With an engineer’s understanding of sustainability, a passion for people-friendly building design, and a 34-year career in high-technology, I researched the built environment from a human and environmental perspective for more than a decade. Contrasting designers’ claims with their ecological veracity provided a sober look at reality—especially for buildings and technologies purporting to be sustainable. Our failure to address global warming in real-time and the public’s self-delusion with “green” and “sustainable” labels, inspired me to address global warming in the near-term—before it’s too late to make a difference. My book Thwart Climate Change Now: Reducing Embodied Carbon Brick by Brick, published in 2021 by the Environmental Law Institute’s ELI Press, resulted from the ensuing research.

Prior to my focus on sustainable design and climate change, my 34-year tenure at the multi-national instrumentation company I founded spanned high technology projects, from U.S. space and defense programs to decoding the human genome. Facilities in the USA, UK, France and Germany led to a wide spectrum of high-tech projects in the Americas, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, Japan and China. Shifting focus to the built environment in 2006, I enrolled in Pratt Institute’s Graduate School of Architecture. In 2010, I founded ShortList_0® LLC to promote the unification of sustainable technology and architectural form—to bridge the gap between claims of sustainability and their true efficacy. As global warming accelerated over the ensuing years, the built environment’s emissions—both embodied and operating—became its primary focus.

In 2016, I published Buildings Are for People: Human Ecological Design, a holistic approach to creating user- and community-friendly buildings that are sustainably designed. Contrast 21c: People & Places followed in 2018, a photographic essay about people and places in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam that highlights the disparities between rural and urban areas, and their struggles to adapt to a 21st-century environment. Thwart Climate Change Now: Reducing Embodied Carbon Brick by Brick, was published in 2021.

Selecting low-Carbon materials for building construction and furnishings is my current focus—those with a low carbon footprint. This includes advocating for the immediate adoption of Carbon Footprint Labeling.

Webinars:

• AIA CES Course “Reducing Embodied Carbon— to Reduce Global Warming”.

• Environmental Law Institute Public Webinar “Thwart Climate Change Now: Reducing Embodied Carbon Brick by Brick”.

• Pratt Institute Housing Consortium's Decarbonization Symposium.

Lectures:

• Sustainable by Design - heralded by the Trade, NYC architecture firm Guest Lecture.

• REALITY & SUSTAINABLE DESIGN: How sustainable is Sustainable Design?, Cornell University.

• DESIGN + GREEN BUILDING: People + Green, Cornell University.

Competition Proposals:
The Ring, February 2014 - Louisville Children's Museum Design Competition
Arverne Dunes, June 2013 - FAR ROC: For a Resilient Rockaway
Terrain House 800, March 2013 - Add-on '13 Affordable Accessory Dwelling
Harlem Piers Farm, January 2012 - The Harlem Edge Competition: Cultivating Connections
K-12 on 62 Steps, August 2011 - Cleveland Design Competition 2011 | A New School Vision
Solar Plaza Fargo, November 2010 - Downtown Fargo: an Urban Infill Competition
Cornucopia Sukkah, August 2010 - Sukkah City: NYC 2010
Solar Spiral, May 2010 - Mine The Gap - The Chicago Prize
Educational Centerpiece - September 2009, San Francisco Botanical Gardens Gondwana Circle
Keyhole House, August 2009 - Prefab 2020
Prairie Ramp House, August 2009 - COEH Greensburg, Kansas
The Concourse Path, May 2009 - Intersections: The Grand Concourse Beyond 100

Judges Special Commendation - AIA National Architectural Photography 2010 Competition