TURETT COLLABORATIVE ARCHITECTS

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Bio : Simeon Seigel

Simeon Seigel

Associate

Simeon Seigel has worked with Turett Collaborative Architects for nearly ten years. Immediately after earning a B.A. at Columbia University in Architecture and Music, Seigel started working at TCA, where he project-managed retail, food service and corporate work. During a six-year hiatus he earned his Master of Architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design where he was named both a Thayer Scholar and a Lehman Scholar. He was awarded the AIA Henry Adams Medal, and graduated with Distinction, and as valedictorian, in 2002. His graduate thesis research concerned the lifecycle costs of homeownership for lower-income Americans and resulted in prototype designs for minimal “seed” homes, planned and detailed for expansion using owners’ unskilled labor and off-the-shelf components. His subsequent research has built on these ideas, promoting self-sufficiency for owners; the benefits for individuals and communities of direct personal involvement in design; and the potential for Home Depot –style construction yards and user-friendly, internet-based software to revolutionize owner-led home design and construction.

Seigel’s architectural experience during those years away from TCA ranged from very large-scale urban design and building projects to a prototype emergency shelter, playground structures, and showroom designs. Seigel worked for several years at Koetter, Kim and Associates in Boston. Alongside his design duties there, he also devised and implemented CAD protocols and customized software for communicating with a nationwide design team for a $1.1B corporate campus design. Seigel created digital tools for automating the seamless translation of documents from different platforms and disparate technical software.

In 2001 his expertise in prefabrication and unskilled assembly was sought out by the inventors of a plastic recycling process. The long-distance collaboration yielded working designs for emergency shelters for the Costa Rican tropics, built from a limited kit of stockpiled parts to suit the unique climatic and economic conditions. Some years later, Seigel collaborated with unskilled-labor in a new way, designing a playground with the children it would eventually serve. The design process –siting, planning, detailing, modeling– was integrated with their studies; architect, teachers, parents and child-designers then worked together to build the structure at Adelphi University on Long Island.

Today, Seigel is an Associate at TCA, as well as a LEED-accredited professional. He is involved in all aspects of design and project management for projects of all types. In recent years he has been focusing on high-end residential design. He is tasked with managing the competing needs of the dozen-or-so projects on TCA’s boards at any given time, properly staffing them and overseeing them for quality assurance, complete client satisfaction, budget and timeline. He contributes to each project with insight, developing cutting-edge design in practical ways and he is recognized amongst clients and colleagues for his ability to communicate complex ideas in clear, simple language.