studio g+G inc., architect was established by principal architect Jason Grossi in 2003, in Canada, focusing on international projects in Europe and the United States.  The studio is sought after for its unique expertise merging contemporary architecture to heritage structures while also specializing in heritage preservation and adaptive reuse. Their experience includes structures for the arts (museum, gallery, and exhibition spaces), campus and educational facilities, and residential work. Other projects include retail design, office design, master planning, and industrial design.

We are a design studio and this ultimately affects the way we approach the design process and management of each project.  We work collaboratively; therefore, every person on the project team has a voice.

On many of our projects, we have collaborated with other design entities.  We have acted as design consultants and as architects of record for projects with firms such as NBBJ in the U.S. and ABV in Moscow.  This has always been a rewarding experience for us, as it allows us to engage in an architectural dialogue with others and gain from this new collective experience.

From the outset of the establishment of studio g+G, we have found new ways of integrating sustainable approaches to both site and building, and we continue to do so in all of our projects through double exterior skins, integrated advanced mechanical systems and green roofs and screens.

Each and every design initiative, involving a building or not, presents the opportunity to explore new ways to integrate an organizing idea with the functional and programmatic needs of the project.  These needs of the project always include the place or site, which, together, become the foundation for the starting point for the architectural idea or “concept.”   Using this approach, studio g+G does not impose any style or building form to a site or locality.  Rather, this evolving discourse between program and site allows a design process to occur that ultimately addresses time, space, light and materials.  It is this concept-driven approach to design that we strive to attain with each project.

For us, architecture is about leaving a good mark on the planet so that there is a possibility that what we create will add grace to our lives.  We always try to design with thoughtful integrity so that our buildings will endure and be loved.  In so doing, our aim is not simply to solve problems but to transcend solutions – the true meaning to our work is what we have to give and leave behind.

Jason Grossi, architect/composer
OAA . AIA . CAHP . RAIC . CLC . CMC

Jason is the sole Principal and founding member of studio g+G inc. architect.  Jason’s practice has won awards for its design accomplishments and its work in preserving built heritage.

Jason started his creative output in orchestral composition and performance before finding his dual existence as composer and architect.  As such, he references architectural design and composition as a singular process treating design and musical materials similarly, allowing one discipline to reference and inform the other.  In architecture he has the ability to simultaneously design projects of various typologies and at opposite scales from large urban developments to small historically critically adaptive reuse projects.   Over the years of working with expanding and preserving heritage structures he has developed a virtuosity toward grafting new into or onto old using the same sensitive approach a composer would have completing the composition of another or developing a theme and variation where the theme or original composition is from an older time and the new is distinct from the old.  Jason has worked on many architectural typologies from large multifunctional complexes in historically sensitive areas, corporate university projects, museums and schools for the arts to single family residential projects and individual pieces of furniture and hardware.  Just as in composition, a ‘Total Work of Art’ is the ideal in every design project he seeks.

Jason studied composition first with Canadian composer and pianist Paul McIntyre, then with Heinrick Taube and P.Q. Phan.  He has been engaged on numerous occasions by various ensembles, including his own local orchestra to compose works for concerts and radio broadcasts being heard many times on national CBC radio.

During an audition to study composition he met the late Yannis Xenakis, a prolific composer and architect, who after reviewing Jason’s scores, elicited a desire in Jason to follow in his path by approaching composition through architecture first.  Jason then temporarily abandoned composition and began his studies in architecture.  He completed his architectural studies with a fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign while studying composition in the School of Music at the same time.   Upon graduation, he received the Excellence in Architecture Award for his specialization in sacred architecture with a thesis titled “The Sacred Space of the Franciscan Friary;” and his composition “Gestures for Woodwind Quintet” was selected among those of UIUC composition graduate students to be performed at Jason’s direction.  This work was also given its Canadian Premier for the 2001 “Canadian New Music Festival”, in Windsor by the Windsor Symphony Orchestra.”

Prior to opening studio g+G, Jason worked as architectural designer for various architecture firms in the Detroit, Michigan area and interned with Gunnar Birkerts, FAIA.  He has also worked as a strategic planning consultant for General Motors, employing his design expertise for initiatives dealing with Eero Saarinen’s famous General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan.

Jason is an assistant professor of Architecture at the University of Windsor in the School of Creative Arts and has been an adjunct professor in design at Lawrence Technological University, and a frequent guest lecturer and juror for design institutions and universities.