Chris is an architect, researcher and educator. He has lived and worked as an architect in New York City, Anchorage, Firenze, Kigali, and Lilongwe. In New York Christopher was a director at studioMDA founded by Markus Dochantschi protégé of Pritzker Prize winning architect Zaha Hadid. In Africa Christopher was director of MASS Design Group where he designed and built many humanitarian projects for such clients as Madonna, Partners in Health, the UN Millennium Village Project, the Clinton Global Initiative, Jeff Gordon Children’s Foundation, and Noella Coursaris.

In academia, Chris has taken the lessons of humanitarian architecture in the developing world to Kent State University. He created a program called design for the re/developing world that teams with Malawi Polytechnic University on a yearlong series of design studios to challenge students to broaden their horizons. Students learned to use their talents as designers to make a positive impact abroad in the developing world and at home in the re-developing world.

Working in limited-resource- environments has inspired Christopher in his practice to reduce material inputs and leverage the building process to make maximum positive impact. In research, he is working with leading researchers at NASA and MIT to develop and promote new bio-materials. Christopher has also written open source material for the AIA and the Center for Architecture Foundation on building technology.

He will speak about his special mycelium based projects around the world (and off this world)