"This passion for solving interesting problems and finding new opportunity spaces enticed me to establish workroom B in 2019, a laboratory for creative strategies based in Los Angeles with a satellite lab in my hometown of Montreal."

This passion for solving interesting problems and finding new opportunity spaces enticed me to establish workroom B in 2019, a laboratory for creative strategies based in Los Angeles and Montreal. My goal with workroom B is to create a playground that mirrors my own passions and interests in applying design thinking to urban systems projects. Working in a place with a tailor-made culture fit, I'm able to assist private clients realize successful projects through research-based innovations and creative strategies.

Resumé

I’ve always been interested in understanding what makes people tick and what nudges us to make the millions of micro decisions that we take every day. This curiosity in human behavior enticed me to study social science to get a good foundation in the connected fields of psychology, sociology and history. This turned out to be an ideal degree for helping me better understand the economy of thoughts, behavior, and cultural formations. After graduating, I joined Université de Montréal’s professional program in urban to study ways to design, navigate municipal politics and regulatory frameworks, and plan cities – the literal backdrop of our lives. After my Junior year, I spent a summer in New Delhi to complete two complementary internships. The first was with a British consultancy called Halcrow (now part of Jacobs Solutions), where we worked on major infrastructure projects. We navigated the mazes of displacement, municipal politics, and engineering as we worked on bridges and roadways. The second was for a project led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Delhi), where we designed the first Bus Rapid Transit system in India. On weekends, I volunteered for a community-based organization that quickly became a professional turning point. There, I learnt the importance to work with local communities, promote sustainable and scalable projects, and design around user priorities to create project that work because they have everyone's support.

This experience enticed me to study urban design as I wanted to work at this finer, more human scale. The Bartlett’s Development Planning Unit (DPU) at University College London (UCL) offers a graduate degree that seemed like the perfect match. The DPU specializes in urbanism in the Global South, where community participation and human-centered design is at the front and center of the curriculum. The program's 3-week overseas studio was another big selling point. That the DPU is located within the Bartlett, at one of the world’s best college made the decision ever easier. (My brother and I are the first people in our family to have completed a university degree. Neither of us grew up aspiring to attend this kind of hyper prestigious institution.) Working with an inspiring cohort coming from all over the globe, I learnt eye opening theories in human-centered design and design research methods that continue to inform the way I think.

After graduating (with distinction, no less!), I joined an art, architecture and urban planning office called Decolonizing Architecture (now, DAAR) in Palestine where we developed projects in collaboration with UNESCO that address social, civic and political problems through design. I returned to London the next year to co-teach workshops and studios at UCL where I also began to collaborate with Professor Camillo Boano on various consultancy projects for the European Union. I soon felt ready to begin a new chapter through a research degree. Working with Professor Marc Angélil at ETH Zurich as a doctoral student and the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) as a researcher, I became an expert at crafting research plans to routinely come up with actionable insights. This turned out to be another decisive experience as our interdisciplinary lab made me better at collaborating with colleagues with different priorities, knowledge and points of views.

After spending over four years at FCL in Southeast Asia, I returned to Montreal to take on a new challenge as the curatorial researcher at the Canadian Center for Architecture.

I relocated to Los Angeles soon after to take on a more substantial role as the Associate Director of the UCLA Urban Humanities program, where I co-led an interdisciplinary unit on human-centered research alongside Professor Dana Cuff in the School of Arts & Architecture. There, I managed a $2M grant, created studio courses in design research, co-led study trips to Tokyo, Tijuana and Mexico City, co-developed a summer teaching programs with Professor Todd Presner in Digital Humanities, and supported student-led action projects across Los Angeles.

While at UCLA, I also maintained a private practice called Atelier Jäggi Leclair for architecture and creative strategies. Working alongside my co-founder Marcel Jäggi, we developed projects in Mexico, Asia, and Europe for which we earned various accolades, including two prizes at prestigious architecture competitions.

After nearly three years at UCLA, I decided to dedicate more of my time and attention on a new project that I called workroom B, a name hinting at the magic that happens behind the curtain. My goal with this venture was to create a new type of design practice stubbornly interested to help private clients through actionable research and creative strategies. Looking at projects and problems through a multifocal lens, we seek to create strategies that work because they consider culture, market forces, legal contexts, and financial viability together. You can see some of work on our website, workroomb.com.

"Looking at projects and problems through a multifocal lens, we seek to create strategies that work because they consider culture, market forces, legal contexts, and financial viability together."

If you're interested to take a peek at my academic research, you can catch some of it in these journals: Space and Polity (Routledge), Architectural Research Quarterly (Cambridge University Press), The Journal of Architecture(Routledge/RIBA), Trans (ETH GTA), Urban History (Cambridge University Press), and Harvard Design Magazine.

Get in touch! Would love to connect.
Ben