Renowned architect designs with nature in mind: James Garrison, Founder, Garrison Architects.

Growing up near Western Pennsylvania's Allegheny Mountains, James Garrison spent most of his childhood surrounded by nature.

Consequently, he gained a great appreciation for the outdoors and how nature can be fused into everyday life.

Today, Mr. Garrison, founder and partner of Garrison Architects, utilizes nature as the founding principal behind all his architectural projects.

A foremost authority in sustainable design, Mr. Garrison is conscious of involving outdoor elements in his every-day life and designs.

While studying architecture at Syracuse University, Garrison recognized what he considered a major problem of historical modernist design--its often immoderate use of natural resources.

Modernism is essentially the idea of planned obsolescence, constant growth, the replacement of objects and a life measured by the quantity of its consumption--an idea at odds with the notion of sustainability.

According to Garrison: "As human beings we construct our reality through archetypal comparisons: good and evil, mind and body, within and without. By virtue of this disposition we have come to think of our bodies as utilities, and nature as something to be tamed and controlled."

However, Garrison views modernism as a robust language, rooted in invention and capable of adapting to new realities.

When Garrison Architects was founded in 1991, he took on the challenge of determining how this language might change in response to our recognition of the need for environmental balance. For the past 13 years, the full-service architectural firm has successfully created designs that support awareness of the natural world, maintain human health and conserve resources and energy in order to sustain a balance with nature.

The firm has been widely recognized for its award winning designs in public and institutional buildings as well as commercial and residential interiors.

Recently, Garrison Architects received the American Architecture Award for its work on The Iversen Kaplan Residence, an addition to a late modern home with vernacular influences situated in a heavily wooded area of Princeton, New Jersey.

The existing house was originally turned inward, with little relationship to its unique and natural surroundings. The newly completed project involved the construction of a 4,000-square-foot addition that now successfully allows for the interaction between nature and the existing structure.

Garrison also received great acclaim for a recent institutional project, the design of the US Border Patrol Station in Murrieta, California. The recipient of this year's General Services Administration Citation for Design Excellence the building restates the relationship between architecture and nature as one of mutual dependency.

The landscape and building form are interwoven through vertical and horizontal sectional integration.

The structure and orientation was determined by the specific climactic and geological conditions of the site. Sustainable design principles guided the selection of systems and materials both outside and inside the building, once again relating elements of the building's functionality with its relationship to nature.

Garrison's commitment to the world of architecture extends beyond his firm and projects, taking time to teach the next generation through his design studios at Columbia and Syracuse Universities for over fifteen years.

Currently, he's involved in Manhattan's Parson's School of Design, teaching architectural design, sustainability, and technology.

Garrison is a member of the American Institute of Architects, is NCARB certified, and is a registered architect in the states of New York, California, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

He currently resides in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY with his wife and children.

He loves to hike through the Adirondack forests to rediscover all his favorite elements of architecture.