2019 Virginia Design Medalist – Jonathan Grinham, D Des
Hanbury welcomes to the firm as the 2019 S Michael Evans Virginia Design Medalist.
Hanbury's Virginia Design Medalist program invites a professor of architecture, planning or design-related curriculum to spend several weeks with the firm participating in design discussions, critiquing work and delivering both formal and informal lectures. The program, now in its fifteenth year, is an opportunity for Hanbury to have an academic assessment of its work, but It is also an opportunity for the professor to step into the world of design practice.
Hanbury's Virginia Design Medalist program invites a professor of architecture, planning or design-related curriculum to spend several weeks with the firm participating in design discussions, critiquing work and delivering both formal and informal lectures. The program, now in its fifteenth year, is an opportunity for Hanbury to have an academic assessment of its work, but It is also an opportunity for the professor to step into the world of design practice.
For the 2019 Design Medalist honor Hanbury has chosen Jonathan Grinham because of his critical thinking on how the design of conventional and emerging material technologies can address architecture’s big problem – energy. His inquiry of where we extract materials, the energy and carbon embodied in the process of making building products, and the end use of these products has led to his development of novel technologies and publications around vascular-thin-film heat exchange, nano-scale thermal tuning, and the coupling of breathable materials to buoyancy-driven ventilation. These topics are complemented by Jonathan's other research interests that track themes in robotics, kinematic structures, embedded computation, and automated fabrication workflows.
Jonathan will be in Hanbury's Norfolk office from June 10 – 21 and builds on the success of our sustainability focus in design-research from medalists Joe Wheeler in 2017 and David Hill and Andrew Fox in 2018.
Currently a lecturer of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a researcher with the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities, Jonathan came to academia after 6 years in practice with SOM Chicago, Studio 27 Architecture in Washington, DC, and Mass Design Group in Boston. Jonathan has taught technology seminars at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as design studios at the Catholic University of America and Virginia Tech. While at Catholic University, Jonathan was the Assistant Project Manager for Team Capitol DC’s Solar Decathlon house, Harvest Home.
He received his Doctorate of Design degree (DDes) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he was a Graduate Researcher for the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Project Manager for the GSD's Alive Project (MaP+S group). He holds a BArch and MS from Virginia Tech.
A special treat for Hanbury, Jonathan will be joined by Nathan King of Autodesk and the BUILD Space next week to conduct a robotics workshop in Hanbury's Norfolk office. Jonathan has collaborated with Nathan to explore building facades, robotics, and design technology. Together they developed a robotically fabricated facade system that was recently used by Zahner, a graphic-perforated-panel fabricator, on the newly opened Cornell Building on Roosevelt Island. They also worked together to develop the façade for MASS Design’s Cholera Treatment Center in Haiti.
As Hanbury continues to elevate our sustainable design and meet the rigors of the 2030 Challenge head on, we expect Jonathan to challenge us and push us toward new innovations.
