Meet the Team | Jack

Jack Johnson’s interest in design started at a very young age when he would draw large scale renderings of boats and buildings by taping together all the sheets of letter sized paper that he could find in his home. Jack’s love of cars and boats led him to believe he should study mechanical engineering to become a car and yacht designer, yet a chance encounter on the ski lift with a retired mechanical engineer steered him towards architecture as a more fitting path to realize his vision.

As KMB architects’ first intern, Jack sets a high bar. While earning his Bachelor of Architecture at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, he’s been spending his summers and academic breaks at the firm, including some remote work during school. The experience allows him to challenge himself to conceive buildable projects in studio, while providing the firm with meaningful contributions in project visualizations thanks to his advanced graphic skills. Jack uses Rhino with aspirations to utilize Unreal Engine to create photorealistic renderings and has a long-term goal to integrate video game animation technology to create lifelike animations of projects.

“Part of my interest lies in being on the front end of solutions — be it as simple as passive design through building orientation to as complex as inventing new, technically advanced systems. The conceptual project I designed with student colleague Elise Malvicini in Berlin was based around using algae for producing power, oil, food, pigments, and plastics that would in turn be used to generate the materials needed to construct a building or create products for the stores inside. For an advanced system like that to work, you have to change perceptions in people — you have to change the narrative about pond scum — so they’ll be open to using the products that an algae system would create.”

Jack is an advocate of regenerative urbanism: the next step in sustainability that declares that net zero is not enough, and we must move to practices that create a net positive. During study abroad in Germany, Jack admired the county’s commitment to sustainability through reusing and repurposing existing buildings and facilities such as the Berlin Tempelhof Airport which has been converted to a park.

As technologically savvy and futuristic as Jack is at work, he still goes analog when it comes to his hobbies, like boat building, creating balsa wood gliders, and restoring his 1965 Ford Mustang. Guided by a belief in the purpose behind the work, he foregoes the 3D printers and laser cutters during these projects and honors the importance of craft while diving into his exacting hobbies.