AIA GOLD SCHOOL MEDAL
University of New Mexico
Received: May 2008I am a maker, architect, designer and coder with over twenty years of practical and conceptual experience spanning the fields of interaction design, ui/ux, graphics, product design, marketing, architecture and landscape design, industrial design, environmental graphic design, sound design and recording, programming and electronics, installation and web art, creative coding, and software development.
I have teaching experience at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I have created and taught a variety of studios and advanced digital design and fabrication courses at the University of New Mexico, and computational and environmental art, game development, graphic and web design and fabrication courses at University of Oklahoma's School of Art + Art History, and first year studio at University of Oklahoma's College of Architecture. My range of experience and inquiry has given me the agility to bridge a unique collection of artistic mediums and design disciplines, with the capacity to apply a high level of personal drive, conceptual depth, industry insight and digital literacy.
The primary arc of my current research deals with personal identity and modes of interfacing with physical and virtual environments as examined through the lenses of cultural, social interaction, gaming, programmatic art, spatial cognition and threshold.
Web Art. Environmental Graphic Design. Installation Architecture. Fabrication. Interactive Narratives. Game Making.
UI/UX studies and development of responsive environments to convey new modes of indication, designation and signification for interior and exterior way finding systems using mesh networks.
Exploring social user experiences of abstract communication for mobile platforms using visualization and sound as vehicles to augment and codify environmental and physiological vectors that respond to user intervention through the manipulation of overlapping spatial relationships.
Visual representations of edge conditions; liminality, boundaries, encroachment, event horizons and perforations as they relate to thresholds among constructed and organic environments.
Hierarchies in constant flux, relational dynamics within online networks, visual feedback based on interactions between individuals' digital characteristics within established proximities and man-made space.
Architecture is sculpture; it is connection, fragmentation and the study of their inter-penetrations.
It breaks beyond the preconceptions that lie within traditional forms and confronts the occupant with new possibilities. Architecture is a catalyst for cultural growth when it embraces opportunities to reflect in itself, a rich and complex present tense.
Architecture is not a patch that fills a void nor is it an invasive maneuver, but rather it is a distinct environment woven into an existing fabric. It is expressive of the present, a contemporary discourse that examines contextual paradigms.
The execution and expression of architecture is a fluid state, a tension between intuitive freeassociation and a rationale that evolves through perception and translation of the immediate.
As idiosyncrasies of a locale fuse with global complexies, an architecture emerges that is not neutral or static but charged with the drive to define lines of contradiction: transformation and preservation, disjointed and coherent, normative and distinct.
Creating a dialogue between building and site, the nature center complex creates an interdependent relationship between Chicago’s social and natural systems while creating a place to get away and relax from the dense network of the city. The circulation flow weaves a series of disconnected buildings into a singular cohesive campus comprised of four distinct programmatic entities. The connective tissue between these buildings become the circulatory system through the complex, it is also the location of exterior activities and gatherings. Consisting of public plazas, event decks, botanical gardens, boat slips, cafes and public art and performance spaces these areas of public collection turn the nature center into more than simply a place to get away, but rather a place to get to.
The plan of the complex addresses specific site aspects such as maximized views toward the harbor, city and habitat, alignment with the waterfront and boating/beach culture and creating a parallel orientation with initial visitor approach. The sectional qualities of the complex aim to address environmental conditions such as optimal solar gain, predominant wind direction during both summer and winter months, and the penetration of natural light.
Chicago, IL
The cleaved plan is a metaphor for a pierced heart and a direct representation of the inspirational imagery found in the poetics of duende flamenco. Evolution of Spanish-Pueblo Style expands form and aesthetic into a hybridization that embraces a traditional massing with updated techniques in building and finish technologies and an expressive freedom - holding on to fundamental traditions while influenced socially and culturally by a heterogeneous present.
Embracing metaphors created in the poetry of duende flamenco: the broken heart and the splinter that pains the soul, informs an architecute that still roots towards a rationalperception and translation of the immediate.
Santa Fe, NM
Through extensively exploring site opportunities of the overall massing and the relationship between landscape and architectural tectonics the studio arts building is a study of the inter-relationship between building-form and land-form.
Between the earthen upheavals that create a pleated horizontal landscape and the vertical continuation of folded metal forms lies the fissure. These cracks, opened though an internal process between the architectural forms, landscape elements and the artist reveals dynamic relationships in which flows the creative soul of the entire environment.
Santa Fe, NM
The current pathway along the shoulder through Corrales, New Mexico is a wasteland, an unsafe, poorly maintained, hostile space where pedestrians, realistically have no place. The challenge of this project was to transform an isolating and dangerous highway shoulder from an unsafe, unstable and detached space into a place of engagement, immersion and balance, centered around the pedestrian’s experience and their safe travel along the Corrales Road commercial corridor.
In addition to designing a safe and enjoyable pathway, automobile circulation needed to be addressed. From studying the ‘free-for-all’ nature of automobile access off Corrales Road, there was an underlying need to consolidate vehicular circulation, relegating its access along existing crossroads with connections and parking located behindclusters of adjacent commercial businesses.
The goal in developing a larger community park within the commercial core of Corrales was to create a social place, for community activities to occur as well as for personal repose. The design concept in terms of a desired aesthetic was achieved by using agricultural patterns and shapes. The design and layout of the landscape reflects long lots, celebrating the village’s deep ties to farming. The landform shapes and overall tectonics of the community park are derived from soil architecture, planting patterns and mechanical forms.
Santa Fe, NM
Situationist Javascripting
Situationist Javascripting
A drift, or dérive is an unplanned journey through a landscape, on which the subtle aesthetic geographic contours subconsciously direct a traveller, with the ultimate goal of creating an entirely new and authentic experience. I created this app to support one of my current classes on web interactivity in order to engage students in developing photographic series of work that they may incorporate into their interactive web art - to act as a catalyst to develop new creative trajectories.
Norman, Oklahoma
The Grey Age
The Grey Age
Our world was dying, humanity on the brink, until a discovery between the harmonic pairing of precise spectral wavelengths and sound frequencies combined with focused magnetism revealed a strange quantum relationship that unlocked something unexpected on our world. Once fused into a crystalline matrix, a triplen harmonic emerged that revealed a massive helical quantum entity. Seven specific entities were identified over time, each leading to brilliant organic and inorganic advances in energy development, environmental rehabilitation, material durability, physical agility, stealth, defensive technologies, and metaphysical manipulation.
This is the story of the Prism.
Coming Spring 2017.
Norman, OK
Book Design
Book Design
Work in Progress
Peter Kray
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Snap-together Furniture
Snap-together Furniture
I wanted to develop a furniture system that functioned as a didactic assemblage - to illustrate connectivity and analog/digital relationships. Both of these factors influenced the ideas that went into this chair. I wanted to work with wood but I also wanted to develop and manufacture a printable connective system that could snap together (and unsnap) so that as an individual grew they could swap out the wooden panels to adjust to their size - to re-engaging the furniture in order to actively modify its dimensions.
Norman, Oklahoma
Promotional Brochure
Promotional Brochure
The Division of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma needed a compact and punchy piece of marketing collateral to hand out to prospective students. This piece was designed to fold into a rectangle that was small enough to side into a back pocket.
University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma
Visualizing the Threshold of Failure
Visualizing the Threshold of Failure
Work in Progress
Lokomoku
Norman, OK
Furniture Design
Furniture Design
Spalted Birch Playwood, Poplar, Enamel, Laquer
Locomoku
Norman, OK
Galileo's World at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History
Galileo's World at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History
Interactive touchscreen-based software developed for the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History’s Galileo's World Exhibit.
Sam Noble Museum of Natural History
Norman, OK
Galileo's World at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History
Galileo's World at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History
Interactive touchscreen-based software developed for the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History’s Galileo's World Exhibit.
Sam Noble Museum of Natural History
Norman, OK
Gear Institute
Gear Institute
Display Stand Concepts
Display Stand Concepts
Puma North America
Albuquerque, NM
Gear Institute
Gear Institute
Gear Institute
Connect Staff is built specifically for staff to communicate with each other and with guests through private networks. Staff can manage tasks and respond directly to guest requests, and management can monitor response times and streamline team assignments. Connect Staff helps to ensure guest satisfaction and an efficient workflow.
Monscierge
Oklahoma City, OK
Gear Institute
Gear Institute
Connect Lobby is an all-in-one interactive platform, carefully spec'd for quality performance and the highest caliber user experience. As a centerpiece for lobbies or other high-traffic hotel areas, it has the flexibility to beautifully convey hotel’s offerings and marketing initiatives. With features like hotel info, local recommendations, flights and social postcards, Monscierge Connect Lobby is designed to enhance the guests experience and free up a hotel's front desk.
Monscierge
Oklahoma City, OK
Exhibition Lounge
Exhibition Lounge
Purple
Boston, MA
Chris Kilbridge Architect
Chris Kilbridge Architect
An intentionally tiny site, CKA uses compression as a mechanism to frame and limit the view. The resulting interaction gives the user an experience of operating a shutter to expose particular layers of information.
Chris Kilbridge
Eugene, OR
Rockstop 2 Prototype Packaging
Rockstop 2 Prototype Packaging
Rockstop
Boston, MA
Vanguard at the Armory
Vanguard at the Armory
A rapid assemblage of metal scaffolding and donated or scavenged construction and traffic mitigation materials were used to carve gallery spaces for a group art show in the endangered Cranston Street Armory.
The challenge of the exhibition was to mediate between the soaring open web trusses and heroics of the 38,000 sf structure and the smaller scale of the art. The scaffolding slices diagonally across the grain of the drill hall, it's vertical elements punching up through the massive volume of space to anchor the exhibit and lock back in to the existing structure. This project was achieved through partnerships with the Vanguard Group of Artists, the Convergence International Art Festival and the Providence Preservation Society.
Providence Preservation Society
Providence, RI
Convergence Arts Festival Masterworks Project
Convergence Arts Festival Masterworks Project
A collaboration with Hogan + Macaulay Architects, this project was conceived as a cinematic montage and used to explore the use of light as a medium to 'drape' imagery across the Providence Hurricane Barrier.
The imagery selected and the compositional choices made for this exhibition included body parts, such as arms, hands and faces, as well as photographs of dancers juxtaposed with more abstract imagery. The entire exhibit was initially simulated on formZ using the exact lighting specs, distances, surrounding light pollution levels, and physical properties to gain insight on our design choices but also to point out any environmental factors that might challenge our preconceptions.
The goal was to create a visual dialog between projected elements of the human form and the highly engineered structural elements of the Hurricane Barrier. The result exceeded our expectations as the dual 12,000 lumen light canons cast intensely vibrant imagery upon the Hurricane Barrier's three story volumes and lacy structural assemblies, cutting through a lightly foggy fall night over the Narragansett Bay.
Providence, RI
American Studies Association Serigraph
American Studies Association Serigraph
American Studies Association
Albuquerque, NM
SA Architects
SA Architects
I was awarded the opportunity to design the new studio space for the previous firm that I worked for, SA Architects in Cranston, Rhode Island. Housed in a previously vacant furniture warehouse, the design re-uses the existing building shell and incorporates Rheinzinc rain shielding on the north and western facades.
Interiors were designed to pull away from and expose both existing and new structural materials so as to function didactically. Larger interior functions are also expressed as singular massings to create a sense of distribution across a landscape.
SA Architects
Cranston, RI
Meeting Street School, a 76,000-square-foot building situated on a nine-acre campus specializes in special-needs educational, therapeutic and diagnostic services to over 3,000 children and their families each year.
The main design objectives for the campus include: creating a dialog between an unfolding urban landscape and the natural environment, developing public spaces that engage students through overlapping meeting spaces, indoor gardens and galleries, outward gestures into the landscape to engage its surroundings, an expansion and contraction of spaces in order to create private/intimate corridors that morph into public/social spaces for gatherings, and fragmented/linear circulation that combines notions of “hallway” (mechanical) and “pathway” (organic).
Meeting Street School
Providence, RI
Urban Intervention
Urban Intervention
Boston Housing Authority
Boston, MA
Redefine the Alley
Redefine the Alley
Alley intervention concept.
Transitions experienced from line, to compression, to decompression emerges as a formal expression that expands along a deep alley in Providence.
Lighting is a subtle affliction upon these forms, to expose the raw shaping of refined materials while drawing the occupant inward and through the space - describing the general metamorphosis of shape as they leave the safe confines of the alley.
RISD
Providence, RI
The Physical Artifacts of Scarring
The Physical Artifacts of Scarring
Conceptual
Cambridge, MA
Mobile Survival Shelter
Mobile Survival Shelter
Conceptual
Somewhere Off-World
Workstation Design
Workstation Design
Vision 3 Architects
Providence, RI
Volumetric Study
Volumetric Study
Conceptual
Bristol, RI
Central Avenue Sketches
Central Avenue Sketches
Drawing series capturing Albuquerque conviviality.
Conceptual
Albuquerque, NM
Tampa, FL
Approximation of a Generation
Approximation of a Generation
Providence, RI
Ken Marold - Vocals, Guitar, Synth
Ed Demille - Percussion, Synth
Tony Iacavone - Bass
Jack Russell - Drums
Geo Social Music Generator
Geo Social Music Generator
Exploring social user experiences of abstract communication for mobile platforms that use visualization and sound as vehicles to codify environmental and physiological vectors that respond to user intervention through the manipulation of overlapping spatial relationships.
Looking at new uses for existing social networks, Mandorla establishes an augmented experience between you and your local friends by synthesizing sounds and visuals based on each users facebook profile aspects. This synthesis triggers as your friend's virtual auras intersect, giving a user the opportunity to engage through interaction by altering and morphing sounds through the HUD like interface.
Conceptual Social App
Norman, OK
Socially Influenced, Locally Procured
Socially Influenced, Locally Procured
Examining streamlined, minimal ways to encapsulate a wide array of socially recommended local places, deals and offers that are sourced through a variety of review sites, facebook and twitter feeds, deal sites and online search tools. I am interested in developing ways to boil down large volumes of local online recommendations, favorites, and 'likes' datasets and develop strategies to present them in legible and highly navigable ways using graphical layering and experimental workflows.
I can envision the next evolution of this research moving into an examination of digital visual overlays and heads up display technologies to extend my research into visual communication strategies to organize complex environmentally overlaid relational visual feedback within augmented reality systems.
Conceptual Recommendation App
Norman, OK
Encroachment Study
Encroachment Study
Examining infrastructure and encroachment, this project looks at geo-tagging as a way to tag a message onto an area. The GPS points were dropped within and around Petroglyph Estates, a cookie cutter creation of southwest suburban sprawl, abuts Petroglyph National Monument, one of the largest petroglyph sites in North America. This project was designed to raise environmental awareness of extensive development and sprawl by pulling our view back to see the approaching storm.
Petroglyphs National Monument, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Envisioning Voyeurism
Envisioning Voyeurism
This piece was constructed as a physical visualization that captures the interactions, glances and gazes between the characters from their respective apartments in Alfred Hitchock's, Rear Window. The development of each nodal zone defines a spatially unique room from which each character is gazed upon by an unknowing subject. I would like to continue exploring this form of storytelling as a larger spatial construct for people to occupy and to incorporate interactive projection elements as a means to overlap additional layers of information upon physical forms.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
This shelving system was created to further my working comprehension of a variety of wood types and to explore the cellular alignment found in wood and plants. The shelving and sides are made of yellow pine, black walnut, and compressed wood fiber board. All of these components represent the cellular walls of of wood.
The voids, typically filled with water at a cellular level are replaced at a macro level with man-made refined cellulose, books. The yellow pine shelf ends are oriented to expose the end grain thereby developing a dialogue between it and the highly magnified graphical representation of offsetting and volumetric variability that is present but imperceptible in the yellow pine to the naked eye.
Norman, Oklahoma
Captured Residual Catalogue, Urban Interface Technology
Captured Residual Catalogue, Urban Interface Technology
While sidewalks create the potential for local interaction, few use them due to sprawl. As a result, the city’s collective memories are fragmented and discontinuous, or forgotten. This new circuit allows for local exchanges to reside, to leave residual traces for others to observe. If people cannot genuinely pass by each other, the next possible means would be for their presences to interact and remain for others to observe and take part in that experience.
This intervention of reclamation is a hack upon the city grid, burning new circuitry specifically for individuals to circumvent ‘the grid’ and flow over it at a pedestrian time scale instead of the compressed scales of speed and efficiency. This new circuitry provides the captured catalogues of visitors’ experiences, a free zone of both immediate and residual interactions, within an area that previously provided no such means.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Interactivity and the Web
Adjunct Faculty
Spring 2016
University of Oklahoma
This course will introduce students to three primary web languages, Javascript, HTML and CSS coding. Students will develop basic interactive experiences using the javascript framework Phaser.js in order to begin developing larger interactive and game ideas moving forward. This class introduces code fundamentals and students are not expected to be proficient coders, however, there is an expectation that students involve themselves completely with the assigned projects, maintain high levels of curiosity and drive and consider how this experience might be useful toward future creative endeavors.
Craft and Making
Adjunct Faculty
Spring 2016
University of Oklahoma
This studio course is acontinuation in the development of fundamental design and visual communication skills through introductions to the material, formal, and spatial properties of architecture. Fabrication, shopsafety, craft, and techniques will be introduced and developed through the making of physicalconstructions. Continued ideas involving creating-making are explored through exercises in the formal, spatial, and material qualities of human environments.
Art, Technology and Culture Studio
Adjunct Faculty
Spring 2016
University of Oklahoma
In an era of decentralization and dematerialization how have our conceptions of space altered? How have networked technologies shifted our experiences between physical and virtual spaces? Are spatial concepts regarding the network and immaterial new?
This course establishes a foundational perspective that considers embodiment and space in the digital age. We will examine how networked information spaces might be understood, intervened with, repurposed, and inhabited as socially navigable spaces.
Ultimately, our goal is first of all to engage the term ‘space’, and secondly to examine possibilities as we extend that engagement into practice.
Game | Code | Play
Adjunct Faculty
Fall 2015
University of Oklahoma
Class Website Coming Soon
In this course we will be exploring the craft of making and developing interactive projects that exist at the intersection of web art, architecture, and game development. Areas of focus include storyboarding, character and world development, basic coding, and graphic and sound work. In addition to making interactive games, this course will address business and marketing concepts for targeting users, creating social buzz, and choosing platforms and distribution channels for your work.
Make, Code, Play : Introduction to Interactivity and Development is structured to expose you to crucial technical, strategic, and artistic perspectives needed to build interactive gaming experiences that are elegant, well written and fun to play. Each week will consist of a short lecture, practical experiments, and workshops. We will be using a specific collection of image, audio, and code tools that are attainable, quick to grasp, and extremely gratifying to use.
Design Fundamentals
Adjunct Faculty
Fall 2015
University of Oklahoma
This studio course provides an exploration into fundamentals of the Creating_Making curriculum. It focuses on the design process, one that seeks solutions that are not merely geometrical and formal, but ones which are rich in concept and idea. The design process will be investigated as a critical and rigorous evolutionary process, in which design proposals are transformed through multiple iterations. This will happen through analysis, critique, and alteration.It will require decisions in the face of uncertainty and what may seem to be ambiguity.
These studies in material and craft will provide a platform for acquiring skills not only in model making, but also in sketching, orthographic projection, perspective construction, rendering of shade and shadow, and use of color. As tools of visual communication, you will use these drawings to explain your designs to others, as well as developyour ability to use them as instruments that are vital to your own design process. By the conclusion of the semester, we will have a strong foundation of skills with digital tools, employing them for design, construction, and presentation. We will interrogate the relationships between the virtual and the material.
Adjunct Faculty
Fall 2015
University of Oklahoma
Class Work
An introductory design technology course developed to introduce second year students to electronic tools, processes and techniques as they relate to Visual Communications. Primary course goals included:
<psycho:MASH>UP</>
Adjunct Faculty
Spring 2015
University of Oklahoma
Visit Class Website
This course will introduce students to a variety of web design tools and techniques, HTML and CSS coding. This is a basic experience and students are not expected to be proficient coders, however, there is an expectation that students involve themselves completely with the assigned projects, maintain high levels of curiosity and drive and consider how this experience might be useful toward artistic works in the future.
Hacking the Urban Landscape
Adjunct Faculty
Spring 2015
University of Oklahoma
Visit Class Website
We’re going to look at spatial transformation through the lens of ‘hacking’. Subversion will be our strategy and we’ll use it to challenge physical, ideological and intellectual systems in Norman and OKC. We will manipulate and reconfigure spaces across these cities, generating programming commands that create new informational layers across our city.
We’re going to examine technologies and invent new and novel approaches to recording and capturing personal perspective and narratives as they pertain to history, principles, and culture and inject these stories into our city’s collective existence. We will be historians, engineers, architects designers and programmers.
Adjunct Faculty
Summer 2009
University of New Mexico
Upper level undergraduate and graduate students. This studio examines urban typologies with particular emphasis upon infill and block redevelopment. Our exploration begins along a commercial strip and major traffic artery. As this area continues it gentrification, it has become a place of extremes. This studio examines strategies and executes a semester project that addresses increases in livable density, defining a sense of place and creating energized social opportunities along the main pedestrian path.
Adjunct Faculty
Spring 2009
University of New Mexico
Lower level undergraduate students required to raise clear and precise questions, use abstract ideas to interpret information, consider diverse points of view, reach well-reasoned conclusions, and test them against relevant criteria and standards. Projects consist of speculative design projects organized around a conceptual framework intended to provoke thought about architecture and the landscape, and its history, future and the liminal time/space in between. Using liminality as a conceptual driver, students are expected to design a situation, intervene in an existing arrangement, or frame an activity in ways that allow the visitor to experience the building site in unexpected ways.
Adjunct Faculty
Spring 2009
University of New Mexico
This course examines intermediate architectural graphical representations through both analog and digital practices. Primary topics covered include technical drawing and drafting conventions, graphic design, typography, digital modeling and model fabrication techniques using both laser cutters and 3D printers.
Adjunct Faculty
Fall 2008
University of New Mexico
This course begins with a theoretical discussion about digital space and visualization and rapidly moves into exploring the potential of 3D modeling and 2D illustration and design tools. Main couse topics include, digital presentation techniques, building modeling efficacy, lighting simulation, 3D typography, terrain modeling, animation and fabrication. Primary goal for this course is to introduce new insights into spatial concepts, and to encourage students to integrate digital modeling and design as a primary tool for exploration.
Adjunct Faculty
Fall 2008
University of New Mexico
This course addresses a multitude of advanced visual presentation and modeling topics including a number of fabrication techniques and platforms. Using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and After Effects and FormZ, Rhino and Maya as the primary three-dimensional modelers, students acquire practical proficiency of these software packages while developing critical skills and techniques necessary to use these digital tools for both presentation work and visualizations throughout their design development process.
Adjunct Faculty
Fall 2008
University of New Mexico
This freshman course examines the rationale of design and the systematic design process and addresses the social and global responsibilities involved with design, fostering design awareness, and building appreciation and an understanding of its relationship to society at large. As an overview of the practice of design, the class also examines through projects and lectures, social awareness, critical issues, and relationships to our environment. Analog and digital design tools used within the graphic design and architectural industries are also introduced.
Adjunct Faculty
Summer 2008
University of New Mexico
Summer design studio made up of 300, 400 and 500 upper level undergraduate students. The question of the studio, “What new techno-social situations can we address within the urban fabric of Albuquerque?” challenged students to engage in a rigorous and fast-paced exploration of programming, verticality, orientation, security, mixed-use functionality, and landscape integration.
2006 - 2008
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Honors : AIA Gold Medal, Master's Thesis Distinction Award, Tau Sigma Delta National Honor Society, AIA Santa Fe Chapter/Bradley Kidder Memorial Scholarship Endowment
1994 - 1999
Roger Williams University
Bristol, Rhode Island
Founder : Indie Developer & Designer
2013 - Present
Norman, Oklahoma
Independant multi-disciplinary shop focused on interactive design, web development, installation art and graphic design.
Founder : VP Design + Marketing
2010 - Present
Santa Fe, New Mexico
UI/UX, graphic and web design, marketing and advertising experience. Responsible for leading interface design, marketing and sales collateral generation and graphic design for our outdoor gear, travel and e-commerce website.
Voted one of the 7 Best Gear Websites by Outside Magazine.
Chief Marketing + Innovation Officer
2009 - 2014
OKC, Oklahoma
UI/UX, graphic design and marketing experience. Responsible for leading interface design, user experience initiatives and hierarchy of content for our interactive software for large touch screens, interactive table tops and mobile apps for hospitality, travel, medical and institutional industries.
Principal
2006 - 2009
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Three years of experience running a design studio as Principal. Created to examine a wide scope of design disciplines including architecture, graphic design, industrial design, web media and environmental graphic design.
Clients: American Studies Association, Healthirst, New Balance, Bostitch, BSCI Medical Supply, Puma, Purple, Sylvania, Chris Kilbridge Architects, Slider Structure Systems, UNM SA+P, Salon Navid
Lead Designer
2002 - 2006
Cranston, Rhode Island
Four years of experience as lead architectural designer. Responsible for the conceptualization and design development of large commercial, educational and governmental accounts and the design and creation of advanced client presentations.
Honors : RI Monthly Magazine Silver Design Award, Metal Architecture Magazine Design Award
Creative Director
2000 - 2002
Boston, Massachusetts
Two years of experience as Creative Director. Responsible for lead design, prototyping, and development coordination within the Skyfish e-Marketplace as well as managing frontend web and graphic design teams to establish a set of visual standards for the company’s market branding and identity packages.
Principal
1996 - 2002
Providence, Rhode Island
Six years of architecture, installation, environmental graphic design and 3D modeling experience as Principal.
Public Installations : The Construction of Art: Vanguard at the Armory, Steel + Light Convergence Festival Masterworks
University of New Mexico
Received: May 2008University of New Mexico
Received: May 2008University of New Mexico
Received: May 2007University of New Mexico
Received: December 2006University of New Mexico
Received: June 2006Honorable Mention Design Award : Pawtucket Day Child Development Center
Received: November 2002I am dedicated to a process oriented, experiential learning environment, where students are constantly expected to re-examine initial perceptions and make connections with their environment on personal, emotional and intellectual levels. My most important contribution to students’ growth, is to mentor them through a critical process that emphasizes discovery, reflection, observation, transformation, and ultimately, realized, concrete form. My goal as an instructor is to see that students complete their academic experience with an ability to initiate projects creatively and work them out through individual thought and effort, arriving at solutions by way of an iterative, reflective process initiated on their own accord.
When engaging students, my primary objective is to sharpen their intentions and guide them through the developmental stages of perception, reflection, relational concepts and abstract reasoning, leading ultimately to critical thinking. Exposure to these pathways in studio has resulted in strong, well developed and deeply realized student projects, as they are encouraged to progress beyond typical snap decision making and purely intuitive processes and into the practice of critical self-judgment, iteration, and abstract learning.
Creation is a result of rigorously examining conceptual ideas. Experiential learning is crucial as a foundational model to critical and abstract thinking. Through discoveries between thinking and making, students connect personally to ideas, motives, and forge relationships between the abstract and the explicit. Through this process lies the transformative development and relational concepts that allow ideas to germinate and grow into fully realized forms.
When a student makes an object, they engage that object, make critical decisions about it, and forge a relationship with it. As a result, the student creates something meaningful, distinct, and acutely related to an inner experience resulting in a visual dialogue between the student and their experience resulting in a representation of personal perception. Ideas are simply a proposition; workmanship is the fully realized expression of that proposition.
The counterpart to successful work is the skill to communicate ideas and critical processes effectively. The ability to critically examine intent results in a lens that offers a glimpse into deeper motives. By identifying key concepts and speaking from both analytical and conceptual points during the review process, students become more confident, articulate communicators, and more aware of their own critical thought process.
Ken is a brilliant and honest teacher. He is able to bring the lofty ideals of architecture down to earth for his students, and his commitment to them is unquestionable.
Ian LeBlanc - Partner, KitbashiveKen is a brilliant, excellent teacher. I had an amazing time in his studio. He is very energetic and full of innovative ideas for design. I appreciate him for what he has done for me through my first year at the architecture school. I liked the way that he thinks about design. He would spend as much time as he can for his students and has the ability to guide them very well through design process.
Fatemeh Saeidi - Graduate Student, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State UniversityKen is a great professor. He always has the time to talk through projects, is very good at working through difficulties, and his energy is infectious to the entire studio around him. He has a strong ability to help students translate sometimes lofty conceptual ideas into physical modes of design.
Zachary Tyler - Project Manager, Counter IntelligenceKen really is a true professional and an extremely valued colleague. I have had the pure pleasure to work with Ken in a myriad of creative and interactive roles over the past five years with Monscierge. From the initial evolution of the company and our first concept to the expansion of Monscierge as an global leader in hospitality technology, Ken has driven evolutionary change for Monscierge. Beyond his business prowess, Ken really is a fascinating and compassionate individual with an interesting range of talents and interests. I can strongly attest to Ken's powerful balance of design and digital strategy expertise, people and program management and analysis. He is truly an extraordinary colleague.
Christy Doherty - Guest Experience Expert, MonsciergeKen's uncanny ability to listen and asses the needs of the consumer market has led him to develop constant products that surpass expectations. From concept to creation, Ken is able to constantly design and create end user products that address the most intricate details around technology applications. He is a great teacher, mentor, and innovator.
Kacey Butcher - Chief Business Development Officer, MonsciergeKen is a great guy to work with but more importantly, he is a great guy. His visionary concepts and product evangelism helped Monscierge define and deliver a world class suite of products and become the company that it is today. His attention to detail and professionalism are bested only by his capacity for entertaining and his flair for cooking.
Liam Walsh - Managing Director EMEA, Monscierge