Blair Satterfield

Associate Professor and Chair, Architecture

Blair is the current chair of the architecture program. He teaches design studios in both the Architecture and Environmental Design programs and coordinates and teaches design media courses at SALA. Blair currently leads a large UBC Teaching Learning Enhancement Fund Grant (TLEF) to increase opportunities for hands-on building, fabrication, making, and prototyping for students in all SALA programs. Blair was awarded the Killam Teaching Prize in 2019. 

He is also the director of HiLo Lab; a UBC SALA based collaborative research initiative that reckons with three interrelated ideas – the use of second stream materials in construction, providing designers and the community with greater access to digital design and fabrication processes, and the design and application of energy and material efficient methods for construction. Specifically, the HiLo Lab team is driven to generate sophisticated but universally accessible tool sets and strategies for efficiently and sustainably building using low-impact materials and techniques. The lab is a model for active learning, where student researchers engage design problems directly and work through challenges in an applied manner. The HiLo Lab was awarded the 2020 R&D Award from Architect magazine for Zippered Wood. HiLo's work has been included in ACSA and ACADIA conferences, and was recently featured in Fabricate 2020, a triennial publication of cutting-edge built projects from both academia and practice (UCL Press).

Outside SALA, Satterfield is a cofounding principal with Marc Swackhamer in the research design collaborative HouMinn Practice. HouMinn is both an acronym of two geographical locations that influence their work, Houston and Minneapolis, and a homophone that describes their research-based practice, which seeks collaboration with experts outside architecture to create work that is more rigorous and resonates with a wider audience. HouMinn’s work has been featured in numerous publications, including Dwell and Fast Company, and has garnered prestigious awards such as the 2020, 2014,  & 2008 R&D Award from Architect magazine, 2014 Core77 Design Award for Environments, and the Best in Environments award from ID Magazine. HouMinn has been published in a number of books and journals. Swackhamer and Satterfield collaborated with Blaine Brownell on Hypernatural | Architecture’s New Relationship with Nature (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014). The team is currently working on a new book about agency and emergence in design.  

In addition to HouMinn, Satterfield has worked for Yung Ho Chang (now Atelier Feichang Jianzhu), Michael Bell Architecture (now Visible Weather), Oliver + Ray Architects, and Bricker + Cannady Architects, where he served as Director of Design for several years. His work with BCA and later Page won multiple AIA awards and national SARA design awards for architecture and urbanism. He was also a co-founding member 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 also helped direct the development of products for the U of H Green Building Components initiative.

Education

M.Arch, Rice University
BSc, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign