Faculty of Applied Science Dean James Olson has appointed Associate Professor Blair Satterfield as director, pro tem of SALA for a one-year term effective January 1, 2024.
Satterfield joined SALA in 2010, and has served as chair of the Master of Architecture program. He has also taught at Rice University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Houston, where he helped direct the development of products for the U of H Green Building Components Initiative. In 2018, Satterfield was awarded with the Killam Teaching Prize, in recognition of his significant impact on the culture of teaching and learning at SALA.
Satterfield is the founder and Director of HiLo Lab, a SALA-based collaborative research initiative working at the intersection of materials, construction ecology, and use of novel technologies in architectural applications. Outside SALA, he is a co-founding principal of HouMinn Practice with design partner Marc Swackhamer from the University of Colorado, Denver. Their work challenges broadly accepted approaches to design agency through focus on post-disciplinary partnerships, unconventional making, material ecologies, and the role of decay in architecture.
Satterfield succeeds Professor Ron Kellett, who has concluded his term. Since his tenure as director began in 2015, Kellett’s leadership grew the reputation and scope of SALA’s academic programs and, in parallel, the School’s faculty, operations and physical infrastructure including a new Digital Design and Fabrication facility collaboration with the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and other Applied Science units. His leadership also enabled development of SALA’s longer term Strategic Directions plan, the Faculty of Applied Science Strategic plan Transforming Tomorrow, and to a shared vision of the Applied One building project.