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FUTURE CITIES LAB is an experimental design and research office based in San Francisco, California and Athens, Greece. Design principals JASON KELLY JOHNSON and NATALY GATTEGNO have collaborated on a range of award-winning projects exploring the intersections of design with advanced fabrication technologies, robotics, responsive building systems and public space.
Their work has been published and exhibited worldwide. Most recently they were awarded the 2011 Architectural League of New York Young Architects Prize, and were the 2008-09 Muschenheim and Oberdick Fellows at the University of Michigan TCAUP, the 2009 New York Prize Fellows at the Van Alen Institute in New York City, and exhibited work at the 2009-10 Hong Kong / Shenzhen Biennale. Both Johnson and Gattegno are graduates of Princeton University. They currently teach at the California College of the Arts and UC Berkeley, and lead workshops around the world, including the Architectural Association (AA) Global Summer Program Biodynamic Structures, Hydra-Cities Lab in Athens, Greece, and the Urban Islands workshop in Sydney, Australia. Jason has also recently collaborated with Andy Payne on the FIREFLY for Grasshopper toolbar and Primer.
JASON KELLY JOHNSON
Jason Kelly Johnson is a founding design partner of Future Cities Lab, an experimental design and research office based in San Francisco, California and Athens, Greece. Working in collaboration with his partner Nataly Gattegno, Jason has produced a range of award-winning projects exploring the intersections of design with advanced fabrication technologies, robotics, responsive building systems and public space.
Mr. Johnson's work has been published and exhibited worldwide. In 2012 the Hydramax project was exhibited at the SFMOMA and the Datagrove project was a featured installation in the Zero1 Art and Technology Biennial. Most recently he was awarded the 2011 Architectural League of New York Young Architects Prize, and the 2008-09 Oberdick Fellowship at the University of Michigan TCAUP, and the 2009 New York Prize Fellowship at the Van Alen Institute in New York City, and exhibited work at the 2009-10 Hong Kong / Shenzhen Biennale. He currently teaches at the California College of the Arts and leads workshops around the world, including the Architectural Association (AA) Global Summer Program Biodynamic Structures. Jason served as the Conference Chair of the ACADIA 2012 Conference "Synthetic Digital Ecologies" held in San Francisco. He has also served as a consultant to the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto.
Jason has also recently collaborated with Andy Payne on the FIREFLY for Grasshopper toolbar and Primer. Firefly offers a set of comprehensive software tools dedicated to bridging the gap between Grasshopper (a free plug-in for Rhino) the Arduino microcontroller and other input/output devices. It allows near real-time data flow between the digital and physical worlds
Jason's design work has been awarded an Unbuilt Architecture Award from the Boston AIA, and an ACSA Faculty Design award in 2010. Recent publications featuring the work of Future Cities Lab include: Interactive Architecture by Fox and Kemp; Softspace: From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space, ed. by Lally & Young; Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments by David Gissen; AD:Territory - Architecture Beyond Environment, among others.
Mr. Johnson has previously taught at the University of Michigan (Oberdick Fellow 2008-09), the University of Virginia, The University of Pennsylvania and the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. He teaches design studios and research seminars in design, public space and advanced technologies. His research seminar “Robotic Ecologies” explores responsive environments, interactive kinetic architectures, and self-organizing intelligent systems. In 2005 he became a Research Associate of the NSO (The Non-Linear Systems Organization) founded by Cecil Balmond and supported by the Arup Foundation and PennDesign. He has been an invited juror at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, IIT, The University of Toronto, The University of Calgary, Pratt, UVa, The University of Michigan, among others.
Jason Kelly Johnson (b. 1973) was born and raised in Canada. He received his Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University in 2001, and his Bachelor of Science from the University of Virginia. While at Princeton Mr. Johnson was awarded a Butler Traveling Fellowship, a Princeton University Academic Fellowship, and the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Thesis Prize for design research. He was the guest editor of 306090, a journal of emergent architecture and design, distributed by the Princeton Architectural Press. He has previously worked with Polshek Partnership and Reiser+Umemoto Architects in New York City.
e-mail: jason at future-cities-lab.net
NATALY GATTEGNO
Nataly Gattegno is a founding design partner of Future Cities Lab, an interdisciplinary design and research collaborative that has developed a range of award-winning projects exploring the intersections of design with advanced fabrication technologies, responsive building systems and urban space. Ms.Gattegno’s work has explored notions of territory – terrestrial, arctic, urban and suburban - by speculating on the design opportunities and inhabitation of extreme climatic environments. FCL’s work has been widely published and exhibited most recently in Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments and AD:Territory. FCL was awarded the 2011 Architectural League of New York NY Prize and the the Van Alen NY Prize in Systems and Ecology in 2009.
Nataly Gattegno was the Muschenheim Fellow at the University of Michigan in 2008-2009. She is currently an Associate Professor of Architecture at the California College of the Arts and Project Coordinator of CCA’s eLAB- an ecology and sustainability laboratory at CCA. She has previously taught at UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia.
Ms.Gattegno [b.1977] was born and raised in Athens, Greece. She received a MA from Cambridge University, St. John’s College, UK. and a M.Arch from Princeton University where she received the AIA Medal and the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Thesis Prize for design research. Ms.Gattegno was also awarded the Stanley Seeger Traveling Fellowship for research on the urban condition of the city of Athens, Greece.
e-mail: nataly at future-cities-lab.net
CURRENT ASSOCIATES
Ripon DeLeon[Senior Designer and Project Manager at Future Cities Lab; 2010 - Present]
Ripon DeLeon draws from both his background in Architecture and Computer Science to work with advanced fabrication techniques, robotics and interaction. Mr. DeLeon graduated from the California Colleges of Arts (CCA) with a Master of Architecture in 2010. At CCA he earned numerous awards including the AIA Henry Adams Medal, Visual Digital Media Book Award, and an Honorable Mention for his thesis work. Prior to CCA, Mr. DeLeon received a BS in Computer Science from the College of Charleston in SC. After graduation he spent a number of years in the software industry developing web-based applications.
COLLABORATORS AND CONSULTANTS
Dr. Scott Minneman [Interactive and Creative Collaborator. Engineering; San Francisco / Menlo Park, 2009 - Present]
Scott Minneman, co-founder of Onomy Labs, has long been engaged in, and with, the practice of interdisciplinary design. This manifests itself in his own background of architectural and engineering design (BA, BS, and MS from MIT; PhD from Stanford), embedded systems, interactive video, installation art, and rock climbing, as well as his research interests in applying technology to support group design work. Scott has worked on interactive robotics for the physically challenged, and communication aids for deaf and non-vocal individuals. As a scientist-collaborator in the PARC Artist-In-Residence (PAIR) program, Scott did installations at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, The Friends of Photography, a Sony JumboTron on the facade of a nightclub on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, SIGGRAPH, and a single-wide mobile home in Goleta, CA. (CV)
Dr. Wendy Ju [Robotic Design, Mechanical Engineering Consultant; San Francisco / Palo Alto, 2009 - Present]
Wendy Ju specializes in applying interactive embedded systems technologies to the exploration and development of new interactive works. Her particular expertise is in creating physical and digital interfaces that implicitly communicate with users; this knowledge has wide-reaching application in public installations and smart environments of all types. Her research interests center on how to broaden the use and applications of interactive systems technologies to children, artists, and budding engineers. Dr. Ju currently teaches at Stanford, UC Berkeley and CCA. Wendy received her PhD in Design and Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2008; her M.S. in Media Arts and Science from the MIT Media Lab, and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford. (CV)
Thomas Kelley [Design and Fabrication Collaborator; Chicago / New York, 2006 - Present]
Thomas Kelley draws from an extensive background in fabrication and design to advance FCL's research and practice in the field. Mr. Kelley graduated from Princeton University with a Master of Architecture and from the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture. He has worked with Asymptote Architecture in New York and Skidmore Owings and Merrill [SOM] in Chicago where he also currently teaches at the School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago.
Michael Shiloh [Mechatronics Consultant; San Francisco, 2010 - Present]
Michael Shiloh has a BSc in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and worked for many years designing consumer and industrial hardware and software systems. Michael joined Survival Research Labs in 1990, designing and installing control systems for the groups' large industrial performance machines, and started teaching electronics and animatronics to artists working in the increasingly popular fields of machine art, kinetic sculpture, physical computing, and robotics. Working with artists and other non-technical designers, it became apparent that there was a need for inexpensive, easy-to-use tools for prototyping and developing interactive projects. In 2002 Michael co-founded MakingThings, helping develop the Teleo line of rapid prototyping building blocks, allowing designers to build complex projects that combined software with electronics and devices such as sensors and motors. A natural teacher, Michael found himself teaching others how to use Teleo at companies and universities including Xerox PARC, Stanford University, California State University (Hayward and San Francisco), California College of the Arts, and the San Francisco Art Institute. Michael is currently serving as a Community Liason for Arduino.
OTHER RECENT COLLABORATORS
Jim Cambell (Artist), David Fletcher (Fletcher Studio), Andrew Kudless (MATSYS), Andy Payne (LIFT, Harvard), Walter Kim (Abstract Nonsense), Jon Acosta, Andrei Hakhovich, Carrie Norman (NY), Troy Rogers (UVA/Belgium), Noah Keating (Mathbeat Industries), Joy Wang, David Malda, Beth Haber, Osma Dossani, Jonathan Izen, Matthew Burtner (UVA), William Morrish (Parsons), Julie Bargmann (DIRT), Chris Fannin (HOK), Byron Stigge (Burro Happold), and many more.