Architect and Urban Planner born in 1955, Nicolas Michelin founded the Paris based agency ANMA in 2001, together with Michel Delplace and Cyril Trétout, and positioned it as a tool for research and innovation in architecture and urban planning. Nicolas Michelin is a member of the Academy of Architecture, National Knight of the Order of Merit, Knight of the Legion of Honor, and was also Director of ENSA Versailles between 2000 and 2009. A theorist and prolific author, he frames the practice of his agency according to eight themes: ultra contextual, ordinary-extra, natural energy, economic lightness, high quality of use, virtuous density, nature in the city and poetics of the useless.

Till Roenneberg started to work on biological rhythms with Jürgen Aschoff at the age of 17. After studying Biology in Munich (LMU) and London (University College), he worked at Harvard. He investigates the human clock and sleep in the real world (the Human Sleep Project). He is professor emeritus at the Medical School of the LMU Munich and currently President of the World Federation of Societies for Chronobiology (WFSC), and former President of the European Society for Rhythms Research (EBRS). He has initiated and directed several large national and international research networks and received several international research prizes. He has published over 200 papers, which have been cited more than 14,500 times (accumulative IF: >900;H-Index: 59). He has written two books, “Internal Time”, Harvard University Press (2012) and The “Right to Sleep” (“Das Recht auf Schlaf”) DTV (2019).
Lisa Heschong was a licensed architect for 30 years and a founding principal of the Heschong Mahone Group (HMG), an energy consulting firm in California. She led the research team that found that more daylight was associated with better student performance. Ms. Heschong is a Fellow of the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) and served as Chair of the IES Daylight Metrics Committee. Lisa Heschong was awarded her Master of Architecture from MIT with the AIA Medal, where her thesis was published as Thermal Delight in Architecture (MIT Press). In 2011 Architectural Research Centers Consortium awarded her the Haecker Award for lifetime achievement.
Kevin Houser (PhD, PE, FIES, LC, LEED AP) is a professor at Oregon State University, editor-in-chief of LEUKOS, the journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), and co-founder of Lyralux, Inc. He has published more than 125 publications about light and lighting. He has won the CIBSE Leon Gaster Award, IES Taylor Technical Talent Award three times, the IES Presidential Award, and is a Fellow of IES. His recent work focuses on human perceptual and biological responses to optical radiation and the application of that knowledge to the spectral design of light sources.
Vivian Loftness, FAIA, LEEDAP, is an internationally renowned researcher, author and educator focused on environmental design and sustainability, climate and regionalism in architecture, and the integration of advanced building systems for health and productivity. With over 30 years of industry and government research funding, she is a key member of Carnegie Mellon’s leadership in sustainability research and education, and contributor to the ongoing development of the Intelligent Workplace – a living laboratory of commercial building innovations for performance.
Her work has influenced national policy and building projects, including the Adaptable Workplace Lab at the U.S. General Services Administration and the Laboratory for Cognition at Electricity de France.
In the past five years, Vivian has been recognized as a LEED Fellow, a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council and the Scott Institute, and one of 13 Stars of Building Science by the Building Research Establishment in the UK.
Cui Kai was born in Beijing in 1957, and graduated from Department of Architecture, Tianjin University in 1984 with a master degree. Now he is Honorary President, Chief Architect of China Architecture Design & Research Group, Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, National Design Master, and Founder of Land-based Rationalism D.R.C. As a promoter of architectural academic research, Cui Kai also acts as the Vice President of Architectural Society of China, Professor of Tianjin University, Practical Professor of Tsinghua University, Professor of University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and editorial board member of several architectural magazines. He is also a bearer of numerous prizes, such as National Best Science and Technology Worker (1997), Expert who enjoys special subsidy from the State Council (1998), Excellent Mid-young aged Expert of the Ministry of Personnel (1999), Candidate of “National Hundred, Thousand & Ten Thousand Reserves Project” (1999), French Culture & Art Cavalier Medal(2003), Liang Sicheng Award (2007), and Academician of International Architecture Academy of Bulgaria (2015)
Architect in A2M since 2010, Aline Branders is now a partner of the firm. She is responsible for Research and Development of A2M since 2014. In this context, she pushes for different facets of sustainable projects: passive, zero-energy (or autonomy), carbon neutral, BREEAM certification, ACV, natural light, water treatment, biodiversity, innovative products, etc. She regularly provides training to architects and contractors on various topics related to sustainable architecture. She has also published for the ‘be.passive’ magazine edited by the A2M office and makes frequent publications in other journals or books. She has given many lectures for different education or professional networks and she also gives courses in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Brussels.
As founding member of A2M, Sebastian Moreno-Vacca leads A2M’s vision, design aesthetic and drive to be the most sustainable and energy efficient architecture possible. Since starting the architecture firm A2M in 2000, Sebastian has led it to international recognition through his sustainable building knowledge and his numerous roles as president of the Board of the Belgian Passive House Association. Since 2006, he has also been teaching at ULB architecture. In 2009, he co-founded and edited the magazine ‘be.passive’. He has been giving lectures regularly for several professional networks (architects, engineers and builders) for more than 15 years. He has also been giving an extensive set of presentations, conferences and trainings in Europe and, for some years, in the United States.
Since its founding in 2008 by Frédéric Chartier and Pascale Dalix, the ChartierDalix office has delivered some fifteen buildings. Noticed at several international competitions, it was awarded a number of prizes. Laureate in 2016 of the international Réinventer-Paris competition for the Ternes-Villiers site and in 2017 with the Nouvelle AOM (Franklin Azzi Architecture and Hardel & Le Bihan Architectes) for the project “Demain Montparnasse”. The office masters a broad range of commissions and programs, both public, such as the La Courneuve train station of the Grand Paris Express, and private, notably several projects involving commercial properties, and hotels. For the last several years, the research department of the office has undertaken work on the integration of the biosphere in architecture. This theme was the inspiration for the project called “Architecture and Biodiversity: Imagining a new urban ecosystem,” which was selected under the framework of the request for proposals for the FAIRE project, launched by the Pavillon de l’Arsenal.
Rasmus Astrup is a partner and design principal of SLA, a renowned Danish landscape architecture consultancy. SLA’s projects have a strong emphasis on biodiversity, sustainability, ecosystem services and the transformative potential of landscape. Rasmus Astrup leads SLA’s biggest international projects and currently works in the US, China, the Middle East and Paris. Since 2015, Rasmus has been partner-in-charge for SLA’s ongoing work with the winning entry for the Reinventer Paris Competition, The Multi-Layered City, which SLA designed in collaboration with Chartier Dalix Architectes and Jacques Ferrier Architecture.
Christoph Reinhart is a building scientist and architectural educator working in the fields of sustainable building design and environmental modeling. He is the Director of MIT’s Building Technology program and head of the Sustainable Design Lab (SDL), an inter-disciplinary group with a grounding in architecture that develops design workflows, planning tools and metrics to evaluate the environmental performance of buildings and neighborhoods. He is also the CEO of Solemma, a technology company and Harvard University spinoff. Design tools originating from SDL and Solemma – such as DIVA, DAYSIM, UMI and ALFA – are used in practice and education in over 90 countries.
Steffen Vogt has been Managing Director of wulf architekten since 2015. From 1993-1998 he studied architecture at the University of Applied Sciences in Stuttgart and the TU Delft (NL). His diploma in 1998 with Prof. Tobias Wulf was followed by a semester abroad at the École d ‘architecture de paysage Bordeaux (FR) and a collaboration in the office Bau Werk Stadt in Stuttgart, before he joined wulf architekten in 1999. The spectrum of work of the internationally active office covers a multitude of demanding construction tasks. Here he is responsible for projects in which daylight plays an important role as an architectural design element, such as the Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Bonn (2017) or the Neue Messe Stuttgart (2010).
Song Yehao is a deputy director of Department of Building Science & Technology, director of Institute Architecture and Technology in School of Architecture, Tsinghua University. He also had visited Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) as a visiting scholar from 2003 to 2004. As to the professional membership, he was not only the National First-class Certified Architect in China, but also the director of the branch committee of Building Technology, Branch of Architects, Architectural Society of China and the secretary-general of the Group for Green Building’s Theoretical and Practical, Committee of China Green Building. Prof. Song’s major research direction focuses on sustainable design and theory both in the fields of architecture and urban design, while highly promoting the combination of modern design and vernacular architecture in China. His representative works and projects includes the Municipal Centre for Changshu, Office Building for Institute for Surface Engineering in Deyang, Primary school and kindergarten for Mianzhu (Post-disaster Reconstruction Project after the 512 Earthquake), Waterfowl Pavilion in Beijing Zoo (Nearly ZEB), South Student Center in Tsinghua University, THE-Studio in Guian District (Prefab ZEB in Moderate Climate Zone), CIFI zero-energy sustainable demonstrated building (Prefab ZEB in Cold Climate Zone), and Longfor Sundar passive museum(nearly zero energy demonstration building) most of which had won plenty of national awards. Prof. Song had also published many academic papers in international and Chinese journals with high impact factors.
Martin Schwartz is an architect and teacher with a special interest in daylight in architecture. He has taught at the University of Plymouth, the University of Michigan, Cranbrook Academy of Art, the University of Oregon as the Frederick Charles Baker Distinguished Professor in Lighting, and since 2005 at Lawrence Technological University in Detroit. His book, Gunnar Birkerts, Metaphoric Modernist, was published in 2009 by Edition Axel Menges. He is currently working on two books, one on daylight in architecture, and Those Who Love the World Don’t Mind Being Reminded of It, on the work of Charles W. Moore. Martin’s blog and writings on daylight may be found at martinschwartz.net.
Ronald Schleurholts (Roden, 1972) is an avid advocate of daylight in the built environment. He studied architecture at the Delft University of Technology, where he focused on architecture, construction methods and interior. While he was still studying, he worked for a period at architectural offices Claus & Kaan and Koen van Velsen. He has worked at cepezed since 1999, and was appointed partner and member of the executive board in early 2005. In 2009 the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies and the Chicago Atheneum chose Schleurholts as one of the forty most influential upcoming European architects under the age of forty. From 2010 to 2015 he was on the board of the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects (BNA) and between 2011 and 2015 he was chair of the Living Daylights Foundation. In addition, he gives lectures about sustainable and integral design in the Netherlands and abroad.
Merete Madsen is educated as an architect and specialized in daylighting design. She holds a Ph.D. from The Professor until 2008. She has written several articles in various magazines and lectured at universities in Denmark, Sweden and New Zeeland. Since 2008, Merete has worked as lighting designer at Sweco in Copenhagen, where she is team leader for an interdisciplinary team of lighting designers, architects and engineers, working with daylighting and lighting design.
Maha Shalaby works as an architect and a sustainability specialist at White Arkitekter with eight years of experience in practice, research and teaching. She studied her Masters’ in Energy Efficiency from Lund university, Sweden and she currently works with various simulations including simple and advanced daylight studies. Her passion lies in integrating her environmental design expertise with parametric tools and using the results from the assessments to inform the design resulting in a holistic way of working. Maha’s additional interests include visual comfort, circadian light assessment, assessing daylight quality in a space, and the perception of the space in virtual reality.
Phillip Greenup is a senior lighting designer with broad international experience. He offers integrated design and technical expertise in natural and artificial lighting, and is widely respected for his expertise in daylight design, assessment and consulting. He understands daylight design from both architectural and technical perspectives, and is passionate about helping to create spaces that are a joy to occupy. Phillip has gained valuable international experience working in four of Arup’s offices in Australia, the UK and the US. Phillip’s project experience includes numerous boundary-pushing and award-winning projects across a wide range of markets.
Giulio Antonutto has worked on a number of iconic projects including the Sheraton Hotel Garden in Doha, the Zaha’s Investcorp Building at the St Antony’s College, the Zaha’s London Aquatics Centre and the Piano Pavilion at the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, USA. Giulio’s area of competence include lighting for broadcast, natural lighting, product design and Masterplan. He has extensive experience in advanced engineering tools. He has been awarded in 2007 with the G4C Innovation Award in relation to his research work on computational design optimisation for lighting and Masterplan.
Santiago Torres is a trained architect specialized in lighting design, with expertise in advanced daylighting simulation. At university, he has researched the acceptance of users to daylit environments under glare conditions, and its consequence for the energy performance of buildings. Since joining Arup, Santiago has been involved in a wide range of projects for both daylighting and architectural lighting design, often collaborating in inter-disciplinary teams to create integrated solutions. These projects have included commercial and residential buildings, museums, sport venues, as well as art installations and special purpose buildings.
Clotilde Pierson is finishing her PhD at UCLouvain in Belgium. She has a background in architecture engineering, and first worked for one year in an architecture office before starting her PhD research. Her research focuses on the influence of culture on the perception of daylight, and more specifically on the perception of discomfort glare from daylight. To determine whether glare metrics can be applied analogously all over the world, she conducted experiments in Chile, in Japan, and in Switzerland. In this talk, Clotilde will be presenting the results of her 4-year PhD research.
Aicha Diakite is a researcher and lighting engineer working in the field of daylighting. She studied Electrical Engineering at TU Berlin (Germany) and Poznan University of Technology (Poland). She went on to study Architecture and Industrial Design at UNAM (Mexico), where she received the Postgraduate Architectural Lighting Design Diploma. Aicha has received several awards for her work including the H.-J.-Helwig-Prize by the German Lighting Technology Association, the VDI Recognition by the Association of German Engineers, and the Hans-Peter-Willumeit-Award by the Foundation Committee of the Center of Human-Machine Systems. She is currently working at the Department of Lighting Technology at the TU Berlin having previously served in Lighteam, Kardorff Ingenieure Lichtplanung, OSRAM and Hellux Construktions-Licht. Aicha is in the final stage to completing her PhD at the TU Berlin. Her research proposes new spectral sky models to enable the integration of daylighting strategies into the design of urban structures that support people’s well-being.
Marielle Aarts graduated on the light preference of office workers, at the Eindhoven University of Technology. Since 2002, she is an assistant professor at the Building Lighting group, Department of the Built Environment (TU/e). She educates students on light and lighting and in her research she aims to define light strategies for a human-centered built environment. Her expertise’s are (day)light, human responses to light, and research methodologies for field studies. Currently her focus is on Healing Environments, specifically hospitals and offices. She is chair of the Light and Health Research Foundation (SOLG) and founding member of the Daylight Academy (DLA).
Samantha Peeters, MSc. graduated in August 2016 at the Eindhoven University of Technology on the topic of the acute alerting effects of light during daytime. Since November 2016 she is working on her Ph.D. at the School of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences in the Human Technology Interaction group. Samantha’s research project is part of the larger multidisciplinary STW project ‘Optilight: Mathematical Optimization for Human Centric Lighting’ of the Intelligent Lighting Institute. The overall goal of this project is to make lighting control systems more centered towards the human user. Samantha’s goal is to search for better and quantified models on human perception and experience through controlled experiments and field studies.
Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon, is the Director of the Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory in Eugene and Portland, OR, and Co-Director of the Biology and the Built Environment Center. He has a PhD in the Built Environment from the University of Washington. He teaches classes in daylighting, integrated design principles, energy performance in buildings, and design. Van Den Wymelenberg has consulted on several hundred new construction and major renovation projects with architects and engineers regarding daylight, energy in buildings, and indoor environmental quality since 2000. Five of these projects have been recognized with AIA’s Committee on the Environment Top 10 Awards and many others are LEED certified. He has presented at many conferences including the National Academy of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, the Illuminating Engineering Society, LightFair International, and Passive Low Energy Architecture.
Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg served as Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Idaho College of Art and Architecture in Boise, from 2004-2015. He was the founding Director of the Integrated Design Lab in Boise (UI-IDL) and served there as professor from 2004-2015, completing over $7M in funded research and outreach in daylighting and energy efficiency for the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, United States Environment Protection Agency, Idaho Power Company, the New Buildings Institute and others. He maintains an affiliate appointment in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Idaho.
Inger Erhardtsen has extensive experience as a lighting and daylighting engineer. She has special skills in addressing and designing large-scale projects, including daylighting strategies, biological-and lighting design. She worked for several years with consultancy and project management for major lighting/electrical projects. Inger has an innovative and open approach towards handling tasks. Inger has a broad experience in collaboration, solving tasks and project management cross-disciplinary (builders, architects, contractors, users and other stakeholders). Inger teaches as external lector and has participated in several research projects in collaboration with Aarhus University on the topic of lighting, LED and daylighting.
Werner Osterhaus is an architect and Professor of Lighting Design Research at the Department of Engineering at Aarhus University in Denmark. His passion lies in applying design, technology and science to architectural (day)lighting to ensure well-being and pleasant experiences for building occupants and a sustainable built environment. Werner has been involved in daylighting research and design since he first started working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Windows and Daylighting research group in 1987. Since 1994, he has been a full-time academic in schools of architecture in the USA, New Zealand and Germany, and since 2009 in a school of engineering in Denmark. He focuses on lighting design, sustainable architecture and building environmental science. Werner has lead and contributed to numerous national and international research projects, published many scientific articles, and regularly serves as reviewer for research funding agencies and international journals.
Bernard Paule is co-founder and manager of Estia SA. The company, located on the EPFL campus, is offering services in building-physics and sustainable development in architecture. After studying architecture at Ecole d’Architecture de Lyon (F), he finalized his PhD at EPFL in 1999, dealing with the application of fuzzy logic rules in the daylighting decision process. In parallel with its consulting activities in daylighting and building energy efficacy, he is regularly involved in research activities (IEA tasks, European & Swiss Projects). Co-author and designer of the DIAL+ software, Bernard PAULE is part-time lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL).
Zack Rogers is president of Daylighting Innovations, LLC, and co-founder and director of engineering of LightLouver, LLC for which he holds several patents for the LightLouver daylighting system. He is the author of the Sensor Placement + Optimization Tool (SPOT) software. He is a licensed Professional Engineer, a LEED® BD&C Accredited Professional, a member of the Illumination Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) and the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS) where he is on several daylighting related committees. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder where he teaches an engineering course on Daylighting.
David Geisler-Moroder achieved a master and a PhD degree in technical mathematics from the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Since 2010 he has been working as a project manager and head of the competence field daylight in the R&D department of Bartenbach. His main work and research areas include the development of simulation methods, the interface between daylighting and building physics, daylighting systems, and lighting technology principles. He is leader of Subtask C “Design Support for Practitioners” in the IEA SHC Task 61 / EBC Annex77 “Integrated Solutions for Daylighting and Electric Lighting”.
Tatiana Séverin-Fabiani is a research engineer working at Saint Gobain Research Paris in the Optics group since 2016. She is involved in a research program on visual comfort and daylighting, developing measurement and modeling capacities for daylight and comfort criteria.
Yannick Sutter is the founder and manager of French lighting consultancy LUMIBIEN which gets involved in R&D projects mostly dealing with the perception and measurement of daylight inside buildings. Yannick also teaches building physics at the National School of Architecture of Normandy in Rouen, France.
Andy McNeil is a Façade Performance Specialist at Kinestral Technologies, Inc. A leading industry expert on daylighting, Andy works on enhancing the Halio® automation system’s ability to respond to changing light conditions to mitigate glare, optimize daylight, and reduce energy consumption. He previously worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab developing methods for simulation complex and dynamic fenestration systems with Radiance. As a daylight consultant at Arup, Andy provided daylight and electric lighting design for world-class museums, healthcare institutions, libraries, and offices.
Caroline Karmann is a post-doctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Integrated Performance in Design (LIPID) in EPFL. She holds PhD in Building Science in Architecture from UC Berkeley and a dual Master’s degrees in Architecture and Energy Engineering from INSA Strasbourg. Caroline practiced as a daylight consultant for four years at Transsolar in Stuttgart, and as a senior research scientist for one year at ARUP in London. Her research focuses on the gap between visual comfort, preference and interests based on the subjective and behavioural responses of occupants.
Claudia Moscoso is an architect and Postdoctoral fellow at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She has wide professional experience in the development of architectural projects, being responsible of small- and large-scale projects in Peru and the US. Since 2010 she has been working in research, obtaining her PhD degree at NTNU, where she conducted research about the impact of daylight on the aesthetic perception of architecture using advanced visual equipment. She is now an active researcher of the Light and Colour Centre at NTNU. She focuses on daylighting studies and quantitative research using VR equipment.
Muhammad Hegazy is currently a PhD candidate at the Architectural Morphology Laboratory in Osaka University, and holds a Master of Science in Environmental Design from Suez Canal University in Egypt. He has worked for Takenaka Corporation in Japan, and been invited as a speaker at the Architectural Association visiting school (AAVS) in Osaka. His doctoral research focuses on improving human-centered daylight performance in indoor environments. By comparing daylight perception in immersive virtual reality to other quantitative measurements, he aims to introduce a set of unified daylight performance metrics that consider both subjective and physical qualities of daylighting.
Francisca Rodriguez (MSc Lighting Design, Ba Architecture) is a PhD candidate in QUT Lighting group (Lumielab). Her lighting experience has manifested in diverse professional and academic contexts in Chile, Sweden and Australia. Francisca has collaborated on the revision of lighting standards for the Code for Sustainable Housing Construction (MINVU – Chile), and has presented her research work at a number of international meetings. Francisca has experience collecting luminous measurements through High Dynamic Range methods, processing digital imagery using programming languages, and analysing visual conditions indoors using portable sensoring technology. As a research member of Lumielab, Francisca aims to understand the role of outdoor luminous transitions on occupant wellbeing.
Steffen Petersen is an engineering expert in building physics with substantial experience in research, teaching and practice. He is currently associate professor at the Department of Architectural and Civil Engineering, Aarhus University, Denmark, where he is leading the research group ‘Indoor Climate and Energy’. His passion is collaborative research and development of methods and technologies for realization of sustainable, healthy, comfortable, and productive indoor environments.
Kynthia Chamilothori is currently a PhD candidate at the Laboratory of Integrated Performance in Design (LIPID) in the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and holds a Master’s degree (Dipl-Ing) in Architectural Engineering from the Technical University of Crete (TUC). From October 2019, she will be joining the Human-Technology Interaction group at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) as an Assistant Professor. Her research interests lie in the intersection of lighting, architecture, and human perception, with a particular focus on how the characteristics of light in space can influence the subjective and physiological responses of occupants.
Rob Shakespeare is principal consultant at Shakespeare Lighting Design, an Architectural Lighting Design LLC. Additionally, a Professor of Lighting Design and researcher, at Indiana University for 29 years. He co-authored Rendering With Radiance: The Art and Science of Lighting Visualization with Greg Ward. Currently a principal investigator and industry liaison for the Designing Visually Accessible Spaces (DeVAS) team, a National Institute of Health supported grant with the goal of providing tools to enable the design of safe environments for the mobility of low-vision individuals and to enhance safety for others. The research has resulted in graphical tools that predict visibility.
Hiroshi Sambuichi graduated from the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science. As an architect born and based in the Setouchi region, Sambuichi strives to create architecture that becomes part of the earth. He was awarded both the Japan Institute of Architects Grand Prix and the Architectural Institute of Japan Design Prize for the Inujima Seirensho Art Museum at Benesse Art Site Naoshima. He is currently working on the Orizuru Tower being built next to the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. In 2018, Hiroshi Sambuichi received The daylight Award for his works.
Greg Ward is an independent consultant working in Albany, California. He graduated with an A.B. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley, and earned his Master’s in Computer Science from San Francisco State University. Ward has published numerous papers in computer graphics and illumination engineering. He is also the inventor of an imaging `gonioreflectometer´ for the measurement of reflectance of architectural materials, and the developer of the Materials and Geometry Format for lighting information exchange. Greg wrote the core and bulk of `Radiance´ – his life’s work – and for which he received The Daylight Award in 2018.
Hugh Dutton grew up in Jamaica and qualified as an architect at the Architectural Association in London. In search of complementary technical expertise, he began his professional career with Peter Rice, a renowned inventive engineer responsible for the Sydney Opera house and Pompidou Center amongst other seminal projects around the world. Rice sought consciously to muddle the traditional boundaries between the architectural and engineering toward an objective of pure holistic design.
Hugh spent 13 years with Rice at RFR and related their experiences in the book Structural Glass notably on the first bolted structural glass and cable structures from the La Villette Science museum to the inverted pyramid at the Louvre. His final work with Rice before his untimely death in 1992 is the west front of the Cathedral de Notre Dame de la Treille in Lille using translucent stone. Forming Hugh Dutton Associés in 1995, Hugh continued his exploration of design and built reality, having collaborated with many well-known architects and designers assisting them on the realization of their concepts with a notable attention to detail. The practice has collaborated on many now significant European projects such as the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, the Louvre Museum Islamic Arts and the Philharmonie de Paris. He has worked as a specialist designer in various places on iconic and sculptural components of buildings such as skylights, entry lobbies, footbridges. His work pays notable attention to sustainability, for example the ‘Climate Ribbon at the Brickell City Centre in Miami which filters sunlight and catches the sea breezes for natural cooling of an open public street.
HDA’s work continues to concentrate on multidisciplinary design, combining structure glass and light, and are currently realizing a light filtering glass roof at the Hotel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde.
Thomas Vonier FAIA RIBA is president of the International Union of Architects (UIA), the only global organisation representing the world’s 3.2 million architects. He has led projects to address the challenges of rapid urbanization, regional conflict and changing climate patterns. Thomas was a delegate to COP 21 (Paris) and COP 22 (Marrakesh), as well as Habitat III (Quito) and the World Urban Forum 9 (Kuala Lumpur). He appears regularly in the news and at conferences on issues related to the built environment.
As a private architect based in Paris and Washington DC, Thomas works with public and private clients to secure commercial and institutional facilities. A board certified security professional, he also works with municipalities to improve urban security. Thomas led innovative work on US embassies resulting in landmark security recommendations to the US Secretary of State. He served as president of the 93,000-member American Institute of Architects in 2017, and was a research affiliate with the Laboratory of Architecture and Planning at MIT.