About

Jacob Kritzinger.

Design engineer/ Architect/ Débrouillard
The short version

I’m a multidisciplinary, human-centered designer with roots in both food and architecture. I’ve always had a passion for exciting people with my designs — whether a carefully executed detail in a building, or a delectable morsel on a plate.

Nothing excites me more than the eureka moment when an invention finally comes to life — though honestly, I can appreciate the little moments too, like finding the exact right bolt in the “I should keep these for something later” box.

These days I lead physical products from napkin sketch through engineering, prototyping and production — now based in Cape Town, South Africa, and building my own software tools at night.

01The path
2007 – 2010
Electronic Burn Computer Solutions — founder
First company: designing desktop computers for integration into medical practices.
2011
Chef — Cape Town
City & Guilds Diploma, South African Chefs Academy. Started in kitchens before ever touching CAD — plating is prototyping too.
2014 – 2017
Architecture — University of Pretoria
BSc Architecture, BArch(Hons), then MArch(Prof) in 2017. Master’s thesis: architectural structures with integrated bioremediation zones as a catalyst for rehabilitating abandoned diamond mining operations.
2018 – 2020
Architect, maker, founder — South Africa
Architect at Ludwig Hansen Architects & Urban Designers (student residence at University of Mpumalanga; lead architect of a private residence on an ecologically diverse conservation; Orlando state dentistry clinic renovation, Soweto). 3D modeler at Marianne de Klerk Architects. Founded Minerva Machinery Production — custom 3D printers and laser cutters designed, built and integrated to client spec, plus 3D-printed architectural models (a 1:500 site model of Pretoria’s CBD, printed 24/7 for three months on five machines).
2019 – 2020
Design lecturer — University of Pretoria
First-year design studio lecturer and honours-year external lecturer, teaching architecture with both theoretical and technical resolution.
2021 – 2022
MDes — UC Berkeley
Master of Design, focused on integrating code into physical and mechanical design. Projects: Kube (a sensory toy for autistic children), Visualising the Future (AI safety glasses for the visually impaired), FungalForm (a mycelium-core evaporative cooler for a mycoremediated future).
2022 –
10XBeta & Manufactured — New York
From summer internship to leading product development, concept through production: mechanical development on Spiro Mini (miniaturising the Spiro Wave emergency ventilator, FDA EUA, born of NYC’s COVID ventilator crisis), then heading up projects like the SOLar Umbrella and the Bottomless Cooler. Nights and weekends: the self-hosted tools on this site.
02Selected work
SOLar UmbrellaSolar-powered vendor-cart lighting for Molson CoorsManufactured, NYC Bottomless CoolerDoorDash × IGLOO connected coolerManufactured, NYC Spiro Wave / Spiro MiniEmergency ventilator — concept to FDA EUA in 5 weeks; then miniaturised10XBeta 10X Parts PortalProcurement & prototyping portal10XBeta
KubeSensory toy helping autistic children into cooperative playUC Berkeley
FungalFormEvaporative cooler with a replaceable mycelium coreUC Berkeley
Kansu.ioEish!, Lattice, MeshWeave — self-hosted software, built at nightIndependent
03Toolkit
04Recognition
2021
Winning project, Technology Design Foundations — UC Berkeley (Kube)
2021
Winning project, Human Centered Design award — UC Berkeley (stAble)
2017
Golden Key International Honour Society — University of Pretoria
05Off the clock

Cooking and hosting dinner parties, making things that didn’t need to be made, off-roading, camping, and traveling. Custom furniture for private clients when the workshop calls.

Build something real.