Our Story
BUDDY began as a high school inconvenience. Growing up in Brampton Ontario, a heavily car dependent city in Canada, I found it nearly impossible to get anywhere. Public transit was underfunded and unreliable, and anything interesting was at least a 20 minute drive away from my house. By walking, that's anywhere from 45 minutes to over an hour. Aside from my house and the hours I spent in high school, I had no third place to exist in freely.
Moving on to college, I experienced what third places could feel like. Of course, I still had responsibilities on campus, but it was much more social. I wasn't trapped in my room, or locked in classrooms for 8 hours. I could see friends, make friends, all organically. And this inspired me to design something that could bring that experience back to high school me.
And so, BUDDY was born. A third space that takes advantage of the infrastructure that supresses it. In a perfect world, BUDDY wouldn't need to exist. The infrastructure that necessitates it wouldn't exist. Cities and suburbs would be built around people rather than cars.