Panelists on December 15th 2006 at Terreform NY.
Lara Greden, Ph.D., is a consultant with The Weidt Group, specializing in energy modeling and risk analysis for sustainable building design, energy conservation, and renewable energy. She is an expert in hybrid ventilation and flexible design methodologies. She works with design teams and major manufacturers consulting on energy, flexibility, and cost decisions.Other research includes studies on market and regulatory mechanisms for encouraging development of sustainable housing in urban China. Design work includes her role as team member of the Fab Tree Hab design team (winner, Habitat for Humanity/SECCA design competition) and sustainable design work in Turkey, including renewable energy systems and passive building design. She was also a consultant at Arthur D. Little, Inc. (now Navigant Consulting, Inc.) on the topics of renewable energy and energy efficiency for the U.S. Department of Energy. Ms. Greden completed her Ph.D. in the Building Technology Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was a National Science Foundation Fellow, MIT Presidential Fellow, and MIT Martin Fellow for Sustainability.
Oliver Medvedik earned his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School in the Biomedical and Biological Sciences (B.B.S.) program. As part of his doctoral work he has used single-celled budding yeast as a genetic system to map pathways that underlie the processes of aging in more complex organisms, such as humans. Prior to arriving in Boston in 1999 for his doctoral studies, he has lived most of his life in New York City. He obtained his bachelor's degree in biology from HunterCollege, City University of New York, in 1998. Since graduating in 2006 from Harvard, he has worked as a consultant for Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company specializing in the research and development of small-molecule therapeutics to treat age-onset diseases, such as diabetes. In his spare time he is working on a popular-science oriented book that seeks to explain the current science and technology of longevity research and the future treatments that will arise as a result of this work.
Yanni Alexander Loukissas is an architect and a researcher who studies the culture of computation in the building professions. His latest essay will appear in The Inner History of Devices, an edited volume by Sherry Turkle, Ph.D. Currently, Mr.Loukissas is a Presidential Fellow and a Ph.D. candidate in Design and Computation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT, he has been a National Science Foundation Pre-doctoral Fellow, a member of the Initiative on Technology and Self, and a research assistant at the Media Lab's Center for Bits and Atoms. He is also a Visiting Professor of Sculpture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and a design and technology consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He holds a Master of Science in Design and Computation from MIT and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. He has taught at both MIT and Cornell and has practiced architecture in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Greece. He currently resides in Cambridge, MA.
James Patten, Ph.D., creates interactive works in diverse media with themes including performance and social commentary. Patten has exhibited or performed in venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Transmediale festival in Berlin, the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, the Museo d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, the Instituto Tomie Othake in Sao Paulo, and the Art Interactive gallery in Cambridge, Ma. Patten's work has been recognized in several interational design competitions including the International Design Magazine's 2004 Annual Design Review, and the 2004 Industrial Design Excellence Awards. Patten holds a Ph.D. and an S.M. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.A. from the University of Virginia.
Anya Bokov, Adjunct Professor, Graduate Program Coordinator, Northeastern University, Senior Architect, City of Somerville, Mayor's Office SPCD. She received her Master in Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and her Bachelor of Architecture from Syracuse University where she was a recipient of the Full Merit Scholarship. Anya travelled to United States from Moscow Russia to study at Syracuse University on a full merit based scholarhip. After graduating from Syracuse in 1998, Anya joined New York-based Polshek Partnership Architects and later Gluckman Mayner Architects. While at Harvard Design School she organized an urban design studio in Russia with Rodolfo Machado and curated two Harvard Design School exhibits in Moscow. In parallel she collaborated with Herzog & de Meuron and the Institute of Contemporary City in Basel, Switzerland on developing a thesis studio. After graduation she worked with Rem Koolhaas at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture on the Hermitage Museum addition in St Petersburg, Russia. Currently Anya Bokov is a senior architect and an urban designer at the Mayor's Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development at the City of Somerville and an adjunct professor at Northeastern University School of Architecture. At Somerville she has been working on projects such as the Brick Bottom urban design competition, Assembly Square and Green Line T Extension among others. At Northeastern she is coordinating the rapidly growing graduate architecture program and has been developing the new curriculum for courses such as Thesis Studio and Professional Practice. She is a member of the Board of Directors at the Boston Society of Architects, representing Northeastern University.
Frank Ruchala Jr. graduated with dual masters in urban planning andarchitecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. At the GSD, Frank won the school's prestigious Druker Traveling Fellowhip, for which he studied airport cities throughout the world. He was also awarded a Penny White Traveling Fellowship in 2002 to study Los Angeles' urban oil fields, research that eventually led to his architecture thesis on the subject which will be published by Actar next year. Frank is currently living in New York where he works in the urban design department of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. He is responsible for work on Columbia University's proposed campus in West Harlem, a joint project between SOM and Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Before this, he worked at numerous design, planning and real estate development firms in Boston, San Francisco and New Jersey. He has taught studios at the Boston Architectural Center and the GSDs Career Discovery Program and his work has been published in Japan, Venezuela and the United States. Frank was part of a team that won the "Prop X: Inventing the next Los Angeles" competition, looking at ways to effectively deal with that city's ongoing housing crisis.
Richard Reames, Sculptor and Author
Opened Arborsmith Studios- A tree nursery/art studio 1993Authored How to Grow a Chair- 1995Directed community planting Williams Oregon- 1997Planted "Laughing happy tree park" in Joykoji Japan with John Gathright, the idea received "The Good Design Award" For ecological design 2000 Garden Creator S. F. Flower and Garden show- 2000Subject in hardbound large format book- Living Sculpture by Paul Cooper 2001Subject in hardbound large format book Eden on Their Minds by Starr Ockenga 2001
Speaker Master Gardeners State Convention in Alaska- 2001Workshop Deans's Nursery Ohio- 2002T. V. PBS “Tree Stories” “fantasy trees” 2002Speaker High Wycombe Collage of Furniture Design in England 2002World Expo Japan 2005 Arborsculpture coordinator for Growing Village pavilion. Authored Arborsculpture- Solutions for a Small Planet 2005Authored article for Compass Magazine- March/April 2006John C. Campbell School of Folk Arts, North Carolina, Instructor of Arborsculpture 2005 and 2006 Speaker Seattle Flower and Garden Show 2006Speaker University of Melbourne Australia 2006T. V. Home and Garden Channel "Off Beat America" segment 2006.
