Little Known Fact:

I plan to run for President of the United States of America on the Sinclair-Schwarzenegger ticket just as soon as Arnold gets the constitution amended to permit foreign-born citizens to hold that office.

Client or Design Philosophy:

Improved building performance can be achieved without increasing construction cost by the right application of technology and good design. Our clients should be able to return to business immediately after an earthquake without spending an arm and a leg.

Virtues:

An ability to deliver under pressure. A modicum of structural intuition.

Vices:

Many and varied. References available on request.

Favorite Project Story:

This year I contributed to a project at Burning Man called Crude Awakening. An eight-story high oil derrick with a 200-person platform at the top was constructed in a few weeks for this annual event in the Nevada Desert, a place where winds can reach 100mph. At the end of the week the piece was burned in spectacular fashion. The worlds largest fire cannon was fired upward directly underneath the tower creating a 1000’ high fireball that completely engulfed the structure and created a nuclear bomb style mushroom cloud visible for miles around. To everyone’s amazement, including mine, the structure was still standing afterward. The satisfaction from this was tempered when the piece continued to stand instead of burning up and falling to the ground as intended. Most people had started to leave by the time it finally fell nearly an hour after the fireball, and so missed the dramatic collapse. Earthquake design is a little bit similar, building codes dictate that we design things to fail – the question is do we design them to fail too soon, or to fail not soon enough?

Special Interests:

I have been pretending to restore my 1964 Triumph Spitfire since 1993 and it still has plywood in place of the floor pans to avoid those Flintstone moments for driver and passenger. These days I’m thankful if it makes it across the Golden Gate Bridge and back without some disaster. Too many distractions. The most recent has occupied much of 2007’s spare time – am participating in the 2008 Plymouth-Dakar Rally www.plymouth-dakar.co.uk. It’s a low budget charity version of the more famous Paris-Dakar race. The idea is to drive a cheapo banger vehicle from London to Timbuktu, Mali where it is auctioned and the proceeds go to charity. Most teams try to supplement the vehicle donation with direct fundraising for fairly obvious reasons. Our vehicle is a 1988 Lincoln Town-Car 5’-stretch Limousine, named Vegas. We recently drove her across country to NYC from where she’ll be shipped to London for the rally start in late December 2007. From there it’s a combination of ferries and driving through France and Spain, across the Mediterranean to Morocco where the real fun begins. All going well we’ll be home by late January. More details at www.limotoafrica.org