Mark Donohue

Mark Donohue received his BArch from Carnegie Mellon in 1986 and MArch with distinction from Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1995. He did his practical training in architecture offices in the United States and Switzerland.

As an associate in Mark Mack Architects he was project architect and designer for a number of award-winning works. As a senior project designer and associate with Gensler, he focused on large-scale commercial and institutional projects that culminated in the competition-winning entry and subsequent construction of the 900,000-square-foot Lettermen Digital Arts Center for Lucasfilm in San Francisco's Presidio.

He is principal and cofounder of Visible Research Office (VRO), a multidisciplinary firm based in San Francisco. Through VRO Mark researches new fabrication techniques and innovative materials and their application in the construction process. The projects test the research at varying scales and uses from private homes to interior interventions for institutions to large-scale cultural projects done for competitions.

He has completed a number of residential commissions in the Bay Area. The Torqued House, 45° House, and Staggered House examine perception and geometry expressed through material form.

In 2007 the 45° House was selected as one of five homes for an architectural tour of South Bay homes. Work at the institutional scale with CCA enabled the exploration of ideas about material effects. The Office of Student Services, Graduate Design Studios, and Solar Blades was born out of research into perception of shapes, moiré patterns, and Fresnel lenses.

His work has appeared in such publications as Zyzzyva, Appendx, Hinge and Metropolis. In 2007 the work of VRO was nominated for the Emerging Voices lecture series sponsored by the Architecture League of New York.

Mark is an educator, as well as practitioner. He taught at Harvard Graduate School of Design; University of California at Berkeley; the Boston Architectural Center; and University of Nebraska, Lincoln before taking his present position at CCA.

He writes and lectures on issues of representation and digital production in architecture, in addition to his practice and teaching endeavors. He has been a speaker at the "Symposium on Architecture in the 21st Century" at LSU and the "New Cities, New Media Conference" at USC. His first book (edited with Balz Mueller) titled 5x2: Research and the Making of Architecture was published by CCA and UC Berkeley in 2006 and is distributed by William Stout Architectural Books. The interview-based book is a compendium piece to a joint CCA and UC Berkeley seminar taught in 2005. The seminar compared and contrasted the U.S. and Swiss educational systems and practices.

His forthcoming book Working 1:1 is the second in this series that focuses on architecture practices that use digital technology to explore the process of construction and interaction with the built environment at full scale.

Mark has been active at the local- and state-level of the American Institute of Architecture (AIA). In 2003 he received a Special Commendation from the AIA California Council. The award was given in recognition for his dedication and promotion of the profession having chaired the 2003 Monterey Design Conference. The conference theme, "Doing good, Doing good," focused on the architect's changing role as grassroots initiators of social change.

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