Blaine Brownell is an architect, sustainable building advisor, and a researcher of innovative materials for design and construction. From self-cleaning paint to transparent ceramics and biological plastics, he has described these and hundreds of other revolutionary products in his two-volume book Transmaterial: A Catalogue of Materials that Redefine our Physical Environment. New developments and discoveries are reported on a website of the same name. As the founder and director of the design/research firm Transstudio, he aims to promote awareness, provide resources and stimulate creative thinking about ecologically-sensitive building and design. He also is the Visiting Professor in Sustainability at the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan.

Brownell holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Princeton University, and a master’s from Rice University. He was selected for a 2006 “40 Under 40” award by Building Design & Construction magazine, and was the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship to Japan for 2006-2007, during which time he researched contemporary Japanese material in­novations at the Tokyo University of Science.

Past Events

• Future Cities Sustainable Solutions, Radical Designs

  2008 Festival

  Urban planner Peter Head, architects Blaine Brownell and Mitchell Joachim, environmentalist Majora Carter, and microbiologist Dickson Despommier laid out radical blueprints and innovative solutions as they imagine housing, feeding, transporting and sustaining city dwellers of the not too distant future.

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