Alan Organschi is a principal and partner at Gray Organschi Architecture, an architectural practice in New Haven, Connecticut recognized internationally for its integration of design, construction, and environmental research. He is also the founder of the fabrication workshop and construction management firm JIG Design Build which in 2018 created the Ecological Living Module, a fully self-sustaining micro house for the United Nations Environment Program.

In April 2021, Mr. Organschi was appointed Director of the Innovation Lab at the Bauhaus der Erde (Earth Bauhaus – www.bauhausdererde.org) a global interdisciplinary initiative that seeks to transform the building sector from a major source of anthropogenic environmental and social impact into a regenerative and ecologically sensitive means to meet the housing and infrastructural needs of an urbanizing global population. In that capacity, he will direct the development of the Lab, its experimental projects, public programs, and trans-sectoral collaborations with global partners.

Mr. Organschi continues as a Senior member of the faculty at the Yale School of Architecture where he has taught architectural design and building technology for two decades. During the 2019 and 2020 academic years, he also served as the Portman Critic at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Architecture. The findings of the research and design work of the studios he conducted were published in the two-volume collection entitled Technosphere/Biosphere.

His ongoing research project, the Timber City Initiative (www.timbercity.org), examines the application of emerging structural wood fiber technologies to the construction of global cities. Timber City has been awarded grants from the Hines Fund for Advanced Sustainability Research in Architecture, the US Forest Service Wood Innovation Grant program and the SITRA Finland innovation Fund for the Circular Economy. Mr. Organschi has written and lectured extensively on the carbon storage benefits of biogenic material substitution in urban building and is a co-author of the upcoming book Carbon: A Field Manual For Building Designers and the scientific paper “Buildings as a Global Carbon Sink” published in the journal Nature Sustainability in January 2020. That same year, the paper received the Aquila Capital Transformation Award which honors scientific research that contributes to the decarbonization of Europe.

Andy Ruff is the Research Director at Gray Organschi Architecture and the Timber City Research Initiative, where he focuses on developing a comprehensive approach for incorporating timber construction into cities, an approach which simultaneously addresses regional material flows, economies of carbon generation and sequestration, the development of new industrial processes, and the complex spatial, architectural, legal, and logistical challenges of constructing timber buildings in dense urban centers. He previously held appointments as Critic at the Yale School of Architecture, Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University, and Lecturer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and served as part of the guest faculty at the Roger Williams School of Architecture, Art, and Historic Preservation, where he led design research into the applications of mass timber assemblies in mid-rise building applications. 

In addition to his professional degree in Architecture from the University of Tennessee, Andy holds a Master of Environmental Design from the Yale School of Architecture and has lectured and published on the subject of mass timber buildings in the global carbon economy. 

Chris Carbone, PE, MS, Preconstruction Engineer, graduated from Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering in 1999 and MIT’s School of Architecture in 2003 with a master’s degree in building technology. As one of the few timber-focused professional engineers in the USA, he began his career with Bensonwood, where he collaborated with prestigious architects such as Lake Flato, Kieran Timberlake, Gray Organschi, and SOM. He was responsible for the successful design and delivery of hundreds of projects. During his tenure, Chris championed the development of innovative wood-based panelized construction systems, integrating glulam, Cross-Laminated Timber, and other mass timber elements into several award-winning products and projects.

His passion for carbon sequestering construction systems at scale led him to join Nordic Structures in 2020, where he focuses on engineering efficient structural grids for Mass Timber buildings and designing frames and connections optimized for the natural properties of the materials. He enjoys working to help clients, designers and construction managers understand how to successfully plan and execute their Mass Timber projects. Chris’ purposeful approach focuses on solving problems, be it at the detail level of a structural connection, the systems level of a building’s envelope design, or the project level – developing the team and the players for a successful resolution.

Jean-Marc is the Director of Business Development for Nordic Structures, the building systems division of Canadian lumber manufacturer Chantiers Chibougamau.  His career spans 44 years in the building products industry with regional, national and international corporations, focusing on value-added, engineered wood and Mass Timber products. Jean-Marc's penchant for delivering customer solutions through value engineering and process optimization led him to join the structures division of Nordic Structures, collaborating with clients, architects, engineers, designers and builders to provide sustainable built Mass Timber solutions across North America.

Jean-Marc is a passionate advocate for sustainability, serving on a number of industry councils; he is a founding member of Timber Edge, an advocacy group dedicated to increasing urban Mass Timber utilization, a board member of the International Mass Timber Alliance, and also serves on the American Wood Council’s Green Building Committee and APA: the Engineered Wood Association’s MAC Committee. He has been a keynote speaker at Holzbau and Woodrise Congress, and a guest lecturer at universities as well as architectural, engineering, and sustainability conferences across North America, Scandinavia and Japan.

Hans leads daily operations at Bensonwood and oversees the company’s research and development of improved systems and products for the construction industry. As a member and coordinator of the collaborative “Open-Prototype Initiative,” he participated in a number of innovative projects including the Net-Zero, LEED Platinum, Unity House and BrightBuilt Barn, as well as the renowned Loblolly house.

Jeff Spiritos is the principal of Spiritos Properties  LLC, a commercial and residential developer that builds mass timber projects in New York and the Northeast. Spiritos worked for 25 years with Hines before starting his firm in 2004 and for the past nine years has turned to build only with mass timber structural systems. Current  projects include Acme Timber Lofts, an 18-unit rental apartment vertical extension project, 340+ Dixwell, a 69-unit affordable housing project, both underway in construction in New Haven, CT and 79 King Street, a 70-unit 55+ rental apartment project in Northampton, Mass, currently in design. Both the New Haven projects were fortunate to have been selected for US Forest Service Wood Innovation Grants. Spiritos has a BSCE from Duke University and an MBA from the University of Michigan and is currently the chair of the CTBUH Tall Timber and Steel-Timber Hybrid Committees. 

Jennifer leads NEFF’s work to develop the forest-based bioeconomy in New England—promoting wood-based materials as a lower carbon, ecologically sound alternative material sourced from climate-beneficial forestry practices. She advances this work through science, program implementation, outreach and strategic partnerships along the forest products supply chain. Before joining NEFF in fall 2019, she was an Applied Forest Scientist at Manomet working with large landowners to reduce climate-related risk in North American forests. Prior to that, she was a Project Manager at INRS, LLC, working on wood energy, resource sustainability, and landowner outreach. Jennifer has a B.S. in Biology from Saint Michael’s College and dual master’s degrees in Forestry and Environmental Management from Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. She is also a Certified Forester.