Joe MacDonald founded Urban A&O in New York while serving as an Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, his alma mater, and now serves as one of its Principals. He is UA&O’s Project Director, incorporating his academic research into practice and his work has been published and exhibited widely. His practice emphasizes Net-Zero/carbon neutral design research, renewable energy, climate mitigation, public policy, 4IR; emerging sustainable material science applications, environmental analysis, and building retrofits, where possible. UA&O is focused on transparent, quantified measurable results, and science-based targets.
He designed the core of the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences, the Water Planet, a merging of living exhibits and interactive technology melded together with sensual, tactile surfaces sculpted into the forms of rippling, flowing water. It received an IDEA International Design Excellence Silver Award for Environments and Double LEED Platinum certification in 2008/11, still the only one to date. Other work has included the design for Johnson & Johnson’s Olympic Games Pavilion for the Beijing Olympics, which received China’s Most Successful Design Award and LEED Gold, he also created exhibition architecture for GE projects in New York and Washington, D.C. He lectures regularly on his research on impact investing, climate change, the UN’s 17 SDGs, circular economies and emerging Net-Zero strategies.
MacDonald’s work has been exhibited widely and published regularly in the popular press: Time Magazine, The New York Times, Metropolis Magazine, The Architect’s Newspaper, Domus, Interior Design Market Tabloid Best in Show, Harvard Magazine, and Vanity Fair. He received Architecture Magazine’s Vanguard award as one of the top ten emerging practices from around the world in and the highest honor of the New York AIA New Practices Award in the same year. He is a Visiting Professor of Architecture at several universities, most recently at the Weitzman School of Design at University of Pennsylvania.
Specialties:
ESG SME, Environmental & Social Impact, CSR
Net-Zero and Climate Neutrality; Scope 1, 2, (3) Emissions
TCFD, GRI Frameworks, GHG Protocols
UN SDGs; “Race to Net-Zero”, 2030; 2050
Zero Energy (nZEB) | Decarbonization
Carbon Capture, Blue Hydrogen, Solar
Public Policy Analysis & Implementation
MacArthur Foundation & Circular Economies
Environmental Management; Wind Farms; Electric Grid and Storage
Agri-Tech; Vertical Farming; Biophilia; Conscious Leadership
