Agenda

Dionne Darling has been with The A|N Media Group for over six years. As A|N’s Associate Publisher, she manages A|N’s Texas headquarters and handles accounts in the West, Southwest and Europe territories. Dionne has over 28 years of direct B2B sales, management and business development experience.

Walcott oversees marketing, communications, branding, and product management, for YKK AP America’s commercial facades and residential businesses; she also supports communications for Erie Architectural Products group. Walcott brings nearly 20 years of B2B marketing experience with manufacturing companies over a variety of industries. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Syracuse University and earned her M.B.A. at Wichita State University; she also served in the armed forces as a U.S. Air Force officer.

Robert Tranter is a Senior Associate at IwamotoScott Architecture with many years experience leading design teams on large-scale projects. He brings extensive knowledge and a unique perspective to each project from his experience working with intricate geometries and forms. With his interest and expertise in technology and computational design, Robert has played a key role in translating complex designs into solvable buildable solutions. Robert’s facade experience is wide-ranging, from custom-unitized curtain walls in high-rise buildings to curvature gridshell systems. Robert currently leads many of the firm’s high-profile projects from conceptual design through construction and detailing. Robert’s built portfolio includes aquariums, civic, cultural, exhibition, office, and education projects in the Bay Area, southern California, and most recently Chengdu, China.

Karen Brandt, AIA, is a Senior Principal at Heintges, a certified WBE. She joined Heintges New York in 2001 and launched the firm’s San Francisco office in 2013. She has spent the last eight years leading and growing the firm’s West Coa­st teams and body of work. Notable projects include 100 Stockton Street, headquarters for Adobe, LinkedIn, and Uber, the MIRA SF tower, the new Whitney Museum of American Art at Gansevoort and the historic renovation of the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations Headquarters, New York. Ms. Brandt holds degrees in architecture from the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Bob Perry is a Design Director at Gensler’s Bay Area architecture practice. He is guided by a passion for creating enduring designs that provide value for his clients and the greater community. His work focuses on the intersection of practical construction methodology and theoretical studies to create a design inspired by place, people, and the environment.

Bob’s portfolio spans various typologies including mixed use, office, build to suit headquarters, and supertall structures. Most recently, his work in San Francisco explores how natural light can shape an exterior and enhance an interior experience. Local projects 633 Folsom, 100 Stockton, and Burlingame Point engage computational optimization and building performance analysis to rationalize intuitive concepts into sensible realities. At 200 Park in San Jose, his team explored how an aesthetic can be created from the inside out by examining the relationship between the interior workplace and outdoor environments in an urban context.

Throughout his career at Gensler, Bob has grown the firm’s practice, strengthened its internal and external relationships, and mentored upcoming designers. He regularly contributes to industry publications, conferences, and is a founding board member of the community nonprofit organization, Simply the Basics.

Gensler is a global architecture, design, and planning firm with 49 locations across
Asia, Europe, Australia, the Middle East, and the Americas. Founded in 1965, the firm serves more than 3,500 active clients in virtually every industry. Gensler designers strive to make the places people live, work, and play more inspiring, more
resilient, and more impactful.

As a licensed architect, Chris fundamentally believes in the responsibility to positively contribute to the world’s built environment and takes pride in fulfilling this moral obligation. Throughout his career he has specialized in the design and execution of high-profile and complex projects. With a true passion for the craft of practicing architecture, Chris seeks to push boundaries in an effort to deliver iconic projects at the highest levels. His built portfolio includes academic, healthcare, cultural, office, and mixed-use projects, including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.

As a Senior Associate and Senior Project Architect at Gensler’s San Francisco-based practice, Chris leads diverse teams through the holistic process of design and delivery of projects. He has particular expertise in realizing innovative building enclosures, marrying aesthetic goals with technical and environmental performance targets. As the signature exterior expression of a building, he is inspired by the pivotal role facades play in reducing overall energy consumption, impacting internal occupant comfort, and providing a canvas for contextual material exploration.

Chris is active in the industry through conference speaking engagements and as a member of the Facade Tectonics Institute Special Advisory Council. He also serves as a content editor of the Institute’s monthly SKINS newsletter.

Lisa leads Eckersley O’Callaghan’s West Coast offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. She joined EOC in 2013 to support the practice’s emerging facade engineering group in London and after playing a significant role in the group’s exceptional growth, Lisa has been responsible for the expansion of EOC’s West Coast presence.

Lisa directs EOC’s R&D efforts, focusing on innovative glass designs and technology.

She remains heavily involved in academia particularly with the Facade Research Group at TU Delft where she pursued her doctoral research and has built strong links between research and industry.

As a Façade Specialist, Felix has a deep knowledge in complex façade and glass design. He is a highly creative engineer and experienced team leader with over 15 years of experience in façade consulting and structural engineering. He enjoys designing structures and façades influenced by individual materials or products. He has worked with many cladding types and specializes in structural facades, structural glass, complex geometry structures, and uncommon building materials such as ETFE and fiber-reinforced polymers. Felix was involved, for example, in the Bombay Sapphire Greenhouses (Laverstoke, UK), a Large Confidential Campus Project (Cupertino, CA), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco, CA) and the Berkeley Hotel Entrance (London, UK).