Mitchell Joachim | |
---|---|
Born | New Jersey, United States | February 3, 1972
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | MIT, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Columbia University |
Known for | Fab Tree Hab, Sustainable design, MIT Car |
Spouse | Melanie Fessel (m. 2008; div. 2014) |
Children | 2 |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Urban design, Architecture |
Institutions | Terreform ONE + NYU |
Thesis | Ecotransology: Integrated Design for Urban Mobility (2006) |
Doctoral advisor | William J. Mitchell |
Other academic advisors | Alex Krieger, Adèle Naudé Santos |
Mitchell Joachim (pronounced /jo-ak-um/; born February 3, 1972) is an architect and urban designer. He is the Co-Founder of Terreform ONE, and a Professor of Practice at NYU. [1] Previously he was the Frank Gehry Chair at University of Toronto [2] and a faculty member at Pratt, Columbia, Syracuse, Washington, The New School, and the European Graduate School. [3]
Most of Joachim's projects employ innovative platforms and methods based on living biological matter for fabrication and design purposes. Rather than merely drawing inspiration from nature (not biomimicry), these materials are altered, coaxed, or engineered to function in ways that stay living and breathing within the environment.
Mitchell Joachim was born in New Jersey to Henry and Ellen Joachim. Henry, a passionate painter, owned a small wood furniture manufacturing business. Ellen, Mitchell’s mother, played a pivotal role in his upbringing, guiding him alongside Henry. In the late '70s, seeking a better quality of life, his parents moved from Manhattan to the suburbs of New Jersey. This relocation blended the cultural richness of their New York City heritage with suburban stability, shaping Mitchell's development and nurturing his passions and interests under the guidance of his parents’ entrepreneurial spirit and artistic inclination.
He earned a Ph.D. [4] at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Dept. of Architecture, Design and Computation program , a Master of Architecture in Urban Design (MAUD) at Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), a M.Arch at Columbia University GSAPP, and a BPS at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York with Honors.
Mitchell has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, LafargeHolcim Foundation Award, [5] ARCHITECT R+D Award, [6] Senior Fellowship at TED 2011, [7] Moshe Safdie and Assoc. Fellowship, and Martin Society for Sustainability Fellowship at MIT. He won the Zumtobel Group Award, [8] History Channel and Infiniti Design Excellence Award for the City of the Future, and Time Magazine Best Invention of the Year 2007, MIT Car w/ MIT Smart Cities. [9] His project, Fab Tree Hab, has been exhibited at MoMA and widely published. He was selected by Wired magazine for "The 2008 Smart List: 15 People the Next President Should Listen To". [10] Rolling Stone magazine honored Mitchell as an agent of change in "The 100 People Who Are Changing America". In 2009 he was interviewed on the Colbert Report [11] Popular Science magazine has featured his work as a visionary for “The Future of the Environment” in 2010. [12] Mitchell was the Winner of the Victor Papanek Social Design Award [13] sponsored by the University of Applied Arts Vienna, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, and the Museum of Arts and Design in 2011. Dwell magazine featured Mitchell as one of "The NOW 99" in 2012. [14] He won the American Institute of Architects New York, Urban Design Merit Award for; Terreform ONE, Urbaneer Resilient Waterfront Infrastructure, 2013. [15]
Early in his career, Joachim worked for Pei Cobb Freed & Partners Architects. Working with I.M. Pei provided Joachim with valuable insights into large-scale architectural projects and the integration of contemporary design with historical contexts. His experience allowed him to develop a deep understanding of architectural form, materiality, and the importance of place in urban design.
Years later, Joachim worked at the architecture offices of Mohse Safdie under an awarded research fellowship. Safdie contributed to his ability to push the boundaries of traditional architecture, incorporating analytical tools and socio-ecological principles into designs of tall buildings and clusters.
The mentorship and collaboration with these two renowned architects provided Joachim with a strong foundation for his career, leading to his recognition in ecological design and sustainable urbanism. Joachim's exposure to Pei's modernist precision and Safdie's humane principles influenced his own innovative projects, such as the Fab Tree Hab, Cricket Shelter, and Monarch Sanctuary. These experiences reinforced his commitment to creating architecture that is not only visually striking but also environmentally responsible and socially inclusive.
In 2002, Joachim started his doctoral research with the MIT Media Lab's Smart Cities group under the leadership of William J. Mitchell. This experience allowed him to explore the intersection of computational design and urbanism, focusing on how emerging types of mobility, city cars, and soft vehicles could be leveraged to create more sustainable transport-based municipal environments.
After MIT, Joachim completed his part of the project on the Frank Gehry Car with General Motors to work in the offices of Frank O. Gehry and Partners in Los Angeles.
In 2006, Mitchell Joachim co-founded Terreform ONE (Open Network Ecology), a 501c3 nonprofit organization that focuses on biotech architecture and ecological urban planning. Terreform ONE aims to address environmental issues of climate change and biodiversity loss through novel experimental methodologies, engineered living materials, and interdisciplinary research. Their operational motto is to "Design Against Extinction".
Moshe Safdie is an architect, urban planner, educator, theorist, and author. He is known for incorporating principles of socially responsible design throughout his six-decade career. His projects include cultural, educational, and civic institutions; neighborhoods and public parks; housing; mixed-use urban centers; airports; and master plans for existing communities and entirely new cities in the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia. Safdie is most identified with designing Marina Bay Sands and Jewel Changi Airport, as well as his debut project Habitat 67, which was originally conceived as his thesis at McGill University. He holds legal citizenship in Israel, Canada, and the United States.
The year 2003 in architecture involved some significant architectural events and new buildings.
Sim Van der Ryn is an American architect, researcher and educator. Van der Ryn's professional interest has been applying principles of physical and social ecology to architecture and environmental design.
The Yale School of Architecture (YSoA) is one of the constituent professional schools of Yale University. The School awards the degrees of Master of Architecture I, Master of Architecture II, Master of Environmental Design (M.E.D), and Ph.D in architectural history and criticism. The School also offers joint degrees with the Yale School of Management and Yale School of the Environment, as well as a course of study for undergraduates in Yale College leading to a Bachelor of Arts. Since its founding as a department in 1916, the School has produced some of the world's leading architects, including Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Maya Lin and Eero Saarinen, among others. The current dean of the School is Deborah Berke.
Michael David Sorkin was an American architectural and urban critic, designer, and educator. He was considered to be "one of architecture's most outspoken public intellectuals", a polemical voice in contemporary culture and the design of urban places at the turn of the twenty-first century. Sorkin first rose to prominence as an architectural critic for the Village Voice in New York City, a post which he held for a decade throughout the 1980s. In the ensuing years, he taught at prominent universities around the world, practiced through his eponymous firm, established a nonprofit book press, and directed the urban design program at the City College of New York. He died at age 71 from complications brought on by COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Fab Tree Hab is a hypothetical ecological home design developed at MIT in the early 2000s by Mitchell Joachim, Javier Arbona and Lara Greden. With the idea of easing the burden humanity places on the environment with conventional housing by growing "living, breathing" tree homes.
UrbanLab is an American architecture and urban design firm with headquarters in Chicago. Founded by Martin Felsen, FAIA, and Sarah Dunn in 2001, the office is known for its focus on sustainability, creative experimentation and a collaborative approach to buildings, spaces and cities.
Sharon Egretta Sutton, is an American architect, educator, visual artist, and author. Her work is focused on community-based participatory research and design. She is a professor emerita at the University of Washington. In 1984, she became the first African American woman to become a full professor in an accredited architectural degree program while teaching at the University of Michigan. She has also taught at Parsons School of Design, and Columbia University.
Kent Larson is an architect and Professor of the Practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Larson is currently director of the City Science research group at the MIT Media Lab, and co-director with Lord Norman Foster of the Norman Foster Institute on Sustainable Cities based in Madrid. His research is focused on urban design, modeling and simulation, compact transformable housing, and ultralight autonomous mobility on demand. He has established an international consortium of City Science Network labs, and is a founder of multiple MIT Media Lab spin-off companies, including Ori Living and L3cities.
The Design Futures Council is an interdisciplinary network of design, product, and construction leaders exploring global trends, challenges, and opportunities to advance innovation and shape the future of the industry and environment. Members include architecture and design firms, building product manufacturers, service providers, and forward-thinking AEC firms of all sizes that take an active interest in their future.
The CityCar or MIT CityCar is an urban all-electric concept car designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. The project was conceived by William J. Mitchell and his Smart Cities Research Group. It is now led by Kent Larson, Director of the Changing Places Research Group at the Media Lab. The project came into reality in 2003 under the support of General Motors. Time magazine choose the CityCar to be one of the "Best Inventions of 2007".
William John Mitchell was an Australian-born author, educator, architect and urban designer, best known for leading the integration of architectural and related design arts practice with computing and other technologies.
Environmentally sustainable design is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability and also aimed at improving the health and comfort of occupants in a building. Sustainable design seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment, the health and well-being of building occupants, thereby improving building performance. The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources, minimize waste, and create healthy, productive environments.
Ecological urbanism draws from ecology to inspire an urbanism that is more socially inclusive and sensitive to the environment. It is less ideologically driven than green urbanism or sustainable urbanism. In many ways, ecological urbanism is an evolution and a critique of landscape urbanism, which argues for a more holistic approach to the design and management of cities. This type of urbanism has a central scope of four main objectives: compactness, complexity, efficiency, and stability. This model of urbanism strives to tackle the current challenges of society by intertwining sustainability and urban occupation models. "Ecological urbanism" was coined by architect and planner Miguel Ruano in his 1998 book Eco-Urbanism: Sustainable Human Settlements, 60 Case Studies. The term first appeared as "EcoUrbanism", which is defined as "the development of multi-dimensional sustainable human communities within harmonious and balanced built environments". The term was used later in April 2003 at a conference at the University of Oregon, and again in 2006 in a paper by Jeffrey Hou. Mohsen Mostafavi used the term in the 2007 publication Intervention Architecture and in a lecture at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Today, ecological urbanism is recognized as a formal academic research topic. Notably, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design has conducted a conference, held an art exhibition, and published a book all centered around ecological urbanism.
Galen Cranz is a Professor of the Graduate School, Architecture at the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies the social and cultural bases of architectural and urban design. She is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, a kinesthetic educational system, who founded the new field "Body Conscious Design."
Kongjian Yu, is a landscape architect and urbanist, writer and educator, commonly credited with the invention of Sponge City concept, and winner of the International Federation of Landscape Architects’ Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe Award in 2020. Received his Doctor of Design Degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1995, Doctor Honoris Causa from Sapienza University of Rome in 2017 and Honorary Doctorate from Norwegian University of Life Sciences in 2019, Yu was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.
Terreform ONE is a 501c3 non-profit architecture and urban think tank that advances ecological design in derelict municipal areas. By formulating unsolicited feasibility studies and egalitarian designs, their mission is to illustrate speculative environmental plans for New York City and other cities worldwide. Their intention is to support community outreach and master plan solutions in underprivileged areas that do not have direct access to qualified architects and urban designers.
Kate Orff is an American landscape architect. She is the founding principal of SCAPE, a design-driven landscape architecture and urban design studio based in New York. She is also the director the Urban Design Program (MSAUD) at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and co-director of the Center for Resilient Cities and Landscapes. Orff is the first landscape architect to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
Martin Felsen is an American architect and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA). He directs UrbanLab, a Chicago-based architecture and urban design firm. Felsen's projects range in scale from houses such as the Hennepin, Illinois Residence, mixed-use residential and commercial buildings such as Upton's Naturals Headquarters, public open spaces such as the Smart Museum of Art Courtyard at the University of Chicago, and large scale, urban design projects such as Growing Water in Chicago and a masterplan for the Yangming Lake region of Changde, China. Felsen was awarded the 2009 Latrobe Prize by the American Institute of Architects, College of Fellows.
Richard M. Sommer is a Professor of Architecture and Urbanism and the Director of the Global Cities Institute at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto. From 2009 until 2020, he was the Dean of the Daniels Faculty. Sommer was born in Philadelphia, and now resides in Toronto, Canada. Trained as an architect and urbanist, Sommer is a leader in architectural education and is a designer and scholar of the built environment.