courses:
Creative Architecture Machines
Synthetic Tectonics
3D Printing & Additive Manufacturing
Jason Kelly Johnson
Co-Director, Digital Craft Lab @ CCA
Professor, Architecture
Jason Kelly Johnson co-coordinates the Digital Craft Lab at CCA and is an Associate Professor. He is also founding design partner of FUTUREFORMS, an experimental design and research office based in San Francisco, California. Jason has produced a range of award-winning projects exploring the intersections of design with advanced fabrication technologies, robotics, responsive building systems and public space. FUTUREFORMS is at the forefront of exploring how advanced technologies, social media and the internet of things will profoundly affect how we live, work, communicate and play in the future. Their approach to design and making, which has been described as “high performance craft”, is also deeply experiential, interactive and materially rich. Read Jason's full bio here and visit the Creative Architecture Machines website.
Jason Kelly Johnson is a tenured Full Professor at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. He teaches in the Architecture program and co-coordinates CCA's Digital Craft Lab. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Museum of Craft & Design and the Green Benefit District.
Jason Kelly Johnson is a founding design partner of FUTUREFORMS, an experimental design and research office based in San Francisco, California and Athens, Greece. Working in collaboration with his partner Nataly Gattegno, Jason has produced a range of award-winning projects exploring the intersections of design with advanced fabrication technologies, robotics, responsive building systems and public space.
Mr. Johnson's work has been published and exhibited worldwide. In 2012 the Hydramax project was exhibited at the SFMOMA and the Datagrove project was a featured installation in the Zero1 Art and Technology Biennial. Most recently he was awarded the 2011 Architectural League of New York Young Architects Prize, and the 2008-09 Oberdick Fellowship at the University of Michigan TCAUP, and the 2009 New York Prize Fellowship at the Van Alen Institute in New York City, and exhibited work at the 2009-10 Hong Kong / Shenzhen Biennale. He currently teaches at the California College of the Arts and leads workshops around the world, including the Architectural Association (AA) Global Summer Program Biodynamic Structures. Jason served as the Conference Chair of the ACADIA 2012 Conference "Synthetic Digital Ecologies" held in San Francisco. He has also served as a consultant to the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto.
Jason's design work has been awarded an Unbuilt Architecture Award from the Boston AIA, and an ACSA Faculty Design award in 2010. Recent publications featuring the work of Future Cities Lab include: Interactive Architecture by Fox and Kemp; Softspace: From a Representation of Form to a Simulation of Space, ed. by Lally & Young; Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments by David Gissen; AD:Territory - Architecture Beyond Environment, among others.
Mr. Johnson has previously taught at the University of Michigan (Oberdick Fellow 2008-09), the University of Virginia, The University of Pennsylvania and the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. He teaches design studios and research seminars in design, public space and advanced technologies. His research seminar “Robotic Ecologies” explores responsive environments, interactive kinetic architectures, and self-organizing intelligent systems. In 2005 he became a Research Associate of the NSO (The Non-Linear Systems Organization) founded by Cecil Balmond and supported by the Arup Foundation and PennDesign. He has been an invited juror at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, IIT, The University of Toronto, The University of Calgary, Pratt, UVa, The University of Michigan, among others. Jason has also recently collaborated with Andy Payne on the FIREFLY for Grasshopper toolbar and Primer. Firefly offers a set of comprehensive software tools dedicated to bridging the gap between Grasshopper (a free plug-in for Rhino) the Arduino microcontroller and other input/output devices. It allows near real-time data flow between the digital and physical worlds. His recent studio at CCA "Creative Architecture Machines" explored the use of these tools to create 3d fabrication machines.
Jason Kelly Johnson (b. 1973) was born and raised in Canada. He received his Master of Architecture degree from Princeton University in 2001, and his Bachelor of Science from the University of Virginia. While at Princeton Mr. Johnson was awarded a Butler Traveling Fellowship, a Princeton University Academic Fellowship, and the Suzanne Kolarik Underwood Thesis Prize for design research. He was the guest editor of 306090, a journal of emergent architecture and design, distributed by the Princeton Architectural Press. He has previously worked with Polshek Partnership and Reiser+Umemoto Architects in New York City.