Design
John is a designer, artist, and architect. He began drawing as a young boy in Virginia and continued through college in New York City, where he double majored in Art History and Business. He continued his design education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he received a Master of Architecture degree. John’s work has been exhibited across the United States & internationally and published across a variety of media channels.
John’s design work focuses on urban scale interventions that create significant value for the community and its users. John’s design research focuses on the future of cities, the smart integration of sustainability into his development projects, and how technology can be used to advance human-scale improvements to how we live, work, and play.
John loves to create. His love for drawing and painting continues even while his focus has been more on the creation of buildings and on his businesses. In his spare time, he draws, paints, and sculpts. He also regularly attends gallery openings and supports the arts through charitable giving.
Brussels, Belgium Fire Station
While at ORG Architects and Urban Designers John was one of the primary designers on the regional fire and safety center just outside of Brussels, Belgium. The project located in Asse, BE, included an urban design landform structure that integrated the fire and safety center with a youth recreation center and skate park. The design used a wall to enclose the two structures and create an urban courtyard in the suburban location to be used for events, meetings, and everyday activities. The project was completed in 2014.
UMass Lowell University Strategic Plan
While working at UMass Lowell John assisted in the creation of the long-term strategic plan for the university. The plan addresses the physical space needs of the university, its projected growth, and identifies both economic opportunities and challenges. With his colleagues and the Director of Planning, John worked to survey and compile campus physical infrastructure and building data. Then the team developed a plan to help the university expand and grow in a sustainable manner. The capital plan laid out spending and investment of more than $5 billion dollars over a 5–10-year period.
Megaform as Suburban Core
A Frame of Opposition
Today the creation of place in the suburbs is a significant challenge for the contemporary American city. In John’s MIT thesis project, the megaform-landform building structure is used to create a place of culture and civic identity in the endless American suburban sprawl. Through the imposition of this massive building on the vast plain of nothingness and infused with both public and private uses a civic form is created. This project symbolically uses the megaform to interrogate the concept of the future of the city as a network of high-density nodes. The integration of the electric vehicle into the megaform further creates both opportunity and challenges for future urban environments that this project attempts to identify and address. This design project was created in 2010.
Urban Design for Sukothai, Thailand
While at MIT John participated in an urban design studio focused on addressing the economic and infrastructural challenges of a rapidly growing World Heritage Site at the Sukothai Temple Complex. About 25 years ago squatters began to inhabit the site they live within the walls of the temple complex and sell food and souvenirs to tourists. The collection of squatters has now become a neighborhood of people living and working in the space. The lack of public infrastructure for this new neighborhood along with challenges faced by the locals for adequate housing are challenges John’s design seeks to address. Using repeatable digital fabrication techniques and locally available bamboo John’s design creates an exportable construction system. This system empowers locals to create new buildings, adequate for minimal shelter and comfort, while also creating opportunities for the sale and export of this novel building system.
Grand Paris - 2030 Transformative Flexible Parking Structures
The Grand Paris project was initiated by President Nicholas Sarkozy of France in 2009 to address the lack of an economic and physical growth plan for Paris in alignment with the 2030 Kyoto Accords. President Sarkozy selected 10 of the best architects in Europe to lead design research on these challenges. Finn Geipel, the start architect, led John’s MIT design studio. John’s project proposes the creation of a distributed network of flexible parking structures designed to maximize the capture of solar energy based on its external geometry. The creation of this series of “high-density parking nodes” allows for the removal of the significant amount of land dedicated to surface parking. This distributed network of parking nodes enables the creation of higher density, walkable, and thus more sustainable, cities.
Additional Architectural Projects
Abattoir Foodmet - Brussels, Belgium
Beveren Police Station and Civic Center - Beveren, Belgium
Beveren Police Station and Civic Center - Beveren, Belgium
Asse Fire Station - Asse, Belgium
Asse Fire Station - Asse, Belgium
The Horizontal Delirium from John's Senior Thesis Project - Megaform: A Frame of Opposition
Art & Design Exhibits
Frank Lloyd Wright, From Within Outward Exhibit
Guggenheim Museum, New York City, U.S. – Harvard Graduate School of Design
John's work was featured as part of the Frank Lloyd Wright, From Within Outward exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, New York City, U.S. While at MIT John took classes at the elite Harvard Graduate School of Design. His class was selected by the Guggenheim to produce animated works using master architect Frank Lloyd Wright's unbuilt visionary drawings for the future of architecture and cities. With his classmates John produced short videos that brought to life the Mile High Tower and the Living City projects. This project was completed in 2009 and exhibited from 2009 through 2011 internationally and across the United States.
This exhibit was also proudly displayed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Milwaukee Art Museum among many other national and international museums.
Le Grand Paris, Cite de la Architecture & Patrimoine
Paris, FR - French President Nicholas Sarkozy initiated design competition, with exhibit.
The Grand Paris project was initiated by President Nicholas Sarkozy of France in 2009 to address the lack of an economic and physical growth plan for Paris in alignment with the 2030 Kyoto Accords. President Sarkozy selected 10 of the best architects in Europe to lead design research on these challenges. Finn Geipel, the start architect, led John’s MIT design studio. The exhibition of the work created by John and his class was featured at France's premier architectural museum and exhibit space, the Cite du Patrimoine d'Architecture. After this primary exhibition the exhibition toured internationally across Europe and Asia.
