Join the Georgia Tech School of Architecture for the 2020 Douglas C. Allen Lecture presented by Marcel Wilson, founder and design director for Bionic based in San Francisco, CA, titled Bionic @ X.

Bionic is a landscape architecture and urban design practice in founded on the mandate to “enable life” in an increasingly complicated and changing world.  After a decade of acting on this mandate the firm is engaged in a range of significant large scale projects including new waterfronts, campuses, the reinvention of urban centers, and the reorganization of cities in response to climate change and sea level rise.  Founder and Design Director Marcel Wilson will present the conceptual basis for the firms creation as well as research and built projects that have emerged from this paradigm shift approach to design practice.

About Marcel Wilson

As Design Director, Marcel leads the design of all of the firm’s projects with an inventive spirit and personal investment. He is an agile and inventive designer, a skilled and inspiring communicator, and a talented collaborator and strategist on projects at all scales and levels of complexity.

As a designer he is distinguished as a creative force in complex landscape projects through his broad expertise in landscape technology which ranges from large scale infrastructure systems to micro scale material applications. His portfolio of design and management experience includes waterfronts, infrastructure, universities, high-rise construction, landscapes on structure, and post-industrial sites. He has led the design and management of landscape projects in the United States and Asia.

Bionic has risen to the cutting edge of the profession through significant commissions for LinkedIn, Adobe, Google, Genentech, and Zeiss. At the city scale Marcel is leading the design of the public realm for the City of Sunnyvale and the India Basin Waterfront in San Francisco. The firm has won multiple international design competitions including Fort Mason Center Public Realm, the Adobe Creek Bridge in Palo Alto, and The Resilient By Design Bay Area Challenge.

Under Marcel’s leadership Bionic has been distinguished by numerous publications including Fast Company, Landscape Architecture Magazine, Dwell, SF Chronicle, and the Harvard Design Magazine. The firm has been awarded numerous awards for its built and theoretical work by the Boston, Chicago, and California AIA, and The American Society of Landscape Architects. Bionic was nominated for the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award.

Wilson has worked for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and was formerly a principal at Hargreaves Associates. He received his bachelors of science in landscape architecture from Colorado State University, and a Masters of Landscape Architecture with distinction from the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he was awarded the prestigious Weidenman Prize for Design Excellence.

About the Douglas C. Allen Lecture

This annual lecture on landscape architecture was established and endowed by alumni, faculty and friends in honor of Professor Douglas C. Allen (1947-2014) in appreciation for his long-time dedication to the College of Design (formerly the College of Architecture) as a teacher, colleague and leader.

A Georgia native and landscape architecture graduate of the University of Georgia and Harvard Graduate School of Design, Allen joined the School of Architecture in 1977. Over his career, he introduced thousands of architecture students to the history and design of landscapes and cities and to the inextricable bond between architecture and urban design. In addition to his teaching, he was honored as a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and served as Associate Dean and Interim Dean of the College of Design.

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