On November 22, 2018, Marc Simmons and Shane Williamson were in conversation as part of the Home and Away lecture series at the Daniels Faculty.
Marc Simmons is a founding Principal of global design and facade engineering consultancy Front Inc with offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, San Francisco and Seattle. Marc is faculty at the MIT School of Architecture + Planning as Associate Professor of the Practice running the Architectural Assemblies course and conducting Design Studios in the M Arch programme focused on the design of shelters and schools for unaccompanied minor refugees in Greece. He recently completed a five year visiting professorship at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Architecture as Ventulett Chair in Architectural Design and has taught at Princeton SOA, Columbia GSAPP and Pratt Institute GAUD. Marc is a licensed Architect in New York State and holds both Bachelor of Environmental Studies and professional Bachelor of Architecture degrees from the University of Waterloo. With more than 25 years of experience, his specialist façade knowledge is built upon previous work at Foster + Partners and Meinhardt Façade Technology in Hong Kong, and the structural glass & façade-consulting group at Dewhurst Macfarlane & Partners in New York.
Associate Professor R. Shane Williamson is the director of the Daniels Faculty’s Master of Architecture program. He received a Bachelor of Science in Architecture with Highest Honors from the Georgia Institute of Technology (’94) and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University (’99). He is Principal of Williamson Williamson Inc., a Toronto-based architecture and design studio that he founded with his partner, Betsy Williamson, in 2007.
Williamson’s research and creative practice employs advanced digital tools as a means to critically engage traditional modes of construction and tectonic expression. Ongoing research seeks to situate digital fabrication and wood construction in a broader cultural context and link theories of design and technology respective of sustainable building strategies. Over the past decade, his research has been funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the National Research Council of Canada, Networks of Centres of Excellence of Canada, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
For more information about the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, visit us at http://www.daniels.utoronto.ca
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