyche.


Curators
Bruce Grenville, Jennifer Volland, Stephanie Rebick


Model Fabrication Patrick Birch, Tori Hamatani, Kevin Isherwood, Dylan Maeers, Jeremy Schipper, Max Schnutgen and Trevor Whitten