Blair Satterfield

Blair is SALA’s current director, pro tem. He teaches design studios in both the Master of Architecture and Undergraduate Design programs, lectures on design thinking, offers courses on design media (coordinating courses for much of the past decade), and supervises independent research projects including theses. Lately, his teaching has explored various aspects of material use and reuse, fabrication, and construction ecologies, including the investigation of embodied carbon in design. He also delves into storytelling, narrative, and the use of various media in architectural production. He has won and directed a Large Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund Grant to increase opportunities for hands-on building, fabrication, making, and prototyping for students in all SALA programs. His students have built, exhibited, and published, and two were honoured with the Canadian Architect Magazine Student Award of Excellence (2019 & 2022). In 2019 he was awarded the Killam Teaching Prize.

Blair also directs the HiLo Lab, a collaborative research initiative based at UBC SALA. This endeavor revolves around three core principles: the utilization of second stream materials in construction, democratizing access to digital design and fabrication processes for designers and the broader community, and the development and application of energy and material efficient construction methodologies. At the heart of the HiLo Lab’s mission lies the ambition to create sophisticated yet universally accessible tool sets and strategies, facilitating efficient and sustainable building practices using low-impact materials and techniques. This is done through applied research, and student investigators directly engage with design challenges in the lab. The HiLo Lab’s efforts have not gone unnoticed. In 2020, it received an R&D Award from Architect magazine for its innovative Zippered Wood project. The lab’s work has been showcased at prestigious conferences such as ACSA and ACADIA, and in Fabricate 2020—a triennial publication spotlighting cutting-edge fabrication projects from academia and practice, published by UCL Press. In 2023, HiLo (collaborating with Ottawa based YAO+) was shortlisted to design the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Beyond his role at SALA, Satterfield is a founding partner, alongside Marc Swackhamer, in the research design collaborative known as HouMinn Practice. The name HouMinn is a portmanteau of Houston and Minneapolis, cities that deeply influence their work. It is also a homophone (pronounced Human) that symbolizes the practice’s commitment to a research-driven approach that collaborates with experts across disciplines to create impactful and resonant projects. Their work has received widespread acclaim, with features in esteemed publications like Dwell, Fast Company and the New York Times, and a collection of prestigious awards, including the 2020, 2014, and 2008 R&D Awards from Architect magazine, the Core77 Design Award for Environments, and Best in Environments Award from ID Magazine. Swackhamer and Satterfield collaborated with Blaine Brownell on the book “Hypernatural | Architecture’s New Relationship with Nature” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), and they are currently engaged in the production of a new book exploring agency and emergence in design. Blair is also a member of the University of Colorado, Denver’s LoDo Lab, established by Swackhamer as a sister to HiLo.

In addition to his involvement with HouMinn, Satterfield has worked for award winning firms including Atelier Feichang Jianzhu (Yung Ho Chang), Visible Weather (formerly Michael Bell Architecture), Oliver + Ray Architects, and Bricker + Cannady Architects, where he served as Director of Design. His work has been recognized with multiple AIA awards and national (US) SARA design awards for architecture and urbanism. Additionally, he was a co-founder of the web-based modern home-plan company Hometta. Satterfield has 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.

Education

MArch, Rice University
BSc, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign