THE OUTLIER ARCHITECT
It reads like the bio of a fictional superhero.
Sample this.
He developed the design of the new South Pole Station. Worked for NASA on lunar bases, Mars vehicles and the International Space Station. Circumnavigated the planet – that’s 36,000 nautical miles, give or take a few – on a sailboat called Galatea. Has explored every continent. Designed undersea habitats, inflatable habitable rovers, sustainable eco-resorts and residences in the tropics, major theme-park attractions, museum exhibits and elaborate movie sets.
And has a day job as an architect, as any good superhero should.
Except Guillermo Trotti, president of Trotti & Associates is, incredibly, a regular guy. It’s just that he has a passion – for sea, space and other extreme environments. For the intersection of technology, design and sustainability. For researching and developing cutting-edge new materials, then using those materials to make the extreme habitable. And for sharing that passion – despite the overflowing roster of achievements, he has found the time for 25 years to teach design in architecture, and industrial design, at the University of Houston and at the Rhode Island School of Design respectively.
Born in Argentina and based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Guillermo’s core expertise – and the foundation for his incredible versatility – remains his ability to understand and design for all manner of extreme environments, designs that don’t always take architectural shape. He was the first architect ever to work with NASA and is currently collaborating with MIT on the Biosuit project, an advanced counter-pressure spacesuit for Lunar and Mars surface exploration. His design footprint can be found across the planet – and beyond – from the Batman rollercoaster and preshow at Houston, Texas to a resort in Belize and a country club in Mexico; the Cosmic Pavilion at Sapporo, Japan to the Riyadh Science Complex in Saudi Arabia; from Antarctica to crew quarters at the ISS, and anywhere else you would think a designer is unlikely to have reached.
