{"id":4751,"date":"2016-09-19T18:38:02","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T18:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modelo.io\/blog\/?p=4751"},"modified":"2020-12-08T06:53:07","modified_gmt":"2020-12-08T06:53:07","slug":"design-manifestos-matthew-krissel-kierantimberlake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/blog\/index.php\/2016\/09\/19\/design-manifestos-matthew-krissel-kierantimberlake\/","title":{"rendered":"Design Manifestos: Matthew Krissel of KieranTimberlake | Modelo Blog Series"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Design Manifestos: Matthew Krissel of KieranTimberlake<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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Matthew Krissel (Photograph by Ed Wheeler courtesy of KieranTimberlake)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Matthew Krissel is a partner at KieranTimberlake<\/strong><\/a>, an award-winning architecture firm recognized for its environmental ethos, research expertise, and pioneering design and planning. He has completed projects for Cornell University, Dartmouth College, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is currently working on projects for the United States Department of State and New York University. In addition to his design responsibilities, Matthew leads KieranTimberlake\u2019s Digital Design Visioning Group, an initiative dedicated to digital innovation, visualization, and knowledge sharing within the firm. Modelo<\/strong><\/a> spent some time learning about Matthew\u2019s journey through the profession and about his current role at KieranTimberlake.<\/p>\n

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On becoming an architect<\/strong>
\nAs a kid, my exposure to architecture was limited to the traditional suburban landscape that dominated my small hometown in New York. By the time I was a junior in high school, I had never even met an architect and, truthfully, had no idea what the profession entailed. But I had also already completed all the art classes offered at my school, so I signed up for a technical drawing class which, incidentally, was taught by a local used car salesman. Inspired by the didactic drawings from Popular Mechanics Magazine, I spent hours in the school basement drawing gears and sprockets using donated T-squares and triangles (this was 1992, after all). I loved the challenge of bringing clarity to complex problems through drawing and representation. After visiting a local architecture practice during a career fair and learning a little more about what an architect was, I kept coming back to the field as I considered college and a future career.<\/p>\n

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Cellophane House \u00a9 Peter Aaron\/OTTO Cellophane House, a five-story off-site fabricated dwelling exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On discovering his voice as a designer<\/strong>
\nWhen I graduated high school, my grades and the financial pressures faced by my parents with multiple kids already in college led me to start my higher education at a two-year technical college. While I was enrolled in an architecture program by name, I really was being trained to be a draftsman. I learned how to see and interpret the physical world, as well as how to annotate and construct two-dimensional and three-dimensional drawings by hand through traditional architectural representation. My success in the program translated into my acceptance into the University at Buffalo\u2019s Architecture program, which offered me an entirely new perspective. Unlike my previous training that focused on depiction, my education at Buffalo centered on learning how to think and create like a designer.<\/p>\n

After graduating with my bachelor\u2019s degree from Buffalo in 1997, I boarded a bus with two duffel bags and moved to New York City. I spent my formative years there, in a city that was saturated with creativity and ideas and where everything was always on a big stage. My time working at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and then later at Kohn Pedersen Fox, exposed me to great design talent and urban living. However, it wasn\u2019t until my time in graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania that I discovered the other facets of design in ways I had not yet imagined.<\/p>\n

I was at UPenn from 2003\u20132005, right in the middle of a pedagogical transition towards the digital. It was a special time in our field\u2019s collective history, and one that I am grateful to have participated in while in school. Seeing design and design methods shift so dramatically away from the analogue was critical for me, especially since I had the advantage of being educated on both sides of this history of architecture. Learning design and making by hand as well as through advanced computation and digital fabrication allowed me to discover my own voice within the design world.<\/p>\n

That voice then came into focus at KieranTimberlake, where so much of what I had discovered in school could be put into practice and cultivated in an environment that truly enables experimentation and holistic thinking. While challenging workflows and rituals of practice, I began to see and think differently, which led me to realize that to do great design work, we often have to engage in practices outside of the traditional boundaries of architecture. The elastic process of designing at the firm built on my strengths and taught me the value of understanding my limits in a place where collective intelligence is encouraged and people are empowered to imagine and create.<\/p>\n

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